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Executive vp of sales and marketing and business development John Rood is leaving DC Entertainment, a DC spokesperson has confirmed.

Rood’s position is being eliminated as the sales and marketing departments get a shuffle. Marketing, interactive marketing and publicity will go under Amit Desai, who is currently senior vice president of franchise management. Desai will add the new duties to his current portfolio.

Sales, custom publishing and business development will go back to being run under co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan Didio, with various folk running each department.

The changes take place on January 1st. Although the reorg comes in the midst of DC’s move to the West Coast, we’re reliably informed that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the move.

Rood came on board in 2010 as part of Diane Nelson’s five person executive team. He made his mark at DC over a wide variety of sales and marketing issues, including the New 52 roll out and a subsequent retailer survey and was a familiar presence at retailer functions, as well as a frequent interview subject, along with Bob Wayne, at industry sites including CBR, ICv2 and PW. He was also a big champion of DC’s digital initiatives, and in general helped moved the company forward on a variety of levels.

Rood was previously at ABC and before that at WB Consumer Products. Despite not having a background in comics, he certainly learned a lot about them in short order.

While this much is confirmed, stepping into the realm of speculation, Bob Wayne has been sidelined quite a bit of late due to some health issues (now corrected, we’re told he’s fine), so it will be interesting to see when he takes the reigns again of the sales department. Pure speculation, but with more than 20 years of DC service under his belt, Wayne could be unliekly to make the West Coast move, so the next two years could see many more changes in DC’s sales department.

5 COMMENTS

  1. I do wish John the best–Didio and Lee running things even more deeply is perhaps cause for concern, however.

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