After yesterday’s real estate listing for Wizard HQ rocketed through the inboxes and AIM windows of the comics industry like a hot knife through butter, ComicMix called up to get the scoop, or at least what would pass for scoop:

When asked for comment on the posting, a representative of Wizard identified only as “Ed” said that the publisher was simply “checking our business options.”

Additionally, when asked about the company’s plans should the building find a new owner, the Wizard representative responded, “We may not go anywhere. We may sell the building and stay as a tenant. We may sell the building and move across the street.”

Whatever the case, the building seems to come with a Kiel Phegley, a sure-to-be valuable add-on in any real estate deal.

You can read Marvels’ entire press release on their Q1 results here. Here’s the relevant portion on publishing:

Marvel’s Publishing Segment net sales declined by $1.0 million or 4% to $26.5 million in Q1 2008 principally due to the timing of major publishing initiatives. Q1 2008 net sales reflected a decline in comic book sales within the direct channel and lower advertising and custom sales, offset in part by continued strong growth in the Mass Market channel. The year-over-year decline in direct channel sales principally reflects strong sales of high profile titles Civil War and The Death of Captain America in the year ago period, versus no comparable specialty titles in Q1 2008. Operating income in the Publishing segment declined by 14% on a year-over-year basis to $9.9 million in Q1 2008 with an operating margin of approximately 37% compared to approximately 42% in the prior-year-period. Based on its planned slate of publishing initiatives, including the release of the Secret Invasion series in late Q2 2008, Marvel expects its Publishing segment to return to traditional margins for the full year 2008.

The link also includes all movie and TV stuff in the pipeline. Although it’s trye taht MArvel Studios won’t have a movie out in 2009, it won’t be Marvel-less at the movies: WOLVERINE opens in May.

MORE: Earnings Call Transcript

ALSO: Marvel stock continues to climb, up 9% yesterday.

The headline says it all: New comic book team faces challenge:

But Sparky Greene, a writer and film producer from Malibu, wants a piece of that market. He and a small group of designers and artists have created a fantasy universe with a new graphic novel, “The Age of Insects: Not Human,” with characters they say are more appealing in some ways than the old heroic archetypes.

Greene is shown here with one of his hissing cockroaches.

Now public Platinum has announced it’s 2007 financial results:

For the year ended December 31, 2007, Platinum reported net revenues of $1.96 million compared to net revenues of $0.18 million for fiscal year 2006, representing a year-over-year increase of more than 1000%.

The increased net revenues were primarily attributable to an increase in option and acquisition fee revenue of $0.86 million and first look revenue of $0.45 million. The Company is currently focused on exploiting its large library of intellectual property. The option and acquisition fee revenue is the result of a major Hollywood Studio’s interest in one of these properties. For the year ended December 31, 2007, cost of revenues was $0.28 million compared to $0 for the year ended December 31, 2006. The increase is primarily due to printing costs for comic books. In 2006 printing costs were included as part of the licensing agreement with Top Cow Productions, Inc. and thus, printing costs were not incurred by the Company in 2006.

The Company also reported an increase in operating expenses of $2.0 million or 63% for the year ended December 31, 2007 to $5.2 million, as compared to $3.17 million for fiscal year 2006. The increase was due to increases in payroll, promotion and merchandising costs, which were incurred to support the growth of the Company. Research and development costs increased $0.19 million or 26% for the year ended December 31, 2007 to $0.96 million, as compared to $0.76 million for fiscal year 2006. The increase was due to development of additional intellectual properties.

Much, much much more inn the link.

[This post was supposed to come up immediately after the rise of the manga one, but then all hell broke loose.]

Despite the huge huge market for manga and things manga right now, comics shops, by and large haven’t been able to sell them or capitalize on the boom. While Naruto sells in Watchmen-like numbers overall, it’s not even in the top 10 on Diamond’s graphic novel charts.

Retailer Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Ohio talked about this in a widely-linked to piece at ICv2 in which he targets the direct markets failure to join on the manga bandwagon in clear, resigned terms:

By now I imagine a lot of you have filed this column into the category of “what does this have to do with us?” — and you’d have a point. We don’t sell manga and from the retailers I’ve spoken to over the last couple of months, it’s clear most of us can’t sell it — not in significant numbers to justify the floor space it’s taking up. But we used to; no one talks about it, but it was the American comic book industry that introduced manga to America.

