ICv2 has a wide ranging interview with Marvel’s Sr VP of Sales, David Gabriel, and it covers just about every topic you could imagine, from digital coupon conversion to page counts to pricing. Go here for all that: Part 1 and Part 2. However, since we’ve had a high degree of scrutiny on Marvel’s trade program of late, here’s what he had to say on that topic:

[Q:] Marvel tends to let its book format collections go out of print more quickly than some of its competitors, treating them as more temporary products than as long term backlist. Can you describe the rationale for that strategy?

Let’s clarify that statement. Top selling evergreen books are not allowed to go out of print. Folks continually want to dredge up the past where nothing was thought of as evergreen. Our two top selling collected editions for 2011, as noted in the market share ranks, were Civil War and Wolverine Old Man Logan. We keep those books in print because with the demand we’d be fools not to do so.

Books that we don’t see as having a shelf life of more than a year and a half, are printed with that in mind. We put out more classic material than any publisher. We’ve had a strong, continuing Masterworks program for over 7 years now… and we’re approaching our 200th edition. Essentials are no longer considered perennials in this market, and we’ve taken our measure of those from retailers and consumers who do not order them as such, and so they are not all kept in stock as evergreen titles. Over the past eight years we’ve published nearly 100 volumes of Premiere Classic books that put some of our most popular stories from the past decades into collected editions. No other publisher has supported the amount of material that we have. There have been times when a book has been allowed to go out of press, say Secret Wars, in order for us to create a special Omnibus Edition which also allows us to gather new extras, redo files that need fixing and get the best possible re-creation available for all the pages. This process in turn allows us to then put out a better version of the paperback and keep that one in stock. We’ve talked about this process before. It would be ludicrous on many books for us to go back to press on an inferior quality book, when we know if we wait a few months we’ll be able to put forth a superior edition.

We clearly stated when we first started putting our ongoing series into smaller Premiere Hardcovers about five years ago that we did not plan for those to stay in print, nor would they be reprinted; they were an edition that went to press a little closer to the timing of the last comic of a series and they were priced slightly higher than a paperback edition in order to assist those retailers who were still enjoying sales of the comics. These volumes keep the lower priced paperback editions off the shelves for a little while longer, allowing a longer selling time for the comics.

There are a lot of factors at play here, one of which is that you just can’t take into account the needs of just one retailer, but instead you need to take a look at the overall big picture. Do we need to get Infinity War back to press when we need to make sure Civil War is still stocked? We need to make the calls on those books that are going to make both us and our retailer and book buyer partners the most money. Sometimes there will be that one book that has gone out of print for a million reasons and rather than anyone find out why they just jump to the wrong conclusions; or to make matters worse, when the rationale behind a book being out of stock is explained some folks just don’t want to hear it or accept the reasons, so they’ll start a massive campaign and create false information. Whew… hope that explains things a bit without inciting riots.

[Q:] What’s your response to retailers who say there’s a lot of demand for Marvel’s archive material that they can’t satisfy because of your book strategy?
See above. I have never heard that a retailer can’t find archival material.

Somehow, we don’t think this is going to answer all the questions. For instance, here’s a fan-created list of Marvel Premiere Hardcovers that are not in print…things like the Warren Ellis/Adi Granov Iron Man which would seem like a good print intro to a very popular character, directly influenced the movies, and was even turned into a motion comic. It’s Marvel’s business plan for this not to have a shelf life, sure, and that’s their prerogative. It just seems…odd.

Chris Hardwick’s role as nerd frontman to the world continues unabated as he’s just signed a deal to appear at more ReedPop events, including C2E2 and NYCC. The “Talking Dead” host will appear at several events at both shows, and Nerdist Industries will participate in another White Space B2B think tank event such as was held at the 2011 New York Comic Con.

ReedPOP, creators and organizers of the New York Comic Con (NYCC), the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2), as well as other major events in the popular culture world, and Nerdist Industries, a multi-platform creator of genre and pop culture content, have today announced a continuation and formalization of a relationship that successfully began at NYCC in 2011 with the launch of the exclusive WHITE SPACE B2B conference.  This new alliance provides for a wide range of strategic and cross-promotional activities that include Nerdist interviews with ReedPOP guests and a prominent role for Chris Hardwick, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Nerdist Industries, at ReedPOP shows.  Hardwick, host of AMC’s Talking Dead as well as Nerdist specials for BBC America, founded Nerdist in 2008 and has nurtured its growth into a multimedia name now spanning blogs, a podcast, television, web-video, live-events and print.  Chris will be a leading personality at NYCC, C2E2 and other ReedPOP events.  
 
Nerdist Industries will have a presence on the floor of ReedPOP shows and will be significantly featured in several panels at these same events.   Hardwick hosted The Avengers and The Walking Dead panels at NYCC in 2011, and he will emcee similar marquee content in 2012.  In addition, Nerdist and ReedPOP will continue to work together to create another WHITE SPACE B2B conference this year as well as develop several live-events, tapings and podcasts at various ReedPOP shows.     
 
“As another nerd leading a group of nerds creating nerd-centric events, I could not be more excited to welcome Chris Hardwick and Nerdist Industries to join forces with ReedPOP,” notes Lance Fensterman, Group Vice President for ReedPOP.  “Our goal is to deliver great shows for our fans, but we also want to communicate the excitement, innovation and essential inner nerdiness of the pop culture spectrum to the world at large.  This partnership with Nerdist Industries is a win-win, providing both like-minded organizations solid ways to amplify what we do through collaborating on new opportunities for our fans, our customers and ourselves.  We’re both forces in the pop culture world, and we’re eager to see what amazing things we can accomplish together.  I look forward to working with Chris and everyone at Nerdist Industries to make this a great continuing relationship.” 

”I am THRILLED to be working with ReedPOP in an official capacity. I attended C2E2 last year, and, while still a young event, I was amazed at how well-organized and fan-friendly it was. Between C2E2, New York Comic Con and ReedPOP’s other events, this partnership makes all the sense in the world for Nerdist Industries. I know this because were we to not be in business with ReedPOP, I’d still be attending these events as a fan,” Hardwick said.
 
As noted, Hardwick’s first appearance on behalf of the joint promotional relationship with ReedPOP will be at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) which will take place April 13 – 15, 2012 in the North Building of McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, IL.   He is scheduled to appear as emcee for special events on Friday, April 13, and he will also be available for a public autographing session.  Specific details of his participation at the show will be posted in the near future on the C2E2 website.  Hardwick will then present a live podcast from Chicago’s Vic Theatre on Friday night.  Other guests who will be participating in C2E2 include Anthony Daniels, David Finch, Josh Gates, Adam Hughes and Joe Kubert.  Many more guest announcements will be made in the coming weeks.  For further information about these guests as well as purchasing tickets, please visit www.C2E2.com.  For more on Nerdist Industries, visit www.Nerdist.com.

Is February 1 really Comics Day and not just Hourly Comics Day? It is the birthday of The Beat (2), ACT-I-VATE (6), Image Comics (20), The Day The Comics Stopped (0) and also Diamond Comics Distributors, a birthday that we failed to mark yesterday in all the hoopla. It was 30 years ago that the company was incorporated, the first step in becoming the world’s largest distributor of English-language comic books, graphic novels and related pop-culture merchandise.

Known as either the gorilla in the room, the great monopoly, or just the only way to get your comics, Diamond is definitely one of the biggest entities in the comics world, and although they do have a monopoly on selling periodicals into comics shops, they are, as many have observed, fairly benign as monopolies go. And yeah, I know there will be a zillion dissents in the comics (as there should be), but the job they do serving thousands of outlets in a timely, efficient manner is still very impressive. And I know from my own personal experience that the executives who run Diamond are not hardened bean counters, but men and women who really care about the industry they work in.

Courtesy of Diamond itself, here’s a timeline for the company and archival material of founder/owner President & CEO Steve Geppi and Executive Vice President and COO Chuck Parker.

“From day one, Diamond has proudly delivered the best possible service to our customers,” said Geppi in a statement. “Our ability to fulfill that commitment to great service reflects the dedication of everyone who is, and ever has been, part of the Diamond team. Their accomplishments seem, appropriately enough, superhuman when you realize that they’ve been doing this for three decades. I am deeply grateful to all of them for their hard work, and I am honored to work alongside them.”

“Steve Geppi has long been synonymous with comic book distribution,” said Parker in his own statement. “Our recognition of this special milestone reminds us of his accomplishments, and those of thousands of Diamond employees over the past 30 years who have worked to make this company an innovative industry leader. Long ago, Steve had a vision of growth and professionalism for the comic industry and has worked his entire adult life to make his vision a reality. His enthusiasm and passion for comic books and pop culture in general, coupled with a retailer’s background, gave Steve a unique and insightful appreciation of what a successful distributor must do in order to achieve.”

