double take comics
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double take comics; a revival of
night of the living dead
.
double take comics recently launched 10 ongoing series, all set in the town in “night of the living dead. ”
interestingly, lionsgate films recently optioned one of double take’s comics, “z - men”, for a major motion picture .
nterconnected universes are all the rage, and gaming publisher take - two interactive almost had its own. take - two’s comic imprint double take
bill jemas is the former president of marvel comics. in his latest venture as the gm for double take comics, bill has found the cure for the dearth of talent in the comic book world - moth storytellers .
double take, the new publishing company from video game company take two and former marvel publisher bill jemas, is formally launching their comics line in september - and doing it bigger than previously announced .
note: double take is an advertiser at multiversity comics. however, this is not paid content and this interview was set up prior to the advertising agreement .
universal monsters universe is really excited about double take comics’ developing universe. they’ve got a great creative and editorial team and an exciting set of books that can be found and picked up at your local comic shop. you could also check out more at double take universe .
in an interview with comic book resources, jemas said double take' s plan is to post its comics to social media and eventually to digital comic distributors like comixology and madefire. later ,
traditional, gorgeous print versions
of the comics are planned, as is a kickstarter fundraising campaign to get those comics made .
the company' s publishing imprint is called double take and is spearheaded by former marvel comics publisher bill jemas. double take' s first three graphic novels, rise, insurrection and soul, are all set in the world of (and feature characters from) night of the living dead .
you’ve described a pretty daunting environment for a new publisher. what is your take on double take’s business model in that tough environment that you’ve just described ?
double take also launched a kickstarter campaign coinciding with the debut of their ultimate night of the living dead titles .
seems jemas’s gamble didn’t pay off if rumors surrounding double take shutting operations are true. at last month’s new york comic con, double take was aggressive, giving thousands of its trade paperback away for free. the press, inverse included, were invited to visit double take’s booth and walked away with ten paperbacks just for showing up .
earlier today, bleeding cool ran the news that double take comics, the comic publishing arm of take 2 interactive is to close down. it follows earlier reports that that its publisher, bill jema s was trying to raise money to buy it .
“we are pleased to expand our partnership with lionsgate, who has the right team to bring to life on screen what double take brings to life in comics, ” said double take general manager bill jemas. “we look forward to seeing lionsgate’s creativity transform the ‘z - men’ story into an exciting feature film, and everyone on the double take team is incredibly enthused at this once - in - a - lifetime opportunity. ”
a representative from double take had no comment for bleeding cool when contacted about this story. more to come soon .
i’ve been waiting for one of the newer comics publishers to bow out for a while now, and double take isn’t the only one that has had hiccups…or had to look at the financing to see how long they would remain viable. the comics publishing business overall is good, but, again, it’s a highly competitive market creatively, with few sure things. i doubt that double take will be the only casualty over the next 12 months .
rumors of double take’s closing later this month revealed the publisher’s original plan involving a shared continuity between bioshock, xcom, and civilization, one that would somehow involve superheroes. ultimately, because of take - two’s games division and a lack of time, double take pursued a universe within george romero’s public domain zombie film night of the living dead. in 2015, double take officially launched with ten titles, including z - men, which was optioned for a movie by lionsgate last year .
and as for jemas? i doubt we’ve heard the last of him. he’s got comics in his blood .
double take’s books were poorly designed and badly drawn. i’m surprised they lasred this long. jemas should have published fewer books and hired professional creators .
the studio will partner with double take, a subsidiary of videogame developer and publisher take - two interactive software. written by jeff mccomsey, “z - men, ” centering on a pair of government agents dealing with a zombie apocalypse, is the flagship title in double take’s recently launched universe based on george romero’s iconic 1968 horror film “night of the living dead. ”
the boom in comics periodical publishers over the last few years has a first casualty: double take. the division of video game company take two interactive, which was headed by former marvel publisher bill jemas will shut down at the end of the month. the news was first reported at bleeding cool and independently confirmed by the beat .
