My Summer At DC Entertainment
By: Katie Hearns
Welcome to the first of many Hive Mind articles that we will be posting this year. We want this section to be a bigger part of our site and I hope you all enjoy and hopefully contribute some tips of your own in the future!
For those who don’t know, I spent the summer interning at DC Entertainment over in Burbank California. I spent 10 weeks as an Editorial intern working on big titles such as Superman, Green Lantern, Suicide Squad and more. This gave me a lot of perspective at the editorial side of comics that often goes unnoticed by people both inside and outside the comics industry.
Editorial is all about reviewing both artwork and scripts that are sent in by the creative talent and making suggestions of changes and improvements so the finished comic is the best it possibly could be. I was able to see firsthand the hard work that the DC Editorial team puts in to make sure that the books fans love turn out great (and get in shops on time). Since I was only an intern there was only so much that I could do independently, but I was able to do a good bit of shadowing other editors and helping out with giving feedback on thumbnails, layouts, colors, and lettering. Editors must have a keen eye for making sure every character is “on model”, the story is cohesive, and there aren’t any typos. It’s a tough job especially when editors are overseeing three to four books at a time.
There are so many other areas of DC I was able to see as well from the awesome stuff at DC Collectibles to the pre press and manufacturing department who formats the overall layout of a comic and assembling it to send to the printer. There are so many different jobs that are available in the comics industry and I’m glad that I was able to get a peek inside one of the biggest and best companies in the world!
I had so much fun working for DC and Warner Bros, from all the wonderful editors I’ve worked with to the various movie screenings from The Meg to Teen Titans Go to the Movies. My summer in LA will be one I will never forget.
I am so thankful to have the opportunity to work for DC this summer and I hope I can get the chance to work for them again in the future!