The Corner Box S1E16 - Licensing Your Childhood Part 2

[00:00] Intro: Welcome to The Corner Box, where we talk about comics as an industry and an art form. You never know where the discussion will go or who will show up to join host David Hedgecock and John Barber. Between them, they've spent decades writing, drawing, lettering, coloring, editing, editor-in-chiefing, and publishing comics. If you want to know the behind-the-scenes secrets, the highs and lows, the ins and outs of the best artistic medium in the world, then listen in and join us on The Corner Box.

[00:31] John Barber: Hey, welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, John Barber, and with me as always,

[00:38] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.

[00:39] John: We're here for part two of talking about licensed comics, and we took a lot of notes on our last podcast. We know exactly where we left off. A week has passed in our heads, and we didn't just spend 15 minutes trying to figure out where we left off.

[00:54] David: Steel trap minds.

[00:58] John: Or steel trap mines. All right, now. Hey, sorry, one of the things we're going to move into, one of the things was coming up, was to talk about how, it feels like a few years of stability, in terms of where licensed stuff was, in terms of comics, what are licensed comics, who had what, how everything was divvied up. There have been some relatively big shifts in the last, I don't know, six months or so. I mean, I don't know, how do you define it exactly? Some new publishers coming in and getting licenses, and older licenses that maybe weren't as active coming back up, and then also just some big shifts in where things have gone. Probably none more so, at least related to the two of us, than the Energon Universe at Skybound. Worst kept secret in comics for about a year.

[01:57] David: I was blown away when I first learned that IDW Publishing wasn't going to do everything they could to try to keep that license. Not being on the inside anymore, maybe there just wasn't going to be a way they can take and retain it, but knowing the long history of Transformers, in particular, and how important that franchise was to IDW, at least while I was there, I was pretty stunned to hear, when it was announced, that it was going to different publishers. Whoa, that's a major change. That's a big shift, as far as the IDW for 12 years. More, 15 years.

[02:38] John: Yeah, way more than that. Back before the Michael Bay movies. So, it was going back to 2007 or so, I think. I should know that. I used to know that offhand. I can't remember. It was six or seven, but there's definitely a long-standing relationship, definitely predated me being involved in it at all. Since I was involved in some of this, there are some things I probably have to steer a little more clear of, in terms of talking about, than I do on some of these things. That seems like a it was a big move for everybody. I mean, I've known that Robert Kirkman was a huge Transformers fan for a long time. I mean, I think there must have been a bit of bucket list thing. I mean, not that Kirkman’s at death's door. I don't mean it that way. I just mean, one of the things you probably wanted to do. After you've conquered television, I guess, you can pick what you're going to try.

[03:28] David: Kirkman won comics. He gets to do whatever he wants now.

[03:34] John: It was a cool rollout. I mean, I was making the joke about the worst kept secret, but I think they did manage to keep a big chunk of what they were doing out of the public eye. Hey, spoiler alert, if you don't follow the news and just pick up your comics every six months or so, just skip ahead a few minutes, but they launched a comic called Void Rivals, and then during that comic, one of the Transformers shows up. The story had broken the day before it came out. A lot of people in the circles, I think you and I knew that was coming out before it happened.

[04:06] David: Yeah, I think the general comic buying audience had no clue. I think that book hit like a ton of bricks, and it's interesting, what an interesting move to put Skybound created and I'm assuming Skybound copyright owns creative. Now, you think that's being all built for Hasbro. Hasbro’s got the copyright on all those new characters.

[04:32] John: At least, whatever I just said. I don't know what kind of deal there is outside of that. If there's some sort of development deal that Hasbro has, where Skybound gets some piece of anything they do with that, or if it's just totally owned by Hasbro. I mean, it's interesting because Skybound was not a licensed comic publisher, and then they picked that up, and then they also picked up Universal Monsters, which seemed random, but I'd forgotten that Robert Kirkman wrote that Renfield movie. I knew that, and then I forgot that that was where that movie had come from. That seems like an interesting deal. I mean, I love the Universal Monsters, and I remember hearing about, “That'd be cool. I wonder who they're going to get on it, and I think we've mentioned before here, James Tynion, and oh, God, the artist, sorry, Martin Simmons. The creative team from Department of Truth, so it's a pretty good team. Then likewise, on Transformers, having Daniel Warren Johnson come on there, I think was super exciting.

[05:44] David: I was shocked at that. Daniel Warren Johnson must just love Transformers. That's all I can think of. Yeah, because Daniel Warren Johnson can write his own ticket, and I think he's probably pretty close to a generational talent. The guy's pretty fantastic, and I think he's got something to say, and he was doing quite well with his creator-owned work. So, for him to bow off of that, even for a limited amount of time, to do a Transformers thing, that's quite a big get, in my opinion, for Skybound. That was a big move.

[06:19] John: Yeah, I think it's pretty likely he would have wound up doing some Transformers stuff wherever, because he is a big Transformers fan. I think that has got to come up. I don't know. I don’t mean in the way that it came about here, and obviously, maybe it wouldn't have worked out anywhere else. I don't know, but yeah, I mean, when you look at some of the stuff he did, especially when starting out, I mean, some of that gets into some really geeky territory, where there's clearly stuff that he really likes. I always think about that one he did about A Wing pilot in Return of the Jedi.