lionsgate is adapting the zombie comic book “z - men” into a horror movie. the studio will partner with double take, a subsidiary of videogame developer and publisher take - two interactive software. written by jeff mccomsey, “z - men, ” centering on a pair of government agents dealing with a zombie apocalypse, is the flagship title in double take’s recently launched [ … ]
one of the strongest titles in double take' s library was' z - men,' which was optioned by lionsgate for a movie last year .
for those unaware, double take is the comic book imprint of game publisher take - two interactive. while a comic book company owned by a game publishing company creating comics about a beloved film property seems like a recipe ripe for disaster, the project is spearheaded by bill jemas, of marvel ultimate universe fame. and put simply, jemas and his creators deliver .
if you all are curious about the comics, here’s the internal site the employees use. you have access to all issues .
last week, bleeding cool reported that double take planned to launch four new books in december, still set in the night of the living dead universe, but expanding into other genres. earlier in october, however, bleeding cool reported that jemas was seeking an investor to buy double take from take - two for $ 1. 2 million, a story which jemas denied, saying, “not even close. ”
double take is only. the first of several recent small publishers that will be closing over the next 18 months during the speculation correction the comic sales market will experience .
a source told bleeding cool that bill jemas, who joined double take in 2013, wanted to make a superhero universe using take - two’s games. strauss zelnick, chairman of take - two, gave jemas financing but was pushed back by the game’s division, who didn’t want an “outsider” to have access to its properties .
sixteen years ago, bill jemas played a lead role on the team that transformed marvel from an insolvent comic book publisher and toy manufacturer into a world - class entertainment company. in 2013, take - two interactive software hired jemas to start double take .
“we’re delighted to expand our relationship with our friends at take - two by partnering with their comic book arm, double take, in bringing ‘z - men’ to the big screen, ” said lionsgate motion picture group co - chairs rob friedman and patrick wachsberger .
). is this different approach due to a perception of a change in the collectible market or is it just a different situation for double take vs. where marvel was then ?
even if you have the original comics, it could be fun to put the two side - by - side and see the differences .
comics get launched on kickstarter all the time – from webcomic collections to new creations to everything in between, creators use the platform to see their creations come to life. but double take, a new publisher based out of new york, has one of the most ambitious, yet affordable, kickstarter campaigns i can recall .
first of all, the company – led by bill jemas, former marvel comics vice president – is using kickstarter to raise $ 15, 000 to bring the world 10 new ongoing series. those comics are all set in the same universe as the george romero classic night of the living dead, and all ten are launching at once. the kickstarter is quite a unique one, both in its low overall cost, the value per dollar of its comics, and how simple the reward structures are: $ 5 gets you 10 digital comics, $ 10 gets you 10 print comics, $ 20 gets you a year’s digital subscription to all ten, $ 50 gets you all the trade paperbacks of the first arc of the ten new series. aside from a few bundles and art prints, that’s it – it is all about these comics .
in these september 2015 solicitations, double take has ten ongoing monthly series based on and around the movie night of the living dead, which they are publishing under the banner of ultimate night of the living dead. jemas was, if you recall, the co - founder of marvel' s long - running ultimate comics line .
take - two interactive, the company behind grand theft auto, borderlands and 2k sports, is no longer just a video game publisher. take - two is branching out into comics with a new line of graphic novels set in the world of george romero' s 1968 zombie film night of the living dead .
take - two has previously explored the comic book market with titles based on its borderlands and duke nukem properties, but double take looks like the company' s attempt to carve out something new. based on the success of marvel studios' film franchises and the walking dead' s video game and television series, take - two must see an opportunity to build upon a fresh comic book foundation .
double take' s ambitions go beyond zombie stories, jemas says. they' ll be introducing superheroes to their universe, which will still share narrative space with the night of the living dead - inspired fiction .
