[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.

[00:41] David Hedgecock: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm your host, David Hedgecock, and with me, as always, is my very good friend.

[00:48] John Barber: John Barber.

[00:49] David: This is another grab bag issue. Not because we didn't have anything planned, but because there's just so much happening right now. We're days away from San Diego Comic Con. So, there's all this crazy news starting to bubble up. There's just a big grab bag of stuff. I hope everybody sticks around for this one. I'm excited to jump into it, find out where we go. I guess, one caveat: I'm usually very positive, but there's some negative stuff in here and I'm going to be negative, John. I might be negative today. So, get ready, everybody.

[01:18] John: Alright. Well, I don't know, man. I don't know if I could take it. It's been a hell of a week.

[01:22] David: Yeah, you're busy. You're busy getting prepared for this San Diego show, right?

[01:24] John: I didn’t just mean that. I meant, in the world, in general. When you're listening to this, you can set your Way Back Machines in your head back to the week before Comic Con. Those are some tumultuous seven days. Somebody took a shot at a presidential candidate, stuff like that. There's a lot going on in the world.

[01:43] David: That's very true. It seems like every time we get on this podcast, there's a lot going on in the world, though, John. It’s just a fast-paced world. That's what we need to accept. So, things move quickly, these days. I've been watching Ancient Aliens on TV, legitimately, as research. Ancient Aliens is my all-time favorite TV show, and here's why. I do not believe that there were actually aliens that have ever been on this planet. I genuinely do not believe that, but I love that show because everybody that's on that show, at least that's in front of the camera, 1000% believes it with their entire heart and all of their conviction. They believe it. They truly believe it, and if they don't actually believe it, they're the best actors that I have ever seen in my life. These guys are incredible. They're writing books. They're traveling around the world, all in the pursuit of trying to prove to the general population that aliens have existed and interacted with humans in our ancient past, and, John, it's fantastic. I love these guys. So, it's like watching a religion being built.

[02:59] John: It's fascinating to look at that stuff. To me, in the 70s, not that either of us were around for this stuff, but Chariots of the Gods. That book was really big and that led to The Eternals at Marvel, and that's what Kirby was inspired by. I don't think he quite believed that.

[03:15] David: Oh, is it really?

[03:17] John: Yeah, The Eternals was inspired by Chariots of the Gods.

[03:19] David: Are you serious? I did not know that.

[03:20] John: Yeah. He talked about it. I don't think that's a secret. I'm not suggesting that he believed aliens were here.

[03:22] David: That was his source.

[03:31] John: Reading some old science fiction stuff from anywhere in that era, from the 50s through the late 70s, maybe even, every rational science fiction writer, at some point, believes that ESP and telepathy are real, and it's funny to see that. Even somebody like Isaac Asimov, or somebody that's dead against that stuff. There's so much, I guess, talk about that, at different points, that that was just a thing in our culture, and I might actually circle back to this point, but we have completely forgotten that. We have absolutely erased that that was a thing that rational people, at one point, believed in, or at least, believed was very probable.

[04:18] David: Yeah, the CIA was conducting all the experiments and developing an entire program around that.

[04:23] John: Yeah. No, definitely. Yeah, I think that's true, but I think that isn’t some weird CIA thing. That was a weird cultural moment. Anyway, but yeah, sure. Ancient Aliens. All right. Is this for a project you're working on?

[04:36] David: Yeah. I've already derailed this. This has nothing to do with any of the topics I wanted to talk about, but yeah, I'm working on a scripts for one of the books I'm working on. So, I don't want to give it away because then I'll […].

[04:54] John: Is it Eternals? Did you create The Eternals just now?

[04:56] David: Marvel hired me to.

[04:58] John: I was hoping you're like, “is that really?” because you didn't realize you also just created The Eternals, and here's where, if I could remember a single Eternals name, I'd throw it out as one of the characters you invented, but I can't. I don't know who they are anyway.

[05:13] David: This. See? I've warned everybody. It's not All-Positivity David today. That movie was not good.

[05:18] John: It wasn’t my favorite, but there's a weird thing with The Eternals, though, and I don't remember a thing about them. The Eternals always wash over me and disappear. I saw the movie. I remember the guy from Game of Thrones played Black Knight, but he's not even an Eternal. I've enjoyed her other movies, the director of that film.

[05:39] David: So, anyway, John, I wanted to talk about Omnibus.

[05:42] John: The big, thick collections of comic books?

[05:44] David: No, the digital website. They closed their doors, John.

[05:47] John: You're going to be negative. I'm going to be just a bit douchey this episode because I forgot they existed until you and Dave Baker were talking about that, and I was like, “what[…]?”

[05:59] David: That might have something to do with the fact that they had to shut their doors. When hardcore, dedicated comic guys like you don't even know they exist. That could be the problem.

[06:09] John: Yeah. I don't mean anything negative about the people doing it, but go ahead. Sorry, this is your topic.

[06:14] David: First of all, I understand why you might think, in 2024, that that could be a viable business, and I also understand why it probably is very hard to make that a viable business, in 2024. My thinking, when I saw it, was, “yeah, that tracks,” because, A, selling digital comics is fraught with danger right now. You've got the Marvel App, which, for $60 or $70 a year, you can get all the Marvel comic books, and that's the only place to get them. So, there's that. Then, for $100 a year, you can get all the DC comic books, almost day and date, at this point. They're only a month behind, for $100 a year. So, that's 90% of the market. Now, there's another giant chunk of manga that's out there, but you've got the Shonen Jump app, and there's a couple of other manga apps that are out there, that are wildly popular. So, there's the other biggest chunk of possible sales.

