Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Apr 11, 2014 12:38:18 GMT -6
ICv2 Interview: Nick Barrucci:
ICv2 recently caught up with Dynamite Entertainment CEO Nick Barrucci to talk about the market and Dynamite’s place in it. In Part 1, we talk about the market, variants, and what’s going on with key Dynamite lines such as Heroes, Robotech, Bob’s Burgers, and more. In Part 2, we talk about Dynamite’s art book line, and plans for 2014.
How do you see the state of the comics and graphic novel market?
I see it doing well. It’s a good year so far. Last year ended well, and from every retailer I’ve spoken with, everyone seems to be doing better. When the retailers are happy that means the industry is doing better.
With your background with the TV shows you have a good feel for the collectibles side of the market. What are your observations about the industry and its use of variants?
I think there still are more variants than are probably needed. But especially over the past year, the variants being created have gotten better for retailers: more original art, more stylized, more themed. They actually have a story behind them now, and it’s more engaging for the retailers and the fans.
For years I’ve thought there are too many variants, and obviously we’re a part of it. I also feel that variants have become better programs as opposed to just being additional art created, or variations, and they’ve become more fun.
What are your thoughts on the use or overuse of the three main type of variants (one where a retailer can order as many of a specific variant item as they want vs. an incentive program where they have to buy a certain quantity of product in order to be eligible to receive or buy the variant)?
The best variant is when you order what you want. It’s the best variant for the retailers; it’s the best variant for the fans; it’s the easiest in that everybody has a choice on how many to order. I think that’s a nice choice for everyone, and in a perfect world that would be the only variant to be offered to retailers and consumers. But we’re all fighting for retailers’ dollars and consumers’ dollars so we’re always trying to create new thresholds to get retailers and consumers to get more excited and to buy more. At the end of the day every publisher is fighting for rack space. We’re selling to the retailer so the retailer can sell to the consumer and that’s the reason why we do all versions of incentives.
Is there excess unsold inventory or perhaps an overstatement of sales when retailers purchase threshold quantities of core titles in order to get access to a variant?
I don’t think that’s the case for any titles out of the top 10. For any title outside of the Top 10, I hardly ever see any retailers swimming in inventory. I make sure I go to at least eight or nine comics stores in a month, and some stores I frequent more than once a month. Maybe the top Marvel or top DC book, or the top Image book like The Walking Dead, when they have huge promotions, retailers may have extra copies of the main cover because they wanted to hit certain thresholds to get the incentive. I know for a fact when we create incentives, it allows more copies to get on the stands and most retailers still sell through.
Our goal is to encourage retailers to take just a little bit more risk to get a few more readers for each of our titles and I’d say the majority of the time this works out well.
Doctor Spektor
Dynamite publishes comics based on licensed characters, company-owned characters, and creator-owned characters. Can you talk about the mix of properties Dynamite publishes and how that might be changing?
Our publications change month to month; there’s no formula into what we’re putting out. We put out the best comics that we can.
We solicit and produce many licensed books, like Battlestar Galactica, both classic and new. The Gold Key line is doing very for us: Turok #1 shipped and sold out for us; Magnus #1 did the same (the advance orders on issue #1 were incredible). We’ve got Doctor Spektor coming out and Solar: Man of the Atom.
Other licensed books are important: Red Sonja, Flash Gordon, Mandrake, Kings Watch, Six Million Dollar Man, Captain Action, Doc Savage, The Shadow. Army of Darkness has been our longest running title along with Red Sonja. They’re a mainstay of our business: branded titles with branded creators.
And we have creator-driven titles, not only including Garth Ennis and Andy Diggle, Rick Remender, Peter Milligan, we’re also going to be working with Duane Swiercyznski, we’re re-presenting The Last Temptation with Neil Gaiman and Alice Cooper.
And then we have the company-owned characters from the Chaos line which is launching in May, Vampirella, and the Superpowers line. It’s a good mix.
The most important thing for us is to put out comics that we love. There some products by creators that we just have a passion to get behind; there are titles that we personally love, or third party characters that creators we work with love, and that shows on the page when we bring them out.
You launched Twilight Zone and Legenderry: A Steampunk Adventure both in the skip week at the end of the year. How did that work out?