Diamond takes part in many of comic’s most important charities and causes. “We’ve used our PREVIEWS catalog and our Retailer Summits to generate awareness and funds for such worthy causes as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the Hero Initiative, the Xeric Foundation, ProLiteracy, the American Red Cross and many others,” said Parker. “We’ve also utilized our resources to assist retail customers in areas stricken by natural disasters to ensure that they get their shipments in a timely fashion and to provide counsel and strategies to customers facing financial challenges.

“Plus, Diamond serves as the central support for Free Comic Book Day and vigorously sponsors such industry-wide events as the Eisner, Harvey, and Joe Shuster Awards. Everyone at Diamond is honored to be associated with all of these organizations, and we hope that our involvement will continue to benefit them in the future.”

THE DIAMOND TIMELINE

1973
• While working as an USPS letter carrier, future Diamond President and CEO Steve Geppi buys his first comic book price guide, and realizes his long-standing hobby of collecting comics could become a profitable undertaking.

1974
• Geppi leaves the USPS to open his first store, Geppi’s Comic World, which operated out of the basement of a TV repair shop.

1982
• With the support of fellow retailers, Geppi founds Diamond Comic Distributors with one warehouse and 17 retail customers.
• Diamond takes over operations of New Media Irjax’s Boston and Tampa Distribution Centers.


1988
• Diamond establishes a national presence with the acquisition of Bud Plant.
• Diamond’s monthly PREVIEWS catalog begins to evolve from a simple title-listing to the “industry bible” it is today.

1990
• Diamond acquires selected assets of Seattle based distributor Destiny Distribution and takes over the operations of Oregon’s Second Genesis.

1991
• Diamond UK, Ltd. begins operations in the U.K., leading to the acquisition of England based distributor Pacific Distribution, Ltd.

1992
• Diamond’s Star System, which will evolve into the PREVIEWS Backlist Service, begins operation, allowing retailers access to quick-shipping of over 8,000 graphic novels and backlist products.

1993
• Diamond acquires England-based Titan Distributors Ltd., consolidates U.K. operations and becomes Diamond Comic Distributors (UK).

1994
• Diamond acquires selected assets of New York-based distributor Comics Unlimited, Ltd.
• The Reorder Universe, which will ultimately evolve into Diamond’s massive inventory hub, opens.

1995
• Reflecting significant changes in the comic industry, Dark Horse Comics, DC Comics and Image Comics choose Diamond to be their exclusive sales agent to comic specialty retailers.

1996
• Diamond acquires selected assets of its largest competitor, Capital City Distribution.
• Diamond launches the toll-free Comic Shop Locator Service.

1997
• Marvel Comics signs an exclusive agreement with Diamond to service specialty market retailers.
• Diamond introduces “One Call Does It All” centralized, personalized customer service, as well as its Order Adjustment program.

1998
• Diamond Online’s Retailer Services Area, the forerunner of today’s Retailer Services Website, goes live.

1999
• Diamond’s Vendor Services Website opens.

2000 
• The selected assets and liabilities of Alliance Games Distribution are purchased, and Alliance Game Distributors becomes a major operating division of Diamond.
• Online Ordering becomes available on Diamond’s Retailer Services Website. 
• The Diamond Bookshelf offers librarians, teachers, and other education professionals information on how comics and graphic novels can become a dynamic and positive addition to classrooms and libraries. 

2001
• Diamond and Alliance start a new industry tradition with their annual Retailer Summits. 
• Through Alliance, certain assets of west coast distributors Berkeley Distributors and Barchetta Distribution are acquired, giving Alliance a strong national presence.
• Previews on Windows joins Diamond’s roster of online ordering tools.
• Diamond’s Retailer Services Website expands with the addition of Reorders Online. 

2002
• Diamond teams with retailers and publishers for the first Free Comic Book Day, designed to attract new customers to comic shops and expose them to what comics has to offer.
• The Diamond Daily e-newsletter begins delivering daily news, product information, sales, and more. 
• Diamond Book Distributors is founded to service the growing demand for comics and graphic novels in the book trade.

2004
• The Comic Shop Locator Service gets a new online home: comicshoplocator.com.
• The first Final Order Cut-off Form is posted on Diamond’s Retailer Services Website, allowing retailers to place orders up until the publisher sets its print run.

2005
• Diamond opens its Memphis Distribution Center


• 

2007
• Diamond’s ComicSuite Point-of-Sale software is announced.

2008
• PREVIEWS catalog celebrates 20 years of “the Comic Shop’s Catalog.”
• PREVIEWSWorld.com debuts on the web.
• Diamond’s Olive Branch Distribution Center opens with 600,000 square feet of space and a state-of-the-art Warehouse Management System.

2009
• Diamond upgrades Retailer Services Website with better news and product detail information.

2010
• Diamond launches kidscomics.com to direct young readers and their parents to kid-friendly comic shops across the United States and Canada.

2011 
• Diamond launches Day-Early Delivery.

2012
• Diamond hires industry veteran Chris Powell as Executive Director of Business Development to oversee the company’s efforts to expand the comic book specialty market.
• Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc marks 30 years of service to retailers, vendors, and consumers worldwide.


David Choe, the eccentric and talented graffiti artist/painter who once flamed out as the artist on an X-Men spin-off, is now set to make about $200 million from the Facebook stock offering. It seems that back in the day Choe painted murals for Facebook’s Palo Alto offices…and instead of taking a lump sum he asked for stock. As you may have heard, Facebook went public yesterday, and was quickly valued at $5 billion or so, making Choe’s little decision one of the savviest moves ever by an art-type. “Always double down on 11. Always,” Choe advises in a recent art book.

The payout to Mr. Choe, the graffiti artist, could provide more money from his paintings than Sotheby’s attracted for its record-breaking $200.7 million auction in 2008 for work by Damien Hirst. In 2005, Mr. Choe was invited to paint murals on the walls of Facebook’s first offices in Palo Alto, Calif., by Sean Parker, then Facebook’s president. As pay, Mr. Parker offered Mr. Choe a choice between cash in the “thousands of dollars,” according to several people who know Mr. Choe, or stock then worth about the same. Mr. Choe, who has said that at the time that he thought the idea of Facebook was “ridiculous and pointless,” nevertheless chose the stock. Many “advisers” to the company at that time, which is how Mr. Choe would have been classified, would have received about 0.1 to 0.25 percent of the company, according to a former Facebook employee. That may sound like a paltry amount, but a stake that size is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, based on a market value of $100 billion. Mr. Choe’s payment is valued at roughly $200 million, according to a number of people who know Mr. Choe and Facebook executives.

Mr. Choe’s page on Facebook shows the life of a modern-day renegade artist. Among the images of his graffiti, there is a trail of images of him partying with scantily clad women and spending large amounts of money on alcohol. In recent weeks, Mr. Choe promoted photos of a $40,000 bottle of alcohol; a single shot, he boasted, costs $888.

Choe has a blog post up at his website with images and videos of the murals and the making of them. We’d advise anyone about to engage in wrist slitting over this story consider the obverse: not that someone got a huge payout for just one job, but that such a payout is POSSIBLE if the stars align.

Anyway, godspeed to Mr. Choe. May he not spend all his loot in one place.

While we all contemplate the various issues regarding revenue for comics and where it will come from, let’s look at where we all assume it will be going: some variant of streaming content. With Apple—and the rest of the market—doing everything they can to kill off the DVD and “the cloud’ becoming the place from whence all jollies will emerge, it is still not a great source of revenue for the big players like Netflix and Spotify.

Netflix just released their quarterlies, and after the whole Netflix/Qwikster debacle, you might think the reason they wanted to split off the business of mailing out DVDs—obsolete technology via an obsolete delivery system—was because it was a money loser. In fact the opposite was true. The old media model was far more profitable.

If you break that down, each streaming subscriber is worth only $2.40 in profit each quarter to Netflix, compared to $17.32 for each DVD subscriber. The old business was very lucrative. The new business kind of sucks. The economics are very different. The DVD business had fixed costs, while Netflix is forced to negotiate streaming licenses on a case by case basis with each media company.

In other words, Universal and WB and whoever are charging Netflix so much for their content that it’s not a very profitable business. And if you’ve seen the streaming options on Netflix lately, you know they haven’t been given access to the good stuff.

