Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on May 29, 2014 20:54:40 GMT -6
www.icv2.com/articles/news/28727.html
We interviewed Valiant Entertainment executives CEO/Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani, Publisher Fred Pierce, Executive Editor Warren Simons, and Director of Marketing, Communications, and Digital Media Hunter Gorinson. In Part 1 of this three part interview, we talk about Valiant’s first two years and its graphic novel business. In Part 2, we talked about Valiant’s biggest reorder titles, the use of variant and enhanced covers, and the Valiant universe. And in Part 3, we talked about the state of Valiant’s movies, licensing, and the company’s summer releases.
Help us establish where Valiant is in its timeline; how long has Valiant been publishing?
Fred Pierce: Our first book came out almost exactly two years ago, and we’re just about to launch X-0 25 which will be the first book of our third year.
Have the first two years met your expectations?
FP: When we started two years ago, and Dinesh [Shamdasani] nine years ago, it was really about how do you bring stories to life that were very popular 20 years ago and make them relevant for today? I think Warren [Simons] and the editorial team and the writers and talent have done a tremendous job doing that. People who didn’t know Valiant was an older empire now see us as something relevant to today, especially with a lot of what’s in Harbinger.
In terms of the numbers we won Publisher of the Year [in the “Under 5% Market Share” category in the Diamond Gem Awards] our first year out, which was very exciting. We just continue to be well-received and growing.
Dinesh Shamdasani: We set very high expectations for ourselves. We wanted to come out of the gate and give the industry a bit of a shakeup. We wanted to tell great stories, the greatest stories that can be told with these characters. We’re very happy with the reception. People seem to like the books. We’ve been winning awards, as Fred said, Publisher of the Year, won a lot of ‘Top 10’ awards, ‘Best of’ awards so we’re looking to keep doing what we’re doing and doing better and better every year. We’ve just done that with Valiant First (see "'Valiant First' Initiative Launches New Titles"). We put out Rai, one of the best books that we’ve done ever and one of the best reviewed books of the year so far. We think the best issues of Rai are coming up and that’s just a kick-off to Valiant First.
After your first year, you said you really exceeded your expectations (see "ICv2--Interview with Valiant's Publisher"). Did that hold true in your second year?
DS: Yes, definitely. Moreso, in fact.
FP: When you think of all the publishers who have suffered from the sophomore slump, we’re definitely happy. We’ve more than doubled the size of our print run from year one to year two, which is very difficult. When you do your first year of printing you have the whole year to lead up to it. Your second year your editorial staff is tasked with launching new material, designing new characters that people care about while they’re still doing the characters that everybody is looking forward to.
That was a great challenge and I think we met it as well as anybody could. In the second year we became a Top Ten publisher, which was phenomenal. Even more than that, the industry turns to us now for a lot of what we do and the industry is copying a lot of what we do.
Warren Simons: When I walked in the door three years ago, part of what we were looking at is what is the X-O Manowar costume going to look like? How are we going to redesign the Harbinger kids? Who are our writers going to be? Who are our artists? How are we going to staff up? What is our publishing plan? These are all variables that, looking back on it now, thankfully with the team upstairs and with all the great freelancers we have, I feel like we did very well. I think X-O has been really well received. I think it’s a great book. I thought Harbinger Wars, the project that [Joshua] Dysart and Duane [Swierczynksi] put together was really well received.
I’m really excited with what we’ve done and with the creators we’ve been able to bring over here. When we walked in the door a couple of years ago, people didn’t know if we were going to be able to publish one issue, ship on time, be successful. We’re playing with toys that were one of the most beloved fictional comic book universes that had ever been created, by some of the most beloved iconic creators in the history of our medium, so we had an immense amount to live up to.
We’re not satisfied, we’re not resting on our laurels, and we’re not looking back at the last couple of years and saying our job is done. We want every book that we put out to be better than the last one. That’s the goal we strive for and that’s why guys are in the office until 7, 8, 9 p.m. That’s why everyone works late.
I’m very happy with what we’ve done to date but the best is yet to come. With the launch of Rai and that first issue selling out, with the work that Matt Kindt and Clayton Crain are doing on that book, I feel that the kick-off to Valiant First has been really great.
FP: The funny thing is, I don’t know how we could have done any better. In the first two years, we never shipped a book late, which is an amazing accomplishment considering all of the hoops that everyone has to jump through. The editorial, the writers, the artists, the colorists, the letterers; everyone really has to get their work done on time and done well so not only do we ship on time, but we ship things that people continue to care about.
