Comings and Goings this week, notes on DC and Marvel and more

There have been a lot of goings of late, but also some hires and promotions.

• Mike Armstrong is leaving ReedPop for an unnamed opportunity, he wrote on Facebook. Armstrong was currently the Vice President, New Initiatives a ReedPop but had been the showrunner for C2E2 and NYCC among his many other duties. He wrote:

It’s bittersweet for me to announce that after almost 15 years, I’ll be leaving ReedPop to pursue a new role that I’m very excited about.
My first ReedPop show was New York Anime Fest in 2009 (pictured below!) and I formally joined the team in 2010 for Star Wars Celebration. Between then and now, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the most amazing people, brands, partners, and fans.
The people I got to work with were 100%, without a doubt, the absolute best part of my job. The thing I’ll miss the most is the Sunday 6:30PM post-show hugs, high-fives, and beers that signaled the end of another successful show. There’s no better feeling.

Armstrong’s departure comes soon after ReedPop president Lance Fensterman left for a still unnamed new position, so some changes there – and a lot of general unrest in the convention space which I’ll look at in more detail one of these days. Chris Arrant has his own good-bye to Armstrong at Popverse, but we’ll miss commiserating about the latest Mets disasters with Mike at shows. He’s a real one.

• Jim “Ski” Sokolowski has left Dynamite,, in what’s described as a mutual parting of the ways. Sokolowski was VP/Associate Publisher at Dynamite, but has a long track record at Marvel, DC, (twice each) and Archie and probably knows more about comic book sales than any living human except Bob Wayne. They are tied. On his Linkedin Page Ski writes that he’s “not looking for a VP/Dir. Level gig, but if you have a lower/mid level needs, I’d love to connect. Please feel free to reach out if you feel I can help you out in any way.”

• Peter Katz has joined GalaxyCon as

• It’s been a jam packed week of IDW news, but I missed that Heather Antos has been promoted to Group Editor, Licensing, a position where she’ll oversee Star Trek, Sonic, and other titles. Popverse has the story.

• I was AFK when the Jim Lee news broke – thanks to Joe Grunenwald for stepping in! As Joe correctly noted, Lee has just been hoovering up titles as people leave – taking over as CCO from Geoff Johns, then Publisher from Dan DiDio. And now he adds President to his portfolio.

Lee has remained the top executive – and now kind of the ONLY executive – at DC as it’s been rocked by many rounds of layoffs and slashed to the bone in some departments. During all this time, one of the most popular rumors surrounding DC was that Lee would be leaving/let go, perhaps as part of a cost cutting move.

I’m very happy to report that that didn’t happen, but looking at the small but doughty band currently running DC – and the general state of change at Warner Bros. Discovery – Lee not being at DC would have been seismically dire. It would have left the state of the all important DC characters completely up in the air, and made the future of the division bleak, to put it mildly. That would not have been good.

It’s also hard not to see Lee’s promotion as part of the general internal optimism and excitement about the revamped DC Studios and its two heads Peter Safran and, of course, the very comics savvy James Gunn.

So yeah, good news.

• Speaking of layoffs, Marvel Comics seems to have been spared in the most recent round of Disney layoffs. I’m told no one really expected any, but, of course, it’s hard not to be cautious in these times. It does appear that March’s downsizing of Marvel Entertainment and removal of Ike Perlmutter was a singular event, and the comics division (which I’m told is stable and profitable) will be left alone. At least that’s what I keep hearing!

Another round of layoffs is coming for Disney in the coming months, however, so we’ll keep monitoring the situation.