Erika Terriquez, of BOOM! Production and Design gets all YO HO HO for the day. More costumes here.

Earlier this week it was announced that BOOM! Studios had signed a deal with Haven Distributors to distribute BOOM!’s second printing comics. BOOM! is the LA-based publisher of both original and licensed comics, and they have recently had several critical and sales success, including books based on Pixar, Disney, Fox, and literary sources, such as the much-praised Roger Langridge Muppet comic.

BOOM! has also been making many distribution deals in rent months — with Kable Distribution for newsstand distribution and Simon and Schuster for books.

Haven Distributors is one of the few alternative distributors for periodical comics, mostly working with smaller companies such as Ape, Markosia and Zenescope who aren’t exclusive with Diamond.

Although Diamond’s tighter policies this year have had a lot of publishers and retailers looking at alternative distribution, this deal for second printings still left a lot of people scratching their heads. We hadn’t heard of anything quite like it before. So we asked BOOM! publisher Ross Richie to explain, and he did. His answers are a little inside baseball, but hopefully shine the light on the many, many factors involved in publishing comics and graphic novels these days.

Q: You’ve recently been expanding your distribution partners on all channels, with a bunch of new deals. How does this one fit in?

Ross Richie: Working with Haven to distribute our 2nd prints is simply a supplemental direct market deal designed to help direct market retailers get more product quicker to the fans that want to buy it. 

Diamond is a great partner, but we saw potential in Haven to be able to grow our existing Direct Market business.  What’s really great here especially, is that for retailers who want to go with Haven we can offer a better discount on our 2nd prints.  We have asked Diamond twice to put us in a better discount category and they have decided it is not something they want to do.  Diamond’s in business to make money and needs to make decisions that make sense for what their best interests are.  We’re in business to make money and need to make decisions on our end that make sense for our own interests.  Sometimes those things line up, sometimes they don’t.  In this instance, Diamond decided giving us a better discount to retailers didn’t make sense.  So for retailers who would like an alternative, at least on the 2nd prints, we’ve got one.  Haven thinks it can sell more BOOM! product with a better discount.

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We’ve been a little behind on BOOM! news, but they are moving forward on a variety of fronts. For instance, they’ve hired Jenny Christopheras Sales Director. Formerly at Diamond, Christopher will be working with Diamond, BOOM!’s new bookstore distributor, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins Canada, their new distro for north of the border. So lots happening in general and at the show. Deets below, but take note of show exclusive MUPPET SHOW and INCREDIBLES hardcovers. one of which has the sweet Michael Avon Oeming cover shown at left. There will also be holofoil variants, one of which has the sweet Michael Avon Oeming cover. Nice!

YOU FIRST SAW THAT MARK WAID IS EVIL

YOU THEN DISCOVERED THAT MARK WAID IS IRREDEEMABLE

NOW AT THE BOOM! STUDIOS PANEL YOU WILL LEARN WHAT IS NEXT FROM MARK WAID AND BOOM!

COHEED & CAMBRIA’S CLAUDIO SANCHEZ
FARSCAPE’ S ROCKNE S. O’BANNON & KEITH R.A. DECANDIDO
MUPPET SHOW COMIC BOOK’S ROGER LANGRIDGE
CARS: THE ROOKIE’S ALAN PORTER
EUREKA’S ANDREW COSBY & ED QUINN
FALL OF CTHULHU’S MICHAEL ALAN NELSON
WILL ALL BE SIGNING AT THE BOOM BOOTH!

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As is their custom, BOOM! Studios will throw a party that anyone can get into, as it sprawls across the Hyatt lobby. Old skool.

BOOM! Studios Editor-in-Chief Mark Waid cordially invites all ComicCon attendees to the BOOM! Studios 4 Year Anniversary Drink Up* taking place at the Manchester Hyatt Grand Lobby Bar, Thursday July 23rd from 9pm to ???

Come help celebrate another year of BOOM!’s explosive growth with Mark Waid, Ross Richie, Andrew Cosby, Matt Gagnon, Chip Mosher, Ian Brill and the rest of the BOOM! Crew with various BOOM! creators in attendance for a night of relaxed fun.

This is an open invitation event. No RSVP needed. No tickets required. We’re BOOM! Studios — we don’t roll that way!

Where: Manchester Hyatt Grand Lobby Bar
When: Thursday July 23rd from 9 to ??

*For those not in the know, a “Drink Up” is just like a “Meet Up” but with people drinking. This will be a gathering of friends and fans, so make plans to stop by see what’s happening!

It looks like kids’ comics licenses are the new hot thing, as two new licenses were revealed yesterday: BOOM! Studios will be picking up the Disney Comics license formerly at Gemstone, and Archaia has just signed a pact with the Henson Company.