DS: You have to see it as a long-term plan. We’re not looking to build a company in two years; we’re looking to build a company in 10 years. So our first year was establishing the company, and we felt very good about how we did that. Our second year was expanding the company, and we feel very good about that. We wanted to avoid the sophomore slump and we did that. The third year is about expanding the readership, and that’s why you see with Valiant First a lot of things to give people a chance to read their first Valiant book so we can dramatically increase our readership. We’ve been seeing the benefits of that already in the mass market and our trade program, which is something that we don’t talk a lot about, but it’s been far exceeding our expectations. I think that speaks to the fact that we have a very solid, a very loyal readership.
How many collections do you have in print now?
WS: We have 35 books, including our Valiant Masters reprint collections and the oversized hardcovers of all of our trades.
FP: Again, since we’ve been publishing for 25 months, 35 collections is quite an accomplishment.
What has been the response in markets other than the comic store market?
DS: They’ve been beating down our door, to be honest. In keeping with our slow and steady growth we’ve tried to be conservative about how we push into the returnable markets like the book market. About three or four months ago we loosened the strings a little bit and have seen a very good response from that so I think we’ll continue to do that.
The deluxe hardcover editions are an example of that where we were planning on doing just the one with X-O, and see how that went. We did Harbinger, see how that went. So now there’s nothing that we’re not considering for direct hard covers.
FP: We have no less than four planned a year.
Valiant is thought of as a product targeted at core comic consumers, as a self-enclosed universe with costumed heroes. Who do you think this audience is who is finding you in the book channel? Do you think it’s lapsed or new readers?
DS: It’s certainly lapsed readers. We have a massive reservoir of Valiant fans from the 90s who are also finding that because the books are so well received, that there’s an aura that’s permeated further out than just the Valiant fans of "these are great books, you should be checking these out, I’ve heard about these books." And when you see them in the book store with a $9.99 price point on Volume One, it makes it a very easy purchase. People are reading them and giving them to their friends. We’re seeing that going on, especially at the conventions.
A lot of people come to us and say they read the books for the first time in trade and didn’t know what Valiant was to begin with, they just heard rumblings. Image is so successful now, and the independent movement is so successful that I think people are more open at this point.
FP: We do phenomenally well with digital, and I think when people are scanning digital comics, we come up and they find us there, too. Also we’re at so many live events and I think a lot of different kinds of people are coming to live events these days. When you’re looking around at these conventions, you’re not just seeing core readers, it is more like something to do on the weekend in an area and people are going. If you think about how successful all the comic book movies are, at some point we all get to benefit from that.
We interviewed Valiant Entertainment executives CEO/Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani, Publisher Fred Pierce, Executive Editor Warren Simons, and Director of Marketing, Communications, and Digital Media Hunter Gorinson. In Part 2 of this three part interview, we talk about Valiant’s biggest reorder titles, the use of variant and enhanced covers, and the Valiant universe. In Part 3, we talked about the state of Valiant’s movies, licensing, and the company’s summer releases. And in Part 1, we talked about Valiant’s first two years and its graphic novel business.
Circling back to the periodical business, what are your reorders looking like? Which books are the ones that retailers have been underestimating and needing to reorder?
FP: We’re finding that reorders are more local than massive. We’ve finding big reorders on Rai and on X-O and Harbinger, especially on X-O these days. The retailer buys to sell out and he buys to sell out quickly, and then he find he has more readers or has readers who say "order the book, and I’ll take it." Our issue is, the retailer is going to Marvel and DC, then Image, and a whole slew of publishers, and we have to break through that, so we’re often under-ordered and they’re often then going back. On some books lately we’ve had to go back to second prints.
Hunter Gorinson: I would also note that in tandem with the rollout of #1 titles that compose the Valiant First initiative we’ve also implemented a series of very strong sales incentives, including returnability for all of the #1 titles.
DS: We do a larger overprint on the first run than other publishers do, and we do that because we know that people will read the book and they’ll like it. Retailers are conservative because they don’t know how the book is going to be received. But we are very confident in our books, and we generate a larger overprint and that gets eaten up. So when you hear second print from us, it usually means that we’ve burned through a larger overprint that other publishers and then hit a second printing. Rai actually looks set to go to a third printing very soon. It’s been really well received.
FP: What we also found is that a lot of the retailers are of an age where they grew up and they were Valiant fans early on. They’re much more likely to hand-sell our stuff. What we like is that if somebody orders, we find that a lot of the retailers do tend to push our stuff more.
Fred, you have been in this industry for a long time. What is your take on the current use of variant or enhanced covers as a percentage of the business vs. the situation in the 1990s? Are you concerned?
FP: I’m not concerned because the market regulates itself. We offer a product. The second a retailer doesn’t want the product, he doesn’t buy it. The second the fans don’t want the product, they don’t buy it. You’re looking at the things on a shelf. Our next reader is someone who is reading something else, probably a Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, or Dynamite reader. So when he’s looking at that other book, I want him to look at our book. If it’s enhanced covers that does it, that’s great. If it’s an oversized book, that’s great. We’re about to launch chromium (see "Chromium Covers for 'Armor Hunters'"). That will jump at a reader from across the room. It was a wonderful product in the day. People still talk about it, and whenever you talk to a retailer about chromium, they smile.
