A recent posting at Larry Marder’s blog confirms what we’d been hearing on the grapevine: the forner Executive Director of Image and McFarlane Toys long time President has left the Mcfarlane fold:

I’m no longer in the Todd McFarlane business. I wish Mr. McFarlane well in all his future endeavors. For the first time in over 15 years, I’m back in the Larry Marder business…and it sure feels good! I can’t wait to see everyone this weekend at SPX and discuss with my friends, colleagues, and fans the future of the Beanworld!

We wish him luck in all future endeavors…especially if that means MORE BEANWORLD.

Quite a big hire at DC, as Steve Rotterdam is appointed Sr. VP of Sales and Marketing. Perusing the press release, Rotterdam comes more from a marketing/agency background rather than a bookselling and/or circulation background, in line with the general emphasis these days on branding. We’ve been hearing good things about Rotterdam from various folks, including the fact that he likes comics, which is always a good start.

Steve Rotterdam, formerly the Chief Creative Officer of Eastwest Marketing Group, joins the DC Comics staff as Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing, it was announced today by Paul Levitz, President & Publisher of DC Comics. In this position, Rotterdam will run both the direct sales and the book trade sales divisions of the company, supervise the marketing and publicity efforts of DC Comics’ publishing and oversee the company’s advertising sales and custom publishing department. Rotterdam will report directly to Levitz.

Rotterdam steps into the role of SVP, Sales & Marketing at a time when DC Comics is experiencing substantial growth for the graphic novel category and will be aggressively expanding its distribution. In recent years, comic shops have experienced increased sales, while graphic novels have become a leading category in the book trade market. As of spring 2008, DC Comics will be distributed in the book trade market by industry leader Random House.

In recent years, DC Comics, already the largest English-language publisher of comics in the world and home to such iconic characters as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, has further diversified its creative output and its publishing formats:

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The New York Comic-Con announces its new point man, Jay Williams, and his email is in included — so you people feel free to contact him. We’re told he LOVES it.

New York Comic Con (NYCC) has announced that it has appointed senior staff member Jay Williams to the post of Manager of Programming & Education. The role is considered critical as much of NYCC’s activity and opportunity is generated by the special events and panel discussions which supplement the excitement of the show floor. Organizers are pleased to have both a trade show professional and veteran, as well as a huge comics fan to fill the role. Williams is expected to bring an intuitive grasp of creativity and management skills to the function.

In a related announcement, show organizers note that one of Williams’ first initiatives is the launch of Kids’ Day, a significant all-day program on Sunday, April 20 which will focus on events and activities designed to attract and entertain young fans. A key partner in the development of this program is Kids Love Comics (KLC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development and growth of children’s comic books in North America.

New York Comic Con will be held April 18 – 20, 2008 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City. Jay Williams is open to receiving ideas and suggestions for all areas of programming at NYCC and may be reached at jaywilliams at nycomiccon.com.

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Well, speak of the devil, we were just talking about his library event and now he has a new job!

Diamond Book Distributors has hired John Shableski as Sales Manager for its growing graphic novel sales to the book trade.

Shableski will be responsible for overseeing sales & marketing efforts to independent bookstores, library and school markets.

John brings twenty-one years of marketing and promotions experience to Diamond, and is recognized nationally as an industry expert on the promotion, sales and distribution of graphic novels for the library market. John formerly worked for the Brodart Company where he held the position of Graphic Novels coordinator along with Marketing and Sales Coordinator for their Tartan Books division.

“John Shableski brings to Diamond Book Distributors and our publishers a wealth of experience, energy and contacts. We look forward to his contributions to help our publishers increase their business in the growing educational and independent bookstore markets,” said Kuo-Yu Liang, Diamond Book Distributors VP of Sales and Marketing.

Diamond Book Distributors is a division of Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc., the world’s largest distributor of English-language comic books and related merchandise. Diamond Book Distributors is dedicated to making a wide selection of graphic novels and other pop culture collectibles available to the book market.

PR:

John Nee has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Business Development, DC Comics. It was announced today by Paul Levitz, DC Comics President & Publisher. Nee will continue to report directly to Levitz.

Nee, who joined DC Comics in 1998 as VP, General Manager WildStorm, oversees Business Development, the WildStorm studio, and the CMX manga imprint. In his new role, Nee will continue to provide leadership for DC Comics in potential opportunities for expanding the company’s core businesses areas, including in international publishing, videogame production and new media initiatives with sister divisions Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment and Warner Bros Digital Distribution.