the craziest part is some much of the work was in fact done by professional comics artists, but the end products all ended up having a shitty homogeneity. but then, everything wrong with them can be laid at the feet of bill jemas deciding he could completely reinvent the artistic process for creating comics without hiring comics professionals. every single member of their core staff, the writers who worked with jemas, the guys who storyboarded the books, the editors, the production designers, the guys who did the work behind the harebrained scheme of producing storyboards that would be later composited together into comic pages—literally every full time, salaried employee—had zero professional experience producing comics .
double take launched their universe with 10 first issues, with “dedication” being written by matt summo. when we asked yocum about the idea and methodology behind launching a universe right out of the gate with ten titles and holding onto that kind of release, especially in a competitive sense with the likes of marvel and dc releasing 20 or so comics a week, he had this to say :
i can’t remember where i wrote it, but when double take was announced, with their pricing structure, i said they wouldn’t make it a year. but they did. so ¯ \ _ (ツ) _ / ¯
so while you’re still in the halloween spirit, go watch night of the living dead for free on youtube. once you’re familiar with the world—or if you want to just dive right in—you can check out the first three issues for free on the double take website. the digital reader for their comics makes for a very cinematic experience. here’s some quick initial thoughts on what the series has to offer .
i brought that trade craft here but honestly i didn’t really know how to make comics i had written a bunch of plots. i complained about a bunch of comics i torn up a lot of pages. the difference between being the president of the company that writes a plot occasionally and being the gm who has to get books out the door is night and day difference. as much as the marvel experience was great and learning how to speak to and market to teens that was all fun. all the stuff we do here at double take i learn here on the job
bill and his wife are huge fans of the moth and have spent countless hours listening to slams on npr. in a case of incorporating what you love in your work, the first books that double take has published are 10 comics based in the night of the living dead universe. the books not only utilize moth storytellers as some of the writers, but actual moth stories are incorporated throughout the books .
but double take is once again doing something different. the 10 creative teams took 45 days to re - draw, re - write and in some cases re - order the different series in an almost director’s cut way. as a writer myself, i’ve never looked at a printed comic that i’ve written without seeing places i’d change it if i could. double take has given the creators that chance. the ability to look at the five issues and make them better .
not long ago double take took the unique step of launching 10 new comics simultaneously on the same day. all of the stories launched from the same place, the 1968 film night of the living dead. these titles included: rise, slab, medic, soul, honor, dedication, spring, z - men, remote and home. now, five issues in, it’s time to do a collected edition .
george a. romero' s 1968 film, night of the living dead, has been credited as redefining zombies from that point forward (if wikipedia is meant to be believed). decades after its release, it continues to influence new creators, and it just provided the basis for an entire new universe of comics. double take comics, a brand spanking new publisher, has launched ten titles all set in the world of the classic film. all of the first issues debuted at once and interested readers could pick up a nifty box containing the whole bunch. so, how does it stack up against romero' s work ?
what double take has managed to do, is create a funny, clever, and oddly educational comic book universe. the stories are as easy to consume as fresh human brains. spruce and sometimes very aware of themselves, these stories remind readers all there is to love about comics. they also build upon that strong foundation with easter eggs sprinkled throughout with 1960s nostalgia like pages from a tv guide or parody ads sure to make you chuckle .
starting the double take comic universe with stories spinning in and out of night of the living dead, it’s safe to say that their developing universe deals with aliens, indestructible humans, and zombies. monsters come in all shapes, forms, and sizes .
double take had a very unorthodox publishing model: bundled monthly packs of 10 titles all spinning out of night of the living dead, a public domain zombie tale. the books were often plotted by writers whose main experience was live storytelling (see storytellers from ‘the moth’ join jemas and double take for ‘living dead’ line .) the shut down appears to have been sudden, as just last week the publisher announced four new titles, and at new york comic con they had a huge giveaway of 10, 000 free graphic novels .