No one’s forcing anyone to do enhanced covers. The readers want it, so the comic shop owners buy it. The second readers don’t want it, we’ll stop doing it.
DS: Fred has told me that part of the problem in the 90s was when you had books that were an enhanced cover and that’s all they were. We’re very cautious and very conscious of that and only put enhanced covers on books we really believe in. We always come to the story first, and the art and creative team second, and then we come to how can we now sell [the book]. Fred has told me many times that one of the reasons there was this influx of gimmick covers in the ‘90s was (this was before the prevalence of renumbering where you could get someone on the books because you had a #1, back when you had 300, 400, 500 issues of the title) how do get someone to jump onto a book? You reach out to them from across the room. The difficulty is just to make sure that when you do reach out to them, that the book is good. So we try very hard to do both.
The first chromium covers are coming out in June and you had to set runs before you had orders in. What are the numbers looking like for those?
FP: The first three books are in June. The numbers are doing very well. We’re still garnering sales. We’re right where we thought we would be.
Meaning you’re not at an allocation point yet?
FP: No, we didn’t print to allocate. That’s not the purpose of this exercise. The purpose of this exercise is to get our book into as many readers’ hands as possible. The hope is once they read one Valiant book, they’ll try other Valiant books as well.
DS: We saw big jumps on all three books with chromium. We saw retailers coming in and really supporting the chromium program, which is really nice. The allocation warning was something we had to do in case the demand was absolutely bonkers. (We printed to make sure we had enough stock, but in case it was absolutely bonkers.) We said it up front knowing that a publisher in the last 12 months has had similar problems and it was quite an ordeal for them. We just wanted to make sure that in case anything happened (and we may still see something like this when we hit FOC and sell-through) that we included an allocation warning.
On the periodicals side, do all of your titles exist together in the Valiant universe?
WS: We operate in a shared universe, but one of the main things I try to do on every book that I edit is make sure that it is as accessible as possible and I can hand the book to someone who doesn’t necessarily read our universe and will be able to walk away with a clear understanding of what‘s happened. Some might say that’s low-hanging fruit, but you’d be surprised at how many times you pick up a book and you have absolutely no idea what’s going on.
So we do operate in a shared universe but we also have different genres within that universe: Harbinger’s a teen drama; X-O Manowar is a sci-fi book; Quantum and Woody is a comedy.
DS: We build every book to be individual and then if you’re reading everything there’s a larger tapestry that you get to see, which is a lot of fun.
We interviewed Valiant Entertainment executives CEO/Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani, Publisher Fred Pierce, Executive Editor Warren Simons, and Director of Marketing, Communications, and Digital Media Hunter Gorinson. In Part 3 of this three part interview, we talk about the state of Valiant’s movies, licensing, and the company’s summer releases. In Part 1, we talked about Valiant’s first two years and its graphic novel business. And in Part 2, we talked about Valiant’s biggest reorder titles, the use of variant and enhanced covers, and the Valiant universe.
What’s the status of media projects for Bloodshot, Harbinger or other properties?
DS: What we can say is somebody is our partner on Bloodshot, Mathew Vaughn is on board as director, and Neal Moritz is our producing partner on it (see "Here Comes the 'Bloodshot' Movie" for the status back in 2012). We have a script that all the partners are very happy with so we’re very close to getting that into production. You’ll an announcement once we get over that hump. There’s been a very interesting development with Harbinger that we can’t talk about yet.
In addition to Bloodshot, we have three or four other titles that we’ve got writers for that we’re developing in house. Joe Straczynski is writing Shadowman (see "JMS to Adapt Valiant's 'Shadowman'"). He’s on his third draft. Sean Daniel is our producing partner: he produced the Mummy films and he’s doing Ben-Hur now. So that’s going very, very well. We’re talking to a couple of directors on that one. There’s another one where we’re about to lock down a big name director.
Part of our presence as a company is to wait until everything is solidified, especially with the prevalence of things getting optioned and announced as a TV show or a movie and then nothing comes of it. We want to avoid that.
Of the projects in the pipe, you think Bloodshot will be the first to hit reality?
DS: Yes, I think that will go to production in the next 12 to 18 months.
You recently announced a Catalyst Game Lab license for an RPG (see "'Valiant Universe RPG: Core Rulebook'") and previously announced agreements with Dynamic Forces (see "Dynamic Forces Gets Valiant") and Rittenhouse (see "Valiant Trading Cards") as licensees. How has the licensing side of the business been going and what are the standout products?