So, what you're looking at, at the end of the day, is maybe 5% of the existing North American market that you have access to, and then you have to deal with all the pirate sites that are doing a better job of curating and cataloguing than the Marvel and DC, and manga apps, and I do not download. I do not pirate. I refuse to. I work in the industry. I don't condone it. I wish people wouldn't do it, but it is there, it exists, and when you're talking about a business, you have to be realistic that that's something that you're going to be competing with. So, when you already have something, digital sales are probably maybe 10-20% of any publisher’s normal business. It might be a little bit more, in 2024, but I'm guessing it's right around there, somewhere. So, if 10-20% of your gross profit is that, 5% of publishers, you have availability of, and then you're only able to scrape off 10-20% of their gross to potentially go to you, man, the math gets real hard, and then you start adding in the fact that this is a tech app. It's an app, and it's going to require coding, and it's going to require updating, Apple's constantly changing their systems. Same for these others. Oh, man, it gets expensive real fast. It makes perfect sense to me that they weren’t able to get over the hump with a couple of years’ worth of attempts.

[08:54] John: I think it was relatively high-profile, too, but there are a bunch of digital apps that nobody’s heard of. Back when we were at IDW, our digital guy that was selling stuff to different companies, he'd bring up some new place, every once in a while, and it would be there for a little bit, maybe make some revenue, and then disappear. It's tough because I think this one, if I remember everything, correct me if I'm wrong, because like I said, I’d forgotten, but this is when there was a big shake-up at ComiXology, that this launched as an alternative to ComiXology. Wasn't that the genesis or the perception of it?

[09:28] David: When I was looking into it, ComiXology shuttered basically.

[09:33] John: It got absorbed into Kindle.

[09:35] David: Into Kindle, and that's when Omnibus immediately moved into the space, or attempted to.

[09:43] John: The problem with that, I think, on a big size, is that there are a bunch of people really mad about ComiXology and the people that are super into comics business, and super into digital comics, but for the majority of users, I don't think it was as big a deal. You can still go there, you can still buy all the comics there.

[09:58] David: On the Kindle?

[09:59] John: Yeah, and it's not the reading experience is, I mean, yes, it was really shitty for a few weeks, but it's not like it stayed really bad. It's a tough sell to make because I think it was replacing a thing that most people didn't actually think needed replacing. Amazon buying ComiXology was the worst thing that's ever happened to digital comics.

[10:17] David: For sure.

[10:18] John: In terms of spreading the reach of them and stuff, just because spreading the reach of digital comics was not Amazon's goal, by buying ComiXology. Honestly, it makes sense for them to pull it into Kindle. I mean, there's all sorts of things that, actually, in as much as anything makes sense, that makes sense to do. It is weird that you had two Amazon apps, at that point, that were both for reading all of those things, but the market’s already divided up.

I mean, I've already got a bunch of digital readers on my iPad. One of the problems with streaming stuff, in general, is I've got too much content already. I don't need to seek out another source of content that I don't know what the content is going to be, but again, this is no disrespect to the people putting all this together. It isn't like Quibi, where it is a fundamentally terrible idea, launched at a bad time. The fact that that launched during the pandemic is an excuse. Quibi was never going to be able to compete against TikTok and YouTube. It was 100% absurd. This wasn’t. It was just bad timing, but also, I don't know if there is a good timing for it.

[11:19] David: Having a centralized place, where you could go to one spot, get all your entertainment, cheap, back in the day, when Netflix was ruling the roost, and that was the only game in town. That was pretty nice. You can get all your Marvel TV shows, and you just basically get everything you want off of one app, and now, to your point, everything's spread to the wind. With something like movies and television, and that level of entertainment, with so many eyeballs on it, it makes sense that maybe three or four of those players will be able to continue to exist in the space. Although, we're seeing that maybe that's not true, but certainly, that can't be the case for something as small as the comic book, a centralized distribution mechanism, single app access point, would have made a lot of sense. Having something like Omnibus grow into a big thing, where you had that one spot where all your digital comics are kept, would have been a nice thing. So, I get why they tried it. I'm not saying that that idea, on paper, doesn't have merit.

Definitely, if you think you can make it work, then I can definitely see somebody going for it. You keep your overhead low, dig in with the publishers, and eventually, start trying to scrape off the Marvel, DC, and manga stuff into your app, as well, and you could probably make a go of it. So, I certainly see why the people at Omnibus can talk themselves into thinking they got something, but now that it's done, I can also see the flip side of that. It's hard to grow when you've got so many barriers between you and what the majority of the comic book publishing stuff in North America is providing. When you're already cut off from 90-plus percent, then that gets tough real fast. Does Dark horse still do its own app, as well? Does Dark Horse still own its app?

[13:05] John: I don't know anymore. I'm not sure.

[13:08] David: I don't know if it's still doing this thing. I know that there was a time where Dark Horse developed and maintained their own app. It wasn't even White Label. I think they actively just created the whole thing themselves.

[13:18] John: Oh, wow.

[13:19] David: Which in the early days, I thought was a good idea, but over time, I don't know, maybe that wasn't a great idea. So, anyway, that's Omnibus. Another one bites the dust. I wonder what's going to fill that space, that digital space, if anything. I don't know. Maybe this is good for the comic bookshops, but Image doesn't really have a place where you can go. Image doesn't have an app. I wonder if they have entertained that idea, at all. If they've got any designs towards doing that, or if they're just going to continue to fill whatever buckets show up in front of them to get filled, even though, as a consumer, I read a lot of my comics on my iPad now. Probably the majority of my comics, I'm reading on my iPad, but I do like the fact that, for an Image comic book, I basically have to go to a store or jump on eBay and get a physical copy. There's something to that, that, while sometimes I'm frustrated by it, I do appreciate it, because the physical print, the reading experience, still is the best experience. As good as the reading experience, for me, has become on the iPad, that print experience is still the best version, for me.