[06:49] David: Love that thing. What was that called? Green squad? I've got several copies laying around somewhere. It's going to be really fun to watch Skybound, see how they handle the Transformers license, because I feel like IDW, for better or worse, did a pretty good business with Transformers. People knew that there was Transformers. If you want a Transformer comic book, you could get it in a variety of different formats, for a variety of different writing and art styles, for the most part, and all that was of, in my opinion. I think, before I was working there, and after I was working there, in between is great quality stuff across the board. So, it'll be interesting to see how Skybound is going to continue to capture new readers, while also servicing those fans who are still interested in the property, see how they walk that tightrope, which is a tightrope that any publisher of Transformers, in particular, is always going to have to be walking. 

[07:58] John: Yeah, I mean, that first issue of Transformers is I think selling in order of magnitude more than a typical IDW issue was selling. It was a lot more.

[08:09] David: Do you think that's just because it moved to a different publisher? I feel like, and this is no slight to Skybound or IDW, for that matter, just the simple matter of moving to a different publisher creates some energy and a new type of energy, and a new type of momentum that almost, just by that move alone, seems to juice the numbers, and especially in this instance, where IDW had that license for a long time. So, it's like, “well, what is Skybound going to do with it?” I think the lookie-loos and the people who were just going to sample it, just going to go up loudly, as opposed to IDW doing a new number one, even if the IDW did do number one with Daniel Warren Johnson, I think those numbers would be vastly improved, but I don't know that those reached Skybound was able to do because Skybound had the added sauce of being the new publisher, so maybe a totally new spin, new take, whatever.

[09:05] John: Yeah, no 100%. I mean, I think the most analogous thing with that was Dark Horse publishing Star Wars comics very successfully and the Star Wars expanded universe, in general, being a thing that everybody in licensed publishing would point at and say “this is the best. This can work,” and then went over to Disney, and Star Wars comics moved back to Marvel. Yes, Marvel put really big talent on it, but the numbers on that were also just juiced, like you said, with “this is a new a new starting point,” and that sense of freshness on it. I mean, that's definitely one that I was aware of Dark Horse making Star Wars comics, but then okay, Jason Aaron and John Cassaday, and it's Han, Luke, and Leia, and it's between episodes four and five, but all of that stuff was, definitely want to check that out. This Transformers, I think has a lot of analogies, a lot of things that track with that, it's an exciting read, a super exciting creator on it, a brand-new starting point. I'm not unaware that the IDW stuff, even when we rebooted it, was not necessarily every reader picks up any issue, and it's the most reader-friendly way to jump into stuff. That stuff got intricate, and that stuff was very idiosyncratic, not that Daniel Warren Johnson isn't idiosyncratic, it definitely is, but it's also very much like “this is the 1980s Transformers, and here's the take on it,” there's a familiarity of what it's riffing on.

Now, they're probably analogous, wanted to be the Ultimate Universe when that originally launched, when that idea of “it's Spider Man, but it's going to be starting from the beginning,” and Marvel hadn't done that a bunch up to then. Marvel can't pull that trigger again and still make that work, even though so long has passed. So, yeah, and I think all of that adds up to it. It's interesting to me that they're launching with Void Rivals, which is tangential to the whole universe. The second series is Transformers. The next three series that we're going to launch are GI Joe.

[11:15] David: I think, Skybound is about to figure out something that you've known all along. Go ahead. I know what you're going to say.

[11:23] John: Well, no, I mean, I guess, as the guy that's probably overseen more failed GI Joe relaunches than anyone, that's a tough one, and then it gets into one of the things that's interesting about licensing. I think the Transformers license, I mean, obviously, I'm super associated with it. The Transformers license, I think, is a very valuable license, a very cool concept.

[11:44] David: Didn’t you write some Transformers at some point?

[11:47] John: Transformers is one of the licenses that, I can't remember what we were talking about last episode, but one of those licenses that is not a period license. You don't think about it, it exists in a certain timeframe. It's a thing that kids pick up on and start reading whenever they get into it, or there were bunch of fans that came in from the Michael Bay movies, a bunch of came in from a Transformers Animated, from Prime, from all the different shows that they've had, all the different lines of toys that they've had, all the movies, all this stuff, and those are pretty rare. I mean, I think we were talking about Ninja Turtles was pound for pound the best license. Transformers shares a bunch of the DNA with that, in that same way that, depending on when you grew up, there's a real Transformers that you grew up with that is not necessarily the 1984 one that I grew up with.

[12:40] David: The first Transformer thing that my son's ever shown interest in was the last movie. That's the first time. That was cool. Yeah, and so that's his Transformers.

[12:54] John: My son got really into Earth Spark, the current cartoon. He's watched every episode of that. He’s super into it. The intersection with GI Joe is a little different, where GI Joe is. If you're a GI Joe fan, you were a fan of the 1982 Larry Hama reboot of GI Joe.