The same is generally true for streaming music services like Spotify and Rhapsody. Here’s an example of a general business structure:

1. General deal structure: Pay the largest of A) Pro-rata share of minimum of $X per subscriber, B) Per-play costs at $Y per play, C) Z percent of total company revenue, regardless of other business areas. As stated previously, this means labels de facto set retail price (they also regularly negotiate floors on price, giving even less wiggle room), which limits the ability of the music service to develop ancillary revenue streams that aren’t siphoned off by the labels.

The above article notes that Pandora avoided these kind of deals by styling itself as a radio station —they must pay a per-song royalty but don’t have the Sisyphean licensing structure of the streaming services.

Of course, the reason why movie companies and record labels are charging all this money is to— theoretically—somewhere down the line give more of the profits to the content PRODUCERS—the Steven Spielbergs, Ke$has and Faith Erin Hickses of the world. So your “Free” streaming site may become as expensive as your cable TV by the time things settle down.

As someone noted somewhere in commenting on our comics economics post yesterday, one of the true costs of piracy is the DEVALUING of content. Once everything is free, it’s hard to convince otherwise decent people that it’s worth something. While streaming and distribution from the cloud is clearly how things are going—wait until the iTV comes out—only Apple and Amazon seem poised to take a reasonable cut via a per download cost.

Lost in the storms of outrage over every boob shot and inker change at various superheroes comics is the real underreported story of the last six months; the decline in graphic novel sales and the concurrent decline of manga. While the former is definitely partly caused by the latter and both are undoubtedly influenced by the bankruptcy of Borders, the full causes behind both have yet to be fully analyzed.

The manga side of the equation is covered in depth, however, in a lengthy column by Jason Thompson at io9 called Why Manga Publishing Is Dying (And How It Could Get Better). Thompson is no stranger to the manga field, having authored the essential reference Manga: The Complete Guide and the manga King of RPGs for TokyoPop. So his analysis is well worth following:

If in 2007, manga was like a foreign movie star who had arrived on American shores to make it big, the last four years have been like watching that star run out of roles, run out of money, sell their house, go into rehab, and end up barely limping along in infomercials.

Thompson goes over all the recents crackups in the US market, from the fall of Tokyopop to the closure at Bandai. It’s a landscape littered with broken toys. While the reasons for the America downfall aren’t too hard to see — the aging of the original demographic and the rise of scanlations — Thompson points out that the situation is also crumbling in Japan:

But the problem isn’t just about fickle Americans — the Japanese manga market is hurting too. Sales of manga magazines, the traditional delivery medium for manga in Japan, peaked in 1995, and have been falling ever since. Graphic novel sales remained steady longer, but have also declined.

Manga is hurting the way that all print media is hurting — but in some ways it’s worse, because manga is ill-equipped to adapt to New Media. Like American comic books, manga started out as cheap entertainment for kids, but while American comics faced their dwindling readership by turning into an adult collector’s item with color, thicker paper and higher production values, manga magazines (and to a lesser extent, graphic novel collections) still use cheap ink and cheap paper to cram in as much pages-per-yen value possible.

Piracy is definitely the backhoe clearing out the grave, however: as Thompson points out, when you google manga you get seven pirate sites and NO legitimate publishers.

Other problems: hidebound publishers who insist on sticking with the magazine model when it’s as outdated in Japan as it is here, the mixed results of initiatives like jmanga and the Digital Manga Guild — a banding together of all the top publishers to present an e-manga site, and a crowdsourced translation site, respectively — as tepid failures lacking blockbuster properties.

And of course, there’s the reason baldly stated by a commenter: “Manga is expensive and we’re all broke.”

Thompson also sees some patches of bright sky ahead — doujinshi is now an area of huge innovation where new hits are emerging. The rise of gag panel strips and multimedia hybrids is also encouraging. Of course manga isn’t going to go away — it’s just that the ways we get it are going to change. And once again, a huge dinosaur of an industry that was at the top of the pack didn’t see the newer, faster predators coming up right behind them.

The Beat has now received Alex de Campi’s rebuttal to James Hodgkin’s statement on being fired from ASHES, the graphic novel project they got funded on Kickstarter for $32,000.

I said I would have my comments, and they are sad ones. I’m an admirer of both creators involved here — professionally and personally. But if there was ever a case of he said/she said this is it. “Creative differences” indeed. The whole thing reminds me (for the old timers out there) of D’arc Tangent, a long ago collaboration between Phil Foglio and Freff which dissolved into “creative differences,” never to be seen again.

Since that strip was created, Foglio has gone on to pioneer to print-to-web publishing model, win a shelf full of Hugo Awards and develop a devoted following. Freff (Aka Connor Cochran) — didn’t do quite as much, although he pops up now and again with this and that. I guess he wasn’t cut out for the cartoonist freelance life.

The saddest part is that this project still looks great—Hodgkins pages look stunning, even if they didn’t follow the script, and it would be great to see de Campi’s writing unleashed again.

De Campi and Hodgkins are both incredibly talented people who will be heard from again–hopefully they’ll be able to let their work do the talking in the future.

Here’s Alex De Campi’s response to James Hodgkin’s statement which we ran yesterday—these comments have also been posted on the private Kickstarter page for backers.
____________________
I am sad that James continues to seek attention for being asked to leave my book. I cannot see how this will benefit him, me, or the book.

James completed 10 pages of finished art for the book, and 10 pages of sketch inks. Even as he turned in pages in bits and pieces, he was extremely resistant to notes on them or discussion of revision… or even showing me pencils before delivering a final piece. This became worse rather than better as the Kickstarter funding rose and publicity around the book grew. James’ tone in emails became actively aggressive and abusive towards me. It was almost like dealing with a schizophrenic or a bipolar person. Any polite request to look again at something was furiously turned down.

It got to the point where, after a particularly bad disagreement in late November, about 85% of the way through the Kickstarter, I had resigned myself to not saying a single thing about pages he had turned in, and I would just let my book be drawn however he wanted it to be drawn, even if it meant the script I had worked so long to bring to life became a disappointment to me. At the same time he was sending these aggressive emails (and not drawing more of the book), I was working 4-6 hours a day on the Kickstarter by myself to raise tens of thousands of dollars to support him — a condition he required in order to take the book on.

So, aside from interacting with backers, the Kickstarter generally for me was a complete misery. Did I express to Jimmy my unhappiness? Yes, but — and maybe this is part of being a female — when a man shouts at you whenever you say “um, I’d like some say in the way the script I wrote is drawn” or “hm, the way you’ve changed this from the script isn’t really going to work in the context of the scene”, you stop saying the thing that gets you shouted at.

Everything came to a head a week after the Kickstarter ended, when something delightful happened — I was contacted by a large US business magazine, who wanted to commission James and I to do a two-page comic about our Kickstarter experience. What an opportunity! First, it paid well. REALLY well. And as James had said he was very short on cash and had no other work on the horizon, this news was well received by him. (James at this point was also pressuring me to send him all the Kickstater money in advance, rather than in tranches as he finished chapters. This made me very nervous, but I agreed and began the process of withdrawing the Kickstarter money from Amazon Payments. Luckily, he never got round to invoicing me).

So, the business magazine commission. It paid GREAT, wasn’t much work, and was going to get copied and cross posted to the moon. Great exposure for our book! And potentially leading to a lot more work for both of us. I turned around a script quickly, and it was approved by the magazine’s editor. They loved it! I sent the script to James. Unfortunately by this point his ego or whatever had gotten so out of hand he was completely unable to listen to and/or respect anything I said. James took a long time to draw the two pages, causing worried queries from the editor, and the sketch he finally turned in took a lot of liberties with the script (as he had been doing with Ashes). The editor was displeased. I was forced into an intermediary role, as furthermore the editor did not hit it off with James and basically didn’t want to speak to him. I consulted with the editor at length about what he wanted (basically, he wanted the script drawn as written) and I worked out some notes to give James so he could quickly turn around an amended sketch for approval.

James ignores the notes and several days later sends a sketch which departs even more radically from the script. The client hates it and emails me, basically going “WTF?!”… print deadline was mere days away at this point. I have long email conversations with Jimmy, basically guiding him through taking his first sketch, changing some transitional elements, and making it work. Basically, I am trying to make it fast and easy for James to get a new sketch in as I can see this gig evaporating before my eyes. James is like OK GREAT! and then sends in a third pencil sketch, on the day of print deadline, that ignores all the notes. All he had to do to make this client happy was just to draw the script they approved. A client who had already said they loved what I do and wanted to give me (and therefore James) more work. When I point this out to him, he becomes extraordinairily aggressive, telling me he is 100% in charge of all visuals for my projects and I have no say whatsoever in what he draws or how he draws it.

