Pixar Comics License Transferred from BOOM! to Marvel

In the first move this writer had seen to incorporate Disney directly with Marvel's comics publishing arm, it was announced in January that the license to publish Pixar Studios (@DisneyPixar) properties such as "Toy Story", "Cars", and "The Incredibles" has been taken from BOOM! Studios (@boomstudios) and given to now-Disney-owned Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel). BOOM! will continue to publish non-Pixar Disney (@Disney) properties comics such as "The Muppets" and "Darkwing Duck". Oddly, all that has been announced concretely from Marvel is the creation of "Disney Pixar Magazine", a reprint anthology of the material BOOM! produced for Disney/Pixar in recent years, to begin releasing in May.

Graeme McMillan(@graemem) had this to say in an editorial on ComicBookResources.com last month commenting on the news:

"At least reprinting the BOOM! material shows that Disney apparently loved what Boom! were doing – it’s a weird backhanded compliment, after taking the license back for Marvel (“We loved what you guys were doing – It’s just that it has your logo attached. I’m sure you understand”), but a deserved recognition of the great work that BOOM! was doing with the characters and the material. I wonder whether BOOM!’s creators will produce new material for the Marvel books, or whether that’ll fall to more familiar Marvel hands (if there’s any new material at all, of course)"

Interestingly, artist Dean Trippe (@deantrippe) was the first to post a comment under the editorial and rebutted some of McMillan's comments with this statement:

"Boom! was licensing publication of those properties, and it looks from the sales figures like they just decided to stop because they weren’t doing that well for them. Stopping publication would then revert the rights to Disney under any normal licensing deal, which I figure this was. Disney can then put out that same material under Marvel, which they own, and that works out to greater exposure for the creators who worked on those Pixar books. Since the creators, I’m sure, knew they were doing work for hire on properties they didn’t own on comics they didn’t receive royalties from, and Boom! no longer felt like it made sense for them to keep putting the books out, and Marvel/Disney thinks it might make sense for them to, this all seems relatively uncontroversial to me"

Meanwhile, last month BOOM! announced reconfiguring its kids comics line as an imprint called Kaboom! (Cute! Brilliant!) Whether this is in reaction to the loss of the Pixar license is unclear.

[via CBR-Robot6]

I tend to agree with Trippe. This isn't so bad for anyone other than corporate BOOM! Although reprinting old comics INSTEAD of making new ones is a loss for the medium as a whole.

~@JonGorga

_________________________________

P.S. ~ Dear L&S readers, if you were curious about the history behind this development, we here at The Long and Shortbox Of It have been following the Marvel/Disney merger/buy-out since the beginning:

The initial announcement and subsequent stockholder vote affirmation

then from

The first appearance of Marvel product in a Disney retail store

and

The formation of new media-centered positions at Marvel

to

New Marvel series picking up previously defunct characters owned by Disney

There Are No More Innocent

You know what's great news? This:

CRIMINAL: The Last of the Innocent #1

By Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips with Val Staples on colors

The best-selling crime comic finally returns, and with their most ambitious story yet. Obsession, sex, money, murder, and nostalgia for days long past all collide in THE LAST OF THE INNOCENT.

Riley Richards got it all… The hottest girl in school and a ticket to the big time… so why isn’t he happy now? Why is he getting involved in gambling and drugs and shady characters in the city? Why can’t he forget the life he left behind in small town Brookview? And why is he suddenly plotting murder?

And as always, each issue of Criminal contains unique back-up features, articles and artwork, which are only available in the single issues.

32 PGS/Mature Content… $3.50

I love comics, and I love comics a lot, but recently I've been feeling a little burned out. I think it was the news that, come this summer, Marvel is going to give Captain America a new #1 that did it but, for all I know, its possible that I have to go so far out of my way to go to my store these days that's making me so tired of the whole thing. Comics like this, though, are what make me still buy monthlies. Comics like this are why I believe in the medium and, more importantly, in the power of the medium.

I've attempted to write about Criminal before, but each time I fail spectacularly: it is, quite simply put, the best series in comics. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are so damn good and they work so well together that they're practically one unit at this point, and there is nothing, nothing, about their work together that I do not adore.

With this on the horizon, my burnout is salved.

Weekly Process Roundup 3/25/11

The weekly process roundup is a collection of sketches, pencils, inks, thumbnails, everything other than finished product, from The Long and Shortbox of It's favorite artists and illustrators, hitting every Friday.

Hey! Jon here! Pinch-hitting for Josh this week on a quick process round-up!

• Cliff Chiang shares ALL his sketches from C2E2.
• Sean Gordon Murphy visually streamlines his art stages for an upcoming "American Vampire" mini-series cover [above] including the fully-colored version, by Dave Stewart.
• Terry Dodson gave us the pencils for an X-Men cover.
• Monica Gallagher brings us through her entire sequential artistic process from thumbnailing to penciling to inking! (A fourth part on digitizing is forthcoming.) [You probably haven't heard of her. Shame on you.]
• Jamal Igle is interviewed by David Pepose for Newsarama.com and explains his tool-choices and working process.