[13:12] David: End of story. Yeah. The end. So, you get in this situation, which is, it'll be fascinating to watch how Skybound navigates this, and again, this is when we were putting together the Revolution concept, which was basically taking all the Hasbro licenses and throwing them all into the same universe. We're going to have Transformers and GI Joe, and Micronauts, and all these other properties all in the same mix. Your comment was “hey, you got Transformers in my GI Joe. Hey, you got GI Joe in my Transformers,” and it wasn't the same as chocolate and peanut butter, mix them together. It was not going to be a Reese's Pieces at the end, and ultimately, I think you were right. I think what we discovered, the way that we did it was that Transformer fans didn't really need or really necessarily want GI Joe in their Transformers. It didn't bring more interest to those books, and the GI Joe fans definitely did not want Transformers in their GI Joe comics. So, rather than being additive to both, it ended up being, I don't know that it was subtractive, but it was close. It didn't do what we were hoping it would do, for sure, and I'm fascinated to see Skybound tackle this, and I wish them success. I hope they're successful. I think it's a cool, fun concept. As a fan of both of those properties, I have no problem with them being together, and certainly, I would love to see GI Joe and a Transformers in a way that it's fun and interesting and out there. I hope they crack that nut. Hope they figure it out.

[14:58] hon: The other lesson that I learned from Revolution was that Transformers has a wide range of ages of people that are really into it, really nostalgic for it. GI Joe has a smaller range of people, and then when you get into some of the other ones, ROM and Micronauts both also have a very big legacy in comics, it's very outsized of what the legacy of the toys were, for toys. Neither one of them were a Hasbro property when they originally launched, but through acquisitions, Hasbro got the rights to this stuff, but very specifically, not the rights to some of the stories, which are still, as I understand, owned by Marvel, or at least, it's unclear what was owned by who, but the other thing was that, if you were really into Micronauts and ROM, you're probably a few years older than me. Not a lot. That skews a little bit older than that, and then when you pull in something like Mask, you pretty much have to be exactly my age to have been into Mask. There's a two or three year window where you could have been into that. That's really true with ROM, if you're into anything other than the specifics of what Bill Mantlo was writing at Marvel. When all that came together, there wasn't a bleed over fans, like you said, we were hoping for.

I think now, especially chasing that that idea of that shared universe is, there's a different context to it. I mean, I don't feel like Skybound is trying to build the Marvel Universe with this stuff, but when that guy ejects from a plane, and then you see is in his name tag is Duke, there isn't a “Oh, holy shit.” You know what I mean? Your jaw doesn’t drop. Of course, that's it. That's who it was going to be, which is fine. I mean, to be clear, that was in one of the best choreographed air combat sequences I've seen in decades. That was a really great scene in the issue of Transformers where you see that, but there isn't that idea that, “these two properties can show up in each other.” We're used to that. We're sick of that. I mean, we, being the world at large. So, that's something to overcome, but that isn't by itself an additive thing. It's going to be, how engaging are they going to make the GI Joe stuff? How relevant can GI Joe be to the modern world? What pieces of GI Joe do they pick to focus on a lot? And also, Larry Hama is continuing his book. I mean, there's still great.

[17:40] David: That's fantastic, and I was really glad to see that, for all kinds of reasons, but through all of this, GI Joe continues to just chug along, being a rock-solid seller. Edition 301 is coming in any day now. As we're speaking, at the end of the day, I think that's what we kept falling back on. It's like, “oh, well. Larry's books doing rock-solid, let's just keep doing that. Let's just keep improving the team around there, and usually, that’s going to be the best solution, which it seems like what they've done here. Chris Mooneyham’s no joke. I think he's good. He made some fantastic covers. So, I think that the numbers on Larry's book is going to be really, really good. I'm certainly going to jump back on for a little while, see what happens.

[18:29] John: Yeah, no, I'm on board for it. Yeah, I'm on board for all of it. I'm really curious to see how it all goes. It is worth noting that at the time IDW got the GI Joe and Transformers licenses, GI Joe was by far the bigger one. I don't think it was very close. So, it's not impossible to get back there. I just feel strange that the world, God knows I have thought about this a lot, and you've heard me talk about all the reasons I think some of this stuff fits in there culturally and historically, and stuff, even at the level of Transformers remains a cool descriptive name, and GI Joe is referencing stuff that nobody knows today. The word GI Joe.

[19:11] David: Good point.

[19:13] John: They've got good talent. They've got some interesting takes on it.

[19:21] David: Just going back real quickly, I feel like I maybe was dismissive of the work that we did on Revolution. The numbers on Revolution were really good. The sales on all those things that we did, certainly, those numbers were much better than what we were doing before, but we had expectations that were far outside, even though they did well. I think our expectations were way bigger than what the results were. So, even though the results were great, it was like “we think we're going to sell a million copies,” and then when we didn’t sell a million copies, which was never going to happen. We were maybe disappointed a little bit. So, not to say that the merging of these two universes hasn't worked before, because it certainly did. I don't know. I just don't feel like, obviously, there was some ingredient that didn't quite get into the get into the pot. I actually think that's what it is. To your point, you see Duke, and you're like, “Yeah, okay.” If I'm a Transformer fan, and it's not really that meaningful to me, and as a GI Joe fan, it's not really that meaningful to me. They don't really need to be together. Spider Man hanging out with Batman would be mind-blowing. Let's see that. Let's put Batman in the Marvel Universe for a year and see what happens. That would sell more copies than anything has sold in the last 20 years. I bet if you did that, and you just ran through Batman in different issues of Marvel, every single one of those random issues where Batman showed up in Marvel comics would be the best-selling book of the year, and that's just not what you get when you throw Duke into Transformers. It's not the same thing.