Folks, I cried. I’m a girl. I do that sometimes. I completely broke down in front of the laptop. Not only was James making the execution of a book I had gone to Herculean lengths to get off the ground into a living nightmare of abuse where I felt afraid to email him about pages, he had just totally destroyed an easy gig with a major, major client because he would not draw the approved script. And then he abuses me via email about it, after I say I am finding a new artist for the 2-pager so I can try to save it. I cried, poured myself a glass of wine, went and found my big girl pants, and told James I would need to find someone else for Ashes.

As for the contract, we did take an investment from an outside source. James was asked about this and approved it before the investment was finalised. I then drew up a contract addressing the division of ownership in the completed book, not the script, which remains 100% copyright me. If James does not complete the book, he does not come into his share of it. The finished graphic novel’s ownership was always meant to be shared with the artist, in recognition of the tremendous amount of work and commitment the artist would have to provide to complete the book. This is only fair. What Jimmy seems to think he has — something for no work — is not fair, nor in the spirit or letter of the contract.

James says that the $3k to Valentine was a surprise. If so, he hasn’t read our Kickstarter project’s own project page, which has said as follows since launch: “If in some crazy world we manage to raise more than our minimum, the first thing that will happen is Jimmy will get a raise, so he can go from Sainsbury’s Value Meals to Taste the Difference. Then any excess money beyond that will go towards publishing the long-awaited trade of Alex’s webcomic Valentine “.

As for the big business magazine gig, thanks to some really lovely people helping me out on Twitter, I got in touch with Pia Guerra who worked all night and nailed the sketch on the first go — she drew a wonderful sketch that the client loved. However after all the drama with James they had decided to drop the piece from the magazine as we had missed the first print deadline. We may still have it in their digital edition; I am waiting to hear.

Once again, I’d like to apologise to our backers for all this drama. I had hoped that the creative split could be handled quietly and professionally but it appears that will not be the case now. I hope you will forgive me and understand why I had to find a way out of a situation where I felt bullied.
____________________

We sent the above to Hodgkins, who responded:

I have made my position clear and outlined the facts of this unfortunate situation. Alex has a wildly different interpretation of events, and says some very harsh things about me, things I naturally dispute. I have attempted to be calm, reasonable and professional, to draw a line under this, I’m accused of being abusive and of being a bully, I’m neither of those things, you will be the judge of who is telling the truth, if anybody cares enough, I will gladly make available all of the correspondence between myself and Alex. It speaks for itself. For now, I’m walking away from this, I have learnt a valuable lesson, I want to move on, and hopefully start work on new projects. I want to thank all who have shown support for the project, I sincerely hope you get to see Ashes at some point in the future, please keep your faith in Kickstarter, Alex and I dropped the ball here, not them, it remains a wonderful platform for supporting and funding creativity.

And there let it lie.

Although once touted as one of the glorious success stories of comics on Kickstarter, the ASHES project has now crumbled, for the moment to…well, ashes.

It began promisingly enough as a sequel to writer Alex de Campi’s Eisner-nominated SMOKE. Although the project was clearly de Campi’s baby, after bringing on board artist Jimmy Broxton, the nom de plume of James Hodgkins (KNIGHT & SQUIRE), the project was put up on Kickstarter with some great looking art and proceeded to beat its goal by some $6000 for a total of $32,000. Its process of funding the project by allowing retailers to buy copies was hailed as a groundbreaking use of Kickstarter and a new DIY decade.

But now, it all looks like a mess. In events chronicled at length at Forbidden Planet and Comics Alliance, after creating 22 pages of art in finished and layout form for the successful campaign, Hodgkins was fired off the book, and posted about it on Facebook (posts since deleted.)

For her part, de Campi went on Kickstarter announcing that she would continue with a new artist. She promised backers that if anyone wanted to leave because of Hodgkins’ dismissal, she would refund their money; and if the new artist on the project wasn’t acceptable she would also refund the money.

If you only pledged for the book because of Jimmy, or if this announcement otherwise colours your desire for the book, please contact me to say so on [redacted] with your kickstarter backer name and I will refund your pledge immediately and in full.

Likewise, once I find a new artist, if his or her work is not a style you like, you may also contact me and be immediately refunded for your pledge.

Folks, I am so committed to making this book. I am so sorry for this drama, and I hope you will find it in your heart to bear with me for a little longer while I straighten this out. Please be aware that the money you have pledged is still YOUR money (none of it was ever going to me anyway, it was all for art and print/reward fulfilment) and I will be respectful of your wishes as to where it will go.

For there is the element of Kickstarter that really hasn’t been examined much: once you pledge, your money is gone. The creators can go off to Barbardos with your money to work on the book if they like. Followed by bad feedback, of course. Kickstarter operates on an eBay like element of trust. And the money isn’t easy to refund, as de Campi has since found out.

Since the split was announced, Broxton/Hodgkins has remained silent. However, he reached out to The Beat to offer his statement exclusively. We’ve asked some questions to clarify things. That statement is below. We’ll have our own thoughts — and a rebuttal by de Campi — in a future post. In the meantime, it’s just sad that what looked like a great comic has been tied up in an ugly wrangle.

BEAT: How did you find out you were fired off the book?

JAMES HODGKINS: On Saturday January 14th 2012, less than a month after it had been successfully funded, I was unexpectedly and unceremoniously told by email that I was to be replaced on the Ashes graphic novel project, a book I had been attached to for over 8 months, and one that had recently raised in excess of $32,000 — Kickstarter’s 7th most successful comics funding project ever as of this point, and an achievement that both Alex and myself were overjoyed with.

There is a lot of speculation and talk right now, about this mess, and it really is a mess, I’m incredibly sorry about the whole thing, and for me, it’s not just about the money, or lost earnings, or how Kickstarter works, this has come as a huge creative blow. I had committed to spend the next year drawing Ashes, the script is quite brilliant, Alex is an extremely talented writer, I very much wanted to be part of something that I thought was going to be special. I hope people can see that commitment from the work I have already produced for the series.

Ashes deserves to be made, it has the potential to be a great book, I’m gutted now that I won’t have the chance to be a part of that process.

BEAT: Alex has alluded to “irreconcilable differences.” What can you tell us about that?

JH: If this is true, then this is news to me, because as recently as January 12th 2012 (just two days prior to the sudden sacking) we enthusiastically discussed and outlined plans for the next wave of art to be produced for Ashes, a friendly and cordial conversation that in particular discussed details of how some of the $32,000 raised could be forwarded to me.

Alex has also said that she didn’t realise things were going so wrong at first, and it wasn’t until the pages started coming in that she became aware it just wasn’t working, I’m at a loss as to why she would think this, as nearly all of the pages she (or any one else) has seen were completed before the Kickstarter campaign even went live, so she must have thought they were OK, she certainly presented them to the world very enthusiastically, since then, I have produced 4 more pages of art, all were well received by Alex, and were included in the Kickstarter updates. There was a discussion about the double page spread featuring the boat and the rock, where I had chosen a different viewpoint/camera angle to the one outlined in the script, but as far as the finished art goes, that is the nearest we ever came to a “creative difference” and, it was settled weeks ago, very amicably.

I’ll not pretend that everything has been plain sailing; when two strong willed and creative individuals come together it can, on occasion be pretty fiery, yes there were tantrums, hissy fits, harsh words and the occasional bit of name calling — but we took it in our stride as I’m big enough and I’m old enough to take that sort of thing, and Alex is a big girl who can look after herself — and is nobody’s idea of a shrinking violet. The biggest difference of opinion revolved around who would have the final say, as in, who would be the “editor”, naturally I wanted to keep control of how the art looked (with the proviso that I did not of course alter the narrative flow or any details of the script). Alex had other ideas and suggested we consider using some of the funds raised to hire an editor, even a name was mentioned (a former, very well respected DC editor, a lady I have, incidentally worked for), I replied in a rather ill-tempered way to this suggestion, for which I later apologised, eventually Alex agreed with me, that the best way forward was for her to let me do my own thing with the visuals (provided of course, I did not change the script, or thrust of the narrative), really we are just talking about camera angles, viewpoints and the shape of the panels, that sort of thing and then, only very occasionally, if I felt strongly enough about it, and could demonstrate that from a storytelling point of view it was a good idea, more than 90% of the art I have produced has been exactly as Alex described/directed. As far as I’m concerned, this little spat (Alex called it that too) was also amicably settled weeks ago. We moved forward, getting on with the job at hand.
Up until the moment I was fired, I honestly had no reason to suspect things were going so wrong as far as Alex was concerned.