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Tom has an unusually extensive list of recent lay-offs and resignations from Wizard which we’ve removed since Tom objected.
It’s of some interest that Mike Scigliano quit — he left DC to take over some of the more visible of Wizard’s convention running duties, and his departure would seem to leave yet another void.

D&Q sends out a personnel related press release and is thoughtful enough to include a Julie Doucet panel to illustrate it!

Effective immediately, Jamie Salomon has been hired as Controller, announced Chris Oliveros, Editor-In-Chief and Publisher, Drawn & Quarterly. Salomon has overseen D+Q’s finances for the past five years while employed at the chartered accounting firm Rabinovitch Luciano in Montreal. At D+Q, Salomon will direct all financial reporting and accounting operations.

“As D+Q has grown from a comic book company to a book company in the past decade, our financial reporting needs have increased. Jamie has been our most valuable behind-the-scenes player in this process,” said Oliveros. “Furthermore, his genuine appreciation and knowledge of the comic book medium makes him an integral part of the D+Q team in understanding why we do what we do.”

Salomon graduated from McGill University with a Bachelors of Commerce. He was the publisher and editor of Copacetic Comics & Crunchy Comics, a freelance tax accountant, and translation consultant.

Drawn & Quarterly, the critically acclaimed Montreal-based comic book publisher, attracts readers from around the world. The company’s cartoonists­Lynda Barry, Chester Brown, Guy Delisle, Tove Jansson, Joe Sacco, Seth, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Adrian Tomine, Chris Ware and others­are among the best in graphic novel literature. D+Q is distributed by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the United States, Raincoast Books in Canada and PGUK in the United Kingdom.

As we told you a while ago, Tom Fassbender has joined Boom! Studios as VP of Publishing; the press release praises his “steady hand” which is something every publishing company needs, it seems.

BOOM! Studios announced today that Tom Fassbender has taken the role of VP of Publishing for the company. Fassbender will provide a steady hand and a veteran’s expertise to all aspects of the comic book publishing concern.

Coming on the heels of the appointment of Mark Waid as Editor-in-Chief and Chip Mosher as Marketing and Sales Director, the addition of Fassbender completes a round of expansion in personnel catapulting BOOM! Studios into its next phase of growth. Fassbender began work at BOOM! Studios this past August.

“Tom is a multi-hyphenate. He’s published comics. He’s written comics. He’s published books. He’s written books. He’s worked in comic distribution. He’s managed a retail comic store. Hell, he’s even been an Eisner judge. You just can’t find experience this in one place. And now he’s working at BOOM!” said Ross Richie.

“Tom’s a great guy, with gut-level business instincts that are as good as any I’ve seen. He’s got the nuts and bolts of this industry down. I love working with him. We make a great team. He’s got his eye on the clock and is making sure the trains make it out of the station on time,” said Mark Waid.

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Sometimes it just takes an honest question to bring out honest answers. Writer Marc Bernadin’s frank questioning over the relative sales failure of his Wildstorm mini-series The Highwaymen has got a lot of people talking. perhaps because Bernadin is a seasoned writer in another field (he’s an editor at Entertainment Weekly) and writing comics isn’t his main gig, he’s coming right out and saying what other people are only thinking? At any rate, the responses both in our own comment section and elsewhere have raised more questions than they answer, perhaps.
Jason Michelitch suggests that the book’s failure is more relative than anything else.

Because as far as I can tell, Highwaymen did sell.

What’s that? How can I say that, when as Jim Lee just said, it hasn’t performed sales-wise, and is being cancelled?

Well, let’s take a look at the numbers*.

Highwaymen #1 (June 2007) 9,360
HIghwaymen #2 (July 2007) 6,108 (-35%)
Highwaymen #3 (August 2007) 5,718 (-06%)

Now, sure, if we’re comparing Highwaymen to Batman, the numbers don’t look too great. Like Bernardin said, opened near 10,000 and went over a steep drop from issue one to issue two. But let’s keep in mind: the steep drop-off between first and second issues is more or less an industry axiom. It’s a rare runaway hit that doesn’t suffer a similar drop. And the fact that orders for issue three only dropped a further 6% is, believe it or not, pretty good.

Michelitch compares THE HIGHWAYMEN numbers to other Image miniseries which are considered successes a lower sales levels, a not entirely apt comparison, to be sure, since IMage does have a much lower sales threshhold.