~ @JonGorga

Monica Gallagher's drawing table

The Symbol Becomes Her

"SIGIL" v2 #1 from CrossGen (a [newly acquired] imprint of Marvel Comics)

The weekly sea of the new comics rack had a very few covers that jumped out at me three weeks ago. Really only one grabbed my attention: a gorgeous fully-painted illustration by Jelena Durdjevic [at right] displaying a woman with striking red hair mysteriously focused away from her face and cleavage (a road not too often taken in American mainstream comic-books and thus very welcome). The woman’s face is obscured by the logo from the series’ original run, spruced-up a bit by the new publisher’s in-house production team.

The comic is “SIGIL” #1, a continuation of a comic-book printed between 2000 and 2003 by CrossGen Entertainment. It appears to have been a science-fiction title then, and it’s… an interesting mix now. Usually when one reviews something in a series, it’s bad form to admit some unfamiliarity with the history of the material being reviewed. I am new to this series. But then, so is the publisher. Marvel announced plans to re-activate the property among the other CrossGen titles last year. Turns out: Disney has owned the rights for years, Marvel is now an official arm of Disney, rights are shared, ergo Marvel may print CrossGen comics. It was one of the announcements of San Diego Comic-Con 2010.

Comics companies buying up old properties after their original publishing house have gone to the great beyond and adding these characters to their repertoire is a long-standing tradition in American comics industry. DC bought the characters from Fawcett Comics in 1980 (many, many years after a protracted court case in which DC sued Fawcett claiming their Captain Marvel was too similar to Superman), the entire small universe of characters at Charlton Comics became theirs to play with in 1985 (on whom the “Watchmen” characters are based), WildStorm Productions became an imprint of DC Comics in 1999 and its properties were declared an informal part of DC’s fictional universe last year (making one of the more sad but expected news items of last year: the end of WildStorm), and, most recently in 2008-2010, Milestone Media, whose comics were always distributed by DC, are now also published exclusively by them.

The previous year, the big news of San Diego Comic-Con 2009 was Marvel’s purchasing of the rights to the character Miracleman/Marvelman, a property so tied-up in litigation new stories haven’t been told with the character since the late Eighties. That instance was only the second time, to this writer’s knowledge, Marvel Entertainment has engaged in this practice. The first being Malibu Graphics in 1994, reportedly purchased not so much for their characters as for their digital coloring department. Disney’s money now runs through their veins and makes them capable of such things just as Warner Brothers money does for DC. It’s all about jockeying for new material with minimal effort and hoping to grab established fanbases combined with a corporate big-fish-eat-small-fish mentality.

But enough history; on to the comic itself. I have to first say: “SIGIL“ #1 is not the best thing I’ve read so far this year. But it also has many fine elements to recommend it.

New writer of “SIGIL”, Mike Carey gives us a story that works as an introduction for new readers (such as myself) but also seems to continue the story from the original run. Our main character Samantha Rey, knows nothing about the unusual magic happenings that bring her to a pirate ship in the year 1695 because she is too young to remember the events that will happen in her future. The one negative thing I am forced to say about the narrative is that it really lacks subtlety. However, Sam’s dialogue is shockingly naturalistic! She sounds like people I know. Read some of this dialogue:
Leonard Kirk’s pencil art shows strong storytelling choices, though with some uneven draftsmanship. Some very fine page layouts serve the story well. [See above again.] The draftsmanship issues might be the fault of the inker Ed Tadeo. (Comics in America are most often produced with two artists: a penciler who create shapes with a pencil, whose lines are then layered-over by an inker to create emphasis and depth.) No way to tell without process materials or inside-information.

Seriously though? This comic was FUN. Hard to do these days it seems. The issue ends on a great cliffhanger… in two ways. (1) The reader is left not knowing how Sam will survive this epic sea-battle aboard the El Cazador in 1695. Evil pirates, old friends of a future version of herself that she certainly don’t know. The ending splash revealing the villain of the piece descending on them from the sky is just marvelous. And (2) we the readers also can’t know if “SIGIL”, or all the other CrossGen properties that have been sitting in limbo for almost a decade, will survive this recession publishing market!

Only time will tell.

~@JonGorga

Weekly Process Roundup 3/18/11

The weekly process roundup is a collection of sketches, pencils, inks, thumbnails, everything other than finished product, from The Long and Shortbox of It's favorite artists and illustrators, hitting every Friday.

• J.H. Williams III gives an update about Batwoman and shares the cover for one of the issues (above)
• Brad Guigar sketches in some books.
• Paolo Rivera uses himself for reference.