[21:14] John: Yeah, and I mean, that's just been the oversaturation. Yeah, we all get it. Space Jam. We know you own those characters. For everybody listening, I'm very proud of the work we did on Revolution-era Transformers and what Fico Ossio and I did, but Colin Bond, Fico, and I on Revolution, and everything Kay Zama did, everything, everybody, I mean, all stuff, it continued through the Micronauts series, Lost Light, Mairghread and Sarah's Transformer series, all that stuff. I'm happy with the work. Whenever I say I don't get excited about GI Joe showing up in Transformers, Tom Scioli’s Transformers/GI Joe series is incredible. It's one of my favorite comics, but yeah, just separating out the actual creative parts of it that I care about from the business parts of it that are easier to talk about. Like I said, I think that's a really valuable license. There's been other licenses that have been coming and popping up in other places. We got into a little of “what was a good license or what wasn't?” I think, last time, but it's interesting to see Mad Cave coming in, and I think we're both getting know a lot of folks at Mad Cave popping in with Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, and Gotchaman, which all existed in comics off and on in older properties. I mean, Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy, especially. It's interesting to see those come in. I'm interested to see how that stuff works.

[22:47] David: Yeah, I just don't know how you're going to do. My creative juices for these things, I can't wrap my head around it, because the last time we saw Gotchaman, which was was Battle of the Planets, Alex Ross was doing the covers, and he was helping with interiors. There was a legit team around that stuff, and I think that they did good business, but obviously, they didn't keep going. So, obviously, it wasn't that good of business, and it was a pretty brief moment in time. It's 2002/2003 when Alex Ross was doing that stuff. So, this was 20 years ago. I don't know, and what has happened with Battle of the Planets in the interim to make it a property that's live and viable and interesting? Right now, I just don't know what that is, unless I'm missing something, which is quite possible.

[23:40] John: It's interesting. I think with several of these licenses have come up, another one has been Conan the Barbarian that came back in at Marvel after a long run at Dark Horse, and then now moved over to Titan. I said “yeah, Marvel after a long run at the Dark Horse.” The Marvel stuff blew up, did really good, they integrated it back in the Marvel Universe. Conan famously, that and Star Wars, were two of the comics that helped save Marvel in the 70s. I get the impression with heroic signatures who hold the rights to the Conan stuff, and with King features on Flash Gordon, they seem to really be making a concerted effort to bring these characters, big these characters up again. The Flash Gordon comic strip relaunched recently. In a world after Guardians of the Galaxy came out, I think it makes a lot of sense to be looking at the IP that you own as a company and saying, “how can we be making this viable the way Marvel Studios pulled nothing out of a hat and turned it into Guardians of the Galaxy?”

[24:48] David: Yeah, I guess that's how this works is the licensor themselves are making a concerted effort to get the property back, eyeballs back on the property, and not just it being a comic book and they're collecting a paycheck, and it does what it does, because you're right, Conan as an example, seems to be really enjoying some fantastic sales in the comic space. There's probably more going on there than just “hey, Titan put out a good book.” So, you could be right. Maybe that's happening. Maybe that's going to happen, or it's happening behind closed doors with Flash Gordon. Maybe there's pieces and stuff getting out there that are going to change the way that people view that, and same for Battle of the Planets. Those feel tough on the surface right here. Early November 2023, it feels like that's a tough hill to climb.

[25:43] John: Yeah, that's one of things. It's interesting, with the licenses, you have these things where it makes a lot of sense. If you own Guardians of the Galaxy, and you figured out a way to get that out there, that's great. If you don't own Guardians of the Galaxy, it would be super weird to come to the license holder and be like, “okay, you remember that character, Groot, from the 50s? We want to license him, Rocket Raccoon. I know he's not in continuity with the rest of this. The universe will take care of that.” You’re just going through this list. Gomorrah, that's from a different era, that's cool, and then we want to really make a different Drax than you had before. All the work is being done by the company that is licensing it in this made-up scenario, and then all the benefits are reaped by the company that owns it, which is where that stuff gets weird. Something like a Transformers or a Conan has a built-in fan base that are going to be attracted to the comic. You want to build on that. You want to do something unique and exciting. You don't just want to coast on it, but that's different than starting from the very bottom of Mount Everest and being like, “well, maybe why don't we climb to the top, and then once we're up there, somebody else gets all the credit?