BEAT: Did you have a contract? How had you entered into the whole Kickstarter process?

JH: Yes, we have a contract, Alex has the signed executed originals, I own 45% of Ashes, as does Alex, the other 5% is owned by a fairly well known film/TV actor from Canada (a non-publicity clause in the contract prevents me from divulging the name, or at least I think it does) I think it important to note, that the contract was not finalized until Nov 20th, 2011, so, long after the campaign went live, and after I produced all the finished art and layout pages that exist, I can only assume Alex was more than happy with all the art at that time or she would not have signed it. Which again makes me wonder why she is so unhappy with my work now, as I have not produced any new pages since then, only sketches and test panels for Kickstarter, which have been seen by all who followed the campaign.

How we ended up at Kickstarter is an interesting story in itself. When I came on board (some 8 months ago) Alex was only talking to regular book and comics publishers, a crowd funding platform was never mentioned, or if it was, I honestly don’t recall. I do seem to remember Top Shelf, First Second and Dark Horse being in the frame, for reasons I’m unaware of, those talks were fruitless. Next thing I know, we are going with UK based Unbound, a publisher I had not even heard of. I was assured by Alex they were a good fit, although a crowd funding type of operation, she considered them very high-end, and much more focussed, as they only publish books.

Talks went well, I was even included on a conference call, with the editors here in London and Alex in the US where we talked about fees and costs etc. I have emails where I’m in discussion with Unbound about the printing of the book, confidential print quotes from third parties were forwarded to me for my opinion, things were that far advanced. It was, as far as I knew, a done deal, with only the fine details of the contracts to be finalised. Then, suddenly (and very much to my surprise) Alex told me we were going with Kickstarter, so I can only assume things went wrong with Unbound. Even though I was not consulted in any way (or even asked if I agreed) Kickstarter it was going to be. I trusted her judgement on this.

BEAT: According to Alex she has offered to pay you for the work you’ve already done?

JH: Yes, she has, but I declined the offer.

Initially I did ask Alex if she might be able to offer me some money, even if I didn’t deserve it (my exact words to her), because basically I’m broke.
There is extra money in the pot (as we exceeded our target by over $6,000) and Alex did promise that any additional funds would firstly go towards a ‘raise’ for me (as she freely admits on the Kickstarter home page, the $60 a page for pencils, inks, colours, letters, book design and pre press production is, well, significantly lower than industry standards) – a raise, as it happens that wasn’t likely to be forthcoming (at least not until well after the book was drawn and printed if at all) something I only realized right at the end of the campaign, when she informed me that $3k of the money raised would be used to complete the print version of Valentine, her other creator-owned project, one that had nothing to do with me whatsoever. It is scheduled to be published by Image comics later in the year — perhaps it could have had its own Kickstarter project.

Alex got back to me with an offer of a little over $1000 for all the work completed and compensation for lost future earnings. I replied quite angrily, that I considered the offer to be both unfair and insulting, I declined it.

After thinking about this in a calmer frame of mind I have decided that I do not want a penny of the $15,000 promised to me by Alex, not even as a severance payment. I’m now of the opinion that to take such a payment would be ethically wrong, as that money was originally donated by people who expected me to be working on the project, as I’m no longer involved, I do not deserve that money, despite the large amount of work I have produced, it would feel like I was betraying a trust, or taking advantage of the good will shown by all the backers, especially as many will want the book mainly for the brilliant story, and be happy to support it, whomever the artist.

However, there is more to this refusal, as to accept it means that I accept leaving the project, and here we have a slight legal snafu, specifically because of the aforementioned contract, raised between Alex, myself and the (unnamed here) actor for book and film rights, a contract that, created quietly and under Kickstarter’s radar, involved a one off payment of $6k to the ‘Seller’ for 5% of the rights, the other 95% being split equally between Alex and myself, I now seem to own a large percentage of a book I no longer work on.

Alex and I are jointly named as ‘Seller’ in the above document, and as such the contract states that 50%, $3k of this is legally mine — as well as having a percentage of after sales profits, I am no longer an employee, I am a partner, and this all becomes a whole lot more complicated, whether I want to leave, I was fired, or whatever.

I think it also worth mentioning that I was only made aware of this contract’s existence, after it was finalised and after the $6000 appeared as a secret pledge on Kickstarter (by secret I mean, a sudden $6k bump, with no corresponding rewards being taken to account for it), although named as a co-author of the work, it does not carry my signature, it was signed (quite legally) on my behalf by Alex.

BEAT: Do you have any thoughts on how this split affects Kickstarter overall?

JH: This sorry business has brought into question the efficacy of the Kickstarter model, with people saying that it is flawed in some way. I think it’s more a case of people being flawed — Kickstarter stands and falls on trust and integrity, there are no legal safeguards or protections in place to prevent fundraisers from lying, cheating, breaking promises, not delivering as advertised, or even sacking artists and replacing them once a campaign has successfully concluded.

I think we need to restore some of the faith in Kickstarter (that has inevitably been lost) as a viable creative/business model for supporting comic book projects of all persuasions.

Despite no legal requirement to do so, Alex has generously agreed to refund the money to all those who pledged but who no longer want a book that I will not be drawing, and also for any who have pledged but do not like the art of my replacement. I think she can can do much better than this, if she so desires.

I suggest the following option, so that all parties walk away from this, with their integrity intact, to repay and perhaps to rebuild the trust that those who have pledged have shown.

Declare the campaign to be null and void, and return all monies. Start again, (this includes of course, tearing up the existing and presumably worthless contract, and returning that money as well).

This will allow Alex a better chance to find her replacement artist (she currently has asked that people give her a week before submitting portfolios, this is cutting it fine if she wants to have made her choice by Valentine’s Day as she has indicated), have proper time to plan a new campaign (without this shadow of mistrust hanging over it) and raise money once more. Those that want the book, even though I will not be drawing it, can simply pledge again – those that don’t, well, they don’t have to pledge.

This seems by far, the fairest, most ethical and least complicated way to proceed, even if it does mean I walk away with nothing.

Alex has said that she will announce her plans on Valentine’s Day. Personally, I see no need to rush into this; the script for Ashes is superb, it will be a great book, and finding the right artist in less than a month for such a mammoth undertaking is not something that anyone need rush into (after all the entire project has been in gestation for 5 years, according to Alex), why set such a short and arbitrary deadline? People have waited 5 years for a sequel to Smoke, they can surely wait a little longer.

Although some websites prefer not to use sources, it is our policy at The Beat to link away. Thus we can confirm that it is indeed true that Warners has applied for trademark registry on a new logo, as you can see above.

The trademark is in black and white so that any color can be applied. “Color is not claimed as a feature of the mark. The mark consists of the letter “D” flipping back to reveal the letter “C” and DC ENTERTAINMENT.”

To be honest, when we first thought this, we suspected it was a new logo for DC shoes.

But no.

As others have commented, this “peel back” logo makes the much-mocked swish — introduced in 2005 — look like the Milton Glaser-designed original in terms of readability.

In other words: we hates it.

While the filing in itself does not mean that all DC products will soon carry this logo — perhaps it is only provisional — a partial list of categories that the logo is trademarked for makes you think, yes, they are serious.

DC DC ENTERTAINMENT Goods and Services IC 030. US 046. G & S: Cookies, bases for making milkshakes, breakfast cereal, bubble gum, cake decorations made of candy, chewing gum, frozen confections, crackers, frozen yogurt, ice cream, pretzels, peanut butter confectionery chips, malt for food; soybean malt; malt biscuits; sugar confectionery, namely candy, candy bars, candy mints, candy coated and caramel popcorn, and candy decorations for cakes; edible decorations for cake; rice cakes; pastilles; pastries; biscuits and bread; coffee beverages with milk; cocoa beverages with milk, chocolate-based beverages, coffee and coffee-based beverages, cocoa and cocoa-based beverages; tea, namely, ginseng tea, black tea, green tea, oolong tea, barley and barley-leaf tea; meat tenderizers for household purposes; binding agents for ice-cream Mark Drawing Code

Goods and Services IC 029. US 046. G & S: Processed and dried vegetables; processed and dried fruits, processed ginseng; raisins, fruit salads, fruit jellies, marmalade; preserved onions, preserved olives; crystallized fruits; vegetable and fruit juices for cooking; jams, chocolate nut butter, cocoa butter and peanut butter; canned fruits and vegetables; pickles; soybean-based food beverage used as a milk substitute; frozen fruits and vegetables; potato chips; processed and dried meat; meat; milk; seafood; and margarine Mark Drawing Code