It was crazy! If I had to do it again, I don’t know that I would. The schedules for the printer and Diamond and FOC were harsher and closer together than we ever could have imagined. It was good in that most retailers were really happy that we shipped it then, given that it allowed retailers to make more money on a slower week.
I think we did hurt ourselves a little; we didn’t sell as many copies as we could because the FOC with Diamond actually was the week before than the FOC from the retailers so we had to print based on our best guess based on initial orders.
We did the best we could and shipped enough copies, but I think we probably could have gotten our numbers up if we had shipped later, in January. We did it, it was really successful, but when you look at our orders for Legenderry #3 and Twilight Zone #3 vs. our orders for Legenderry #2 and Twilight Zone #2, our numbers actually went up. So I think if we would have waited to get information from retailers on the #1s we would have done better. But they did fantastic; they were the #1 and #2 top-selling non-Premier books for Diamond for that month.
You announced the Heroes license at Comic-Con last year and now they’ve announced they’re bringing back the show (see "'Heroes Returns'"). Is there going to be any connection in the storylines between the new show and the comic?
Right now we’re waiting to hear from Universal; the show’s going to take precedence over everything. We’re really happy the show’s coming back. It’s really exciting because it’s one of my favorite TV shows; it was a watershed show. And the excitement for the TV series will build up awareness for everything else. Right now we know as much information as everybody else, which is that they’re working on it.
What’s going on with Robotech--you announced the Robotech-Voltron crossover, but is there anything else coming out after that?
The crossover is bi-monthly. Once the five-issue crossover is completed in October, we will have a new Robotech series coming out in November. We have a superb creative team signed up for it, and we’ll be making that announcement at San Diego Comic-Con.
When you announced your Robotech license, you said the rights were acquired from Harmony Gold and DC. How was DC involved?
DC has the license and we sub-license from DC. It’s been a great relationship.
You also announced a license for Bob’s Burgers, which prompts the question, "can Dynamite do funny?" Bob’s Burgers also has a different look and feel from your of your usual slick, glossy presentation; how will you approach things differently for that property?
A lot people forget that we published The Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters a few years ago, which is a parody book. The thing about Bob’s Burgers is that the writers and producers of the show are actually writing the comics series. This is going to be as authentic as it can be and will be canon; the stories will fit in as if they are episodes from the TV series.
When is that going to launch?
San Diego Comic-Con. One good San Diego announcement leads to a San Diego first appearance.
What are you doing with the Gold Key line? Do these characters exist in a common universe, and will there be any connection between them?
They are in a common universe. Let’s just say that Joe [Rybandt] and Nate [Cosby], the editors, are working hand in hand with Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, Frank Barbiere and Mark Waid to peel away at the onion.
You’ve got a crime line going that is mostly creator-owned intellectual property. Crime has been a small genre within the comics business, so what makes you think there’s a market there, and how is Dynamite approaching that?
Like many other genres, it’s an underserviced genre. The potential for crime books is huge; you just have to have the right talent on it. Having a launch with Garth Ennis and Andy Diggle was a great first step, and we have more coming out with Duane Swiercyznski and other creators. We don’t see it being limited; we see it being an unfulfilled segment of the market.
The success we’ve already had with Uncanny and Red Team shows that the market is there. Also, when you look at what Ed Brubaker’s been putting out over the last few years, and Greg Rucka, there are books that succeed in that genre.
ICv2 recently caught up with Dynamite Entertainment CEO Nick Barrucci to talk about the market and Dynamite’s place in it. In Part 2, we talked about Dynamite’s art book line, and plans for 2014. In Part 1, we talked about the market, variants, and what’s going on with key Dynamite lines such as Heroes, Robotech, Bob’s Burgers, and more.
Let’s talk about your art book business, which has been a growing area for Dynamite. What are you doing in that category, and what have people been responding to?
We’ve done quite a few different art books. The main ranges are [artist specific and character or themed art books]. The artist specific titles include Sean Phillips, Howard Chaykin, Alex Ross, John Cassaday, Ramona Fradon, John Romita Jr. and Sr. and George Perez--a great variety of creators whose work we respect and we had a passion to put out retrospectives on. We put out two a year, the next one being Jock, from The Losers. We try to work with creators whose work we love, who we have a passion for, who we can spend 200 to 300 pages showing their career and artwork. These are passion projects for us.