how xcom would connect to bioshock and civilization, or even how anyone becomes a superhero in these universes, remains unclear, perhaps because no one got around to thinking it through. but the success of take - two’s games could have given double take a fighting chance: the publisher officially launched in 2015 to unenthusiastic reviews, criticized for the art and lack of depth in the stories. “if bill had their support, he would have had the strongest marketing push of any comic company in the market, ” said bleeding cool ’s source. “double take was not the huge success bill had hoped for … and the money has to run out sometime. ”
scenes from rise, insurrection and soul are being posted to double take' s facebook. many of those scenes are a work in progress, going from sketch to inked to colored work, and some feature recreated and expanded scenes from night of the living dead in comic form .
scourge of rich johnston, maker of puns, and seeker of the snyder cut, jude terror, sadly, is not the hero comics needs right now... but he' s the one the industry deserves .
the latest games from take - two’s franchises, bioshock: the collection, civilization vi, and xcom 2, are available now .
it’s utterly unsurprising that double take failed. what is surprising is that someone gave jemas the go ahead with a scheme that seems to be built almost entirely around indifference to and contempt for the medium, the industry, the professionals who work in it, and the readers who buy the product .
inspired by the popularity of zombies via the walking dead, bleeding cool ’s source said jemas “latched on” to night of the living dead with the hope that “double take [ sic ] could prove themselves, then strauss and bill could push back on the game division to give them the properties. ”
one line of enquiry pursued the origins of his comics universe. as published, it is a sequel to the public domain movie the night of the living dead, initially set in the sixties, that transforms into a superhero universe .
double take tried a lot of innovative marketing and format initiatives– jemas has always been a trailblazer and he had some intriguing ideas here. but the material wasn’t that strong and lacked recognizable creator names. (you can read the first issues of all 10 titles here for free to see if you disagree .) selling bundles and books outside the dm seemed like a good tactic but with other publishers putting out stellar work, competing creatively is a key to survival. although double take had deep pockets, that could only go so far. jemas as also rumored to be seeking an investor to buy the company, although that rumor was expressly denied by jemas .
heidi macdonald is the founder and editor in chief of the beat. in the past, she worked for disney, dc comics, fox and publishers weekly. she can be heard regularly on the more to come podcast. she likes coffee, cats and noble struggle .
one of the most unique aspects to these comics are some info graphics that you could find during 1966, with the most informative info graphic is a small map in the back that shows where each book is taking place and from there i judged where to begin. reading all ten collectively, i do recommend that fans of the horror genre pick all of these up to get a comprehensive view of an exciting zombie horror adventure. find more comprehensive news, creative teams, and universe information at the official double take universe site. with each billed at 10 bucks a pop, they certainly wonâ€™t leave a dent in your wallet .
one of the complaints from earlier reviews about double take comicsâ€™ were the art and lack of secondary character depth. with the re - editing for the graphic novels the artist have gone and retouched the first issues to be at the same detail as the fourth and fifth issues. even the order of some of the secondary characters stories have been reshuffled to make the storyline run smoother. i highly recommend for those readers that only read the first issue to pick up at least one of these graphic novels and give them another read. you will not be disappointed with all the changes that have been made to make these comics better reads .
has quietly been working at bleeding cool for over three years. he has written comics for image, top cow, shadowline, avatar, idw, dynamite, moonstone, humanoids and zenescope. he is the author of the lucius fogg series of novels and a published photographer .
all ten titles will go five issues and then see trade paperbacks (graphic novels) release in the fall of 2016. some of the titles will be ongoing and by the end of the year, double take will expand with five to seven new titles that take place in 2016 but in the same shared universe. “50 years from the events of these books, super heroes have emerged; pennsylvania has become a wasteland, and we go all over, ” according to yocum. “there’s also going to be a book about early 2o’s females in london. ”
monsters come in all forms, shapes, and sizes. while the iconic universal monsters led the charge with vampires, mummies, wolf men, and gil men (to name only a few), george a. romero gave the world the premiere depiction of zombies, then known as ghouls. his 1968 masterwork, night of the living dead, ignited fans and critics imaginations and is currently preserved by the national film registry. to this day, romero’s night of the living dead is still very much a part of the horror conversation and it was the very subject that joe and i got to discuss with gabe yocum and matt summo of double take comics while at c2e2 – chicago comic and entertainment expo .