Goods and Services IC 021. US 002 013 023 029 030 033 040 050. G & S: Glass, ceramic and earthenware goods, namely, bowls, plates, coffee cups, and cups; beverage glassware, namely, jugs, mugs and drinking glasses; sugar and creamer sets; infant cups; cookie jars; ceramic, glass and china figurines; toothbrushes; non-electric coffee pots not of precious metal; lunch boxes; lunch pails; wastepaper baskets; ice buckets; plastic buckets; shower caddies; cake molds; serving utensils, namely, pie servers, cake turners, spatulas, scrapers, and cake servers; canteens; plastic coasters; thermal insulated containers for food or beverages; cookie cutters; cork screws; water bottles sold empty; decanters; drinking flasks; gardening gloves; rubber household gloves; and dinnerware, namely, paper plates and paper cups

Services IC 024. US 042 050. G & S: Bath linens, namely, bath towels and wash cloths; bed linens, namely; bed blankets, bed canopies, bed pads, bed sheets, bed spreads, pillow cases, comforters, duvet covers, mattress covers, dust ruffles, blankets, throws, crib bumpers, and pillow shams; textile wall hangings; curtains; draperies; cotton, polyester and/or nylon fabric; linen; kitchen linens, namely, barbecue mitts, cloth napkins, dish cloths, fabric table cloths, kitchen towels, fabric place mats, oven mitts, washing mitts, fabric table runners, pot holders and cloth coasters; handkerchiefs, quilts, and golf towels

Would you wear oven mitts emblazoned with this logo?

Seriously now.

The range of products being filed for suggests to us that maybe this is just for tags or something.

Oi, if only.

The end of 2011 was a time of turmoil for the brand known as Wizard. Founder Gareb Shamus was forced out by his own board, and the new board committed to mending fences and resurrecting the media end of the brand to go along with the successful convention business. Now the company’s annual report has just been posted and sadly for snoopers, the financials only go up to the end of 2010. However, there is lots of other interesting reading, including the difficulty of running a web-based media enterprise — it’s not making any money, which will surprise no one — and the convention business — only Chicago and Philadelphia are profitable with the other events losing money.

There’s some fairly dire reading in the whole filing — the risk factors section alone should leave you curled up into a ball on the sofa watching a Jane Austen movie — but a lot of that is boilerplate for SEC filings which need to disclose everything that could go wrong.

Despite all that, in our conversations with current Wizard board members, they sound committed to moving forward with the parts that work, and trying to fix the parts that don’t. A new president is to be announced any day now, and that person will have a big say in how Wizard World survives.

Our Company has two lines of business: (i) live multimedia events, which involves ticket sales and exhibitor booth space, and (ii) sponsorships and advertising. Our current focus is on growing our existing Comic Cons by obtaining new exhibitors and dealers and attracting more high profile celebrities and VIPs. We also plan to expose our database of fans and our target market of young adult males to our content through digital media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flicker, and Tumblr, and draw higher traffic to our website www.wizardworld.com by creating content from our live multimedia events and promoting such events through emails, newsletters, our iPad app and our soon to be released iPhone and Android apps.

Further, in the fourth quarter of 2011, we launched our new digital entertainment ad network called the “Wizard World Digital Entertainment Network,” which will be comprised of two websites located at www.wizardworld.com and www.toywiz.com, and the Wizard World email database. The Wizard World Digital Entertainment Network will offer display advertising to brand advertisers, priced on a traditional CPM ad impression basis. We plan to work with display advertising networks and third party representation firms, and to hire four direct sales employees over the next 12 months to maximize the monetization of the Wizard World Digital Entertainment Network.

We expect to produce six (6) live events during the year ended December 31, 2012. We run the risk that we will not be profitable in the live event business. To date, we have operated profitable live events in both the Philadelphia and Chicago markets, but we have operated at a deficit in other events. In order for us to operate a successful event, we must produce an event that is relevant to the public in order drive ticket sales, booth sales, sponsorship and advertising. In order for the Company to grow the digital business, we must attract unique users and drive traffic to our online site. To date, we have exhausted considerable resources developing our media platform, but we have yet to earn a profit from the platform.

Currently, our digital media business has been funded on capital raised from outside investors. We are currently earning revenue from the site and from the newly launched digital entertainment ad network, but not enough to maintain the costs to operate. We must continue to fund the digital media business from outside investors and from cash flow from the live event business until the media platform generates enough revenue to support its own operation.

A P&L for 2009 vs 2010 has been posted:Results of Operations

There’s also a run down of the convention business:

On November 13, 2010, the Company acquired the production rights to the Mid-Ohio Comic Con from GCX Holdings.  The total consideration for the acquisition was $77,500, of which $60,000 was the initial purchase price, payable in royalties consisting of 25% of the first $40,000 of exhibitor revenue, plus 10% of the exhibitor revenue over $40,000.  Additionally, we agreed to a five-year consulting agreement for $3,500 per year, payable in annual installments commencing in the year after the $60,000 initial purchase price had been paid in full.  The production cost of the 2011 Mid-Ohio Comic Con was approximately $160,000, which we funded out of existing cash and cash flow from our Company’s operations and proceeds from ticket sales and exhibitor sales prior to the event.

Subsequent Business Operations

In late 2011, we began to leverage the popularity of our Comic Cons to use as a springboard to enter the digital media market.  Specifically, in the fourth quarter, we launched our new digital entertainment ad network called the “Wizard World Digital Entertainment Network,” which is comprised of two websites; www.wizardworld.com and www.toywiz.com, and the Wizard World email database.  The Wizard World Digital Entertainment Network will offer display advertising to brand advertisers, priced on a traditional cost-per-thousand (CPM) ad impression basis.  The Wizard World Digital Entertainment Network plans to represent both its owned and operated site, www.wizardworld.com, as well as third-party sites such as www.toywiz.com.  The Company expects to sign up several more third-party sites in 2012 and beyond to grow our vertical entertainment ad network business.

Our 2011 Wizard World tour included nine conventions occurring in the following cities: New Orleans, LA, Miami, FL, Toronto, Ontario, Anaheim, CA, New York, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Rosemont, IL, Columbus, OH and Austin, TX.  We receive revenue from our Comic Cons in three (3) ways, namely from (i) consumer ticket sales; (ii) exhibitor booth sales; and (iii) national and/or regional sponsorships.  Each Comic Con varies in cost to produce.  Production costs vary based on the size and scope of the production.  Generally, our production costs range from approximately $150,000 for a smaller scale production to over $450,000 for a larger production.  We base the number of Comic Cons that we produce on how much internal cash flow we have to fund them, which limits the number of Comic Cons that we can produce in one year.  

The Company’s plan for 2012 is to focus the Wizard World tour on the Company’s six most popular ‘Super-Regional shows; New Orleans, LA, Toronto, Ontario, Philadelphia, PA, Rosemont, IL, Columbus, OH and Austin, TX.

The majority of our target audience are young adult males and are active consumers of many types of entertainment and media, such as movies, music, toys, video games, apps, consumer electronics, computers, and lifestyle products (e.g. clothes, footwear, digital devices, mobile phones and men’s personal items).

Digital Media

In late 2011, we began leveraging the popularity of our Comic Cons as a springboard to enter the digital media market.  We will use digital media (i) as a distribution channel for the pop culture content that we showcase at our Comic Cons, (ii) to provide coverage of our Comic Con events, and (iii) to introduce new and upcoming products and talent in the pop culture world. To that end, we formed a wholly owned subsidiary, Wizard World Digital, Inc. (“Digital”), to send entertainment emails to our fan database, manage our website www.wizardworld.com and our online presence on, among others, Twitter and Facebook.

Further, in the fourth quarter of 2011, we launched our new digital entertainment ad network called the “Wizard World Digital Entertainment Network,” which is comprised of two websites at www.wizardworld.com, www.toywiz.com, as well as the Wizard World email database.  The Wizard World Digital Entertainment Network will offer display advertising to brand advertisers, priced on a traditional cost-per-thousand (CPM) ad impression basis.  We plan to work with display advertising networks and third party representation firms, and to hire four direct sales employees over the next 12 months to maximize the monetization of the Wizard World Digital Entertainment Network.

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Strategy

Our objective is to use our Comic Cons and Wizard World Digital to become the voice for pop culture enthusiasts across multiple media platforms. Key elements of our strategy include:

·
producing high quality live multimedia events across North America for promotion of consumer products and entertainment;

·
leveraging all the content created and generated at the live multimedia events to enter the media market and distribute the content in digital media such as websites, apps, emails, newsletters, Facebook, Twitter, Flicker, Tumblr and YouTube; and

·
obtaining sponsorships and promotions from media and entertainment companies for the Comic Cons, including:

o
expanding our relationships with entertainment and media companies; and

o
forming strategic relationships with new media and entertainment companies to promote their products.