[26:58] David: Once we get to the top, give the gold plaque to the other guy. That's exactly the thing that’s confusing me about these particular properties, and that's no slight to the properties. In this particular, Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, Battle of the Planets, in particular, and not pick on Mad Cave. They probably got a fantastic idea for how they're going to handle these properties, and I really think that Mad Cave, that publisher is super interesting right now, and I'm anxious and excited to see where they go in the next year or two, because they seem to be making some really interesting moves, but these moves, in particular, just seem like a tough road, just because of what we've been talking about. Whatever it is Dick Tracy's going to do in the comic book, the comic book has been selling Dick Tracy, not the other way around, and I just don't know how you're going to change that. Who's clamoring for Dick Tracy in 2023? No one. Literally, no one.

[27:58] John: I would love a chance to work on Dick Tracy, or whatever. I mean, that sounds like so much fun to work on it, and the series is written by Alex Segura and Michael Morrissey, who are both great. Alex's novel, Secret Identity, was terrific.

[28:14] David: I'm going to pick up and buy Dick Tracy because Michael and Alex are writing it, not because it's Dick Tracy. You see what I'm saying?

[28:25] John: Yeah, no, exactly.

[28:25] David: I'm definitely going to pick it up and read it, definitely give it a try, but it has nothing to do with Dick Tracy. It is the creative team that they've put on it that I'm interested in. I'm going to follow that team.

[28:38] John: Well, there's a little bit to it. I do also think there's some alchemy to it, where you get those two doing Dick Tracy, I'm interested, I'm curious to see how that works. That sounds interesting. I mean, I know, the two of them are doing a Detective Comic set in a city that looks a lot like Chicago. Okay, that sounds fine. Oh, Dick Tracy? Okay, at least I know what Dick Tracy is. There's little bit of hit to it. Same thing with Flash Gordon. Everybody knows what that is. There are certainly worse things to be putting out, in terms of licenses, by far. I think those are cool characters. They're super influential. They're super important to the history of pop culture. You wouldn't have Star Wars without Flash Gordon, but you wouldn't have all sorts of stories if you didn't have Flash Gordon.

[29:24] David: Wouldn't have a pretty fantastic Queen soundtrack if it wasn't for Flash Gordon.

[29:29] John: Right. It'll be interesting to see if that alchemy fits together here. If I were the rights holder for those properties, again, yes, I would be pushing full force to try to rest Dick Tracy away from Warren Beatty, in terms of movie rights. I love the Warren Beatty movie, but as I understand, he still has a piece of that, or all of it, and it did make things difficult, and trying to launch a new Flash Gordon media thing, all that sounds really great. Sounds like something that I think you should be doing. It's just the number of Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy fans is not the same as the number of Star Wars fans or Transformers fans, or a 180-degree different one, IDW picking up Monster High. That's a really interesting pick, because that isn't something that's existed in serialized fiction in comic books.

[30:19] David: Except it did.

[30:20] John: Oh, it did?

[30:21] David: Yeah, a couple of times. In fact, Abrams had the license.

[30:25] John: I did not know that.

[30:26] David: When Monster High was so big that it was even on my radar, as an adult male, Abrams had that license, and I think they did a pretty good business with it, and then they let it go, and Abrams wouldn't let something go if it wasn't doing okay, but they let it go and then Titan picked it up and they picked up in 2017. So, it's only been five years, six years, and Titan made it their free comic book day in 2017. So, they launched a Monster High comic book exactly the way that IDW is planning to do it, according to the press release that I saw. So, I think that Monster High, in my mind, makes more sense than something like Dick Tracy in 2023, but I hope they've got really good plans, because again, I don't know, I just named off two things that you've never heard of, and 2017 free comic book days, they probably did 100,000 units, and you and I didn't know that existed, and it's not that long ago. So, I think it's interesting. I think it's got potential. I think it has actually more potential than something like a Dick Tracy in 2023, at least on the surface, in terms of popularity and awareness, and it being within that potential 20-year cycle for nostalgia. I think it fits in there or is close enough. So, it'll be interesting to see what that does, and maybe five years is the nostalgia tipping point, so maybe IDW has got their finger on something there. I've got worries about that one, too. I can definitely see why IDW would want to go after that one, but I think that one's going to be a little bit of a challenge, too, but if it was me, I'd be banking on that nostalgia hit, that 20-year cycle, just about coming up from Monster High, and hitting that super hard, pushing every nostalgic button I could.

[32:32] John: But when you think about when those things did come back, when Transformers first came back from DreamWave, or when Devil’s Due relaunch GI Joe, I think both of them took a “here's the comic you'll remember, but it's a little more serious, a little darker, a little grown up, grew up a little bit with you.” I mean, I guess you can say that that's even what Skybound is doing with Transformers, and probably we say the same thing about when IDW launched with Transformers. That's probably what it was doing, too. I don't think that's where it's going to go with Monster High. I don't think you're going to go in and be, “well, what happened to the Monster High girls after they had to graduate and get jobs?” Or whatever. I don't know. Yeah, interesting.

