After a year-long stint with Random House as their book distributor, Radical Publishing is back at Diamond, we are told by press release.

The announcement is a bit of a no-brainer considering that Radical was at last month’s Diamond Retailer Summit.

Radical Publishing has finalized negotiations to return to Diamond Book Distributors (DBD) for distributing their graphic novel titles and products to book stores, mass-market merchandisers, libraries and other outlets worldwide.

“We’re very excited to be rejoining Diamond Book Distributors,” said Radical Publishing Director of Sales, Teddy Cabugos. “In this industry, we recognize that a publisher really needs to be with a distributor whose expertise is the world of graphic novels. Diamond’s influence in the book market and ability to secure placement for their publishing lines means that we’re at the right distributor to grow our business.”

The deal commences in April, with DBD handling previous backlist titles and new frontlist titles offered to the book market for June release. Radical was previously distributed by Random House. “We are pleased to welcome Radical Publishing back to our client roster,” said Kuo-Yu Liang, DBD’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “I am very excited that we can bring their titles to book market customers once again.”

Founded by Barry Levine, Jesse Berger and Matthew Berger, Radical publishing released their first titles in May 2008. Since then they have recruited a long list of top creators and published a number titles already making headway in the industry. Unlike other comics’ publishers, Radical focuses on character- driven mythological or genre-based stories, such as Hercules, Aladdin: Legacy of the Lost, Earp: Saints for Sinners, Legends: the Enchanted, and Caliber. Many of their materials are developed with an eye on the film industry.

Back in August, 2010, we told you all about the story behind OBLIVION, a graphic novel concept by director Joe Kosinski (TRON: LEGACY) that was optioned to Disney Studios for a cool $500,000. It seemed like a lot of money for yet another “celebrity comic” so what was so hot about it? At the time we wrote:

As regular BEAT readers know, studios optioning comics are a weekly occurrence, and yet this one not only gets a coveted Nikki Finke TOLJA! (signifying an important story) but $500K just for some typical comics-to-movie pitch after FOUR STUDIOS were in the running to get it? What gives?

The answer lies in the identity of the celebrity brainstormer. Although TRON: LEGACY is still months away from release, Disney has set its eyes on TRON as its franchise of the future, and they are very, very — as in VERY — high on Kosinski, even though he’s a virtual unknown: TRON: LEGACY is his first film and prior to that he was best known for that GEARS OF WAR TV spot with the song from Donnie Darko in it.

But now, in a story leaked simultaneously to all the trades, comes word that Disney has dropped OBLIVION:

Disney has opted to not move forward with an adaptation of Joseph Kosinski’s illustrated novel “Oblivion,” and is letting the “Tron: Legacy” helmer and Radical Publishing shop the project to other studios and producers. Pic had been developed under the title “Horizons.”

Mouse House picked up the project from Kosinski last August after the book bowed at Comic-Con.

Deadline digs a bit deeper:

Studios are looking at a rewrite by Karl Gajdusek, and I’m told this is a $100 million plus project (not including star salary), so it’s an opportunity for someone to pencil in a tent pole. Calls to Disney haven’t been returned on the subject, but I’ve heard that the reason Disney stopped work after developing the script and going through a soft prep process is that the studio decided that a gritty PG-13 science fiction action project didn’t fit into the Disney mandate. Considering that Paramount, Fox-based Chernin Entertainment and Universal all chased the property before Disney stepped up to keep its Tron: Legacy helmer in the studio fold, I’m told this will get bought by somebody. It will have an easy exit, as the deal came with progress to production language. It’s unclear if Kosinski will direct this next; he’s got Black Hole at Disney, and the studio’s developing a Tron: Legacy sequel.

It’s pretty obvious where all this info is coming from: Radical. As we observed back in August,

There is hardly a company that does not have some kind of celebrity “vanity project” comic out there made mostly to show to producers as a bible for a film. And all of this is despite the fact that not a single movie has yet been made from a comic book that was published just to be turned into a movie.

OVLIVION was optioned by Disney to keep Kosinski in the fold; TRON: LEGACY didn’t turn out to be quite the major tentpole the studio had hoped for, so bye-bye, vanity project.

It seems several production shingles are still after the project now that it’s in turnaround. It’s quite possible we’ll be seeing another round of PR on this. But will OBLIVION ever get made? It really depends on how hot Kosinski can get. Can he steer BLACK HOLE, another Disney reboot, into box office joy? If he gets a solid body of movie hits behind them, he might get the chance to make his AVATAR…but he’s got to earn that spot.

Radical Publishing is a free-spending but little read comics publisher based on the comics-to-movies business plan pioneered by Tekno, although they have been putting out more recognizable books by people like Rick Remender and David Hine of late. They’ve also recently launched something of a marketing offensive — they were a silver sponsor at the recent Diamond Retailer Summit in Chicago, with a presentation aimed at showing retailers they were serious about promoting their books. Perhaps Radical has noticed, as many publishers have before them, that publishing comics that people actually want to read is a much better way to get a movie made than just attaching some stone cold celebrity.

Radical has a full list of signings by such folk as David Hine, Paul Gulacy, Arvid Nelson, and Jimmy Palmiotti. And Wesley Snipes and Sam Worthington, if that’s how you roll. You can view the entire singing schedule here. Here’s their event list. (More info here.)