As usual, Valerie D’Orazio comes out and says what everyone is thinking:

What might have been the problem with “Wildstorm?”

Branding.

What IS Wildstorm?

A wing of DC?

A publisher of “Old Imagey” type comics like “Gen 13,” etc?

The edgy publishers of “The Authority?”

Purveyors of fine Alan Moore products?

A prestige artist’s studio?

Vertigo II?

Publisher of licensed product like “World of Warcraft?”

What is Wildstorm?

What does the Wildstorm brand promise me so that I would run into “The Highwaymen” in the store and take a chance on it?

Johanna is similarly blunt.

There is no reason to buy a miniseries any more. If you’re going to do all that promotional work (and they did), then you should be pushing something that will keep selling. That’s true of series — if a reader signs on, there’s another one every month to buy — and books — as long as they’re kept in print, new customers can be found on an ongoing basis — but not of limited-run projects. What’s the point in pushing it when three or five months later, your hard work doesn’t have any more payback?

For his part, Bernadin takes it all in and remains philosophical:

Maybe, finally, the answer to the “why” is: The market just isn’t set up to support a book like this because, ultimately, the readers don’t want a book like this. If they did, there’d be more of them. There’d be more romance books, and more action books, and more war books, and more straight sci-fi books, and more police procedural books. I’d say it was as myopic as TV, but then you’d have to posit a TV landscape where there were only sitcoms set in a bar.

A lot of the answers take the Wildstorm brand itself to task. It’s worth noting that the imprint is in a bit of a state of flux now — Executive Editor Scott Dunbier was removed several months ago, a major personnel move covered only in a so-called “gossip column” and some now removed message board joking. We have several thoughts about this — the first being that Dunbier is a dear friend of ours, and we wish him all the best.

The second is just how wacky comics book “news” is. While the executive shuffle in Hollywood is covered on a minute-by-minute basis by the entertainment trades, no one seems to have even asked about Dunbier’s departure at a Wildstorm panels mere days after the news “got out”. Either comic books are too piddly to really bother with, or the comics press wouldn’t know a juicy story if it bit them on the ass. (I include myself in that, but my friendship with Dunbier more or less recused me from the story.)

At any rate, Ben Abernathy has been promoted to Senior Editor at Wildstorm, and things seem to have settled down a bit or at least be regrouping. Which still doesn’t answer the question of whether anyone wants to read miniseries about new characters. That question seems to go on and on.

Blogger and gentleman Sean T. Collins announces he’s been laid off from his editorial position at Wizard. Tom has biographical details. Good luck, Sean! We are sure you will land on your feet, or at least have more time to blog.

PR:

David Hyde has been promoted to Vice President of Publicity, DC Comics, it was announced today by Paul Levitz, DC Comics President & Publisher. Hyde will continue to report directly to John Cunningham, VP of Marketing.

Hyde, who joined DC Comics in November of 2003 as Director of Publicity, oversees the publicity campaigns for all graphic novels, trade paperbacks, and the 80-plus monthly ongoing periodical titles published by DC Comics, Vertigo, MINX, WildStorm, CMX, Zudacomics.com and MAD Magazine. He has spearheaded publicity campaigns for numerous individual titles, including 52, Identity Crisis, The Quitter, Pride of Baghdad, Y: the Last Man and the Absolute Edition of Watchmen, as well as the press announcements of DC’s recent initiatives, including the launch of CMX, MINX and Zudacomics.com and the unveiling of a new company logo.

In his new position, Hyde will continue to represent DC in coordinating publicity opportunities for Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Home Video, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Licensed Publishing releases of DC comics-related properties.

Levitz commented, “David has played an important role in raising the profile of DC and of graphic novels, and I look forward to his increased opportunity to build our business in his new position.”

Before joining DC, Hyde served as the Assistant Director of Publicity at Anchor Books, a division of Random House. It was there that he worked on the publicity campaigns for Alexander McCall Smith’s The Number One Ladies Detective Agency, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Robert Lanham’s The Hipster Handbook and Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. He began his career in publicity as an assistant at Vintage Books, a division of Random House, and worked his way up to Senior Publicist during his time there. He personally worked on campaigns and tours for Rick Russo’s Empire Falls, Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, Ernesto Quinonez’s Bodega Dreams, Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm, Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn and Robert Kaplan’s The Coming Anarchy.