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Yesterday’s announcement that Borders was having a tough time coming up with financing for expansion and was contemplating a potential sale led to a bad day on Wall Street, but the outlook for chain book stores isn’t all that rosy over all says Marketwatch:

Shares tumbled more than 20% in morning trading [for Borders] ahead of the rescheduled conference call, and are down more than 70% for the year. Borders’ quandary would have seemed less gloomy in 2006, or even a year ago, when private-equity firms were falling over each other to snap up specialty retailers.

Meanwhile, its top rival Barnes & Noble Inc. posted a 9% decline in quarterly profit and said it expects fiscal first-quarter same-store sales at its namesake stores to be “slightly negative.” Its shares climbed, but it’s looking at a loss of more than 20% of its market value for the year.

Many things led the bookstores to this gloomy place. A book is the ultimate retail commodity, so shoppers either go for the lowest price — which leads to margin-killing price wars — or the best shopping experience.

According to the piece, both chains are rooted in their 90s heyday which saw consumers flock to the “third place” ambiance of free reading, comfy chairs and coffee bars.
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The San Jose Mercury News asks if the shaky economy could lead to slashes in sales for all those movie spinoff toys that are coming out based on Indy, Iron Man, Prince Caspian etc etc? Not necessarily.

Longtime Bay Area comic book store owner Joe Field said comics and graphic novels - a core piece of the spring merchandising push - are classic “counter-economy” products.

Comics and some related items, Field said, become “inexpensive nesting entertainment” when budgets are stressed. Field, who owns Flying Colors Comics in Concord, said people decide they can’t afford the theater, concerts or eating out, so they stay home reading, playing games and returning their attention to neglected hobbies.

Amazon toy manager Sarah Wood states that their toy sales have been growing thus far this year.

Jim Milliot at Publishers weekly is reporting that the Borders book chain has hired J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch to help them look into a possible sale in order to get more cash to move forward with restructing.

CEO George Jones said that given the tight credit market it was becoming expensive, and at times impossible, to find new funds. To help ease that situation, Pershing Capital, the private equity firm that has a large stake in Borders and two board seats, has agreed to lend the company $42.5 million. In addition, Pershing has agreed to acquire Borders’s Australian, New Zealand, Singapore and Paperchase subsidiaries for $125 million if Borders cannot find another buyer at a better price. A deal to sell the Australian/New Zealand unit fell apart last week.

The infusion of capital from Pershing will give Borders enough money to continue to revamp its operations. Still, Jones said the completion of its turnaround may take longer than expected. “Overall, we believe that the 2009 financial targets we set back in March of last year remain attainable, yet within the current economic environment, we will be slowed in our progress and expect that we’ll reach them later than originally anticipated. Still, we believe our strategic plan remains the right path toward achieving these goals,” Jones said.

Borders has had many economic woes in recent years; any blow to its bottom line would be a blow to, certainly manga sales.

The ICv2 charts same out yesterday, and for the second month in a row, things were down:

Comic and graphic novel dollar sales to comic stores dipped in February vs. the year ago period, the second time in just four months that such a drop has occurred. The 4% drop followed an anemic 1% rise in January, a 4% increase in December, and a 5% drop in November. Tough comparisons with the Civil War-fueled sales in the year ago period and a lack of significant new hits in were the primary reasons for the declines.

Prior to the last few months, May 2005 was the last month that comic and graphic novel sales to comic stores declined.

The graphic novel chart is here; top 300 comics here. The analysis of the periodical sales continued the dubious picture:

The bestselling comics in comic stores were an extraordinarily weak bunch in February, with the top title, X-Force #1 (featuring 2 covers), selling only around 105,000 copies. Only three titles, X-Force, New Avengers, and one of the Amazing Spider-Man issues, topped 100,000 copies, something that happened only once all last year, in October. Prior to October 2007, it had been over 18 months, in January of 2006, since as few as three titles were over 100,000 copies in sales to comic stores.

Declines in the top 25 titles heavily outnumbered increases; only four titles increased versus the previous issues, versus 20 decliners.