having flipped through the on - line versions, i’m half curious how they formatted the print comics, though. did they also do the weird (read: awful) lettering at the bottom of the panel? (saves money on competent letterers when you can just typeset something at the bottom of the panel… )
my first question, when i heard about double take, was this: why night of the living dead? what is it about this property that spoke to you enough to launch an entire line in the same universe? bill jemas: it’s the best thing in the public domain. night of the living dead offers expansive leeway for world building and allows us to make it our own, and we do .
you were at marvel for one of the most important and yet tumultuous times in their history – what, from that experience, do you bring to double take? which project – launching a new company, or reviving a flailing one – seemed more daunting? i think i’m genetically programmed to fix broken things. “i love the smell of napalm in the morning”. starting anew is certainly more daunting for me .
it’s the second project that lionsgate has launched with take - two. the studio announced in august that it was developing a tentpole based on the videogame “borderlands” with avi and ari arad producing .
our pick? matt summo’s “dedication. ” his title is described as “thanks to some hungry customers, the closing shift at george’s market has turned into a graveyard shift. ” “dedication” writer matt summo actually has experience in working at a grocery store. while working there, he published a book with an artist he found online. that journey led him to double take to seek out a position as an editor. “i put together a comic book, i could be an editor. i lettered it, i formatted it and so i sent it in [ to double take ] and they got back to me and said that they really liked my sample and ‘would you like to write for us? ’ when it finally came around to night of the living dead, summo was asked to write one of the books based on his experience working at a grocery store .
double take is quick to point out that
no one affiliated with the 1968 night of the living dead film is in any way involved in the creation of the new stories .
but since romero' s zombie movie is in the public domain — the result of a copyright mistake on behalf of the film' s distributor and a disastrous flood that ruined an early print of the film — it' s legally fair game .
this is like saying you see no difference between a star wars movie and a troma film: clear evidence of an utter lack of discernment in, or understanding of, the medium. they were, without doubt, the worst comics i have ever seen a nominally professional and well funded publisher put out in the past ten years .
the lineup of creators on these books are, for the most part, relatively unknown to mainstream comics fans. what can you tell us about each of the creative teams to pique our interest? bj: we have three star writers doing two books each: jeff mccomsey (best known for his zombie collections, fubar and mother russia) is on “z - men” and “rise, ” brian finklestein and peter aguero – our moth radio hour grand slam champions – are professional writers and storytellers and are also doing two each. brian on “slab” and “medic, ” peter on “home” and “honor. ” double take is fortunate to have three wonderfully talented creators working in the office, michael coast, our story editor, along with julian rowe and kurt tiede – graphic artist .
what is immediately apparent in all of the double take titles is the sense of normalcy that flows through them. each picks up with a group of characters going about their everyday lives. they' re doctors, grocery clerks, or radio djs in evan county, pennsylvania. suddenly, the dead begin walking and they don' t know what to do. we know the horror that awaits them, but for them, it’s just getting started .
the companies that are crafty find a way to make money through a whole bunch of other ancillary sources of revenue: obvious and easy, graphic novels; just as obvious but less easy, tv and movie deals; and then finally licensing. but at double take, our charter is to build properties from scratch so we’ve had to shuffle the model a little bit to make it make more sense, to give us a reasonable chance at long - term profitability .
the zombie obsessives of the world know night of the living dead was one of the original mainstream zombie flicks and franchises before the zombie craze really took over thanks to current properties like the walking dead and world war z. but neither of those properties would likely exist without night of the living dead, which helped invent the zombie genre behind director george a. romero’s vision. and thanks to the folks at double take, his zombie universe is about to get expanded .