Following an editorial talent search at San Diego, IDW has hired Andrew Steven Harris as their newest editor:

IDW Publishing is pleased to announce the newest member of the IDW team. Andrew Steven Harris, a former Los Angeles Times editor and one of the founding writers for Wizard Magazine, will oversee IDW’s Transformers and Star Trek comic book titles, two of the company’s most prominent licenses, along with several other books in the IDW publishing line. He will report directly to IDW Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall.

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7 billion by end of 2006 according to Informa[citation needed], and 3.

Chip Mosher will be joining BOOM! Studios as Marketing and Sales Director, and evidently begin writing a lot of press releases; viz:

BOOM! Studios has appointed Chip Mosher as Marketing and Sales Director, where he will be in charge of all marketing and sales initiatives with the direct, library, and mass market. Mosher began his relationship with BOOM! Studios this past May when he made his comics debut creating and writing the espionage thriller LEFT ON MISSION.

“Chip’s mix of comic book industry experience and fresh business vision is unparalleled in comics,” said BOOM! Studios Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Ross Richie. “He’s got the attitude and heart of a warrior, and deeply loves the comic book publishing medium. But what makes him truly dangerous is that his new ideas are compelling and practical. The sparks are really going to start to fly now at BOOM!.”

“Chip’s exactly what this company needs and the kind leader that will take us to the next level,” said BOOM! Studios Chief Creative Officer and co-founder Andrew Cosby.

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Expert editor Stuart Moore is back in the chair at Virgin:

Virgin Comics and the SCI FI Channel announced today that Stuart Moore has been appointed Editor on the first titles from the new imprint.

The new ‘SCI FI / Virgin Comics’ venture was announced earlier this year, with a stated goal of utilizing the global creative and synergistic resources that exist both at SCI FI Channel, part of NBC Universal, and Virgin Comics to create new stories for comic books, television, movies, digital, gaming, licensing and merchandising.

“This was an impossible opportunity to turn down. Virgin and SCI FI are two of the most vital entertainment companies around, and we’re all excited about crafting the best possible speculative fiction projects for the 21st century,” commented Stuart Moore. “For my part, Virgin’s been great about working out a deal that lets me exercise my editing muscles again, without interfering with my writing projects at various other companies. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.”

“Stuart is not only one of the greatest editors, but also one of the greatest people in this industry,” said Virgin Comics CEO & Publisher, Sharad Devarajan. “His wealth of experience is only matched by his wonderful reputation for guiding numerous creators to reach new heights in their work.”

Moore is an award-winning editor with a prolific career in the industry. At DC Comics, Stuart was a founding editor of the Vertigo imprint, where he won the Will Eisner award for Best Editor 1996 and the Don Thompson Award for Favorite Editor 1999. From late 2000 through mid-2002 Stuart edited the bestselling Marvel Knights comics line.

“We’re thrilled to have a seasoned comic book veteran like Stuart involved in the development of these new properties which are being created from the ground up for multi-media application,” added Adam Stotsky, SRVP Marketing for the SCI FI Channel.

“Simply put: Stuart Moore rocks. Ask any writer or publisher he’s worked with (and we did) and you hear nothing but the best things said. With Stuart aboard, I feel confident we’re going to deliver on our bold prediction to re-imagine sci-fi,” added Gotham Chopra, Virgin Comics Chief Creative Officer.

The first SCI FI/Virgin comic titles are expected to hit shelves later this year and the imprint is currently reviewing story pitches from numerous comic book and television writers.

Over at the IDW site, it has just been announced that Clifford Meth has joined the company as Executive VP of Strategies/Editorial. Meth is best known recently for putting together The Uncanny Dave Cockrum tribute book, as well as helping Cockrum get a royalty settlement in his waning years. He’s also known as a fiction writer.

Most recently working with IDT Entertainment as VP of Creative Development, Meth will now serve as the Executive VP of Strategies/Editorial at IDW, where he will put his vast network of entertainment industry relationships to work in order to create new opportunities for the burgeoning publisher.

“I’m thrilled that Cliff has joined the IDW family,” said Ted Adams, President of IDW. “He’s a terrific writer and has a huge Rolodex that includes many of the greats from the worlds of comics and science fiction. He’s already got some great projects in the works that I can’t wait to announce.”

Via Comic Foundry move that Laura Hudson has joined the marketing team at Virgin Comics. We knew the girl was good! Congrats.

