Comings & Goings old

Following the departure last year of Director Karl Erickson, MoCCA has just announced two new hires; Cartoonist Doug Bratton will fill the role of...

Marketing Coordinator Aaron Colter tweeted and social networked yesterday that he and Dark Horse had parted ways. Colter was a whiz at Twitter and Facebook and all the other ways we talk today, and managed these fuctions for DH, but he also was, shall we say, irreverent -- not perhaps the best image for a respected publisher. At any rate, maybe posting stuff like the attached image was a tweet too far.

2011 is going to be a tumultuous year for comics. Heck, it's already tumultuous. There's going to be consolidation and retrenchment. So over the next few weeks we'll be checking in at a few companies to see what's going on -- some of it's great and some of it is not so great. We will start with Top Cow which announced last week that they were consolidating many of their functions at Image Central, including production, marketing and sales efforts.

While the industry reacted with equal parts nostalgia and disdain to yesterday's announcement of the end of Wizard nagazine (see next post), and quite rightly pointed out all the harmful, childish attitudes it enshrined, we'd like to dwell for a moment, if we may, on the magazine's one very positive legacy: all the great people who worked there.

Over at iFanboy, one of the former Wizard employees has given a tell-all exit interview that's pretty juicy. Here's how the employees found out what was going down:

Sierra Hahn and Dave Marshall have been promoted to full editors at Dark Horse Hahn has edited many media tie-ins and original series, while...

Via PR, official confirmation of Sarah deLaine replacing Betsy Gomez as Image Comics' PR & Marketing Coordinator. deLaine is a long time Image staffer and formerly worked at Comic Relief.

Some changes at Image Comics, which had a dynamite 2010 with the success of WALKING DEAD and many new series. As announced in a press release, Top Cow, which has functioned pretty much independently of Image for marketing and PR, will be moving some of its operations to the Image Central office, coordinating more production, marketing and sales efforts. Top Cow had a big hit in 2010 with ARTIFACTS, a big event crossover for their long running WITCHBLADE and DARKNESS franchises, but they don't have a huge publishing program and some consolidation seems like a move to strengthen both companies.

Tokyopop has just signed a deal with Diamond Book Distributors for distribution to both comics shops and bookstores. This marks Tokyopop's return to Diamond...

While I was off the grid, the Blogfather Dirk Deppey announced via Twitter that he had been laid off by Fantagraphics: I've been laid off...

After three years in top management positions, Mark Waid is leaving his current position as COO at BOOM! Studios to go back to freelancing. He'll continue to write INCORRUPTIBLE and IRREDEEMABLE, his hit titles for BOOM!, and Stan Lee's THE TRAVELER. Editor-in-chief Matt Gagnon, who stopped into that position in July, will oversee BOOM!'s creative output. Waid spoke exclusively to CBR with his usual candor about the move, stressing that unlike his tenure at CrossGen, he was leaving on friendly terms.

A lot of changes have been announced over the last month at DC. Here's what we know or can guess.