January 4, 2009:

THE BLUEWATER COOLER: Publisher Darren G. Davis rants and raves about the comic industry: ISSUE 3

With the holidays coming to a close, I thought I would do a light blog about comic licenses.

As I talked about before, the comic book market is really tough now. I noticed recently the trend is to pick up licenses. In the last couple months I have seen obscure comics on the properties, “The Greatest American Hero,”, “Debbie Does Dallas” as well as the “The Muppet Show.”

A lot of independent companies like Boom Studios, Dynamite and IDW are running around trying to grab up licenses. Bluewater is in the same boat as the others. We started publishing the Ray Harryhausen line of comics and now the Lionsgate titles like Warlock and Leprechaun. Trust me we have a couple new ones that we have not announced yet that are more obscure.

Licenses are what is keeping the Indies from staying alive. Look at how Devil’s Due is slipping because they lost G.I. Joe to IDW. Then there is the Moonstone/ Dynamite “The Phantom” nightmare.

Sometimes these are a good thing if they are done correct. I never thought I would get to see a “Godfather” comic book. We did try to get the license around the time BOOM studios got it. It was a smart move on their part.

Licenses add respectability to your company. If you are doing work with Pixar (like Boom!), then the public views you as being respectable. It also gets you a lot of press. The William Shatner announcement was everywhere .

Diamond does not think that Warlock will do well. They think it is a too obscure film, but I counter that with the success of the obscure comic franchises like “Army of Darkness”. They did about the same in the box office according to IMBD, but Warlock also had 2 sequels. Diamond did not even give us a Spotlight on it! But the 8,000th DAWN print did…

We try to add extra’s into our licensed series to give the reader something more for his money. With the Ray Harryhausen comics we had some of his original artwork. As for the William Shatner line of books, even though it is not a traditional license (more of a partnership with Shatner). There will be a lot of extras. With “Missile to the Moon” it will feature a 2-page spread on the film.

I do think you need to balance the amount of licenses to the original line of comics. IDW does it right with their signature brand. They do seem a little heavy on the license side with “Star Trek”, “G.I. Joe”. “Transformers”. “Angel” and all the others. Maybe I am a little envious that “The Ghost Whisperer” is doing better than Vincent Price.

Consumers are having a hard time picking up a new title. It is now an investment of their money as well as their time. I can now see that this economy is hurting comics now by the numbers across the board. Producing licensed comics or known properties that consumer’s trust is the way to go right now. Bluewater is changing it gears to produce mostly our core books like “Legend of Isis”, “10th Muse” and “Judo Girl”. These are titles that people know and trust. We will also toss in licenses like “Vincent Price Presents” and “ “Roger Corman Presents”. Also will be included are some random titles like “Spaced Out”. I feel like we are robbing our core readers if we do not keep coming up with some cool and new titles.

When I was at Image Comics, I worked on the “Tekken” videogame license, which turned out to be a disaster. I hated that project a lot. Which is why only one issue of “Tekken Forever” exists. The people that produced it for us turned in the book late and I was forced to re letter the book the night before it went to print. They pasted up the letters so to fix all the typos in the book; we had to erase the previous letters. There were spots it looked so bad and we fixed it the best we could. I should not talk too much about typos, I need a copy editor, but this was really extreme.

I really enjoyed working with Cindy Margolis on the 10th Muse. She was always sending emails telling us how proud she was. I even got invited to her birthday party. It was a fun night! So far working with Shatner has been great, this year I got a holiday card from him.
Once again I am kind of jaded, because I would rather focus on brand new comic series. Are we going back to the world where you will see comics based on “Gomer Pyle”? Do fans want new series based on “Gossip Girl” or “Two and a Half Men”? . Personally I would love to see the "Hardy Boys" come back in a traditional comic book. I really do not love the Papercutz version. "Zak Raven" (the young adult novel), was started as a treatment for the "Hardy Boys" set in the future. It was too difficult to get. The other thing I went for was doing a 70’s version of the 10th Muse and having Farrah Fawcett be the photo model. We had Vinnie Tartamella do a promo piece of her in the classic pose in the 10th Muse outfit. Farrah loved it but her people did not want her following as a photo model. I totally understand where they are coming from but she promised to send us signed posters of our image!

Help me prove Diamond wrong and pre-order Warlock!

Until next time,

Darren