§ Disney first. As revealed by the online September previews, BOOM! will publish WALT DISNEY’S COMICS AND STORIES #699 by Riccardo Secchi and Stefano Turconi, and MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS #297 by Stefano Ambrosio and Lorenzo Pastrovicchio. This is picking up the numbering right from where Gemstone left off. But it also looks like BOOM! will be marketing these books in a more kid-friendly format, like its successful launch of the Pixar books, THE IINCREDIBLES and CARS. Arthur de Wolf at the DCW website (a dedicated source for Disney comics news) gives this a bit of perspective:

It looks like Boom! is completely abandoning the collector’s concept and going a different route. The first new issue of Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories will have only 24 pages and will sell for $2.99, the same price and size as its Pixar titles. And that’s not all, it will have the first part of an Italian-produced multi-part series titled Ultraheroes. These three-tier stories (stories with three rows are usually used in smaller pocket-sized books, while full-sized comics have four rows) aren’t anything like the material that has been published in WDC&S in recent years. Ultraheroes is a series with a total of 240 pages, so it looks like this is going to be the new style of WDC&S for at least its first 10 issues.

Gemstone always published Disney Comics more for the extremely niche adult collectors market that’s more numerous in Northern Europe than here; a switch to a kid-friendly line could make for a larger potential audience.

§ The other news was Archaia picking up the Henson license, with such properties as FRAGGLE ROCK, THE DARK CRYSTAL, LABYRINTH, MIRRORMASK, and THE STORYTELLER. PW has more details. With Archaia recently refinanced and revitalized, this is their first significant licensing deal, and shows that they’re fitting right in with the model of the modern comics publisher.

Unanswered questions from THIS announcement: what about Toykopop’s license for manga-esque versions of things like LABYRINTH? According to a post by author Jake Forbes at Comics Worth Reading, the fourth volume of RETURN TO LABYRINTH is still coming out.

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Another highlight of the weekend was the public unveiling of Longbox at Heroes Con. What is Lngbox? The short version is iTunes for comic books. CBR has details.

Rantz Hoseley, the editor behind Image’s “Comic Book Tattoo” anthology of comics inspired by Tori Amos, introduced his latest endeavor at Heroes Con this weekend. Longbox, a digital comics platform similar to iTunes, is expected to launch later this year as a free download for Mac, PC, and Linux. Developed by Quicksilver Software, Longbox comics can be download for a suggested price point of $.99 per issue, with the potential for block and subscription pricing. The first two publishers confirmed for Longbox are Top Cow and BOOM! Studios. CBR News caught up with Hoseley to discuss the details of Longbox and its potential impact.

We also find this quote quite interesting:
Hoseley believes the very existence of digital comics from major publishers represents a sea change from the perception of online content that existed when Longbox was in its planning stage. “Three years ago, when we started doing development, publishers were very, very resistant to it. The majority of publishers wouldn’t even discuss the possibility of it: digital comics are the devil come to steal the milk from our children’s mouths,” he recalled. “The difference is that now, every publisher realizes, especially with the increasing cost of monthlies and the declining sales of monthlies, that there has to be a way to expand the market. With every other form of entertainment embracing digital distribution and sales medium, it is very foolhardy to not do likewise.”
Lots more on this later.

Via his Twitter feed, writer Mark Sable reveals that he was detained for 30 minutes prior to a flight by the TSA after a random search turned up a copy of his script to UNTHINKABLE. In the BOOM! series, a government think tank spends its time thinking up possible terrorist scenarios. Read Twitter backwards!

# Just hope TSA writes a spoiler free review for Unthinkable.9:55 AM May 10th from Tweetie

# My privacy, a small price to pay for educating the government about the medium.9:53 AM May 10th from Tweetie

# I hope the TSA enjoyed the waterboarding in issue 3.At least they know comics aren’t just about superheroes.9:52 AM May 10th from Tweetie

# Nothing like starting the day explaining you’re not a terrorist, but writing about them.9:50 AM May 10th from Tweetie

# Talk about life imitating art imitating life. I ouldn’t make this up if I tried.9:48 AM May 10th from Tweetie

# Wow.Just detained by TSA for over half hour.They read and questioned me about the script for Unthinkable9:41 AM May 10th from Tweetie

More reax in the link.

A few quick notes on notables things:

§ BOOM! has announced that its line of kids comics will be carried at Disney’s Soda Fountain Studio Store on Hollywood Blvd. BOOM!’s kids line includes books based on the Muppets and Pixar properties. We can’t attest to what the intervening 10 years have meant, but back when we worked at Disney, getting into Disney Stores with comics was always a big deal, so this is a nice way to get comics in front of an audience that has children and some spending money.

§ Brandon Graham’s KING CITY is one of the Tokyopop original GNs that was left unfinished in the downsizing of their OEL/OGM/whatever you want to call it program. However, it is coming back:

The deal is set. Tokyopop and Image comics are putting out my KING CITY book
in twelve 32 page chunks starting on August 19th
It’s going to be printed wider than standard comics size. BIG!
Golden age size. Ivan Brandon’s Viking book just came out the same size I think.

So Image will put out a once manga sized book as a periodical comic and then collect the whole thing again? That’s pretty progressive. While the details of the workings of the deal aren’t known, internet hopes that Becky Cloonan’s EAST COAST RISING will also go this route are high.