[14:33] John: Yeah, I could see that. I mean, I do think that digital has some pluses to it. The colors can be really vibrant and it's better than it was 20 years ago. It's definitely something that, the experience now, you could at least make an argument as to which one you preferred, where I think, at one point, it was unquestionable, just the resolution and everything was so much better, in print, but yeah, I mean, I'm a big print guy. There's something about reading, and not always. I buy a lot of Humble Bundles, too. So, I might just sit down and read all the BPRD stories, or whatever, that I bought on Humble Bundle. I'll be happy as a clam reading them all on digital, but I'm not going to get rid of my stack of Hellboy paperbacks. It doesn't replace it, for me.

[15:17] David: Yeah. When I find it most convenient is just that travel time, when you're on a plane or you go on vacation. I used to have to lug around a backpack, literally just a backpack, dedicated to, whatever, 30 trade paperbacks or comics that I was going to bring with me because I wanted to read them. Did I ever read all of them? Rarely, but I had them with me, and I certainly had the ambition to do it. Now, it's just on the iPad, and that is a game-changer. It’s very nice to have that.

[15:48] John: Two Thanksgivings ago, and to my friend, Pat Bonfrisco’s wedding, and I got stuck at Akron Airport, or the airport region. I was at the hotel across the street from the airport, for an extra day, but I had my iPad, and I was like, “fantastic.” You know what I mean? I'm just going to sit here and enjoy the hotel room, and then enjoy sitting at O'Hare airport for an 8-hour layover, at some point, and just read a bunch of comics, and that's great.

[16:17] David: Nice. Well, RIP Omnibus. I'm curious to see what the next move in the digital space is, but I wish all those folks the best of luck. I didn't know any of them over there, but I hope they all land quickly and easily into whatever they're going to do next, and just wanted to bring that one up. There's been a lot of interesting business moves, in the last couple of weeks. So, we mentioned Larry Hama GI Joe: Real American Hero Kickstarter recently. I think the last time we talked about it, it wasn't done. It was at $2million, and it ended up over $3million. I think, 7/8000 people purchased the books.

[16:59] John: David, I'm not sure. Is $3million a good amount for 40-year-old comics to make you? I'm not sure. No, man, that is amazing.

[17:08] David: The profit on that has got to be insane. I mean, you think it's 80%? I bet it's 80%, because there's no shipping cost there, John. The shipping is part, you're paying for shipping.

[17:27] John: Oh, I see. There's not an additional fee.

[17:29] David: Yeah. So, there's no outsized extra cost here. The only cost that's here is the printing of the stuff, and when you're printing that volume, 7/8000 copies of the thing, you're going to get some good deals. Even all the fancy stuff, you're going to get some good deals, man, and they're definitely going to print more than just 7/8000 copies. I'm sure, because it's Skybound, and they do good quality stuff. So, I'm sure they're going to throw a ton of bells and whistles at this thing. Everything is going to be a premium package, but even at that, I think they're at 70/80% profit, net, and it's shocking. It's a shocking amount of money. So, one of the things that I mentioned, John, was that no licensed property has ever been more associated with a single creator, to my mind, the way that Larry Hama is associated with GI Joe: Real American Hero. Larry Hama is GI Joe: Real American Hero. He has written every single issue of that book, of that run.

[18:50] John: No, he actually didn't. There's one issue he didn't write, early-on.

[18:43] David: Okay. Alright. Thank you for that. So, of the 300-plus issues that have been written, potentially one, he did not write. I mean, he is GI Joe: Real American Hero. Hold on just a sec. Sorry.

[18:56] John: A Classified Mission briefing from Shooter, the GI Joe guy from Issue #1, that was mentioned on the computer screen and never showed up again. That's who's briefing David right now. Looks like a serious mission. This is probably going to involve the October Guard, and it looks like David's off to Afghanistan in the 1980s.

[19:15] David: Sorry.

[19:16] John: I gave them the rundown. You're off to Afghanistan in the 1980s because, Shooter […].

[19:24] David: I take off my headphones for two seconds. So, anyway, no one's ever been more associated with a licensed property than Larry Hama, and when you have that much money, at that level of profitability, my sincere hope and dream is that Larry Hama gets a nice payday out of that, in addition to the company that put it together, because it's not that Skybound does not deserve to make as much profit as they can make, as a business. That's certainly their right, their prerogative, and if they put this together and they made it successful, and it certainly was more successful because Skybound was involved. So, I'm not saying that they don't have the right to take all of it, basically, but my hope is that somebody like Larry Hama, who is definitely getting up there in age, is, I don't know, just taken care of, and I saw something the other day that really made me depressed because I don't really follow Larry Hama very closely on social media, but this popped up in my feed, for some reason. So, I wanted to read it, and then I wanted to get your take on it.

So, this is from July 9th, 2024. Larry writes in a Facebook post, he says, “I have macular degeneration.” He's losing his sight. Is that what macular degeneration is? I believe that's what it is. I should have done some research. Anyway, “I will probably be incapable of drawing within the next few years. So, if you want a sketch, better act soon. Although, my arthritis may make everything moot before then. I have no ligaments left in my basal thumb joints. It's just bone scraping against bone. Therefore, drawing is actually quite painful, but not as painful as signing my signature.” In that campaign, he signed 500 books or something like that, or it was 100. It was a very large number of plates that he was signing, that all sold out instantly. I was there on the first day of that campaign, and those things were sold out already. So, I've read, and I did a little more research, and I've read in other places, I think Larry works because he likes to, as much maybe he needs to. Reading between the lines, is he working because he has to, right now? Because, gosh dang, man, can we not do that, as an industry?