the hiccup with these double take titles is that they don' t feel like full chapters of a story. while each of the series is an ongoing and there are more issues on the way, all of them end in abrupt ways, as if there were supposed to be more pages that were just left out. it doesn' t fill me with an urge to check out more, as they all end right before or just as the action is starting .
x - com was originally a 1994 game from microprose, set in 1998, a franchise featuring an elite international organization tasked with countering alien invasions of earth. recent games were published by take - two’s 2k games set in 2035 .
while bioshock, initially set in the sixties, was set among the survivors of a doomed underwater utopia and the monsters left behind. the games were developed and published by take - two’s 2k games, and developed with ken levine .
civilization was a microprose game, originally set in egypt in 4000 bc, and extending into the future as players develop their worlds, with sequels expanding that scope. take - two’s acquisition of the game would see future iterations extend off planet .
unlike a lot of new publishers, double take has a large, quite successful corporation as the parent company. with that in mind, why was a kickstarter the way to go for you guys? is this as much about getting the word out and building an audience as it was about raising the funds? bj: we are using kickstarter differently in that we want comic fans to get the product easily and affordably while allowing retailers to get in on the ground floor much more affordably than they can through distribution. readership is goal # 1 .
there’s a steve martin joke :
how you can be a millionaire and never pay taxes? the first step is you get a million dollars .
our first step was to get sponsorship by a well - heeled company who understands that it can take some time to brew up a good entertainment business. really the first step and what’s kept us going through these two years and change without publishing anything is a lot of support from the guys at take two. some of that has just been giving me and my team the time to learn how to build properties from scratch. that’s been really hard to do. it’s been an intellectual challenge. as some of us know, as you get older, those intellectual challenges take a little bit longer, but i think we’re there on the creative side .
, which is just the stuff inside), you take the risk, you buy the book. you don’t have to buy this and that and the other thing, you just get the one book. those seem to have held value, or i’ve perceived them to have held value .
in recent weeks, i’ve had a little contre temps with bill jemas over an interview that was meant to take place but found him first pre - empt it and start to post elements from it before it was finished. two extensive sets of questions sent to him remain unanswered at this point .
your kickstarter is fascinating for a few reasons; first of all, your incentives are extraordinarily affordable, and almost egalitarian in what is offered: no limited edition prints, no variants, just comics. to me, that shows how confident and proud you are of the books. was there a temptation to do something more extravagant for the rewards? bj: we are very proud of the stories we are telling and the work will stand on its own. we may offer more extravagant rewards once we hit goal and go toward a stretch goal .
“if you love the movie and you like the characters, you’re going to be happy, ” gabe yocum remarked in regards to the expanding nature of the series. all ten titles take place around the fictional evans county, pennsylvania during the events of the film and expand the nature of night of the living dead in sometimes quite surprising and exciting ways .
i don’t like variants. i think it’s a lot of work with not a lot of value. if we do any variations, we might take one story, one premise and build two beginnings off the same premise; we might build two alternate universes into the same world. so we might have alternate insides, but i don’t think alternate covers are all that healthy. everybody who bought
in a subsequent post, bc quoted an unnamed industry insider with a story of how the line was originally supposed to adapt take two games such as x - com, civilization and bioshock, a plan that was scuttled due to personality conflicts and business concerns. this led to a hasty plan of adapting night of the living dead in a series of interconnected books, according to the insider .
with respect to us specifically, we are going to take a guess at what the books ought to sell, and we’re going to print that amount, and that’s all we’re going to print. the difference is that we’re not expecting the books to become collectible on the first day. we’re building up some inventory. we’re talking to the top retailers in the industry, and a handful of we’ll call them, affectionately, whales (a handful of serious collectors) about taking a position with the books and buying a bunch of them, and selling them out slowly .
