Larry Hama And Mark Waid Accuse Dan DiDio Of Blacklisting Them From DC Comics, Waid Takes It Even Further

John F. Trent |

Oct 2, 2023

G.I. Joe creator Larry Hama and Kingdom Come creator Mark Waid recently accused Dan DiDio of blacklisting them from DC Comics.

Hama and Waid’s comments came in reaction to DC artist Jamal Igle announcing he was ending his personal and business relationships with DiDio due to the former DC Publisher doing an interview promoting his Ancient Enemies comic book series with Jon Del Arroz.

Igle reacted to the interview writing on Facebook, “I just unfriended an ex employer for crossing a line they can never comeback from. Once you cross that comicsgate line, we’re done. Professionally and personally.”

In the comments of this post, Hama accused DiDio of blacklisting him writing, “He blacklisted me. At the same time I was blacklisted at Marvel. I didn’t work for like eight years. He asked me to take on a title that I thought should be written by a woman, and told him so. He did the same thing to Priest.”

Hama previously claimed in May he had been blacklisted by both Marvel and DC.

He wrote on Facebook, “I was considered a commercial hack by organized comic fandom for my entire Marvel run of GI Joe. I was considered not good enough to write for the GI Joe animated shows. My Wolverine run was mostly ignored by fanzines while it was running (never got invited to cons.) I was considered not good enough to teach comics at SVA.”

He then shared he was blacklisted, “I was black-listed by both Marvel and DC. The list goes on and on. I learned very early to ignore the negativity and Charlie-Mike with my best efforts.”

As for why he was blacklisted, Hama explained, “I made the mistake of telling one head honcho that his brilliant online fumetti could not be shot for his allotted budget, and that there wasn’t enough bandwith in the universe at the time to put it up. There wasn’t. The result was that he fired the entire online department, and none of his editors would return my calls for years.”

“The other head honcho was pissed that I turned down a job offer because I thought the project should have been written by a woman,” he added.

Despite being blacklisted Hama relayed, “I have no grudge against Marvel or DC. They are corporate entities. I was done dirt by execs who are no longer at either company. I harbor no enmity towards the editors, artists, and writers who stabbed me in the back, conspired to have me fired off books so they could write them themselves, took credit for my work, etc, etc.”

“As my old compadre Howard Chaykin stated, my revenge is living well, having a loving family, wonderful friends and loyal fans,” he asserted.

As for Waid, he responded to Hama’s comment on Igle’s post writing, “And Devin Grayson. And Alan Grant. And me. And a half-dozen other artists. He had a long list.”

Later in the thread he also claimed that DiDio blacklisted Mike Wieringo and Humberto Ramos.

B. Clay Moore, who previously lead a campaign to get Bounding Into Comics banned by DC, Marvel, and other publishers from their press lists, commented in response to Hama writing, “Larry Hama, I know people he blacklisted who asked him to his face about it, at which point he lied to them about it not being true. That’s doubling down on shitty behavior.”

Waid replied to Moore stating, “True. At least once, he actually came up to me and told me that he’d heard I thought I was blacklisted and it wasn’t true. A quick call to the editors at DC always proved exactly the opposite: ‘We were told in no uncertain terms to never hire you.'”