Is the still-blossoming recession to blame? Seasonal lulls? Has Paul and Marc-Oliver’s nefarious plan to kill North American comics sales finally taken hold? Is it event fatigue? Marvel fatigue? DC fatigue? Fatigue fatigue?

One of the oft-blamed culprits for the slide is DC which, not to kick a company when it is down, is really getting a full-on rollicking these days. A business piece in Crain’s has a typical headline: Marvel zaps DC in comics battle. Despite the title, it’s more of a paeon to Marvel:

To put it another way, Marvel Comics had a banner year in 2007. A combination of breakout comic book series and best-selling graphic novels allowed the creator of the Hulk, Spider-Man and Captain America to dominate comic-book shops and take market share away from Batman, Superman and other superhero stars of longtime rival DC Comics.

“It was neck and neck [a few years ago],” says Marvel Comics Publisher Dan Buckley of the competition with DC. “Now we’ve stretched out in front.”

We don’t really listen to blogosphere bitching, or, God forbid, message board comments, which are nothing but uninformed whining most of the time. However, we always said that the only way to back up complaints was to stop buying the books. Has this really taken hold? This post from Wednesday Is My Sabbath sums up the usual dissatisfaction with DC’s current output:

When it was first announced, DC Editor in Chief Dan DiDio said that Countdown was going to be the backbone of the DC Universe. The problem is that their backbone has a wicked case of scoliosis and has failed miserably in holding up the rest of the line. Quite the opposite in fact, it seems to have dragged the rest of the line down to its abysmal level. Apparently DiDio and company have learned from the mistakes of Countdown and their next weekly series (called Trinity and starring Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman - pic is of the first cover) will be self contained, but after being subjected to 52 weeks of some of the worst comics I have read in a long time, taking them at their word is something I have no plans to do. Besides the fact that there are already more titles featuring Superman and Batman than you can shake a stick at that throwing one more out there hold absolutely no interest on my end. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong but after pre-paying for Countdown I will be perfectly content to have my money in my pocket and have missed a decent series rather than be out my money and have 52 22-paged turds clogging up my closet.

Will Marvel fall to the same problems as DC? They seem to be chugging along pretty well. While most industry observers are het-up over the impending FINAL CRISIS, the Grant Morrison-penned outing doesn’t have comedian Patton Oswalt stumping for it.

After COUNTDOWN and CIVIL WAR, I was going to take a break from these big summer crossover thingies. But this SECRET INVASION…holy shit. This is not a big, disposable, multi-issue donnybrook. This is a blitzkrieg from page one. Bendis basically worked out a remorseless, nothing-but-business tearing down of the Marvel Universe. And it’s clear the story has been set up…for…years. And the deaths are treated so off-handedly, with no appeal or remorse — and this is three issues in. So far, each issue has also ended with a shit-your-pants, ’Wait, what in the FUCK?!” moment…after, of course, about three or four what-the-fuck moments tossed off during the course of each story. As it stands right now, someone’s holding a possible key to stopping the Skrulls, and it’s the LAST person in the Marvel Universe you’d want with that info. And no, it’s not Dr. Doom.

Can DC compete by racing copies of the first four issues to FINAL CRISIS to Seth Rogen’s door? Well, perhaps, but according to recent interviews, they only have two issues finished.

Jeff Smith’s blog comments on the comics’ move to Warner Bros:

The whole thing happened very quickly last Friday night. Warners called and made us a real offer, it was as simple as that. They stated their seriousness to stay true to the books, and after a couple of back and forths, the whole thing was over in an hour and a half. Vijaya and I had a celebratory drink and went to bed. We woke up Saturday morning to find the internet on fire!

As previously reported, that “serious offer” was a “mid-six-figure option against seven figures for purchase.” So let’s hope that celebratory drink was Dom Pérignon.
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Cold Cut Distribution, the largest comics-centric alternative to Diamond as a distributor, was recently acquired by a Chicago-based webcomics publisher, and the new owners are changing the name. PR:

Rogue Wolf Entertainment announced today a new name to go along with the new face of Cold Cut… now known as Haven Distributors, or Haven Distro for short.