[33:14] David: I mean, there's two versions. I guess you could get away with trying to thread that needle and doing the Pixar version that you laid out last time, but it'll be fascinated to see where they go with that, but I do think that the name Monster High will bring readers to that property, and that's what you want. You want it to be so big that people not already into comic books will be interested in it, and be willing to try a comic book and pick it up. There's a lot of hurdles there. So, Monster High has a potential clear a lot of those, but the downside is that everybody in comic books, at least the direct market version of comic books, has zero interest in Monster High. So, you don't have the additive. Whereas, something like Transformers has a built-in audience inside of comic books and then Transformers can also pull new readers, non-comic readers to it. So, that's what makes it a valuable license. Monster High, I don't think, has that. Monster High is going to just be pulling in non-comic readers to read this thing. That makes it difficult, but I do think there's something there. We were talking about the other day, I don't think we were talking about on the podcast, but you brought up these major tentpole movies, just talking about licensed properties that might be worth exploring, and you mentioned a couple of them. I can't even mention Barbie. What was the other one? Mario Brothers. Why would you go after something like Monster High when there's Barbie and Mario Brothers sitting out there?

[34:59] John: Well, Nintendo is the white whale of license publishing. I mean, Nintendo is just weird. As far as companies go, their strategies are always unique to themselves. It's well-known in the video game space that Sony and Microsoft are going to do stuff that makes sense, and Nintendo is going to do Nintendo stuff. That makes sense for Nintendo. I just read this somewhere. Everybody that worked on Super Mario Brothers, the 1985 game, I forget when it came out in Japan. Everybody on there is credited on the new Mario Brothers game that came out last month because they all still work at Nintendo.

[35:42] David: Oh, wow. Really? That's fascinating. I love that. I wish we had more of that in this country.

[35:55] John: The tale that is told is always that original Bob Hoskins/John Leguizamo Super Mario Brothers movie was received so poorly that Nintendo just avoided ever doing any licensing or stuff like that from then on, because I mean, they did do comics. I mean, that was what Valiant was, Nintendo comics. They did all that stuff. I mean, there's manga and stuff, especially a lot of Legend of Zelda manga. Obviously, it doesn't hold true with Pokemon, which is partially owned by Nintendo. I mean, you’ve got to edit a Donkey Kong comic at one point.

[36:33] David: That was my bucket list. No joke, I've wanted to make a Donkey Kong comic book, probably since I played Donkey Kong. I want to make that comic book. Somehow, what happened was, Skylanders, The Video Game, had Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. As one of the playable characters in one of the last seasons that Skylanders put out. So, as a promo book, we managed to get Donkey Kong into an eight-page story with Skylanders, but man, I mean, it's Donkey Kong-centric, but I was so happy, and David Baldeon did the art, and David’s so good. He’s perfect for that, he was perfect for the Skylanders, perfect for Donkey Kong. I was so happy with how things turned out, and I mean, we did an insane amount of copies on that thing because it was distributed through Gamestop and all kinds of game distributors. It was a promo. I think we did a quarter million units on that thing. So, not only did I get to do a Donkey Kong, but I also got to do Donkey Kong comic that some people actually saw. I mean, like you say, Nintendo is the white whale. I would do just about anything, and I think that's how you end up with Dick Tracy, because you're like, “Let's do Donkey Kong,” and then you're like, “oh, we can't do that.” There's just no way. You can't crack that egg. They're not going to say yes, and there's no amount of money that you can give them to make it make sense for them. So, you end up like, “what about Barbie?” And Barbie is set up to handle licensing, and they do storytelling. They've got all kinds of little videos and stuff, and they've got the movie, so yeah, maybe Barbie, and then “Nope, can't do that, either.”

The amount of money that Barbie makes on other stuff is just, you can't make it make sense. So, you keep going down your list of licensed properties that might be available and that you can do something with, and then you end up with something like Dick Tracy, because even though everyone knows that a Barbie comic probably has a better chance, at the very least, than a Dick Tracy comic book, you just can't get the Barbie license. Can't get it, can’t make it happen. I'm picking on Dick Tracy, and I don't mean to be picking on Dick Tracy. So, I'm anxious for that book, and I'm sure it's going to be fun but, in terms of just licensed properties, that's the one I'm picking on.

[39:17] John: I do love Dick Tracy. There's been a lot of good Dick Tracy comic books. IDW put out a couple of things. This is going to be another one. The Kyle Baker prequels to the Warren Beatty movie are awesome. You should check those out.

[39:30] David: The couple that edited were really great. I really loved it.

[39:35] John: Mike Oeming one and then the Mike Allred one. Barbie is an interesting case, because I don't know that it was impossible to get a Barbie license, but everything about Barbie is not what that movie is, in terms of the licensing side of Barbie. Obviously, there's no way anybody could have predicted the runaway success level of that movie, but I think the level of success, in general, I suspect took a lot of people by surprise.

[40:04] David: I mean, before that movie launch, there was lots of people make fun of the movie, like “who wants to make a Barbie movie? How they're going to do that? That thing's going to tank.” I heard that a lot.