We receive revenue from our Comic Cons in three (3) ways, namely from (i) consumer ticket sales; (ii) exhibitor booth sales; and (iii) national and/or regional sponsorships. If we were to receive revenues, we expect that approximately 95% of the revenues will come from Live Conventions through ticket sales, exhibitor sales and dealer sales, and 5% will come from Sponsorships and Promotions.  In time, our business plan is to generate a majority of our revenues from advertising sales on all of Wizard World Digital’s media properties.  We expect that digital media revenues will primarily be earned through offering advertisers the ability to place banner ads on our digital media properties, priced on a standard cost-per-thousand (“CPM”) basis.

Sponsorships and Advertising

We sell sponsorship and advertising opportunities to businesses seeking to reach our core target audience of young adult males.

Sponsorships. We provide sponsorship opportunities that allow advertisers a wide range of promotional vehicles on-site and through our public relations efforts.  For example, we offer advertisers the ability to (i) display signage at the Comic Cons, (ii) include their desired logos on all direct mail that is sent in connection with one or more Comic Cons, (iii) be included in press releases to the media, (iv) obtain sponsor tags on the radio spots or in the print or online ads where we advertise, and (v) obtain advertising space in our digital media.  We also provide the opportunity for advertisers to sponsor events at the Comic Cons like costume contests or gaming tournaments and the ability to have “step-and-repeats” for photo opportunities, meet and greets with celebrities, VIP packages and “goody” bag giveaways.  Sponsors pay a fee based upon the position of their advertising media and the exposure it will receive.  Specifically, the closer a sponsor is to the entrance of the Comic Con, the more exposure such sponsor will receive as a greater number of Comic Con attendees will view the sponsor’s product and/or services.  Therefore, the rental fee for space at our Comic Cons is more expensive if the space is closer to the entrance.

Promotions. Promotional opportunities include product placement and brand associations on-site at the Comic Cons.  As our brand grows, we hope to earn revenues by co-promoting, for example, a movie at one of our Comic Cons, with entertainment and media companies and brands seeking to benefit from the popularity of the Comic Cons and the exposure received from appearing at them.  We have not and do not enter into formal agreements with respect to co-promotion with other parties.

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Digital Media. We produce a number of digital media properties, including our website www.wizardworld.com, emails, newsletters, iPad app, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flicker and Tumblr to create awareness of our Comic Cons and provide updates to our fans and consumers.  We also use our website www.wizardworld.com to a large extent to provide a source for the latest Comic Con news and information.  Display advertising is offered to brand advertisers across all our digital media properties, priced on a traditional CPM basis.

Marketing

Our Comic Cons are marketed through a variety of media outlets, including social media, websites, public relations, television, radio, direct mail, email, flyers and postcards.  Our Comic Cons usually obtain publicity through coverage of the events at our Comic Cons from local TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, national press such as the Associated Press and Reuters, fan websites, blogs and social network channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Flicker and Tumblr.  In certain instances, we do not pay for advertising because we can provide desirable content to media outlets.  For example, we typically invite the local TV stations to our Comic Cons so that they can interview the celebrities featured at our Comic Cons.  As a result, we receive free TV coverage and the TV stations obtain content for their shows.  In addition, we arrange for celebrities to call into local radio stations.  As a result, we receive on-air promotion of our events and the radio station reaches a larger audience who want to tune in to hear our celebrities.  We also receive on-air promotion by exchanging air time for ticket give-aways to our Comic Cons.  With respect to the internet and online advertising, we advertise throughout our website www.wizardworld.com about the upcoming Comic Cons.  We also send out emails to our fans on a regular basis.  In addition, we send out direct mail postcards, print flyers and postcards in each city where we hold a Comic Con, which are handed out at local events, retailers and public gatherings.  As a result, we believe that we are cost effective when it comes to how we spend our advertising dollars.

We are consistently creating and developing new content to distribute to our fans via all of the digital outlets we have developed, including, without limitation, our iPad app called Wizard World, which can be downloaded via our website at www.wizardworld.com or through Apple’s App store for the iPad.

As penny stocks go, the WIZD brand isn’t trading that well, the filing notes:

Our stock is thinly traded, so you may be unable to sell at or near ask prices or at all.

The shares of our common stock are traded on the Pink Sheets and are thinly traded, meaning that the number of persons interested in purchasing our common stock at or near ask prices at any given time may be relatively small or non-existent.  This situation is attributable to a number of factors, including the fact that we are a smaller reporting company that is relatively unknown to stock analysts, stock brokers, institutional investors and others in the investment community who generate or influence sales volume.  Even in the event that we come to the attention of such persons, they would likely be reluctant to follow an unproven company such as ours or purchase or recommend the purchase of our shares until such time as we become more seasoned and viable.  As a consequence, our stock price may not reflect an actual or perceived value.  Also, there may be periods of several days or more when trading activity in our shares is minimal or non-existent, as is currently the case, as compared to a seasoned issuer that has a large and steady volume of trading activity that will generally support continuous sales without an adverse effect on share price.  A broader or more active public trading market for our common shares may not develop or if developed, may not be sustained.  Due to these conditions, you may not be able to sell your shares at or near ask prices or at all if you need money or otherwise desire to liquidate your shares.

As we’ve mentioned here several times, there have been no more important graphic novels published in this century than PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi and FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel. Both found large audiences well beyond the traditional ones for comics, and both have become oft-imitated — but never duplicated — by book publishers trying to cash in on the “graphic novel” trend. (The number of graphic autobiographies exploring ethnic roots alone is staggering.)

2012 will see the debut of Bechdel’s followup — ARE YOU MY MOTHER. As FUN HOME dealt with Bechdel’s difficult relationship with her closeted father, ARE YOU MY MOTHER is about, well, her mom. Here’s the blurb:

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel’s childhood . . . and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter goodnight, forever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It’s a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother—to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers

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While this book has received scant attention in the online comics world, while we were working on another project we noticed that it has a 100,000 print run planned by publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. That’s a pretty daring number for a sophomore literary writer, and one of the biggest ever for a GN. Dark Horse famously had a 100,000 print run for their Janet Evanovich project — a number that didn’t turn out so well and resulted in tons of returns. Dav Pilkey’s OOK ‘N’ GLUK had a print run of 1 million, however, and that did just fine. We’re sure that Torsten will be along in the comments presently to supply any examples we have forgotten.

Whatever happens, it’s an impressive number for a graphic novel and shows a lot of faith in Bechdel’s ability and readership. Of course, given her evocative writing style and clean, keenly-observed cartoons, it’s a faith that should be merited.

Well, that didn’t take long.

2012 has claimed its first publishing casualty as Bandai Entertainment has announced they will be canceling their manga and home entertainment publishing to focus on licensing their brands as they undergo a restructuring.

Their Facebook and Twitter accounts will also be shut down.

It had been a long time Bandai had made any manga publishing news but still…

UPDATE: Here’s background from Bandai’s Ken Iyadomi:

In a decision made last October, but only now becoming public knowledge, Bandai Entertainment’s corporate parent at Namco Bandai Holdings made the decision to exit the American home video business. Iyadomi says he wasn’t privy to the fine details. “The decision was made in Japan by the contents SBU (Strategic Business Unit).” That business unit originally included the video games division, but recently was merged with all of the company’s audio visual businesses, including Sunrise, Bandai Visual and Bandai Channel.
But the broader reasons are quite clear from the outside. The physical anime business in North America has shrunk substantially over the last five years, and shows no sign of returning to its former glory. “A couple of times we were hit with huge returns, and the financial result was pretty bad,” Iyadomi admits. Still, he believes the division might have been able to keep going for a few more years, had the SBU allowed it.

’00s nostalgia.

Official PR:

Bandai Entertainment announced today that it will stop releasing new titles on DVD, Blu-ray and Manga formats starting in February of 2012. The company will continue to sell catalog titles and shift its operation to licensing which will include digital distribution, broadcast and merchandising.

As a result of this change in strategy for the North American Market, Bandai Entertainment’s organization will be restructured at the end of January 2012.

The following previously announced anime titles have been cancelled: TURN-A GUNDAM, NICHIJOU and GOSICK.