“Cold Cut Distribution had a solid base, but it’s time for a change,” explained Lance Stahlberg, Haven Distributors’ COO. “The independent comics terrain is some of the toughest there is in the pop culture market for retailers as well as publishers. Part of what we are trying to do is make it easier for both sides to do business together. ‘Haven’ made sense because that’s exactly what we offer both sides; a safe place to interact. We encourage both retailers and publishers to contact us with changes they would like to see as well. Feedback is not only welcomed but strongly desired!”

To join the Haven Distro newsletter, interested parties can use the signup form on www.havendistro.comwww.HavenDistro.com, where they will also find a contact form for questions or feedback. Haven’s new international toll free phone number is 877-HAVEN-50 (877-428-3650). The old number, 866-4-COLDCUT, will remain active during the transition but will eventually be discontinued. Havendistributors.com and Coldcut.com will both forward to www.havendistro.com, and all current retailer accounts will still work in the existing shopping cart.

§ DC has created an animated trailer for the new David Lapham book YOUNG LIARS. No direct embed but its in there.

§ DC has also updated their Canadian pricing policy. With the Canuck buck now on just about equal footing with the US$. beginning with items arriving in Direct Market stores on March 19, DC Comics periodicals will feature a single price for both U.S. and Canada. Johanna has commentary.

In a promo for their new ICv2 Guide #52: Graphic Novels ICv2 offers a few stats:

…the number of graphic novels released in the North American market in 2007 was 3,314, a 19% increase over the 2,785 volumes published in 2006. All indications are that the tsunami of graphic novels will only increase in 2008, further fueling the competition for shelf space in bookstores and comic shops that one longtime graphic novel publisher described to ICv2 as ‘brutal.” The number of releases is so high that one direct market retailer admitted that he ordered all but the very top tier of manga titles “like periodicals to sell out quickly, rather than like graphic novels that we intend to keep in stock.”

Are there too many graphic novels? Not enough? Just right? What do you think, Goldilocks?

Speaking of PW AND videos, we have a new area for multi-media content, and one of the first is a video of last fall’s Think Future panel on “Harnessing the Power of Graphic Novels”.

PW’s Calvin Reid and Heidi MacDonald explored the issues around the category with some of comics’ influential players. Joining the discussion were John Cunningham, DC Comics, Dan Frank, Pantheon, Rich Johnson, Yen Press, Joe Quesada, Marvel and Bill Schanes, Diamond Comic Distributors.

You can view the video here.

The Great Bookscan debate continues. Rich Johnston has helpfully leaked the actual chart so everyone can play along at home. ADD, Brian Hibbs and Dick Hyacinth all weigh in with second third or 99th rounds — to be honest we’re beginning to get flustered and lose count.

We would agree that the argument over the definition of terms like mainstream, indie and art is getting a little silly, and everyone’s pre-existing conditions are making themselves heard loud and clear, as when ADD turns this

Also worth considering is how perception of Bone has changed over time. When it first debuted, it was so different, so much better than the vast majority of comics, that I think one might have been justified in lumping it in with Eightball or Yummy Fur (I know I did, back in my late teen years). Today, with the massive success of the Scholastic printings and the sheer number of similar works (many inspired by Jeff Smith), it’s harder to classify it that way.

into this

Dick Hyacinth looks at the Bookscan kerfuffle, and is sharp enough to understand exactly why Bone is an art comic, which some people you would think would know better weren’t able to quite wrap their brain around.

It’s getting so we’re almost ready to turn it all over to the brave few like John Mayo and John Jackson Miller who just crunch numbers on a higher, Euclidian plane.

Just to beat out own hobby horse again, yes, we know that Bookscan figures don’t tell the whole story, and they shouldn’t be used to paint a much-beloved graphic novel as a failure just because it sold “only 5000″ copies according to Bookscan. The point is that D&Q and Fantagraphics are publishing very successful books that are selling healthy amounts of copies even though they sell “only 5000″ copies on Bookscan. In that regard, this piece from Slate by Daniel Gross from a few years ago is must reading: Why writers never reveal how many books their buddies have sold.:
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It seems that Boom! Studios has joined the ranks of comics publishers getting a little VC pie:

The Los Angeles company, officially known as Boom Entertainment, has just taken a $600,000 investment from DFJ Frontier and the Gideon Hixon Fund, following a particularly successful January. At the beginning of the month, it featured the first printing of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy novel
called North Wind, on MySpace. The comic, a five-part mini-series that takes place in a futuristic, frozen-over LA, sold out in ten days at brick-and-mortar retailers and has since gone through a second printing. Note: North Wind was available for free online, through the MySpace promotion — people were willing to go out and buy the print version, anyway.