[40:14] John: There still is not a second thing to go see based on that. You know what I mean? There's a new Netflix show that comes out, but it's got nothing to do with the storytelling from the movie, which is reasonable because the movie is idiosyncratic and so unique, and I'm not saying that that's what Barbie should lean into. Barbie’s a strange one that I think it must have gone from a good, if questionable, license to the biggest thing on the planet over the course of a summer. This is said with no inside knowledge. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody came out with a Barbie comic, but I don't know what that winds up being. You can't do the movie as a comic because it's going to feel dumb, because somebody did that already. You can't pick up that same audience from the movie by doing either just a regular Barbie story where she's, I don't know, an astronaut, or she's a deep-sea diver or mermaid, or whatever. That was one of the brilliant things about the movie, I think, was capturing all those facets of what the character is, and talking about it. So, yeah, I don't know. Barbie is strange. I mean, there also is no other Super Mario Brothers thing to fall back on, but that's because Nintendo is weird. That would make sense if there was one, but they weren't going to have one. Where I feel like Mattel probably would have had one if everything had lined up. If they could see into the future and be like, “Barbie is going to be really huge.” Nintendo, I think, even seeing into the future, they would have been like, “we'll put out a video game in November.”

[41:55] David: The announcement that Nintendo made like a year ago was so perfectly Nintendo. They're like, “Yeah, we're good with the Switch. We’re probably not going to change that out for at least five more years, though. So, it's working fine. We’re not making any changes.” There you go. That's fantastic. I like that. I understand what you're saying with Barbie, and you're right. When you put it in that context, it does make it a more difficult climb, for sure. The movie is the thing of interest, but you can't do the movie, probably.

[42:35] John: It’s not like the other stuff doesn't have interest. I mean, it's not like Barbie wasn't also already very popular, but this is another thing of just adapting stuff in other mediums. I think the level of difficulty of doing a Batman movie is very, very low. Not to take anything away from the people that have done great Batman movies, but he dresses in black, he has a cool car, and he has the best villains anywhere. The level of difficulty on a Barbie movie is extremely high. What's her job? What does she do? Is she a feminist icon, an anti-feminist icon? There's nothing to latch on to. I think that movie being okay would have been extraordinary, but the movie being actually really, really good was beyond extraordinary. Super amazing, and credit to Greta Gerwig and everybody.

[43:29] David: What would you do, John, if you were starting a company and you had to pick up a couple licenses? We've been bashing everybody else’s ideas. What would we do?

[43:41] John: I think the other thing with getting a license, a Dick Tracy or a Flash Gordon, is that it at least says that you're the publisher that does this kind of thing, and there could be a longer game involved in it, as well as trying to create good comics and trying to get that stuff out. Starting out as a publisher, I don't know that going for something one of those wouldn't totally make sense to me. This is the problem, is that because of the way culture is fragmented so much, it's hard to find that pervasive thing, the way My Little Pony was a smash hit when that came out as a comic 10 years ago, or whenever that launched. It's hard to find something that is so culturally pervasive outside of stuff that already is licensed, that we're talking about, or that is Barbie or Nintendo stuff that's hard to license. I mean, stuff like Sonic the Hedgehog, that's a great one. That's a super good license. That's at IDW as well. What would you do?

[44:42] David: I agree with you with the fragmentation of fandom, because there's so many, outside of NFL football, there's not this huge mass consensus very often on creative works. Everybody has so many different directions they can go, and there's so much available to us. So, it's hard to get that level of awareness around a property that would translate to good sales in comic books, because comic books are such a niche market, the top funnel has to be so big, so it’s still a meaningful number by the time you get down to the bottom of the funnel, which is people who are willing to buy a comic book, so I was thinking about leaning more into genre overall, and where I landed was horror. I think you could start a horror-based comic book company in 2023, and serve that niche, and service that horror niche and probably do pretty well. So, in order to signify that or signal that, I would lean into getting a couple of horror licenses, and I was looking at what was available. I think something, nostalgia factor-wise, a Nightmare on Elm Street, I think is one, could lead into some more recent stuff, like The Conjuring or Saw. I think, Evil Dead probably plays well in comic books still. There might be people trying to do Evil Dead. I'm not sure.

[46:14] John: Yeah, there's a long history of Dynamite doing Ash in Army of Darkness stuff. I think Evil Dead gets into one of those weird ones where every iteration of it is owned by a different company. So, it can be licensed separately.

[46:26] David: And then, I thought Scream would be a really good one, too, because Scream, you can also play a little bit for comedy. It's got a little more room in it to play, and so, I thought Scream’s probably my number one. I think, out of those to roll with. All those movies, all the Scream movies have done well. There's no stinker in any of the Scream, in terms of sales. I don't know it story-wise but, in terms of box office, every single time Scream comes out, it does well, so that tells me that concept in general is doing well, so I would lean into that. So, that's where I’d go. That would be my business. That's where I would start, and then everything that I do would be creator-owned type stuff or internally developed stuff, would all be around the horror genre concept. I'm going to be the horror company, and then just for my own personal, I want to do John Wick, and I know that there was a John Wick comic book Dynamite put out several years ago, and I think it was pretty well received, but I think John Wick now would do even better than it did back then, for the reasons that we talked about last episode, where before John Wick, my personal experience with John Wick was that was the first two movies. It was just there. I was trying to keep up with how many people were getting shot in the head, in the chest, and it was just this super high action adventure, with Keanu Reeves just blowing people away for an hour and a half, and I was 100% entertained by that, and I think, when the last John Wick comic book came out around 2017, or something like that, I can't remember exactly, but with the last two movies, you've got more story, you've got more characters, the mythology has grown quite a bit since then and now, as a fan, we're invested in the story, it's still about putting one in head and in the chest, but it's about so many other things now.