[21:46] John: I don't know. I don't really know what Larry gets up to, because he does a lot. I mean, he's busy. Even in the time when the only thing he saw coming out was Real American Hero, he wasn't just writing Real American Hero, I don't think. I think he was doing other stuff that just wasn’t forefront of American comic books or something. I've disappeared for the past year or something. Nobody sees the video game thing I'm working on, or whatever, but I know he's not as rich as he should be, for everything he's created. I think that's fair to say.

[22:18] David: That's my concern, is that I'm not saying he should be as rich as he should be. I'm just saying, a guy who is able to generate $3million worth of income over the course of a week, for a company, through his dedicated, almost obsessive, work, if there was a royalty guarantee against this thing, he'd have tons of cash, but because he's working in a licensed property that's gone through several publishers, there's no royalties, necessarily, attached to any of this work. Frank Miller writing Dark Knight, he's still getting royalties off of that, but in this particular instance, it's not the case. It's frustrating to me that I even have to bring this up, as a concern, and what it makes me think about is, I'm looking at the industry, as we are right now, and I know what people are making for their page rates in some of the royalty structures. It's not sustainable in a way that allows for really creative, really talented people to continue in the industry without having some breakout project that they themselves are doing at Image, where they own it. I don't see how the bigger corporations are taking care of talent right now. So, Larry is just this shining, glaring spotlight on that particular issue.

[23:36] John: The thing that I'm really against, which is everybody that I grew up with getting older. I don't like that. I think it would have been better if everybody that I grew up reading and watching stopped aging in 2002/2003. They were a little older than that when I was a kid, but not that old. Also, a bunch of people died this week. You know what I mean? This has been a rough week for shows that we grew up with. I mean, Bob Newhart, Shannen Doherty, the dad from Doogie Howser. There is that part that Larry's not super young. I don't know. Larry's always had a pretty positive relationship with Hasbro, from everything I've heard. So, I don't want to speculate too much, because there are times at Marvel, where I know that Marvel was at least helping to take care of, to some degree, some of the older creators that weren't actively doing stuff, and that wasn't being publicized, and that wasn't a thing everybody knew about, and you'd sometimes see people complaining about it, and other times, you’d see people very validly complaining about it. I'm not saying you should trust corporations. I don't know.

It's a crazy circumstance that so much of comics are based on licensed material or material that the creators don't own, as opposed to novels. There are a lot of novelists who don't make the money that they deserve, as well, but for different reasons. Game of Thrones sells a billion copies, and George R.R. Martin doesn't get rich from it. Now, he does, but the person that writes the Star Wars novels doesn’t, but that's a relatively small percentage of publishing prose compared to comics. I hope Larry's well taken care of. I don't know. I mean, he's great. He's a national treasure, both in front of and behind the scenes, on stuff. I don't know where I was going with that.

[25:25] David: I don't know where I'm going with it, either, other than, I genuinely don't know what solution is, and I genuinely don't want to be placing blame at anybody's feet, because I don't know that there necessarily is any blame to be placed at any individual's feet, or any company’s feet, but I feel like, if the industry does not start actively taking better care of talent, eventually it will decline, to the point where it actually can't come back. If companies actively are like, “hey, we're going to pay living wage page rates, and we're going to do, licensed property or not, there is going to be a royalty structure in place for at least at the time that it is published by this company,” as an example, or requiring licensers to make some stipulations about royalties, so that when the Gargoyles Kickstarter does $700,000, Greg Weisman is getting some of that for the work that he did on that, because contractually, there's an obligation there, not because somebody has a goodwill bone in their body to do that.

I still think that the solution would be for labor to unionize, but that just won't happen because every single one of them is an individual business separate in and of themselves and, dear God, getting thousands and thousands of businesses to all agree on something, and also, the industry is built, the reason we are partially in this malaise, for lack of a better term, is that there's so many people that are willing to work in this industry for so little. It's hard to say, “well, I'm going to put my pencil down and not draw,” because there's literally 100 guys waiting to jump over you and pick that pencil up and draw whatever assignment they're given.

[27:23] John: That's true, and also, comics fall in this weird place, where it seems like we’ve got the worst parts of traditional publishing, combined with the worst parts of movies, and everything you said is true about film, as well, but they're all unionized, and I suspect part of that was that, especially early-on, it was more difficult to make and distribute movies than it was to make and distribute comic books. So, there's fewer houses that we're doing it, I guess. Imagine if, somehow, comic book creators did unionize the way Neal Adams was trying to really push for it in the 70s and 80s. What would that mean in today's landscape? Who were you unionizing toward now? Is Random House going to look at you, when you come in and you're unionized, and you're trying to do your graphic novel there? Are they going to be like, “okay?” because there's no union of novelists.

[28:15] David: It's because the structure is different. I guess the structure might not necessarily be different on the licensed work, but on the creative work, the bulk of the creative work that is done in prose, if I write a book, I own it. It is my copyright. So, in a way, in essence, I am gambling on myself, but the vast majority of work in the comic book business, it's the flip of that. It's all licensed because Jack Kirby sold it all for a paycheck in 1963. So, we're all doing Jack’s stuff from that point on, and that is not something that I can gamble on myself. That's me just earning a paycheck. I own nothing after that, except for the original piece of art, which there was a 10-year battle just to get that. So, I do think it's different. I think the industries are different, in that regard. There is no apple-to-apple comparison. PRH would just have to, or whatever the prose company that's stepping into the space, would have to agree, “if you're going to do graphic novels, there's a union that you're going to have to work through and work with, and these are the rates, and if you don't agree to these rates, we're going to try to take you down. As a union, we are going to try to take you down,” and maybe there are different arrangements for when it's creator owned.

