Comings & Goings old

Top Cow publisher Filip Sablik has told friends that Friday will be his last day at Top Cow, where he was publisher for the last 4 years of a 6 month stint. But fear not, Sablik has a NEW job at a comics publisher which he'll be announcing at Comic-Con. Jessi Reid, Top Cow's Social Marketing Coordinator, will be taking over Sablik's duties at Top Cow.

Archie Comics has just made a hire and some promotions that solidify their role as a fast-track comics publishing company. Jim Sokolowski has joined the company as SVP - Sales and Business Development. Additionally, Harold Buchholz has been promoted to Senior Vice President – Publishing and Operations; Paul Kaminski has been named Executive Director of Editorial and Alex Segura has moved up to Vice President – Publicity and Marketing.

Yes, the world is a little stunned by the announcement of Matt Groening quitting Life In Hell. It isn't like this hasn't been threatened though. Back in November of 2009, roughly two and a half years ago, the Chicago Humanities Festival had a panel on the declining market for Alt Weekly comics. Groening was there. Lynda Barry was there. Chris Ware was there. Jules Feiffer was even there. And back then, Groening was already talking about quitting.

By Todd Allen

--I learned something new today. Remember how Watchmen started out as a treatment for the Charlton characters DC had purchased? Come to find out out, DC didn't purchase the rights to all the Charlton characters and Dynamite now has the rights to Peter Cannon/Thunderbolt. As in, the prototype for Watchmen's Ozymandias.

Thing From Another World, the pop culture chain store, is seeking a manager for their Portland, OR store. And yes, there WILL be a written exam. Details below:

It's been a while since we checked in on Disney Publishing and their impending move. Since then a lot has happened. As we recall from our own time at Disney, they have an entire department that does nothing but move people around, and this switch sounds like it was put in place just to give them something to do. Basically, as reported by Publishers Weekly, Disney is swapping its East and West Coast publishing houses, moving 100 people from White Plains and the NY office to Glendale, and 50 Disney Press people back to New York. Wha--? The moves will roll out from now until September 30th.

Random House is hiring a manga editor to work in their Kodansha imprint/joint venture. It's a pretty senior position for the right person who knows manga and speaks Japanese. Here's the scoop:

Dynamite has landed a new comics license in Pathfinder. Pathfinder, if you're not current on role-playing games, is a sort of spin-off of Dungeons & Dragons. Essentially, the D&D 3.5 rule set is available for licensing via a "Game System License" and Pathfinder jumps off from that point. Tor talks about Pathfinder as being like D&D "3.75" and an alternative to the latest rule revisions to the mother ship.

As we mentioned a few days back, DC's East Coast publicity department has been severely depopulated, first by the surprise departure of VP David Hyde, and the simultaneous ankling of publicity manager Josh Kushins, who left for a new job in California, we're told. Kushins had been at DC for about a year.

As expected, today's firing of Disney Studio head Rich Ross has Tinsel Town buzzing, and a picture of a Mouse House in disarray is emerging. Marvel Studio head Kevin Feige has been named several times as a potential replacement, but Nikki Finke's must-read analysis also confirms what we wrote about last year: legendary skinflint Ike Perlmutter is very much in the mix at Disney, and his personal dislike of Ross certainly didn't help matters. (Ross was also on the outs with Pixar's John Lasseter, according to Finke.) But even Disney chairman Bob Iger is feeling the Ike pinch:

Rich Ross, the head of Disney Studios since October 2009, has just been removed from his post. We can't hope to know what it means—although lots of theories will be floated very soon—but flops like MARS NEEDS MOMS and JOHN CARTER are probably part of it. "Mars killed Rich Ross." Even the impending mega-colossal worldwide superhit AVENGERS didn't help Ross.

Hawkeye is an odd character, if you look at his publishing history. He's been a staple of the Avengers since the title's earliest days. In fact, you could probably argue that the core of the Avengers were the Vision and Hawkeye. Characters that you read in Avengers and not solo books. When they wanted to spin-off West Coast Avengers, Hawkeye was the centerpiece of the spin-off. When they launched Solo Avengers, Hawkeye was the regular feature. You had Hawkeye mini-series in '83, '94 and '03. More recently, you had Hawkeye & Mockingbird and Hawkeye: Blindspot. You even had an Ultimate Hawkeye mini-series. Hawkeye is similar to Doctor Strange. Whereas Doctor Strange limped along in a lower selling cult title for several years, with occasional team book stops (usually variations on The Defenders, Hawkeye has been a staple of several popular team books (Avengers, West Coast Avengers, Secret Avengers... and an early stop over in The Defenders), but his solo efforts just haven't gotten much traction.