Clearly in response to Disney acquiring Marvel, Warner Brothers has announced that it will turn its DC Comics property into DC Entertainment. But while Disney’s move was largely a licensing synergy which will leave the day to day business of making Marvel’s comic books unchanged, WB is putting it’s own corporate control over DC’s Editorial staff. Longtime DC Comics President Paul Levitz will step down to allow company girl Diane Nelson to take over the ship.

The problem here is that WB is using Nelson’s success managing their $5.5 billion Harry Potter Franchise in hopes she can work the same magic with DC’s crop of superheroes. There’s no doubt that the movies and merchandise in the world of Potter are phenomenal moneymakers, but Nelson never dictated anything to JK Rowling from a creative perspective on the direction of her books. It’s one thing to make better movies and merchandise based on DC Comics, but to run the comics at the same time stinks of bad news.

With the comic book company run by the same folks that benefit from the merchandising, what will be the justification for experimental projects that don’t have immediate mainstream appeal. Could something the Vertigo imprint have been made if movies and toys were brought into the equation up front? Alan Moore’s Watchmen is considered one of the greatest comic books of all time, but it’s merchandising and mainstream success is more of a flukey experiment 20 years after it was first made. Would it have got off the ground in today’s environment?

Time will tell. If anything, maybe this relationship might help to actually increase the sale of comic books which has floundered in the last decade. Both Marvel and DC have had eternal troubles increasing the sales of same titled books when X-Men, Batman, and Iron Man movies were released. Perhaps the movie/merchandise synergies they will both enjoy now might give the comic books themselves the marketing shot in the arm they need.

Admittedly, Marvel and DC’s day to day operations were already corporate monsters before these activities took place, but it was nice to see comic books being produced merely for the sake of just being good comic books. With the motives of pleasing stockholders and considering TV, Movie, and Toy Potential for every potential project being scrutinized, you wonder if we’ll ever see the likes of independent spirit there again. With lackluster “pre-deal” DC films like Jonah Hex and The Losers coming out, that might force their hands to ensure the comics are all potential blockbuster movies or video games even more.