>>113303589Marvel actually considered making an offer for DC circa 1982, the last time DC's sales were totally in the crapper. Imagine how different things would have been.
>>113304021It really doesn't. If Warner wanted to just license DC out to another production company, they'd pick someone with the production capacity to manage the IP. Fantagraphics simply doesn't have the staff and couldn't grow fast enough or reliably enough to do it. It would be like Heroes Reborn all over again, low sales would spook them, they'd end up doing a whole lot for nothing and bring it back in-house.
If it's an outright sale, then Fantagraphics would simply never raise the money.
>>113304009I can see them stopping new production of comic books, certainly. It's been a long time coming - low sales, constant complaints about the quality/content/cover price from readers, bad press around relaunches (looking at you, New 52) - and when it happens it will probably be quite sudden, rather than the big send-off event you might expect given the history of the company.
AT&T/Warner absolutely don't give a shit about company wars though. If Disney are willing to pay them then they'll sell up. What they're interested in is whether it's a worthwhile sale - that depends on whether they need the money right now, whether they think the IP can make money *under their control* in future. On present evidence it's hit and miss, mostly miss, as far as the movies go. That could certainly swing it. But there's no "shooting down" of suggestions that they could sell underperforming sections of the group. It's just what you do when something is unprofitable and you're losing money by just keeping it going.
Shutting down the New York DC operations five years ago and bringing everything over to Burbank was not the Warner/AT&T way of saying "good job guys you're doing great". It was a way of not having to pay expensive rents for offices in New York occupied by people who are just scraping by.