What have your bestsellers been among the artist retrospectives?
They’ve all sold really well, they’re evergreen, they’re truly evergreen. Our best seller probably has been The Art of Alex Ross, a beautiful 300-page book, but The Art of Sean Phillips and Howard Chaykin have been doing exceptionally well as well. Two of the first ones we did were The Art of George Perez and The John Romita Legacy, and those have been fantastic. They all do well and we’re really proud of all of them.
The other art books we do are character based or themed. We’ve done The Art of Dejah Thoris, The Art of Vampirella, The Art of Red Sonja; we’re doing The History of Painted Comics. Our art books have a nice, wide range.
They’re great because we not only sell at the book stores and through Amazon, but we also get them into libraries and book clubs.
Where are your books sold, do you sell more through the book channel or the direct market?
The direct market is always the most important market for us, and we do still have the most support from the direct market. We’re pretty happy with the growth we’ve had over the past year. We were able to ship most of our high-end collections (definitive editions and art editions) in the fourth quarter and really bumped up our numbers through Diamond because we have great support in the direct market.
We also shipped the Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files: Ghoul Goblin, which did awesome.
Was that a relic from your past deal with the Dabel Brothers?
No, this was a new agreement.
What are you most excited about coming from Dynamite in 2014?
It’s like saying "pick your favorite kid." I’m excited about the 20th anniversary of Chaos and the tenth anniversary of Dynamite and being able to re-launch the Chaos library. We launched Evil Ernie two years ago, and it did really well. It was a great six-issue series. We got the kind of reaction we were hoping for, and I think Chaos, the combined universe, is going to do so much more sales wise because it’s all the characters, but Evil Ernie was a great lead-in.
We’re re-launching Vampirella with Nancy Collins, who is best known in the comics industry for her work on Swamp Thing, but she’s also a successful prose novelist. We were reintroduced to her thanks to Gail Simone on The Legends of Red Sonja series. She did a great Red Sonja story and we approached her about writing Vampirella and re-launching the series with us. She’s really taking the character back down to the basics, the way Archie Goodwin defined Vampirella and really made her a character in the early ‘70s, Nancy is taking that essence to the next level. I couldn’t be more excited.
We have some big announcements coming for the John Carter world.
More Shadow with Howard Chaykin. As a fan, seeing Howard revisit The Shadow for the first time in 28 years is a dream come true for me. So on a personal level, that’s really exciting.
I’m excited about some initiatives we’re pulling together, including for Pathfinder: City of Secrets, where not only are we creating exclusive covers for retailers, we’re creating the opportunity for them to have exclusive maps which should allow them to bring in a larger audience to buy the comics, and help retailers make more money.
We’re working with Alex de Campi for the first time on a Lady Zorro series. I’ve been following her since Smoke, and she’s a really smart writer with a distinctive voice whose work I respect. That we’re finally getting to work with her is really exciting.
I think the fact that we executed the Gold Key characters so well is a proud accomplishment because we worked hard to get here.
We’ll be announcing the first wave of figures to be released by Dynamite Toys and Games at C2E2 this year. We’ll be bringing back the Eternal Toys brand as well, which was the cast line of action figures that Clay Moore worked with back in the ‘90s.
By Gen Con we’ll have our first game announced and be able to show it.
What am I most proud of? Dynamite has hit its 10th anniversary; I'm really proud of the achievements of everyone at Dynamite--from the team in the office to the creators we work with and the licensing partners we have. This isn't just about us, but it's about the work and the fans who support us. I have a great team of creators that we work with; everyone at Dynamite works at 100% all the time; and we’ve surprised people with some of our announcements over the past year. The fact that we were able to grow from the publisher that published Army of Darkness and Red Sonja to now working with creators as great as Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Andy Diggle, and the list goes on. I’m really proud of the achievements we’ve made.
Last year was a transition year for us. This year there’s going to be a lot of execution that will surprise a lot of people, and next year, there’s a good chance that we will grow about 50%, if not more.