§ Bestselling author Jodi Picoult’s run on Wonder Woman continues to get press, including this piece at CNN.com:

“My kids looked at me and they were like, ‘Mom, you totally have to write ‘Wonder Woman!’ ” she told USA Today. (Gallery: Wonder Woman and Picoult)

So Picoult rearranged elements of her hectic work schedule and dove into research. (She admits to not being much of a “Wonder Woman” fan growing up — “X-Men” was more her speed.) Looking back on the character’s six decades in comics, Picoult found the story focused more on Wonder Woman’s exploits as a superhero and less on the life of her alter ego, Diana Prince.

That angle baffled her. Diana Prince is a far more interesting character, she says, and offers plenty to work with.

§ DC Group Editor Peter Tomasi has left his day job and gone exclusive with DC to pursue his writing career. Always highly regarded as both a writer and editor, Tomasi has sold a screenplay and has many comics projects in the hopper:

“It’s titled Black Adam: The Dark Age and it picks up right where 52 left off and leads into the start of Countdown. It’s being drawn by Doug Mahnke, inked by Christian Alamy and edited by Mike Siglain. The pages that have come in are pretty damn spectacular! It follows Adam in Kahndaq and around the rest of the globe as he searches for the magical word he lost in 52.”

And after that? Where will Tomasi show up next at DC?

“Honestly, I’m interested in everything here. There’s a great stable of characters at DC that I would love to write. I’ve edited quite a wide variety of books in my tenure here, so I’m looking forward to casting my net pretty wide and tackling established characters along with developing new properties. No reason to limit myself at this juncture when so many doors are open.

§ Also over at Newsarama, Kazu Kibuishi announces a “Flight light” for kids. FLIGHT EXPLORER will be out from Ballantine in Spring 2008 and will include strips like “Jellaby” by Kean Soo, “Missile Mouse” by Jake Parker, “Zita the Spacegirl” by Ben Hatke, Steve Hamaker’s “Fish N Chips”, Johane Matte’s cat story, Phil Craven’s “N” and an unpublished “Copper”story.

Newsarama: So, at what point did the idea for Flight Explorer come into the picture?

Kazu Kibuishi: I had been hearing a lot of librarians and booksellers talk about how much they wanted good comics for younger readers, and I saw how there was so little of it out there with the exception of Jeff Smith’s Bone. Flight always contained a high percentage of material that would be perfect for young readers, but the more mature content often steered parents and librarians away from sharing the books with kids. A few of the Flight artists are also parents, and I could often feel their desire to be a part of a book that was more appropriate for their children, and the voices in their own stories reflected that. On top of this, I could feel that for some of the artists, the kid-friendly material was starting to impinge on their desire to tread more into the older kids’ fare, and the last thing I wanted was for artists to feel that they had to write for younger audiences and not for themselves. I mean, really, I think that it’s just when you have kids, your kids become that self that you write for.

When Flight 4 came together, we ended up with more material than we expected and all of it was of the highest caliber work we’ve seen so far. We overshot the expected page count by 80 pages. People often told us that we should just hold extra material back for the next volume, but knowing that we’ll have even more material on top of that when the deadline for the next one comes around (as well as the fact that the artists would like to be included in the most current volume), I decided I needed to come up with a different solution. And since I still didn’t feel we were ready to raise the frequency of publication, I decided it would be a good idea to create a new kids’ version of Flight.

§ Ah exhibit on African-American contributions to comics at Jackson State U in Mississippi shows that Comic books have become hot again thanks to the successes of NBC’s ‘Heroes,’ the Spider-Man films and the revived Superman and Batman franchises.:

The exhibition ‘Other Heroes: African-American comics, creators, characters and archetypes’ focuses on topics such as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and racial stereotypes.

‘The show really wants to focus on racial representations through that particular medium,’ said John Jennings, co-curator of the exhibit, which runs through the end of June at the historically black university. He curated the exhibit with comic book partner Damien Duffy. Jennings said he is talking to other universities about having the exhibit tour.

Some images have been taken out of the comic setting, enlarged and mounted on gallery walls in the university’s art building. More than 50 artists contributed to the exhibit including some selections by Denys Cowan, artist for ‘Hardware,’ which depicts a man who turns high-tech vigilante to stop his employer, who has links to organized crime and drugs.

‘I think people are going to be surprised at the mastery of the storytelling,’ said Jennings, who describes the works as anti-mainstream and trying to break misconceptions.