Newsarama has a few more details. It’s not like $600,000 is a staggering, staggering amount of money. But it’s a tidy investment. Although Boom! has had a few wrinkles along the way, you’d have to say hey have earned it with an array of good hires, readable titles, and generally upward movement.

UPDATE: Apparently, both the original story linked to above and the Newsarama article have some inaccuracies. WE’re being told by sources close to Boom! that the $600,000 figure is the cap of a potential loan, not cash on hand.

Boom Studios

We’ve been trying to collect our thoughts on Brian Hibbs 2007 Bookscan analysis all week but what with catching up on 500+ emails, work, laundry, getting engaged and all, we have had a hard time finding a moment’s peace.

Anyhoo, the thing to remember about all this — esp. the Brian-vs-Dirk argument — is that everyone has their own horse in this race. Hibbs’ is that the Direct Market is a more efficient market for comics than bookstores. Dirk’s is that anything that isn’t manga or indie sucks and is stupid and doomed to failure and that anyone who attempts to look at such material without this bias is a dingbat. And us? Well, it’s probably that books with wide appeal will sell more but that everyone’s definition of “wide appeal” will differ.
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As you may have heard, yesterday Reed Elsevier announced they were selling off RBI, the b2b publishing end of their operation, including Variety, Broadcasting and Cable, and, yes, Publishers Weekly, the home of this very blog. The reason given was that the cycle-driven profit structure of magazines supported by advertising didn’t fit in with the Dutch parent company’s business plans. Lots of scuttlebutt going around, but whoever wants the whole caboodle will need a spare $2-2.4 billion, which could take a while–or no time at all. Certainly Variety alone could have a number of suitors.

We really have no idea what any of this means but we’ll keep on blogging until they tell us to stop. One bit of fall-out that is known: the Reed Exhibitions group that puts together the BEA, New York Comic-Con and New York Anime Fest will not be sold off, so that’s one less conflict of interest on our plate.

Remember when Marvel Studios was one of the independent movie studios who signed a separate interim deal with the WGA? It turns out there was quite a bit of urgency behind this, as the strike has created a big gap for Marvel’s planned filmed ventures. ICv2 puts the pieces together from yesterday’s investor conference call and earnings announcement:

In a conference call with stock analysts Marvel Studio’s David Maisel indicated that, because of the strike, the company was scrambling to get one film debut in 2009 (and indicated that if that happened, it would likely be in late 2009). Marvel lists four films in development, Ant Man, Captain America, Thor and The Avengers, but Maisel gave no indication which one of those projects might be the one that Marvel plans to release in 2009 — look for an announcement in the fairly near future, because given the time necessary for special effects work, a new Marvel Studio project would need to get underway by this spring or early summer in order to make a 2009 date. There will be one Marvel-based film debuting in the summer of 2009, but it will be X-Men Origins: Wolverine from Fox, which is slated for a May 1st release, not a Marvel Studios’ film.

Since Marvel’s future earnings are in large part based on the movies they produce, this is a big deal and perhaps part of the reason their stock declined yesterday despite the huge rise in profits they announced. A transcript of the investor’s call is available here.

HeavyInk is a new comics e-tailer that offers social networking functionality with its 20% discount. We’ll let you parse the press release:

After a period of public beta, comics retail and social networking site HeavyInk (http://www.heavyink.com) has announced its official launch, effective today. Bringing together comics and community in a way that revolutionizes online comics retail, HeavyInk offers a fully-featured social networking framework along with a comprehensive selection of comics titles, graphic novels, and trade paperback collections.

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Marvel had its quarterly earnings call today, and the picture was rosy, led by a rise in net income from $11.7 million in Q4 2006 to $27.6 million in Q4 2007. The rise was due to higher profits from outsourcing toy production. While licensing was up 129%, Publishing also showed a rise:

Marvel’s Publishing Segment net sales increased $1.7 million or 6% to $30.3 million in Q4 2007 principally due to continued strength in the Direct and Mass Market channels and the benefit of special event publishing such as World War Hulk and Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Operating income in the publishing segment also rose 6% on a year-over-year basis to $12.3 million in Q4 2007 with a comparable operating margin of approximately 41%.