DS: Like we do with the rest of the business is take a slow and steady approach. What Russ [Brown] has done is go toward the licenses that were the first jumping point for new readers to come into the universe. We’ve done plushes, t-shirts, trading card sets, lithographs and some statues in the works. The RPG we’re really excited about. Catalyst is one of the best in the business at it. They’re big Valiant fans and they’ve got a 10-part digital program that they’re building from Free Comic Book Day through free RPG Day to see the game (see "'Valiant Universe RPG' Pre-Release Promotion"). The game’s coming along really nicely.
So licensing is going very well but we’re taking a very conservative approach. You’re not going to see us do a big license with a big box retailer just yet. We do have a couple of things that we’re excited about that we have not announced yet.
Are there any licenses announced that we haven’t mentioned yet?
Catalyst (tabletop gaming)
Cinderblock (apparel)
Dynamic Forces (collectibles)
Classic Imports (collectibles/glassware)
Amazon/Kindle Worlds (fan fiction)
Rittenhouse (trading cards)
HQM (foreign publishing)
Panini (foreign publishing)
Jackpot/Heart Healthy (energy drinks)
Storm City (mobile games)
Custom Wall Scrolls (wall scrolls)
Comic Images (plushes)
GOG.com (video games)
Night Dive (video games)
Kamite (foreign publishing)
Ovni (foreign publishing)
Comicube (foreign publishing)
Quarantine Stuidos (statues)
What Valiant publishing products are you most excited about coming out the rest of this year?
WS: Our big event which launches in June is Armor Hunters, written by Robert Venditti, with art by Dougie Braithwaite. Over the past couple of years Rob’s built a story which features Aric of Dasia, a time-displaced Visigoth, with the most powerful weapon in the world known as the X-O Manowar armor. For the last couple years we’ve seen this be the most coveted object in the universe. It’s something everyone wants to get their hands on, whether that’s the Valiant heroes in our Unity launch, or divine aliens in the X-O Manowar launch. But what we discover is that the suit may be a bit of a poisoned chalice. That launches in June with Issue #1, but the four-issue limited series is going to tie into a bunch of our other titles including Unity, written by Matt Kindt with art by Stephen Segovia, and X-0 Manowar written by Robert Venditti with art by Diego Bernard. We’re super excited by that.
In July, we launch two three-issue limited series. One is our Bloodshot title with Joe Harris and the brilliant Trevor Hairsine, and then we have Armor Hunter: Harbinger by Joshua Dysart and Robert Gill. So we’ve got an exciting four-issue summer blockbuster coming up and our Rai story which was launched in May will continue. We’ve got a ton of stuff coming up as part of our Valiant First initiative.
DS: We’re super excited about Armor Hunters, it’s something we haven’t tried before. It’s a very big scope story which is very tricky when you’re working within a shared universe but we have some really talented cats at Valiant, Warren included. We think we may have cracked it. We looked to The Authority, we looked at a bunch of big books like that. We’re going to do our big, epic story.
Anything else that we should have asked about?
WS: Continuing our summer launches, we have Delinquents #1, which will be a four-issue limited series from the co-writers of Archer and Armstrong, the brilliant Fred Van Lente and the great James Asmus. That’s our crossover book with Archer and Armstrong and Quantum and Woody. It’s something we knew we wanted to have happen since day one here. It’s absolutely goofy and irreverent and awesome and it features…
DS: An ass map! Fred Van Lente and James Asmus came up with this great idea. The whole story centers around a map of the United States that’s been tattooed on a homeless man’s ass, and then skinned and split into two and it leads to the Hobo treasure. So Archer and Armstrong on one half and Quantum and Woody on the other half, and of course, X marks the spot in the middle of the butt cheeks and that’s where everyone’s headed.
WS: And you know, Dinesh comes to my office almost every month to ask if we can incorporate an ass map into all of our titles. I just couldn’t hold him off any longer.
Then we have Dr. Mirage coming out, which I’m super excited about. Jen Van Meter’s come onboard. She’s put together a really beautiful first script which unlocks a whole side of the Valiant universe that we haven’t seen before. Roberta De La Torre did some jaw dropping, breathtaking, beautiful art for Shadowman.
DS: The thing you really need to ask us is what we’re doing next, because none of us can tell you. If I even tried, Warren would literally jump through the phone and kill me because we have something really cool cooking up.
FP: We’ve done the difficult thing where we’re looking forward, we’re not looking back. Years one and two are gone and now we’re looking to years three and four. We always want to be next year’s comic book company. That’s really the goal here, and we keep that in mind.
DS: That’s really what Rai and Armor Hunters is about our launch is about. We did something and then a lot of people looked at it and had some success. So with Rai and Armor Hunters, we tried to double down and push further and now again with the next thing we’re doing that we can’t talk about, it’s more of that. I think people will have the same reaction that did when they saw Rai. How did this company manage to put this together? This is a big boy book.
FP: We’re a little company but we have a very big footprint. We’re proud of it, but it just keeps raising the bar. It raises the bar for us.