ICv2 recently caught up with Dynamite Entertainment CEO Nick Barrucci to talk about the market and Dynamite’s place in it. In Part 1, we talk about the market, variants, and what’s going on with key Dynamite lines such as Heroes, Robotech, Bob’s Burgers, and more. In Part 2, we talk about Dynamite’s art book line, and plans for 2014.
How do you see the state of the comics and graphic novel market?
I see it doing well. It’s a good year so far. Last year ended well, and from every retailer I’ve spoken with, everyone seems to be doing better. When the retailers are happy that means the industry is doing better.
With your background with the TV shows you have a good feel for the collectibles side of the market. What are your observations about the industry and its use of variants?
I think there still are more variants than are probably needed. But especially over the past year, the variants being created have gotten better for retailers: more original art, more stylized, more themed. They actually have a story behind them now, and it’s more engaging for the retailers and the fans.
For years I’ve thought there are too many variants, and obviously we’re a part of it. I also feel that variants have become better programs as opposed to just being additional art created, or variations, and they’ve become more fun.
What are your thoughts on the use or overuse of the three main type of variants (one where a retailer can order as many of a specific variant item as they want vs. an incentive program where they have to buy a certain quantity of product in order to be eligible to receive or buy the variant)?
The best variant is when you order what you want. It’s the best variant for the retailers; it’s the best variant for the fans; it’s the easiest in that everybody has a choice on how many to order. I think that’s a nice choice for everyone, and in a perfect world that would be the only variant to be offered to retailers and consumers. But we’re all fighting for retailers’ dollars and consumers’ dollars so we’re always trying to create new thresholds to get retailers and consumers to get more excited and to buy more. At the end of the day every publisher is fighting for rack space. We’re selling to the retailer so the retailer can sell to the consumer and that’s the reason why we do all versions of incentives.
Is there excess unsold inventory or perhaps an overstatement of sales when retailers purchase threshold quantities of core titles in order to get access to a variant?
I don’t think that’s the case for any titles out of the top 10. For any title outside of the Top 10, I hardly ever see any retailers swimming in inventory. I make sure I go to at least eight or nine comics stores in a month, and some stores I frequent more than once a month. Maybe the top Marvel or top DC book, or the top Image book like The Walking Dead, when they have huge promotions, retailers may have extra copies of the main cover because they wanted to hit certain thresholds to get the incentive. I know for a fact when we create incentives, it allows more copies to get on the stands and most retailers still sell through.
Our goal is to encourage retailers to take just a little bit more risk to get a few more readers for each of our titles and I’d say the majority of the time this works out well.
Doctor Spektor
Dynamite publishes comics based on licensed characters, company-owned characters, and creator-owned characters. Can you talk about the mix of properties Dynamite publishes and how that might be changing?
Our publications change month to month; there’s no formula into what we’re putting out. We put out the best comics that we can.
We solicit and produce many licensed books, like Battlestar Galactica, both classic and new. The Gold Key line is doing very for us: Turok #1 shipped and sold out for us; Magnus #1 did the same (the advance orders on issue #1 were incredible). We’ve got Doctor Spektor coming out and Solar: Man of the Atom.
Other licensed books are important: Red Sonja, Flash Gordon, Mandrake, Kings Watch, Six Million Dollar Man, Captain Action, Doc Savage, The Shadow. Army of Darkness has been our longest running title along with Red Sonja. They’re a mainstay of our business: branded titles with branded creators.
And we have creator-driven titles, not only including Garth Ennis and Andy Diggle, Rick Remender, Peter Milligan, we’re also going to be working with Duane Swiercyznski, we’re re-presenting The Last Temptation with Neil Gaiman and Alice Cooper.
And then we have the company-owned characters from the Chaos line which is launching in May, Vampirella, and the Superpowers line. It’s a good mix.
The most important thing for us is to put out comics that we love. There some products by creators that we just have a passion to get behind; there are titles that we personally love, or third party characters that creators we work with love, and that shows on the page when we bring them out.
You launched Twilight Zone and Legenderry: A Steampunk Adventure both in the skip week at the end of the year. How did that work out?