[29:35] John: I guess what I was getting at more is, it was one thing to try to unionize people when every company was set up along the lines of a Marvel or DC. That's not the case with comic book deals now, in that there's book publishers, there's web publishers, there's all these different spaces. There are small publishers that do leave you some rights, small publishers that take some rights. I feel like that's really hard in a way that, with movies, Christopher Nolan doesn't own the copyright to his movies. Some corporation or holding company owns the copyright to that, but there are union protections involved in it, where he still gets, allowing for the creative accounting that a company might have, he still gets money for it, blah, blah, blah. Anybody making a movie gets that stuff.

There's at least a similarity of where all those deals are coming from, because nobody's coming out, with rare exceptions, just straight-up owning their own movies when they're making them, and even when they do that, they own them not because they wrote the movie, but because they produced the movie and owned the production company. George Lucas didn't own Star Wars because he wrote it. I'm rambling, but I'm trying to figure out what it is that is the problem with, we've brought this up a couple times, what is the problem with comics that makes it where a union is impossible? Because I agree, it's very difficult to imagine right now. Movies solved it. I don't get it. TV solved it.

[30:54] David: Yeah, but when did they solve it? When there was a fraction of the people working within the industry and it was much easier? I don't know. There's also the fact that there's so many people that are working on a movie that aren't in front of the camera. There are so many people. The grips, and the cameramen, and all that stuff, and those are all considered, I think, at least, at some point, they were considered more blue-collar-type jobs. Of course, they require a specific skillset, and maybe some specific training, but it was more of a blue-collar style job, and that falls well within the category of potential for unionization, and I don't know that we necessarily get that specific type of one-to-one in the comic book community, because everybody that's freelance is creative. They're in front of the camera, for lack of a better term, but anyway, my whole thing is, it's frustrating to read something like that from a guy like Larry Hama. I have no insight on whether he's doing this because he has to or because he wants to.

Looking at some of his posts, it seems like he still is enjoying what he does, and he certainly has other projects outside of GI Joe that seem to be coming online, coming to fruition, one way or another, but I just hope that it's because he wants to, and not because he has to, and I guess, wouldn't it be nice that if we were part of an industry where I didn't have to wonder, and I just knew “he just doesn't want to retire. He's just doing his thing.” Great. Go for it. I guess, that’s all I had to say on that.

[32:40] John: Boom! Next topic.

[32:41] David: Boom! is exactly what I wanted to talk about, John. You knew. Let's layout this timeline here. So, there's a couple of things here, and I don't know anything, John. There was an announcement a couple of weeks ago. Filip Sablik, who is the president and the marketing president, I don't know, I think he handles marketing but he's also the president of the company, or the publisher of the company, Filip Sablik, left Boom! Studios, Boom! Publishing, and I thought that was very curious, because I was like, “man, why would he? The buzz was that he's leaving for some cool new opportunity, and I'm like, “man, seems like Boom's a pretty cool opportunity. I would just probably not go wherever that is going to go and stick with the thing.” The bird in the hand’s worth two in the bush. So, I was looking a little further, also around the same time, former senior editor Dafna Pleban, moved over to Viz. Around the same time, the VP of Licensing and Merchandise, Lance Kreiter, went back to his old job. Well, essentially, his old job, at Dark Horse. So, all these upper-ups. What's going on? Now, tangentially, John, and this is the thing that I wanted to talk about first, around the same time that Filip Sablik is leaving Boom! for parts unknown, Jamie S. Rich, the former editor-in-chief of IDW, announced that he was leaving IDW for parts unknown. I think those two are conspiring to do something, John.

[34:12] John: Okay, I think so.

[34:14] David: Yeah. You think so? I have zero insight, but I'm like, “they're both leaving at the same time, from jobs that seem like they're pretty decent,” on the surface. On the inside, I have a feeling it's a little different, but on the outside, those are pretty high-powered jobs, for a relative unknown thing. So, man, there's got to be a pot of gold at the end of that little rainbow. What is it? What are they going to do? I think they're going to land in the same place, A, and B, what is it?

[34:44] John: Yeah, I don't know.

[34:45] David: Tell me, John. Tell me. We know you know. Only guy I know in comics. I know that you know everything.

[34:52] John: I don't. I don’t know.

[34:55] David: Liar. You know and you’re just not going to tell us. Our audience deserves the truth, John.

[35:02] John: No. My guess is something like DSTLRY, where there's probably somebody looking to do a new publishing initiative.

[35:11] David: The way that DSTLRY thing did?

[35:12] John: I guess. This part, especially, is purely a guess.

[35:17] David: Yeah. 100% speculation.

[35:21] John: I wouldn't be surprised if there was something attached to maybe some other company. I just mean that in the sense that I'm a little surprised nobody else ever did what Legendary started out doing, just having a comic book arm of the movie production, but maybe reversing that, where it seemed like they were doing mostly licensed properties from Legendary, like Godzilla movie comics, stuff like that, but doing it the other way of just having a comic book arm that potentially became movie properties.

[35:55] David: Your development arm is basically just your comic book publishing arm?

[35:59] John: If you already had Marvel Studios, setting up Marvel Comics instead of going the other way, but that's not based on anything. I'm surprised that hasn't happened. So, maybe it's something like this. To be clear, I'm 100% making this up. If it was something like Skydance or something, where they put out a lot of movies. They have their fingers in a lot of different puddings, which is a phrase I made-up that sounds British.

[36:23] David: I think it’s pie? Fingers in multiple pies. I don't know.

[36:28] John: Gross. It would make sense for somebody like that, if something that had a wide range like that.

[36:34] David: It's got to be big. If my presumption, if my guess is that they're going the same place, those are both well-paying jobs, it's got to be something big. I think you might be right, John.

[36:47] John: What if they know Biden is dropping out, and what if their idea, I don't know which one of them is president, which one of them is vice president, but what if that's what they're angling for?

[36:56] David: They’re going to be the new ticket?

[36:58] John: I think that's my new number one theory.

