Business News

A couple of quotes from Warren Ellis were making the Twitter rounds this weekend. This one, from 2000 (!), is from Ellis' column for CBR, and concerns the fine art of writing a comic book pitch:

Earlier this week the Borders bookstore chain announced its earnings for the quarter ending July 31 and the results were weak, as expected. Sales fell 11.5%, to $526.1 million, with a $51.6 million loss.

ICv2 has its first comprehensive interview with DC co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio since the publisher restructured in February. The interview runs in three parts. There's a hint that some of the CMX titles that weren't finished may get picked up by a different publisher, perhaps Dark Horse, and an acknowledgment of the need to keep prices down from DiDio:

A few things from hither and yon: § Archie Comics' aggressive new management team is profiled in a big story in the NY Times' Business section: We’re at the beginning of the beginning,” says Jon...

Late last night Twitter flared with anger over a post entitled How to hire an artist by a designer of Flash-based computer games. Although we usually don't quote things so extensively, it seems that running enough of an excerpt to get the whole story is important here (plus is may be taken down). This is what the author, Christopher Gregorio, has to say about selecting an artist for a game project:

The road to comic book Valhalla is lined with companies that have tried to do "celebrity comics" as a means of switching to the fast lane of movie money and licensing gold. Tekno, Virgin, CrossGen. 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. COWBOYS & ALIENS, which is certainly an A-list project with Jon Favreau, Daniel Craig, and Harrison Ford aboard is set to be the first comic of its genre to ever actually get turned into a big movie. But this is the first time it has ever happened and it took 10 years. And despite this, there are still no other Platinum, Tokyopop, Radical, or Liquid movies. No one can go to Netflix and order the MAYHEM movie or OCD movie or GAMEKEEPER movie.

Geoff Johns and Diane Nelson are riding to the rescue of Warner Bros. as they ready Green Lantern and Wonder Woman to become the blockbusters they were destined to be, according to this profile...

The NY Times has the scoop on a new Image imprint to be headed up by Robert Kirkman</a>. Skybound will allow Kirkman to take a more hands-on role in mentoring and editing, and offer creators an advance and marketing, in exchange for a percentage -- so it's kind of like an agency AND an imprint.

At the April retailer summit in Chicago, Diamond broached the possibility of making Tuesday new comics day instead of Wednesday, in accordance with retailers' wishes to get comics a day early to avoid a Wednesday morning stocking rush and so on. (The biggest Diamond accounts already get Tuesday delivery.) While most industry types at the show felt that Diamond wouldn't be asking this question unless they planned to go ahead with it, it is still very much in the thinking stages.

Diamond has been running a retailer survey on their website for a few months polling shops on what day and delivery method they think would be best, and whether a $5 weekly fee to cover the costs of policing the system and prevent early sales would be reasonable. We're told that over 1,000 retailers responded, but Diamond hasn't decided how to move forward yet.

Rocketship, the innovative Brooklyn comics shop which has been a mecca for graphic novels and forward-looking comics retailing, is closed down, several locals reported to The Beat. The store is currently locked up but...

A new player in the game, another movie-based comics line ... but this time with a distribution plan?

When Harvey Pekar died suddenly on Monday, he left several comics projects in the works, and Rick Marshall asked Pekar's recent editor, Jeff Newelt about what unfinished projects we might be seeing eventually.