It was crazy! If I had to do it again, I don’t know that I would. The schedules for the printer and Diamond and FOC were harsher and closer together than we ever could have imagined. It was good in that most retailers were really happy that we shipped it then, given that it allowed retailers to make more money on a slower week.
I think we did hurt ourselves a little; we didn’t sell as many copies as we could because the FOC with Diamond actually was the week before than the FOC from the retailers so we had to print based on our best guess based on initial orders.
We did the best we could and shipped enough copies, but I think we probably could have gotten our numbers up if we had shipped later, in January. We did it, it was really successful, but when you look at our orders for Legenderry #3 and Twilight Zone #3 vs. our orders for Legenderry #2 and Twilight Zone #2, our numbers actually went up. So I think if we would have waited to get information from retailers on the #1s we would have done better. But they did fantastic; they were the #1 and #2 top-selling non-Premier books for Diamond for that month.
You announced the Heroes license at Comic-Con last year and now they’ve announced they’re bringing back the show (see "'Heroes Returns'"). Is there going to be any connection in the storylines between the new show and the comic?
Right now we’re waiting to hear from Universal; the show’s going to take precedence over everything. We’re really happy the show’s coming back. It’s really exciting because it’s one of my favorite TV shows; it was a watershed show. And the excitement for the TV series will build up awareness for everything else. Right now we know as much information as everybody else, which is that they’re working on it.
What’s going on with Robotech--you announced the Robotech-Voltron crossover, but is there anything else coming out after that?
The crossover is bi-monthly. Once the five-issue crossover is completed in October, we will have a new Robotech series coming out in November. We have a superb creative team signed up for it, and we’ll be making that announcement at San Diego Comic-Con.
When you announced your Robotech license, you said the rights were acquired from Harmony Gold and DC. How was DC involved?
DC has the license and we sub-license from DC. It’s been a great relationship.
You also announced a license for Bob’s Burgers, which prompts the question, "can Dynamite do funny?" Bob’s Burgers also has a different look and feel from your of your usual slick, glossy presentation; how will you approach things differently for that property?
A lot people forget that we published The Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters a few years ago, which is a parody book. The thing about Bob’s Burgers is that the writers and producers of the show are actually writing the comics series. This is going to be as authentic as it can be and will be canon; the stories will fit in as if they are episodes from the TV series.
When is that going to launch?
San Diego Comic-Con. One good San Diego announcement leads to a San Diego first appearance.
What are you doing with the Gold Key line? Do these characters exist in a common universe, and will there be any connection between them?
They are in a common universe. Let’s just say that Joe [Rybandt] and Nate [Cosby], the editors, are working hand in hand with Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, Frank Barbiere and Mark Waid to peel away at the onion.
You’ve got a crime line going that is mostly creator-owned intellectual property. Crime has been a small genre within the comics business, so what makes you think there’s a market there, and how is Dynamite approaching that?
Like many other genres, it’s an underserviced genre. The potential for crime books is huge; you just have to have the right talent on it. Having a launch with Garth Ennis and Andy Diggle was a great first step, and we have more coming out with Duane Swiercyznski and other creators. We don’t see it being limited; we see it being an unfulfilled segment of the market.
The success we’ve already had with Uncanny and Red Team shows that the market is there. Also, when you look at what Ed Brubaker’s been putting out over the last few years, and Greg Rucka, there are books that succeed in that genre.
ICv2 recently caught up with Dynamite Entertainment CEO Nick Barrucci to talk about the market and Dynamite’s place in it. In Part 2, we talked about Dynamite’s art book line, and plans for 2014. In Part 1, we talked about the market, variants, and what’s going on with key Dynamite lines such as Heroes, Robotech, Bob’s Burgers, and more.
Let’s talk about your art book business, which has been a growing area for Dynamite. What are you doing in that category, and what have people been responding to?
We’ve done quite a few different art books. The main ranges are [artist specific and character or themed art books]. The artist specific titles include Sean Phillips, Howard Chaykin, Alex Ross, John Cassaday, Ramona Fradon, John Romita Jr. and Sr. and George Perez--a great variety of creators whose work we respect and we had a passion to put out retrospectives on. We put out two a year, the next one being Jock, from The Losers. We try to work with creators whose work we love, who we have a passion for, who we can spend 200 to 300 pages showing their career and artwork. These are passion projects for us.