Similarly, the following manga titles have been cancelled: KANNAGI 4-6, CODE GEASS: RENYA, GURREN LAGANN VOL. 7, GUNDAM 00I, LUCKY STAR BOO BOO KAGABOO, NICHIJOU MANGA, CODE GEASS R2 NOVELS, and TALES OF THE ABYSS: JADE 1 and 2.

Additionally, Bandai Entertainment’s facebook and twitter will be shut down.

About Bandai Entertainment Inc.
Bandai Entertainment Inc. is a subsidiary of Namco Bandai Holdings (USA) Inc. and a premier
distributor of Japanese animation in North America. Titles include K-ON!, Gundam 00, Code Geass:
Lelouch of Rebellion, Lucky Star, Gurren Lagann,The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Cowboy Bebop,
Outlaw Star, Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, My Otome.

Since everyone is always comparing the comics business to the music business in terms of retail erosion, how about looking at a music success story? The New York Times has a profile of musician Cee Lo Green explaining how, despite the economic decimation in the music industry, he’s been able to make some $20 million this year by rigorously branding himself and expanding his activities to including numerous TV hosting gigs, merchandising, and Vegas. Along the way some interesting iTunes numbers are dropped.

Although “F&^% You,” Cee Lo’s anthemic yet catchy song of moving on was downloaded some 5.3 million times in the US, that doesn’t mean he made $5 million from it.

A chart-topping single could once be counted on to drive big sales of full albums, which bring in greater royalties. But the “unbundling” of albums in the age of iTunes — the loss of album sales at $10 or $15 when consumers can buy a single song for about $1 — has contributed to a 58 percent reduction in album sales since 2000. Despite the success of “Forget You,” “The Lady Killer” has sold only about 450,000 copies in the United States.

“How much do you make on five million singles?” Mr. Mestel asked. “It’s not $5 million. Apple takes a piece of it, the record company takes a piece of it, the producer takes a piece of it, and then Cee Lo gets a piece of it as the artist.”

A recording contract for an act like Cee Lo would typically offer a net royalty of about 15 percent, according to several music executives. That means that for a $1.29 download from iTunes, after Apple takes its standard 30 percent fee, the artist would be paid 13 or 14 cents; for five million downloads, that amounts to about $650,000. As one of five writers of the song, Cee Lo would also make about $45,000 in publishing royalties on those downloads.

To supplement his income Cee Lo’s management company has set him up on many TV shows, including The Voice, on which he’s a judge. He’s also becoming a more Liberace-like entertainment figure with over-the-top performances like the above Grammy show Muppet-impression, co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow from the Grammys.

While the lessons for the comics biz aren’t necessarily directly applicable here — performance art not having as much bearing on a written art form — it does show how once you do get a breakthrough, widening your portfolio and working your ass off can yield the financial results that a simple ASCAP membership once did. Of course, it helps to have actual talent and charisma, as Cee Lo does.

Wizard World without Gareb Shamus. The entire idea would have seemed ridiculous until just a few days ago when an SEC filing revealed that Shamus, the owner and founder of the company, had been removed as CEO. It was startling news which left everyone wondering what would become of the Wizard brand—once mighty in both media coverage and entertainment shows.

Answers are beginning to emerge. In an interview with The Beat, Wizard’s executive chairman Mike Mathews revealed that a new era has already begun at Wizard World, which will include outreach to the entire industry in a move to repair damaged relationships with both other industry players and fans.

In one of the most notorious examples of the bad blood which the old Wizard had given rise to, subscribers to the print magazine had not been given any make-up subscriptions for issues paid for but never mailed. However, according to Mathews, a letter is being sent out to old subscribers offering them a $100 credit towards Wizard shows.

“Where are we headed is to be an entertainment company,” Mathews told The Beat. “First and foremost it’s all about treating our fans in a supportive manner and providing them with the best entertainment we can, putting on great conference and having great VIPS.”

Mathews described the convention side of the business—currently planned as New Orleans, Toronto, Philadelphia, Chicago and Mid-Ohio, with Big Apple and Austin TBA—as robust. “With the last couple of shows business is excellent. And we couldn’t be happier. We have a couple of shows that are spectacular—Philadelphia and Chicago—but the reality is we’d like to have a number of cities that are spectacular as well.” While plans are in place to grow the business over the next year, he said that the number of shows is not yet set. There is room for more, but at the same time, if a show isn’t making money there is no reason to put it on.

A planning meeting is being held next week to decide the number of shows for 2012. Much of the future plan depends on the new CEO, who will be announced early in January—the company is already in talks with a candidate who already worked with Wizard. Jerry Milani, Peter Katz, and Kevin Kelly will all be staying on with the company.

As for the other part of the Wizard business – news and entertainment – Mathews said that part will be developed as well, under the new CEO’s guidance. Mathews own background is in web network and monetizing websites – he founded Interclick, the internet ad agency that was recently sold to Yahoo for $270 million. “We’ve rebuilt wizardworld.com and are in the process of becoming a vertical ad network similar to Complex and Break.com. We are also running Toywiz.com and we are just finalizing deals with a number of music sites. When you think of us as an entertainment brand we don’t want to be just in a narrow category, but a broader category of entertainment.”

Although discreet about the process that led to Shamus’s ouster, Mathews did note that the stockholders had looked at recent company performance and decided that a change was needed. He also noted that “Gareb is one of these types of personalities who has taken strong positions over the years with various people in the industry and brands. And that kind of hurt us because of where we are trying to go—we’re trying to be a Switzerland of entertainment and we want to try to try to reach out to brands.” Accordingly, Mathews and other Wizard personnel are in the process of reaching out to industry players, dealers, and vendors and attempting to mend fences -– the fact that PR guy Jerry Milani actually was able to take steps to set up this interview is proof that things have changed.

Of course, one of the tactics Wizard had gained the most notoriety for in recent years was aggressively scheduling shows against other cons put on by entities perceived as competitors—most famously scheduling the Big Apple con the same week as New York Comic-Con and then moving it to the week before. More recently, the Toronto show moved its date to go up against C2E2 in Chicago, put on by Reed, which also throws NYCC. But Con Wars look to have ended.

While Mathews didn’t see moving the current shows that are already scheduled, “This ‘comic-con’ brand is an amazing business,” he said. “There is no reason why there needs to be tension. Let’s work together to make sure we have dates that work for all of us. We’re looking at things.”

“We really feel the way to be the Switzerland of the entertainment category is to have good relationships with all constituencies,” he concluded. “What we had wasn’t a long term success model and that’s what we recognized.”

The Valiant comics relaunch has been brewing for a while, with some hires and much consultation, but they’ve just let the cat out of the bag — their new line is expected to launch next May, with a Free Comic Book Day preview leading the way. The preview will feature X-O MANOWAR, BLOODSHOT, HARBINGER, and probably some other Valiant favorites. The creative teams haven’t been announced but the preview cover is by Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic.

Valiant has also hired Hunter Gorinson as Marketing & Communications Manager and Atom Freeman as Senior Sales Representative in addition to Warren Simons as Executive Editor, so they’re putting together a pretty good team.

Valiant Entertainment is proud to announce its first ever Free Comic Book Day release – the Valiant Comics FCBD 2012 Edition!

 
On May 5th, get the inside track on the year’s most groundbreaking comic book event with this exclusive look at the all-new Valiant Comics! X-O Manowar! Bloodshot! Harbinger! Some of the best-selling heroes of all time return this Free Comic Book Day, just as all-new #1 issues of Valiant Comics begin arriving in stores!  

 
“This has been an event a decade in the making, and we’re approaching this with dedication, passion and a commitment to excellence,” said Executive Editor Warren Simons. “We’ve lined up some colossally talented colleagues – both new and old friends alike – and if you have a love for great comics and innovative stories, we’ve got some great stuff in store for you.”

 
Featuring a cover of the brand new X-O Manowar by superstar artist Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic, this sneak peek into Valiant’s extraordinary first year comes packed with never-before-seen stories, character redesigns, and interviews with Valiant’s team of visionary creators. 

 
“We couldn’t be happier to be partnering with comics retailers, Diamond and ComicsPro for Free Comic Book Day 2012, the most exciting day in comics,” said Publisher Fred Pierce. “In 2012, fans and retailers can expect some of the best books in all of comics to be shipping monthly from Valiant.”

 
Valiant’s Free Comic Book Day special edition is just the first title that the publisher has lined up for the month of May. Look for announcements regarding the full array of new titles, creative teams, and shipping dates to be released in the New Year. 

 
“Free Comic Book Day is just the beginning,” said Valiant Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani.  ”For anyone who loves comics and top-notch storytelling, the return of the Valiant Universe will be an event not to be missed.”