[37:00] David: Alright, which ones the President, Filip or Jamie? I think it's got to be Filip, right?

[37:05] John: Yeah, no offense, Jamie.

[37:07] David: Filip’s just, he's a handsome devil, and he's also got those little PowerPoint presentations that he does. It's so charming. So, he's got that folksy thing going, too. No offense to Jamie, but I think it's got to be Filip. I think you're right. It's got to be something with big pockets, probably within the entertainment industry. You know what it is? Netflix finally got wise and realized that Mark Millar's stuff doesn't really do that well. So, they're going to try again, and they're going to have a comic book arm, a Netflix comic book arm. That's what it is. Netflix stock is going to go through the roof. They’ve got to spend that money somehow, and they're not buying NFL football, yet. My frustration. I like the President, Vice President thing, that they're the new Democratic ticket. I'm leaning into that. That's my new […].

[38:01] John: But that wasn't the end of the news at Boom!

[38:03] David: No, it wasn’t. No, that's the thing. There's so much to talk about this week, John. Speaking of Boom! Speaking of the place where Filip Sablik recently worked at, but no longer does, Boom! sold. Boom! is no longer on the market, John. Boom! has been on the market for the last, before the pandemic, they were trying to sell Boom! Boom! has been up for sale since 2012, but legitimately, since 2019/2020. I saw the pitch deck. Years ago, I saw the pitch deck. So, they finally did it. Those crazy […], they finally did it. They finally found a buyer, and John, it was a great buyer, too. I'm very excited for the future Boom! Penguin Random House bought them.

[38:50] John: Yeah. That's interesting.

[38:52] David: That's what you have for me. That's interesting? That's what you have for our audience. That's interesting? Okay, moving on.

[39:00] John: You know what? It's weird for comics, because that's not the way comics have worked, where a distributor and a comic book publisher were the same company. The one time that was tried was Marvel buying Heroes World Distribution.

[39:15] David: Almost took the industry down.

[39:16] John: Yeah, that was a disaster, and I mean, it almost took the industry down, in abstract terms, and almost very literally took Marvel down. It did cause Marvel to go bankrupt. It did create a situation where they were almost sold off by Ron Perelman, the other Ron Perelman. The other way around, a distributor selling comics, aside from Diamond doing very small things that weren't directly competing against their other publishers, like Diamond Direct.

[39:47] David: Diamond Select?

[39:49] John: Diamond Select. That was it. Sorry.

[39:51] David: You’ve got one mistake per podcast, John.

[39:53] John: That's one of those things, like me trying to name any Apple product now. It's not just because I'm old. It's that I've gone through so many product cycles that I know the three words they use, and I can't remember what order they put them in in this one thing they're talking about. All the Apple products are like Taco Bell menu items. It's the exact same things, just spun around in different orders.

[40:15] David: Configured differently.

[40:16] John: Yeah. So, is it an AirPod, an EarPod, an Earbod, an AirBod?

[40:21] David: I'm shocked that people don't order Taco Bell just by the shape, at this point. Give me the half-moon. Give me the tube. There's no difference. It's all the same stuff inside.

[40:34] John: Presumably, they'll have a very premier spot in PRH’s publishing plan.

[40:43] David: If I was Diamond, I'd drop them right now. They probably can't do it. Contractually, they might not be able to do it, but if I was Diamond, I'd be like, “bye. We're done,” but maybe they want to try to pull that money in.

[40:53] John: Were they not exclusive already?

[40:55] David: I think Boom! was exclusive to Diamond.

[40:58] John: Oh.

[40:59] David: Yeah. No, that's the second half of this discussion. I want to talk about the PRH, what it means to be bought, but then I want to talk about what it means for Diamond. So, it's exciting for me, in a couple of ways, because PRH obviously is a major player, but they're not a major player in the same way that a Disney or a Time Warner Brothers is, in that they are a print publishing company. Their whole thing is printing and distributing prose material. So, they understand, in a more meaningful way, what it is to be in the reading space than just about any other major company out there. Not to say that Disney and Time Warner Brothers does not understand those spaces. They're not in them in a way. I mean, that is Penguin Random House’s thing. That's what they do. They make books and they distribute books for sale. I think it's a brilliant move on PRH’s part, for a couple reasons.

One of the reasons is that it puts them in the graphic novel and comic book space, in a way that they did not have before, and suddenly, they're competing with other prose publishers that have developed graphic novel graphics and First Second, and all that stuff. I don't think they have anything like that, currently, and now suddenly, they do, with a big backlist and licensed properties, and creator-owned properties, and everything in between. Suddenly, they've got all that, and their ability to just immediately move forward with whatever agenda they want, in the graphic novel space, and comic book space, for that matter. It's instant. They just put their stamp on the industry in one move. So, I think it's really smart for them. It probably didn't cost them much because, as I was saying, Boom!’s been on the block for 5 years. So, when you're on the block for that long, you're not selling at a premium, and I'm not saying that everybody at Boom! had shares. I'm sure they all got pretty well taken care of.

I'm guessing that was a 3x, maybe 5x, and I was doing a little research. Boom! since 2012, they've had seven or eight rounds of funding that were public, and each one of those rounds, I couldn't get the details, but the first two rounds, I was able to find. The first round was 1.5mil. The next one was 4.5mil. So, let's make a general assumption that the other six or seven rounds of fundraising were at that five or six million. So, you're looking at $25/30million. You do a 3x on that, you're at $100million to buy that company. You got a decent chunk of change out of that. Everybody that had shares. I mean, Ross Richie probably got a nice chunk of change. I don't know if he quite got FU money, but I bet he got close, but back to PRH, PRH still got it at a discount, is my actual point there. They probably got it at a discount. They didn't have to pay max price on any of that. So, that's a great move for them. Puts them in the space. The second half of that is that Boom! has to be Diamond’s biggest account on the publishing side. Boom! has to be. The biggest chunk of percentage of sales going out of Diamond has got to be Boom!