how closely will these stories get to the action from night of the living dead? will we encounter familiar characters and settings, or are these simply tales set in that world? bj: a little of both — want a peek? it was important that we include the characters that are familiar to fans of the film, but we also go far beyond the limits of the film and the world you know. take a look at our website where the first 10 issues will be free. “z - men” # 1 is already up in full for free now .
what we’re doing is taking the 10 first issues and ganging them together in a super pack, shrink - wrapped with a spine, and loading all of those in a display shipper that fits countertops. so a retailer can buy the units, not blow any shelf space (not that counter space is easy, but shelf space is gold), put our 10 - packs in a display case and sell them at a reasonable price, and when there’s one or two units left, they can take the super pack and place it spine out where the graphic novels go .
headquartered in new york city, take - two interactive software, inc. is a leading developer, publisher and marketer of interactive entertainment for consumers around the globe. the company develops and publishes products through its two wholly - owned labels rockstar games and 2k. our products are designed for console systems and personal computers, including smartphones and tablets, and are delivered through physical retail, digital download, online platforms and cloud streaming services. the companyâ€™s common stock is publicly traded on nasdaq under the symbol ttwo. for more corporate and product information please visit our website at http: / / www. take2games. com .
the beautiful concept behind double takes style is there is no listed reading order, so you can really jump into any one and still get something from a title. thereâ€™s no forward or anything that mentions these books are all part of this announced â€œultimate night of the living deadâ€ event despite all of them taking place within miles of each other, and, eventually, thematically touching on the zombie elements. although the 10 different comic books are under the same universe and tackle the same common threat, each story has their own feeling to it. z - men and honor tackle a more serious tone while dedication and home go in a more light hearted direction. although with only reading two or three of these graphic novels the tones may not blend well but when read all together the tones blend well with each other .
“ [ bill ] ’s kind of a visionary thinker and the fact of the matter is, the landscape we’re in today, where comics are so omni - present – they’re everywhere, independent companies often fail. the status quo is failure for independent companies. because it’s the same thing over and over again, why not figure out something different? when we originally decided on this shared universe and that we were going to have ten titles, originally we thought – why not put out three the one month and two the next? but why would we expect a different result than everyone else? there’s no reason so why not try something different and if you’re launching an entire universe; a universe is born with a big bang, not with a whimper, we thought ‘okay, why not do ten on one day? that’s a lot, but we could package them together. the big thing in media, right now, is binging so why not binge an entire universe at one time? for $ 20 bucks you get ten comic books; they all have connections and overlap. it’s a real cohesive universe. it just made sense. ”
a prophecy says that in the comic book industry' s darkest days, a hero will come to lead the people through a plague of overpriced floppies, incentive variant covers, # 1 issue reboots, and super - mega - crossover events .
). in part 1 of our two - part interview, we talk about how the comic publishing world has changed since jemas’ marvel tenure (2000 - 2004), his thoughts on overprints and variants, and on launching a new comic company in the current environment. in
, we talked about the launch issues of pricing, accessibility, marketing, digital, and the talent .
you’ve got a unique perspective on the market. you ran marvel’s publishing 10 - 15 years ago, have been adjacent to the comic book business since, and are now jumping back in with both feet. how do you think the business has changed in that time ?
i guess my surprise coming in was how well some of the independent companies and creators were doing in terms of sales volume. in talking to the handful of the guys who do creator - owned pubs, either self - published or self - published through image, i was expecting them to be doing better financially. i think my surprise with the industry is that it may not be providing a living for as many people as it could be or should be. without naming names (i don’t want to embarrass people), looking at sales numbers from independent guys that score really high up in the monthly charts and understanding how much money is left for the creative team, when all is said and done not much is left. so that was a bit of a shock .