§ This is kind of a catchall, but Robot 6 has an excellent list of links to all kinds of e-publishing news. One of them concerns comics selling well on iTunes, and we just happened to make this snapshot tonight of iTunes best selling “Book” apps which includes comics:

Of course we have no idea of what the actual sales numbers on these are, but Twilight and the Bible are very popular in general, so you can see comics are holding their own. STAR TREK: COUNTDOWN’s popularity has been previously noted, but the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are also in there. So…this thing is happening.

• This blog post which interviews a purported Amazonn “insider” is probably as close as we’ll get to what really happened when over 50,000 books pegged as adult- or gay-themed were purged from Amazon’s rankings. The short version, as always, is “Blame France!”:

By this time, Amazon.com had upgraded the problem to Sev-1. (Amazon.com breaks down its operational issues in terms of severity levels. Sev-3 means a problem affects a single user. Sev-2 is a problem that affects a company, or a lot of people. Sev-1 is reserved for the most critical operational issues and often are sent up the management chain to the senior vice president level.)

“People got pulled away from their Easter thing when this whole thing broke,” the employee said. “It was just a screwup.”

Amazon.com employees are on call 24/7, and many began working on the problem from home. It didn’t take much digging to realize that there was a data error.

Amazon managers found that an employee who happened to work in France had filled out a field incorrectly and more than 50,000 items got flipped over to be flagged as “adult,” the source said. (Technically, the flag for adult content was flipped from ‘false’ to ‘true.’)

• Mike Kunkel is off DC’s little kid-themed BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM, and Art Baltazar and Franco are on.

• Steven Grant and Mat Santolouco’s comic, 2 GUNS, is in development by Blake Masters, creator of Showtime’s Brotherhood.

There’s a bit of news and announcements out this morning from WonderCon. At the Image panel, Erik Larsen talked about Obama and John Layman talked about his new series:

Layman was on hand to talk about his new ongoing title, “Chew,” with artist Rob Guillory.

“’Chew’ is about a federal agent who is able to get psychic impressions from the things he eats,” Layman said. “When there’s a corpse that shows up in the sewers or the garbage dump, he is sent and has to chew on the corpse to figure out what killed them.”

The story is set after a bird flu epidemic has wiped out the poultry population, and the agent actually works for the Food and Drug Administration “keeping you from eating chicken,” Layman said. “Meanwhile he’s solving crimes by eating really, really gross stuff.”

J.K. Parkin also reports this nugget:

Duirng the Q&A, a fan asked about new technologies, and Starkings was quick to pull out his iPhone and show off “Elephantman #1.” He said the Web and iPhone aren’t the future of comics – “they’re already here.” Electronic media aren’t replacing comics, he said, but supplementing them, pointing out that if you were ever stuck in an airport without comics to read, you could always download them via Wi-Fi. He also touted Rantz Hosley’s Longbox initiative, which he said was intuitive to use.

At the BOOM! panel, a new co-publishing deal with Fox Atomic was announced, as well as a new series by Mark Waid, with covers by Paul Pope:

Waid will be following up Irredeemable with a new series, The Unknown. The four issue miniseries will deal with a globetrotting female detective who debunks the paranormal but is lost when confronted with the one mystery she can’t solve, what lies beyond death. Waid, who wasn’t able to attend the panel due to a conflict with Mega Con, calls the book “Doc Savage as written by David Lynch.” Dutch artist Minck Oosterveer is doing the interiors, with covers by the likes of Erik Jones and Paul Pope.

PR on the BOOM!/Fox deal below:

BOOM! Studios announced today that Fox Atomic, a division of 20th Century Fox, has entered into a broad multi-title comic book and graphic novel co-publishing deal that will see the formation of a Fox Atomic Comics imprint at BOOM!.

Titles will cover a vast array of different titles and characters, some very familiar to fans, others being new turns on old favorites, as well as entirely new, original series.

Fox Atomic first made a splash with a series of SpikeTV Award-winning original graphic novels in 2007 including 28 DAYS LATER: THE AFTERMATH, featuring work from 30 DAYS OF NIGHT creator Steve Niles, followed by THE HILLS HAVE EYES: THE BEGINNING written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray. A third graphic novel, the International Horror Guild Award-winning THE NIGHTMARE FACTORY was also released, adapting stories from Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Award-winner Thomas Ligotti. THE NIGHTMARE FACTORY: VOLUME TWO, the second graphic novel in the series, followed in 2008.

The new Fox Atomic Comics and BOOM! Studios collaboration will see titles serialized as individual single issue comic books before being collected into trade paperback graphic novels available in the direct and mass bookstore markets.

The new venture will see a broad expansion of Fox Atomic’s titles after its previous success. Partners are keeping the specific details of the series under wraps with expectations for further announcements later in the convention season featuring marquee series and high-profile creators.

As you may have heard, all that Mark Waid is evil business is beginning to make sense and you’ll learn more at New York.

YOU FIRST SAW THAT MARK WAID IS EVIL

YOU THEN DISCOVERED THAT MARK WAID IS IRREDEEMABLE

NOW AT THE BOOM! STUDIOS PANEL YOU WILL LEARN WHAT IS NEXT FROM MARK WAID AND BOOM!

WITH A VERY SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FROM COMIC BOOK RESOURCES

(MARK WAID IS EVIL T-shirts available in limited quantities!)

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