There's so many other characters, there's so much going on, and it's really become developed, and the owners of the property has shown a willingness with the TV show to go outside of just John Wick movies. They're willing to tell other stories. So, they've expressed the interest. Makes me think “there's probably something.” They've licensed comic books before, the mythos has grown, the popularity has grown, and they've got story that you can explore in a comic book in a meaningful way, and would count. That's really another thing that we haven't really talked about, and maybe we can save it for another time, but it has to count. The comic books have to be, for lack of better term, in continuum. They have to have meaning, and that's how you make this stuff work.

[49:22] John: I mean, I think something like Conjuring, the network of the Evil Dead stuff, aside from the weird right splits on it, that totally makes sense. I mean, I think you could probably look at the X Pearl universe. That's probably a cool place in horror as well, stuff that's building up a mythology around it. It wouldn't be interesting with Nightmare on Elm Street, or any of those classic properties, tell that story in comics, and try to do anything about it. I know they're making a Crystal Lake TV show or they're supposedly doing that about Friday the 13th. I mean, really, one day every couple years, somebody gets killed. I mean, most of the time, it's just a camp. I mean, you could just do a regular camp show or camp comic. I like to think that Friday the 13th, if you watch that first movie, they made that movie, and they're like, “do we market this more as a camp setup procedural or do we lean into the part where somebody starts killing somebody in the last? Which way do you think people are going to want to go to the movie? What do we do?” Nightmare’s a good one, because that's a hard one to reboot in movies, and I mean, they did, but one might have to remind someone that they did, because that character was Robert England. You know what I mean?

[50:47] David: You take Robert England out of it and it's not Nightmare on Elm Street anymore.

[50:51] John: When you do that in comics, he’s obviously not there. So, you're not losing anything.

[50:55] David: It can be Robert England as long as you want it to be.

[50:59] John: Yeah, even if you were totally rebooting it, even if you're going to go back and do a new version of it from day one, and that's smart. I think, having that genre’s focus makes a lot of sense, too.

[51:08] David: Yeah, that's the big piece, is the sharper focus, because then you're the go-to company for science fiction or the go-to company for horror, and I think horror is easier, and I also think that horror, in particular, plays to the comic book buying audience, more than others, and I think Walking Dead is a perfect example of that, and I mean, I know that's a unicorn out there, but I think there's a reason why a black and white comic book from two at the time, not super wildly popular, creators became what it became just in comic books, and I think, because people were, “holy shit, zombie comic book. Hell yeah, and it's done well. Man, sign me up.” Comic book fans, they're in for the horror stuff. There's a large segment of the comic book audience that like horror, and a large segment of the audience, for entertainment, likes horror. It's huge. So, if you lean into that, do it well, I think you can do that. That’s what I would do. So, anything else to add on that one, John? I feel like we did a good business on this one. This was the longest we've talked about a single subject. Hopefully, people are into it.

[52:26] John: There's a lot more that’d be worth noting, but I do think, in terms of younger graphic novels, middle grade, and YA graphic novels, that's been a place where it's been hard for licensed stuff to cut through, other than stuff that's been adapted from novels. Yeah. I mean, actually, I think, you could say that. Actually, I was going to say, with the exception of my precious Babysitters Club, but even that's adapted from novels. So, maybe that's not right, with exceptions. I'm sorry. You know what? I say that, and then I can think of the Five Nights at Freddy's and a couple other ones. Plants versus Zombies. There are some exceptions to that, but that's still a tricky one, I think, to have your giant hits in that medium are not licensed ones a lot of the time, which is the most qualified statement anybody could make. I could make that about anything. So, maybe that's worth more pondering, but we don't have time.

[53:19] David: Yeah, I think we better wrap this, man.

[53:23] John: I'm sick of both of us.

[53:26] David: Well, thanks to our three listeners who have hung in there. Thanks for the chat. I liked this one. I think we did get a good one here. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Hopefully, you got something out of this. Once again, a little bit of a peek behind the curtain, how we think about these things on the business side, at least, and how sometimes you have those questions about “why hasn't there been a Goonies comic book?” It makes so much perfect sense. Why hasn't somebody made the Goonies comic? And the answer is because trust us, many people have tried, and it just can't be done. At least, not yet, and it's usually because of some silly business reason. So, thanks, everybody, for listening, and we'll be back next week with a new topic, and I think we'll have some more guests coming up here pretty soon, too. So, thanks again, and see you next time.

[54:15] John: See you later.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, tell your friends about us, leave a review and comments. Check out www.cornerbox.club for updates, and come back and join us next week for another episode of The Corner Box with John and David.