What have your bestsellers been among the artist retrospectives?
They’ve all sold really well, they’re evergreen, they’re truly evergreen. Our best seller probably has been The Art of Alex Ross, a beautiful 300-page book, but The Art of Sean Phillips and Howard Chaykin have been doing exceptionally well as well. Two of the first ones we did were The Art of George Perez and The John Romita Legacy, and those have been fantastic. They all do well and we’re really proud of all of them.
The other art books we do are character based or themed. We’ve done The Art of Dejah Thoris, The Art of Vampirella, The Art of Red Sonja; we’re doing The History of Painted Comics. Our art books have a nice, wide range.
They’re great because we not only sell at the book stores and through Amazon, but we also get them into libraries and book clubs.
Where are your books sold, do you sell more through the book channel or the direct market?
The direct market is always the most important market for us, and we do still have the most support from the direct market. We’re pretty happy with the growth we’ve had over the past year. We were able to ship most of our high-end collections (definitive editions and art editions) in the fourth quarter and really bumped up our numbers through Diamond because we have great support in the direct market.
We also shipped the Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files: Ghoul Goblin, which did awesome.
Was that a relic from your past deal with the Dabel Brothers?
No, this was a new agreement.
What are you most excited about coming from Dynamite in 2014?
It’s like saying "pick your favorite kid." I’m excited about the 20th anniversary of Chaos and the tenth anniversary of Dynamite and being able to re-launch the Chaos library. We launched Evil Ernie two years ago, and it did really well. It was a great six-issue series. We got the kind of reaction we were hoping for, and I think Chaos, the combined universe, is going to do so much more sales wise because it’s all the characters, but Evil Ernie was a great lead-in.
We’re re-launching Vampirella with Nancy Collins, who is best known in the comics industry for her work on Swamp Thing, but she’s also a successful prose novelist. We were reintroduced to her thanks to Gail Simone on The Legends of Red Sonja series. She did a great Red Sonja story and we approached her about writing Vampirella and re-launching the series with us. She’s really taking the character back down to the basics, the way Archie Goodwin defined Vampirella and really made her a character in the early ‘70s, Nancy is taking that essence to the next level. I couldn’t be more excited.
We have some big announcements coming for the John Carter world.
More Shadow with Howard Chaykin. As a fan, seeing Howard revisit The Shadow for the first time in 28 years is a dream come true for me. So on a personal level, that’s really exciting.
I’m excited about some initiatives we’re pulling together, including for Pathfinder: City of Secrets, where not only are we creating exclusive covers for retailers, we’re creating the opportunity for them to have exclusive maps which should allow them to bring in a larger audience to buy the comics, and help retailers make more money.
We’re working with Alex de Campi for the first time on a Lady Zorro series. I’ve been following her since Smoke, and she’s a really smart writer with a distinctive voice whose work I respect. That we’re finally getting to work with her is really exciting.
I think the fact that we executed the Gold Key characters so well is a proud accomplishment because we worked hard to get here.
We’ll be announcing the first wave of figures to be released by Dynamite Toys and Games at C2E2 this year. We’ll be bringing back the Eternal Toys brand as well, which was the cast line of action figures that Clay Moore worked with back in the ‘90s.
By Gen Con we’ll have our first game announced and be able to show it.
What am I most proud of? Dynamite has hit its 10th anniversary; I'm really proud of the achievements of everyone at Dynamite--from the team in the office to the creators we work with and the licensing partners we have. This isn't just about us, but it's about the work and the fans who support us. I have a great team of creators that we work with; everyone at Dynamite works at 100% all the time; and we’ve surprised people with some of our announcements over the past year. The fact that we were able to grow from the publisher that published Army of Darkness and Red Sonja to now working with creators as great as Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Andy Diggle, and the list goes on. I’m really proud of the achievements we’ve made.
Last year was a transition year for us. This year there’s going to be a lot of execution that will surprise a lot of people, and next year, there’s a good chance that we will grow about 50%, if not more.