You can listen to the entire investors call here.

Technorati Tags: Money

Some news from late last week: Platinum Studios is now a publicly traded company. Follow along at PDOS.

Platinum Studios, Inc. (OTCBB: PDOS), an entertainment company that controls an international library of more than 3,800 comic book characters which it adapts, produces and licenses for all forms of media including print, film, online, mobile / wireless, gaming, and merchandising, today announced that the company’s shares have been approved for trading on the NASD’s Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board market under the symbol PDOS.

“Our new trading symbol, PDOS, allows our existing shareholders and potential new investors to obtain our trading and financial information, as well as keep up to date on our company’s developments and accomplishments,” said Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Platinum Studio’s Chairman and CEO, and comic creator.

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Get out your Oscar frock! Both Nikki Finke and the NY Times are reporting a settlement may near :

Informal talks between representatives of Hollywood’s striking writers and production companies have eliminated the major roadblocks to a new contract, which could lead to a tentative agreement as early as next week, according to people who were briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.

A deal would end a crippling writers strike that is now entering its fourth month.

Could this mean the end of non stop reality TV programming? We sure hope so, because we weren’t looking forward to Would You Let a Fifth-Grader Waterboard You?

Technorati Tags: Labor Relations

§ Adrian Tomine interviewed by Terry Gross.
§ Direct link to Shaenon Garrity’s Compleat Overlooked Manga Festival. BOOKMARK.

§ You gotta pay wholesale now.

§ Sam and Max in Surfin’ the Highway will be out this February in a remastered edition from the great Steve Purcell..

§ Ambush Bug is also coming back, with the old Giffen/Fleming team on board. And who will be made fun of?

Greg Rucka would know I was kidding. Geoff Johns would know I was kidding. I think any of the guys on 52 would understand. But the point is that we shouldn’t make fun of them as individuals. So, for example, we can make fun of something like a Shadowpact story, but we shouldn’t be making fun of Bill Willingham.

§ Area man teaches town about comics:

“Her work is really lively, really fresh, and she has experience drawing manga,” Zakour said.

What’s manga?

“It’s sort of friendly and anything goes,” Zakour said of the Japanese cartoon style. “Like my novel writing. I write bubble gum for the brain.”

§ New comic book store not as important as stopping crime to Bridgeport, CT.

§ Ad for IRON MAN film will be one of the big ads during them Super Bowl.

§ Some 1.3 million of whatever-is-the-currency-in-the-Philippines worth of fake Warner Bros and DC Comics school supplies were seized in a raid in Manila. That sounds like a lot but it was only 6,148 items. Still, piracy is bad!

For months, the LJ of Cold Cut Distribution employee Matt High has been spotlighting his spectacular vacation photos. Of late it started talking about packing up and moving. A post yesterday spelled it out

Still no official news on Cold Cut to announce, since the paperwork is not signed yet. But the unofficial news is Cold Cut is closed (and has been since before Christmas, really), and will re-open under totally brand-new ownership in Illinois sometime next month. Details to follow when they can be released.

Cold Cut is one of the very few surviving comics distributors that isn’t Diamond. Although exclusives had left them with a smaller amount of product to carry, their publishers page still lists a couple hundred publishers, including SLG/Slave Labor, Fantagraphics, NBM and book publishers like Random House and Harper Collins.

Cold Cut had been in dubious shape for a while, with a public plea for a new buyer posted in July. We wrote to High for any additional comment but received no answer. We also polled a few indie publishers carried by Cold Cut and the general sense we got is that owner Mark Thompson has generally remained current with publishers, so there is at this point no big financial hit to publishers in the offing.

The need for a distributor other than Diamond continues to be a theme bubbling under the industry, with many rumours of alternatives surfacing now and then, but never in an organized way. Baker & Taylor, the large book distributor seems to have become a de facto alternative for many retailers, as they offer speedier orders on mainstream books and reasonable rates even for returnable books. However, Cold Cut did have a niche that many people found useful or even essential. Whoever this company in Illinois is must have thought the same thing.