Business News

PR just went out announcing the organizational changes. In a surprise last-minute reprieve, editorial is staying in New York...but digital, multimedia and administrative are going to LA.

It was a wise man who said that comic book movies function as $20 million advertisements for graphic novels...and in the case of the Scott Pilgrim series it is certainly true.

The business news website ICv2 isn't known for being hyperbolic. So when Milton Griepp said that this month's comics sales had "plummeted" everyone leaped up, screaming, knocking over chairs and spilling drinks everywhere.

Sales of comics and graphic novels through Diamond Comic Distributors dropped substantially in August with periodical comics falling 17% and graphic novels down 21%.  There wasn’t a single comic title even close to the 100,000 in August. 

If it weren't for the continued strength of SCOTT PILGRIM trades, the GN drop would have been even more grisly. On the periodical side, there was no big book, but, said ICv2, Certainly "the lack of one big title can’t account for everything." The grim details immediately set the punditocracy to arms, perhaps sniffing the hint of burning smoke in Tom Spurgeon's Doomapocalyptigeddon which he descried from his aerie high in the Misty Mountains, the same distant smell of charring paper and brimstone that we've been picking up for the last few weeks.

Can an old-fashioned comic book company that lasted about a year in the newsstand era find happiness in the modern world of licensing and Hollywood exploitation? That's what Stan Lee's cousin (by marriage) is counting on, with the relaunch of Atlas Comics. Atlas/Seaboard was founded by Martin Goodman, founder of the original Marvel/Atlas/Timely. After selling Marvel to the distributor Cadence, Goodman got back into the publishing game in 1974 with Atlas Comics, a short-lived but innovative outfit that offered art returns, profit sharing, and other ahead-of-their-times perks. However, it didn't last long -- by 1975, it was dead.

A year ago, two major events happened in the world of comics -– it was dubbed The 10 Days That Shook the World. On August 29, 2009 it was announced that Marvel was being acquired by Disney. A few short days later on September 9, DC Comics became DC Entertainment. It was also announced that Paul Levitz -– who had been at DC for some 37 years -- would be stepping down. The world held its breath to see what would happen next. There were big changes brewing at the big two. How would Disney and Warner Bros. change the face of comic book publishing as we know it?

Another tweak in the ongoing book distribution shifting: Cartoon Books, Jeff Smith's company and publisher of the 1 Volume BONE and RASL books, is moving from Diamond Book Distributors to PGW. The move affects only Cartoon Books' returnable sales -- direct sales will continue to be offered through Diamond Distribution. Recently out from cartoon Books: RASL POCKET EDITION #1, collecting issues 1-7 of the story of a dimension-jumping art thief. Good reading.

Re the current discussion following the actual creative costs quoted by Glenn Hauman in a recent post ,Todd Allen reminded me of a piece he wrote for PW COmics Week a while ago breaking down printing costs vs profits. Here's an excerpt ( but the whole piece is very long and should be read in its entirety.)

Khepri Comics is a web-based comics seller that's been around for over a decade, offering a lot of indie books but specializing in work by Brian Wood, Cliff Chiang, Becky Cloonan, and other "new mainstream" creators. Over the years, owner Brian Scot Johnson has built a strong relationship with these creators by promoting their work via special sales and so on. By partnering with Khepri these creators -- who, in addition to their distinctive work, have well-defined fanbases which they maintain via web interaction -- would be able to, say, offer a blog preview of their small press work with a link to Khepri and know that consumers would be able to purchase a copy.

Over Labor Day, Glenn Hauman at ComicMix had a fine post about the actual cost of comics which I'm quoting at length because it's so true:

That's about how much it costs for an average page of comic book art, in terms of labor. Figure $100 for the writer, $150 for the penciller, $130 for the inker, $90 for the colorist, and $30 for the letterer. Those numbers go up and down depending on talent and publishers, but that's a nice round number for us to work with.