We interviewed Valiant Entertainment executives CEO/Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani, Publisher Fred Pierce, Executive Editor Warren Simons, and Director of Marketing, Communications, and Digital Media Hunter Gorinson. In Part 1 of this three part interview, we talk about Valiant’s first two years and its graphic novel business. In Part 2, we talked about Valiant’s biggest reorder titles, the use of variant and enhanced covers, and the Valiant universe. And in Part 3, we talked about the state of Valiant’s movies, licensing, and the company’s summer releases.
Help us establish where Valiant is in its timeline; how long has Valiant been publishing?
Fred Pierce: Our first book came out almost exactly two years ago, and we’re just about to launch X-0 25 which will be the first book of our third year.
Have the first two years met your expectations?
FP: When we started two years ago, and Dinesh [Shamdasani] nine years ago, it was really about how do you bring stories to life that were very popular 20 years ago and make them relevant for today? I think Warren [Simons] and the editorial team and the writers and talent have done a tremendous job doing that. People who didn’t know Valiant was an older empire now see us as something relevant to today, especially with a lot of what’s in Harbinger.
In terms of the numbers we won Publisher of the Year [in the “Under 5% Market Share” category in the Diamond Gem Awards] our first year out, which was very exciting. We just continue to be well-received and growing.
Dinesh Shamdasani: We set very high expectations for ourselves. We wanted to come out of the gate and give the industry a bit of a shakeup. We wanted to tell great stories, the greatest stories that can be told with these characters. We’re very happy with the reception. People seem to like the books. We’ve been winning awards, as Fred said, Publisher of the Year, won a lot of ‘Top 10’ awards, ‘Best of’ awards so we’re looking to keep doing what we’re doing and doing better and better every year. We’ve just done that with Valiant First (see "'Valiant First' Initiative Launches New Titles"). We put out Rai, one of the best books that we’ve done ever and one of the best reviewed books of the year so far. We think the best issues of Rai are coming up and that’s just a kick-off to Valiant First.
After your first year, you said you really exceeded your expectations (see "ICv2--Interview with Valiant's Publisher"). Did that hold true in your second year?
DS: Yes, definitely. Moreso, in fact.
FP: When you think of all the publishers who have suffered from the sophomore slump, we’re definitely happy. We’ve more than doubled the size of our print run from year one to year two, which is very difficult. When you do your first year of printing you have the whole year to lead up to it. Your second year your editorial staff is tasked with launching new material, designing new characters that people care about while they’re still doing the characters that everybody is looking forward to.
That was a great challenge and I think we met it as well as anybody could. In the second year we became a Top Ten publisher, which was phenomenal. Even more than that, the industry turns to us now for a lot of what we do and the industry is copying a lot of what we do.
Warren Simons: When I walked in the door three years ago, part of what we were looking at is what is the X-O Manowar costume going to look like? How are we going to redesign the Harbinger kids? Who are our writers going to be? Who are our artists? How are we going to staff up? What is our publishing plan? These are all variables that, looking back on it now, thankfully with the team upstairs and with all the great freelancers we have, I feel like we did very well. I think X-O has been really well received. I think it’s a great book. I thought Harbinger Wars, the project that [Joshua] Dysart and Duane [Swierczynksi] put together was really well received.
I’m really excited with what we’ve done and with the creators we’ve been able to bring over here. When we walked in the door a couple of years ago, people didn’t know if we were going to be able to publish one issue, ship on time, be successful. We’re playing with toys that were one of the most beloved fictional comic book universes that had ever been created, by some of the most beloved iconic creators in the history of our medium, so we had an immense amount to live up to.
We’re not satisfied, we’re not resting on our laurels, and we’re not looking back at the last couple of years and saying our job is done. We want every book that we put out to be better than the last one. That’s the goal we strive for and that’s why guys are in the office until 7, 8, 9 p.m. That’s why everyone works late.
I’m very happy with what we’ve done to date but the best is yet to come. With the launch of Rai and that first issue selling out, with the work that Matt Kindt and Clayton Crain are doing on that book, I feel that the kick-off to Valiant First has been really great.
FP: The funny thing is, I don’t know how we could have done any better. In the first two years, we never shipped a book late, which is an amazing accomplishment considering all of the hoops that everyone has to jump through. The editorial, the writers, the artists, the colorists, the letterers; everyone really has to get their work done on time and done well so not only do we ship on time, but we ship things that people continue to care about.
DS: You have to see it as a long-term plan. We’re not looking to build a company in two years; we’re looking to build a company in 10 years. So our first year was establishing the company, and we felt very good about how we did that. Our second year was expanding the company, and we feel very good about that. We wanted to avoid the sophomore slump and we did that. The third year is about expanding the readership, and that’s why you see with Valiant First a lot of things to give people a chance to read their first Valiant book so we can dramatically increase our readership. We’ve been seeing the benefits of that already in the mass market and our trade program, which is something that we don’t talk a lot about, but it’s been far exceeding our expectations. I think that speaks to the fact that we have a very solid, a very loyal readership.
