DC Comics Issues Formal Statement on Sexual Harassment Complaints

Jill Pantozzi | May 13th, 2016

Today, DC Comics broke their silence over allegations of sexual harassment within the company.

You might have been seeing elsewhere online that a breaking point had finally been reached over years of this “open secret,” as many have called it. Though others had reported on his infractions without naming names and kept it out of headlines in the past, the firing of Vertigo’s fantastic editor Shelly Bond spurred Nick Hanover on April 20th to name Senior Editor Eddie Berganza as a serial harasser, which then spurred Janelle Asselin to recount her personal experiences working at DC Comics and her and her co-workers’ actions against Berganza. Above the already horrible instances of harassment The Beat reported on another connected issue:

Several sources with first hand knowledge of the matter confirmed that, if it wasn’t a hard and fast written out rule, there was, for quite a while, at least an informal policy in place that no female staff would be assigned to the Superman office, and no female freelancers would be hired. This latter part was disregarded, as several women have actually worked on the Superman line in recent years.

The cat was finally and truly out of the bag for the comic reading masses to read about. And so we waited for DC to respond.

I had my doubts it would happen. Even though there are many good people working inside DC, they are not allowed to make decisions as easily as some fans would hope. Parent company Warner Bros. likely had a firm hold of what was going on internally once the news went wide. As a result of these reports and others, another person felt comfortable to come forward with an alleged instance of sexual misconduct against a “Senior Art Director from DC Entertainment.” Warner Bros’ human resources was said to be getting involved.

And that brings us to today. DC’s statement, given to Comic Book Resources, is as follows:

DC Entertainment strives to foster a culture of inclusion, fairness and respect. While we cannot comment on specific personnel matters, DC takes allegations of discrimination and harassment very seriously, promptly investigates reports of misconduct and disciplines those who violate our standards and policies.

As part of our ongoing effort to provide an equitable working environment, we are reviewing our policies, expanding employee training on the topic and working with internal and external resources to ensure that these policies and procedures are respected and reinforced across the company.

That is a short statement and certainly not going to quell much of the anger building against the company. CBR also points out, “This follows an all-staff meeting on Friday afternoon led by DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson.”