[44:21] John: I'm sorry, I’ve got to go to the bathroom.

[44:23] David: Alright. We're going to do what John did to me. Whatever he did to me. I don't know what to talk about, though. I'm not as clever as John. I can't do this stuff on the spot. I'm just going to be quiet.

[44:39] John: Alright.

[44:40] David: Anyway, where was I? Oh, the largest percentage of their sales has to be from the Boom! company because who else is there? Dynamite? I don't know who their other premier accounts would be, but the next closest would probably be Dynamite, or maybe I think they're reselling Marvel and DC stuff. So, maybe they're making some there, but what a move. PRH basically took their competitor and said, “hey. We're going to go ahead and take your biggest account. You’ve got six months.” In terms of the distribution wars, Penguin Random House just crushed Diamond. Not that Diamond was even playing anymore, but they crushed them in one move. I think that alone was worth the price, in the grand scheme, but they're getting a lot of other stuff out of it. So, I think it's a brilliant move by the Penguin Random House Group. From what I was reading, they were in the mood to do some shopping, and I think that was a great spend. So, I'm excited for what it means.

I think it gives the comic book industry, as a whole, another big player with deep pockets who can really be aggressive in pushing the medium forward in a variety of different ways. They're going to do it, I'm assuming, in the way that they do their prose, where they lean into the creative talent, they let creative talent do the thing, and then push and promote their work, instead of “hey. Look, we can do Power Rangers,” which is cool, yay, but not pushing the medium forward in any meaningful way. I think it's a great move on PRH’s part, and I think it'll be, ultimately, fingers crossed, I think it's good for the industry.

[46:07] John: Yeah. I'm interested to see what it does, what it changes at Boom! how much of it changes. Does it actually stay the same? Is this PRH's chance to do more licensed stuff, to do more Power Rangers, and do these comics? How does this fit in with PRH's other publishing arms? That's the weird parts about it. It's pretty rare for a publisher to get absorbed by a company that has a lot of publishing arms already, and Marvel and Disney was a different thing, because Marvel's not a publisher the same way Boom! is. You can't go to Marvel with the book you want to publish, and they'll maybe publish it. Marvel publishes Marvel stuff, and the same thing true with DC, although a little bit less so, in terms of the Warner stuff, but DC was pretty separate from any Warner Books stuff, aside from 1986, when Warner Books was publishing the bookstore paperbacks of DC stuff. I don't know what that means. Is there a world where Boom! just gets chopped up and sent to other parts of PRH at some point? Or does Boom! stay Boom!?

[47:12] David: I think Boom! is going to stay Boom! and the only reason I think that right now is that, while Boom! might not have been selling from a position of power, because it's been on the block for a while, it still is, I think, a viable, profitable company. I think if it’s not profitable, it's so close to profitability that once PRH gets in there and streamlines a few things, it'll definitely be profitable. That BRZRKR Kickstarter, didn't it do $1million or something?

[47:38] John: Right. Yeah. I mean, but is that what they become then? Boom! does that and then Boom! also publishes Buffy comics, or whatever, Boom! also publishes Power Rangers comics. So, they've got all that stuff that’s on the licensed side of things, because the Power Rangers Kickstarters also did extraordinary.

[47:55] David: Oh, yeah. That's right. Power Ranger thing did half a mil.

[47:58] John: Yeah, and at the same time, they also published Mech Cadet and a lot of creator-owned stuff, and some stuff that was getting developed in other mediums and stuff, stuff that was just being published by them. Boom! was a wide-open general interest publisher. You know what I mean? They published a lot of different stuff. They had a certain look and a certain feel to what Boom! was, but again, it isn't like Marvel, where Marvel publishes Marvel comic books, full stop. It's Marvel characters. They're more of an IP company that also publishes comic books. Boom! publishes stuff, but PRH publishes stuff in a million places, but then again, they publish from a million places. So, it makes sense to have another one.

[48:39] David: Yeah, and also, they don't publish in a million places, graphic novels and comic books. Comic books, specifically.

[48:48] John: Yeah, periodical comic books. Exactly.

[48:50] David: They don't. There's still a market for it. There still is a market for that. So, why not grab that piece and see if you can grow it, and like you said, streamline it? So, I'm very interested in this move. I am anxious to watch it unfold. I'm anxious to find out who they put in place at the top, and I think it's going to be really fun to follow this one for a while, and I think, for the health of the industry, I think this was generally a positive move. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for it.

[49:21] John: As Boom! enters a new era of publishing, the last issue of Joe Matt's Peepshow came out, and the weird thing with that, seeing that now, I think the previous issue of Peepshow was from 2007 or something. It's been a little while. Joe Matt died last year, and this thing arrived. To me, picking it up, it's like a transmission from a lost civilization. It's so weird to see that now, again, in a week where a bunch of people died, a bunch of stuff was going on. So, Joe Matt was one of the pioneers of autobiographical comics. There were these three Toronto-based artists, Joe Matt, Seth, and Chester Brown. Joe Matt was actually an American, but he moved to Toronto. The three of them were doing their own auto-bio comics for years, starting in the 80s, going through the 90s, up into the 2000s. At some point, Seth and Chester Brown both started, I think, focusing more on non-autobio stuff, stuff that was more fiction or historical stuff. Chester Brown did Louis Riel, his book about Canadian history. Seth died at his drawing board. Seth didn’t die. Joe Matt died. Sorry.

[50:28] David: Joe Matt. I feel like the last time I read something from him was in the 90s.