How many collections do you have in print now?
WS: We have 35 books, including our Valiant Masters reprint collections and the oversized hardcovers of all of our trades.
FP: Again, since we’ve been publishing for 25 months, 35 collections is quite an accomplishment.
What has been the response in markets other than the comic store market?
DS: They’ve been beating down our door, to be honest. In keeping with our slow and steady growth we’ve tried to be conservative about how we push into the returnable markets like the book market. About three or four months ago we loosened the strings a little bit and have seen a very good response from that so I think we’ll continue to do that.
The deluxe hardcover editions are an example of that where we were planning on doing just the one with X-O, and see how that went. We did Harbinger, see how that went. So now there’s nothing that we’re not considering for direct hard covers.
FP: We have no less than four planned a year.
Valiant is thought of as a product targeted at core comic consumers, as a self-enclosed universe with costumed heroes. Who do you think this audience is who is finding you in the book channel? Do you think it’s lapsed or new readers?
DS: It’s certainly lapsed readers. We have a massive reservoir of Valiant fans from the 90s who are also finding that because the books are so well received, that there’s an aura that’s permeated further out than just the Valiant fans of "these are great books, you should be checking these out, I’ve heard about these books." And when you see them in the book store with a $9.99 price point on Volume One, it makes it a very easy purchase. People are reading them and giving them to their friends. We’re seeing that going on, especially at the conventions.
A lot of people come to us and say they read the books for the first time in trade and didn’t know what Valiant was to begin with, they just heard rumblings. Image is so successful now, and the independent movement is so successful that I think people are more open at this point.
FP: We do phenomenally well with digital, and I think when people are scanning digital comics, we come up and they find us there, too. Also we’re at so many live events and I think a lot of different kinds of people are coming to live events these days. When you’re looking around at these conventions, you’re not just seeing core readers, it is more like something to do on the weekend in an area and people are going. If you think about how successful all the comic book movies are, at some point we all get to benefit from that.
We interviewed Valiant Entertainment executives CEO/Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani, Publisher Fred Pierce, Executive Editor Warren Simons, and Director of Marketing, Communications, and Digital Media Hunter Gorinson. In Part 2 of this three part interview, we talk about Valiant’s biggest reorder titles, the use of variant and enhanced covers, and the Valiant universe. In Part 3, we talked about the state of Valiant’s movies, licensing, and the company’s summer releases. And in Part 1, we talked about Valiant’s first two years and its graphic novel business.
Circling back to the periodical business, what are your reorders looking like? Which books are the ones that retailers have been underestimating and needing to reorder?
FP: We’re finding that reorders are more local than massive. We’ve finding big reorders on Rai and on X-O and Harbinger, especially on X-O these days. The retailer buys to sell out and he buys to sell out quickly, and then he find he has more readers or has readers who say "order the book, and I’ll take it." Our issue is, the retailer is going to Marvel and DC, then Image, and a whole slew of publishers, and we have to break through that, so we’re often under-ordered and they’re often then going back. On some books lately we’ve had to go back to second prints.
Hunter Gorinson: I would also note that in tandem with the rollout of #1 titles that compose the Valiant First initiative we’ve also implemented a series of very strong sales incentives, including returnability for all of the #1 titles.
DS: We do a larger overprint on the first run than other publishers do, and we do that because we know that people will read the book and they’ll like it. Retailers are conservative because they don’t know how the book is going to be received. But we are very confident in our books, and we generate a larger overprint and that gets eaten up. So when you hear second print from us, it usually means that we’ve burned through a larger overprint that other publishers and then hit a second printing. Rai actually looks set to go to a third printing very soon. It’s been really well received.
FP: What we also found is that a lot of the retailers are of an age where they grew up and they were Valiant fans early on. They’re much more likely to hand-sell our stuff. What we like is that if somebody orders, we find that a lot of the retailers do tend to push our stuff more.
Fred, you have been in this industry for a long time. What is your take on the current use of variant or enhanced covers as a percentage of the business vs. the situation in the 1990s? Are you concerned?
FP: I’m not concerned because the market regulates itself. We offer a product. The second a retailer doesn’t want the product, he doesn’t buy it. The second the fans don’t want the product, they don’t buy it. You’re looking at the things on a shelf. Our next reader is someone who is reading something else, probably a Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, or Dynamite reader. So when he’s looking at that other book, I want him to look at our book. If it’s enhanced covers that does it, that’s great. If it’s an oversized book, that’s great. We’re about to launch chromium (see "Chromium Covers for 'Armor Hunters'"). That will jump at a reader from across the room. It was a wonderful product in the day. People still talk about it, and whenever you talk to a retailer about chromium, they smile.