Creators Panel
Thursday July 22
Time: 2pm – 3pm
Location: Room 32AB

Hosted by Harry Knowles (AintItCoolNews.com) featuring Jimmy Palmiotti, Rick Remender, Peter Milligan, Matt Cirulnick, David Hine, Arvid Nelson, Nick Percival and Keith Arem!

Booth #3735 Signing Schedule
Thursday: A special EARP: SAINTS FOR SINNERS signing with Matt Cirulnick, M. Zachary Sherman and Kyushik Shin; plus signings from Jimmy Palmiotti, Nick Percival, David Hine and Rick Remender!

Friday: Jimmy Palmiotti, Paul Gulacy, David Hine, Arvid Nelson, Peter Milligan, Rick Remender and Keith Arem.

Saturday: A special AFTER DARK signing with Antoine Fuqua, Wesley Snipes and Peter Milligan; an OBLIVION signing with Joseph Kosinski and Arvid Nelson; THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME signing with Producer and star Sam Worthington and Creator and Writer Rick Remender; and DAMAGED and PATRIOTS signing with creators Michael Schwarz and John Schwarz (Full Clip Productions).

Sunday: David Hine, Jimmy Palmiotti, Paul Gulacy and Nick Percival.

Cartoonist/reality star Nick Simmons issued a statement yesterday regarding being caught redhanded lifting images from Bleach and other very well known manga:

“Like most artists I am inspired by work I admire. There are certain similarities between some of my work and the work of others. This was simply meant as an homage to artists I respect, and I definitely want to apologize to any Manga fans or fellow Manga artists who feel I went too far. My inspirations reflect the fact that certain fundamental imagery is common to all Manga. This is the nature of the medium.

“I am a big fan of Bleach, as well as other Manga titles. And I am certainly sorry if anyone was offended or upset by what they perceive to be the similarity between my work and the work of artists that I admire and who inspire me.”

Hm, does anyone remember back in the day when Rob Liefeld admitted to “tributing?”

Unsurprisingly, this lawyer-vetted non-apology has ignited even more outrage at his blatant lifting — while, as we noted, an outrageous fake Nick Simmons on Facebook was widely quoted last week, the real one isn’t much better.

While a lot of manga fans are calling for the 21-year-old Simmons to be publicly shamed in more painful and scarring ways than he’s experienced thus far, some are lumping him in with other youthful appropriators, such as 17-year-old German novelist Helene Hegemann, who was caught lifting huge passages of her book from other writers, but defended the practice with a credo for the Post-Sampling Age: “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.”

An article on Hegemann and other literary swipers in the NY Times, looks at the generational phenomenon of literary sampling:

The news made waves in the United States with an almost novelistic kind of timing, just before the publication last week of a highly anticipated book by David Shields, “Reality Hunger,” a feisty literary “manifesto” built almost entirely of quotations from other writers and thinkers. The borrowed words are marshaled to make a case against what Mr. Shields sees as boring fiction and in favor of genre-bending forms like the lyric essay. Mr. Shields, a novelist who migrated to nonfiction, has called it “far and away the most personal book” he has ever written. And though publishing-house lawyers required him to include an appendix listing his sources (at least those he could remember) Mr. Shields asks the reader to honor the spirit of the book by taking a pair of scissors and giving it an appendectomy.

While Radical, publisher of Simmons’ INCARNATE, have pulled the book for now, an experienced eye can also justifiably ask: “Where was the editor?” Anyone vaguely familiar with manga should be familiar with Bleach, and the stylistic swipes were so blatant that an actual manga editor might have caught them before this all came out in the wash.

While questions of whether it’s art, homage, tributing, or just plain ripping off continue to swirl, as usual Simon Jones has a debunking of some of the common misconceptions about the matter.

Finally, Bleach creator Tite Kubo is aware of the controversy and responded on Twitter “I’m more interested in the fact that Gene Simmons’ son is a mangaka than whether he’s plagiarizing me or not.”

UPDATE: A few places are reporting that the “Nick Simmons” who showed up at a Facebook page called Calling for legal action against Nick Simmons for plagiarism of other workswas the real deal with a lot of obviously outrageous comments, but he was not.

Word broke yesterday via Live Journal that Nick Simmons, best known as the son of musician Gene, had been found to be stealing from the art of Tite Kubo (Bleach) in his Radical comic Incarnate. We’ve filched bug one example above…there are many more. That’s Kubo on the left, Simmons on the right. While we had previously praised Simmons’ for being a rare nerdlebrity who didn’t just write his comic, but actually drew it…perhaps that was not so much the case.

Rich J. was the first on the case and upon contacting Radical, they actually pulled the book:

We at Radical Publishing, Inc. and Radical Comics, Inc. are quite concerned to hear the news surrounding Nick Simmons’s Incarnate Comic Book. We are taking this matter seriously and making efforts now to contact the publishers of the works in question in an effort to resolve this matter. We have halted further production and distribution of the “Incarnate” comic book and trade paperback until the matter is resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. Rest assured that Radical is taking swift action regarding this matter and will continue in its efforts to maintain the integrity and protect the intellectual property of artists throughout the world whose creative works are the bedrock of our Company and the comic book industry.

While this would make for a very embarrassing episode of Family Jewels, the general consensus is that Radical at least acted well once Simmon’s got caught. Johanna Draper Carlson has a thorough round up of reactions, including some who point out that swiping and scanlations are not so ethically separate as some would wish.