[50:32] John: I was interested. I'm like, 60-year-old Joe Matt, what was he drawing when he passed away? Because the last three […] of this comic were inked by Chester Brown. He didn't actually completely finish the comic, but Chester finished it up. There's no mention of what happened, other than in the indicia, that the materials copyright the Estate of Joe Matt, and they thank the Matt family, and all that stuff.

[50:55] David: In the indicia?

[50:56] John: Yeah. There's no text feature.

[50:58] David: Really? That's odd.

[51:03] John: I don't know. The comic is packed. The story, that back cover, there's no room. The way the story is built, it jumps around in time. So, you're seeing events out of order all around the same time period. So, it's hard to even tell if that was the story. Maybe there was going to be more. I really don't know that much about it. The story is set in 2003. So, it's already set 20 years ago. So, we're actually just looking at 40-year-old Joe Matt. It's set at a time where HBO had optioned his graphic novel, The Poor Bastard, that was a collection of Peepshow, to be a TV show, and Joe Matt move to LA to try to make this TV show. Spoiler alert, it doesn't happen, but that doesn't actually come up in the comic. It's about him leaving Toronto and leaving his friends. So, it's really heartfelt and everything. Also, most of what Joe Matt wrote about in Peepshow is about him not drawing comics. “I don't want to draw comics.” That stuff, and then also, his pornography collection and how much he masturbates. That was largely what Peepshow was about. This one is also about that. He's moved to LA, but it's also about him trying to date young Asian women, and that's not a comic you can launch today.

It’s weird to see this thing, like I said, from this lost civilization, where in the late 80s, early 90s, it wasn't like people weren't saying, “Joe Matt comics. There's a lot of him talking about pornography,” but there was that confessional, letting you into the side of things that people don't talk about, of their own lives, aspect to it, where I don't think that's how that is now. I don't think that's how you look at that now, when he's like, “I don't know. As a 40-year-old guy, maybe I shouldn't be dating this 18-year-old girl that I met online” because I think the answer that we've come up with is a resounding “no.” Yeah, you shouldn't. You shouldn't. That's right.

[53:12] David: We worked that problem out.

[53:13] John: Yeah, you know why that seems creepy? Because it is. I don't mean to be talking bad about the dead, especially about the dead, when it's somebody that is writing a book about what a jerk they are, and that’s how he paints this stuff. He isn't coming off like, “oh, I'm a great guy.” I'm like, “oh, man. I'm a mess. I sure do love young Asian girls. I hope I can go out with this one.” It's not the world we live in anymore.

[53:38] David: We're not going to title this podcast “Young Asian Girls.” It’s not going to fly, John. I guess he's still doing it today, but he's recalling it, 2003, a moment of time and perspective, and even at that point, things were definitely different. The Internet was definitely not what it is now, and the way that we parse and consume information is much different. Back then, I'm just completely riffing here, but “back in the day,” having somebody like Joe Matt expose himself, his real self, in a way, him revealing his ugliness was cathartic for the reader, in a way. It's like, “Oh, I'm not that, but I have my own issues.” So, it was almost a catharsis. Whereas we are exposed to so much now. There was a vomitus of people exposing their lives. It's not needed. It's not necessary. It’s not required. So, it becomes, I don't know, just a dirty old man trying to talk about weird stuff, but that's not what it was, then, to your point. You're right, I don't know that you can do Peepshow, in 2024. Oh, I shouldn't say that. I should say that I don't know what Peepshow is in 2024. I don't know that it's that novel, actually.

[55:06] John: It is funny, because Peepshow is a formative thing in autobiographical comics, and he talks a lot about how Robert Crumb was his idol, and he was trying to do what Crumb did, which was unfiltered, “here's the actual self.” I don't know that we want that anymore, when that's what you're seeing. I think, also, part of it is, at some level, basing the idea that the audience was similar people to him, but I don't think that that's the image of the audience you have anymore, either. I feel like the image of the audience has broadened out, universally, that we don't think of just the same type of people reading this stuff. It's strange.

The other part, though, about this is that, when we decide something is wrong, and we generally agree that something is wrong, a thing that we used to do, but we don't say anymore, we forget that, not that long ago, that thing was just going on, even if it wasn't okay. We swing so far to the “these are words that you don't say,” and I'm all for it. That's how we grow as a society. We sometimes forget that it wasn't that long ago that people did say words that we don't say anymore, or that thing, and seeing Peepshow popping up, I don't know, it was a strange experience. I don't know what I'm getting at. It felt, to me, like a transmission from an old civilization, and I was never actually a huge Joe Matt fan, especially. Chester Brown was probably my favorite of any of them, and he's still around. I'm saying Chester Brown like he's not with us anymore. He certainly is. I don't know, man. A weird ending, as new things begin and things grow out.

[56:43] David: Getting old is weird.

[56:45] John: Yeah, I guess that's it.

[56:48] David: I would like to unsubscribe from getting old.

[56:50] John: Yeah, I'm happy that I don't look at this and be like, “well, this is perfect. That's the way things should be. We should objectify people in that way.”

[57:00] David: But you never did. I like how you phrased it. It's like opening up a time capsule from 25 years ago and this is what edgy, revealing auto-bio make you think was, 25 years ago, and now I'm desperately wanting people to stop revealing about themselves and their lives, and everything they do. Please stop. Can we all just add a filter or three?

[57:28] John: Yeah, indeed. Alright, we’ve probably gone on long enough, though.

[57:30] David: Oh, man. We did a good business today, John. It is just our longest episode ever. We've been doing this for almost a full year now.

[57:37] John: This episode?

[57:38] David: Alright, everybody. Thanks for coming. Thanks for joining us today on the podcast. Hope you guys got something out of this. A lot of speculation, or just a lot of thinking out loud. There’s been so many different big business moves. This has really got my brain on fire. It's what I wanted to talk about. Thanks for indulging me, John. Okay, everybody. We'll see you next time on The Corner Box.

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