No one’s forcing anyone to do enhanced covers. The readers want it, so the comic shop owners buy it. The second readers don’t want it, we’ll stop doing it.
DS: Fred has told me that part of the problem in the 90s was when you had books that were an enhanced cover and that’s all they were. We’re very cautious and very conscious of that and only put enhanced covers on books we really believe in. We always come to the story first, and the art and creative team second, and then we come to how can we now sell [the book]. Fred has told me many times that one of the reasons there was this influx of gimmick covers in the ‘90s was (this was before the prevalence of renumbering where you could get someone on the books because you had a #1, back when you had 300, 400, 500 issues of the title) how do get someone to jump onto a book? You reach out to them from across the room. The difficulty is just to make sure that when you do reach out to them, that the book is good. So we try very hard to do both.
The first chromium covers are coming out in June and you had to set runs before you had orders in. What are the numbers looking like for those?
FP: The first three books are in June. The numbers are doing very well. We’re still garnering sales. We’re right where we thought we would be.
Meaning you’re not at an allocation point yet?
FP: No, we didn’t print to allocate. That’s not the purpose of this exercise. The purpose of this exercise is to get our book into as many readers’ hands as possible. The hope is once they read one Valiant book, they’ll try other Valiant books as well.
DS: We saw big jumps on all three books with chromium. We saw retailers coming in and really supporting the chromium program, which is really nice. The allocation warning was something we had to do in case the demand was absolutely bonkers. (We printed to make sure we had enough stock, but in case it was absolutely bonkers.) We said it up front knowing that a publisher in the last 12 months has had similar problems and it was quite an ordeal for them. We just wanted to make sure that in case anything happened (and we may still see something like this when we hit FOC and sell-through) that we included an allocation warning.
On the periodicals side, do all of your titles exist together in the Valiant universe?
WS: We operate in a shared universe, but one of the main things I try to do on every book that I edit is make sure that it is as accessible as possible and I can hand the book to someone who doesn’t necessarily read our universe and will be able to walk away with a clear understanding of what‘s happened. Some might say that’s low-hanging fruit, but you’d be surprised at how many times you pick up a book and you have absolutely no idea what’s going on.
So we do operate in a shared universe but we also have different genres within that universe: Harbinger’s a teen drama; X-O Manowar is a sci-fi book; Quantum and Woody is a comedy.
DS: We build every book to be individual and then if you’re reading everything there’s a larger tapestry that you get to see, which is a lot of fun.
We interviewed Valiant Entertainment executives CEO/Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani, Publisher Fred Pierce, Executive Editor Warren Simons, and Director of Marketing, Communications, and Digital Media Hunter Gorinson. In Part 3 of this three part interview, we talk about the state of Valiant’s movies, licensing, and the company’s summer releases. In Part 1, we talked about Valiant’s first two years and its graphic novel business. And in Part 2, we talked about Valiant’s biggest reorder titles, the use of variant and enhanced covers, and the Valiant universe.
What’s the status of media projects for Bloodshot, Harbinger or other properties?
DS: What we can say is somebody is our partner on Bloodshot, Mathew Vaughn is on board as director, and Neal Moritz is our producing partner on it (see "Here Comes the 'Bloodshot' Movie" for the status back in 2012). We have a script that all the partners are very happy with so we’re very close to getting that into production. You’ll an announcement once we get over that hump. There’s been a very interesting development with Harbinger that we can’t talk about yet.
In addition to Bloodshot, we have three or four other titles that we’ve got writers for that we’re developing in house. Joe Straczynski is writing Shadowman (see "JMS to Adapt Valiant's 'Shadowman'"). He’s on his third draft. Sean Daniel is our producing partner: he produced the Mummy films and he’s doing Ben-Hur now. So that’s going very, very well. We’re talking to a couple of directors on that one. There’s another one where we’re about to lock down a big name director.
Part of our presence as a company is to wait until everything is solidified, especially with the prevalence of things getting optioned and announced as a TV show or a movie and then nothing comes of it. We want to avoid that.
Of the projects in the pipe, you think Bloodshot will be the first to hit reality?
DS: Yes, I think that will go to production in the next 12 to 18 months.
You recently announced a Catalyst Game Lab license for an RPG (see "'Valiant Universe RPG: Core Rulebook'") and previously announced agreements with Dynamic Forces (see "Dynamic Forces Gets Valiant") and Rittenhouse (see "Valiant Trading Cards") as licensees. How has the licensing side of the business been going and what are the standout products?
DS: Like we do with the rest of the business is take a slow and steady approach. What Russ [Brown] has done is go toward the licenses that were the first jumping point for new readers to come into the universe. We’ve done plushes, t-shirts, trading card sets, lithographs and some statues in the works. The RPG we’re really excited about. Catalyst is one of the best in the business at it. They’re big Valiant fans and they’ve got a 10-part digital program that they’re building from Free Comic Book Day through free RPG Day to see the game (see "'Valiant Universe RPG' Pre-Release Promotion"). The game’s coming along really nicely.
So licensing is going very well but we’re taking a very conservative approach. You’re not going to see us do a big license with a big box retailer just yet. We do have a couple of things that we’re excited about that we have not announced yet.
Are there any licenses announced that we haven’t mentioned yet?
Catalyst (tabletop gaming)
Cinderblock (apparel)
Dynamic Forces (collectibles)
Classic Imports (collectibles/glassware)
Amazon/Kindle Worlds (fan fiction)
Rittenhouse (trading cards)
HQM (foreign publishing)
Panini (foreign publishing)
Jackpot/Heart Healthy (energy drinks)
Storm City (mobile games)
Custom Wall Scrolls (wall scrolls)
Comic Images (plushes)
GOG.com (video games)
Night Dive (video games)
Kamite (foreign publishing)
Ovni (foreign publishing)
Comicube (foreign publishing)
Quarantine Stuidos (statues)
What Valiant publishing products are you most excited about coming out the rest of this year?
WS: Our big event which launches in June is Armor Hunters, written by Robert Venditti, with art by Dougie Braithwaite. Over the past couple of years Rob’s built a story which features Aric of Dasia, a time-displaced Visigoth, with the most powerful weapon in the world known as the X-O Manowar armor. For the last couple years we’ve seen this be the most coveted object in the universe. It’s something everyone wants to get their hands on, whether that’s the Valiant heroes in our Unity launch, or divine aliens in the X-O Manowar launch. But what we discover is that the suit may be a bit of a poisoned chalice. That launches in June with Issue #1, but the four-issue limited series is going to tie into a bunch of our other titles including Unity, written by Matt Kindt with art by Stephen Segovia, and X-0 Manowar written by Robert Venditti with art by Diego Bernard. We’re super excited by that.
In July, we launch two three-issue limited series. One is our Bloodshot title with Joe Harris and the brilliant Trevor Hairsine, and then we have Armor Hunter: Harbinger by Joshua Dysart and Robert Gill. So we’ve got an exciting four-issue summer blockbuster coming up and our Rai story which was launched in May will continue. We’ve got a ton of stuff coming up as part of our Valiant First initiative.
DS: We’re super excited about Armor Hunters, it’s something we haven’t tried before. It’s a very big scope story which is very tricky when you’re working within a shared universe but we have some really talented cats at Valiant, Warren included. We think we may have cracked it. We looked to The Authority, we looked at a bunch of big books like that. We’re going to do our big, epic story.
Anything else that we should have asked about?
WS: Continuing our summer launches, we have Delinquents #1, which will be a four-issue limited series from the co-writers of Archer and Armstrong, the brilliant Fred Van Lente and the great James Asmus. That’s our crossover book with Archer and Armstrong and Quantum and Woody. It’s something we knew we wanted to have happen since day one here. It’s absolutely goofy and irreverent and awesome and it features…
DS: An ass map! Fred Van Lente and James Asmus came up with this great idea. The whole story centers around a map of the United States that’s been tattooed on a homeless man’s ass, and then skinned and split into two and it leads to the Hobo treasure. So Archer and Armstrong on one half and Quantum and Woody on the other half, and of course, X marks the spot in the middle of the butt cheeks and that’s where everyone’s headed.
WS: And you know, Dinesh comes to my office almost every month to ask if we can incorporate an ass map into all of our titles. I just couldn’t hold him off any longer.
Then we have Dr. Mirage coming out, which I’m super excited about. Jen Van Meter’s come onboard. She’s put together a really beautiful first script which unlocks a whole side of the Valiant universe that we haven’t seen before. Roberta De La Torre did some jaw dropping, breathtaking, beautiful art for Shadowman.
DS: The thing you really need to ask us is what we’re doing next, because none of us can tell you. If I even tried, Warren would literally jump through the phone and kill me because we have something really cool cooking up.
FP: We’ve done the difficult thing where we’re looking forward, we’re not looking back. Years one and two are gone and now we’re looking to years three and four. We always want to be next year’s comic book company. That’s really the goal here, and we keep that in mind.
DS: That’s really what Rai and Armor Hunters is about our launch is about. We did something and then a lot of people looked at it and had some success. So with Rai and Armor Hunters, we tried to double down and push further and now again with the next thing we’re doing that we can’t talk about, it’s more of that. I think people will have the same reaction that did when they saw Rai. How did this company manage to put this together? This is a big boy book.
FP: We’re a little company but we have a very big footprint. We’re proud of it, but it just keeps raising the bar. It raises the bar for us.