but i think the other things were not surprises. it’s very hard to make money as an independent publisher. the math just doesn’t work. good indies [ move ] 10 - 15 thousand units. if you want to pay people the way marvel and dc does, you’re spending $ 10 - $ 15 thousand for art and editorial, and then by the time you get done paying that and you’ve got $. 50 to $ 1 a book you have to pay at low print volumes, you’re just losing money on every book if you’re successful, which is an interesting way to define success .
from a pure ink, paper, sales side, what we’re doing is a little bit higher risk but certainly higher reward. very specifically, we’re not trying to peg our initial print runs to initial orders. we’re going ahead and printing enough books so that we get really good prices from the printer, so we can have a low retail price point, get new readers in, and still sell to the retailers at a good enough price so they have a decent margin .
so we’re gang - printing the first 10 books, and (this coming out of my mouth will shock you) overprinting, printing what we think will sell in a long run with the first issues as opposed to what we sell in the first pop. once we had all 10 books in mind, we thought, we can trickle them out once a month, 5 - 10 thousand units, or we could gang them together in one big super pack .
we think this is a nice model. you never know until you know, but crystal ball out, this feels good. what i can tell you about it, with 10 individual # 1s trickled out one at a time, i was pretty sure that even if we had pretty good books, we’d lose money. with this system, i’m pretty sure that if we have pretty good books, we’ll make money, the retailers will make money, and the fans will get a decent price .
this kind of thing is exciting. my boss asked me yesterday how i’m feeling and i tell him i’m feeling nervous and i’m not sleeping, and for me, that’s good. that means we’re working hard on this and we’re doing everything we can to get the best stories out there and carry through the rest of the way through the printing process so the reader’s experience is good overall .
you mentioned that people may be surprised at the fact that you are overprinting. you famously ended overprints at marvel when you were there, and the collectible market responded (see
that’s the other surprise when i re - entered the industry. the team that left with me and the team we left in place, there was a nice model for making money for everybody, the no - overprint, no - reprint model .
as i got back to the industry, i had a handful of retailers who called and said ,
bill, you know we owe you one .
they send me a picture of a beach house and say ,
we built that with the money we made when we got back into collectability .
so i would have expected that marvel would have kept up with no overprints, no reprints, and that dc would have copied, and the industry would have had, in addition to the pure readership, a collector’s aspect. and frankly, if you’re doing print in the era of dod [ download on demand ], you’d better have something. so i was a little surprised that something that was really teed up and ready to go and worked really well disappeared. i don’t know why, and haven’t talked with the guys about why they did what they did, but it’s a shame .
i think we’ll get to collectability. it didn’t make sense to me to think that we’d get collectability from obscurity. i thought the books should get out there, people get to like them. if people like them as much as we hope they do, there’ll be a chase and the books that we’re printing the first shot will sell out quickly and have a secondary value to prime the pump for the collectibles business in the long term .
i’m not a collector; i love the collectibles business. i think it’s a lot of fun. i’ve lived through the abuses. i lived through fleer. we had a wonderful business, and we got the rug pulled out from under us by the parent company with overprinting, but when collectability’s working, people have a good time doing it and retailers can make a pretty solid living brokering collectibles .
one difference now is that some of that collectible aspect of the market is in the variants portion of the business. are you doing any variants? how do you feel about those ?
i don’t believe in them. as i look back at the products that i’ve produced, and the products that were produced when i was the most active in the business (books like
# 1. it’s a collectible book now it’s a lot of fun to have. we didn’t do the variant. the books that had the variants didn’t hold value .
i’m also harkening back to my experience with trading cards where the plain vanilla, in - the - pack michael jordan rookie card’s worth a lot of money and all the b. s. that we created of variant michael jordan stuff didn’t really matter .
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here' s a preview of the sandman universe # 1, published by dc vertigo .
pandasaurus games is placing a new edition of the spiel de jahres - nominated coop card game the game in target .
shinobi 7 will release my hero academia: the card game based on the popular anime .
lionsgate is adapting the zombie comic book “ z - men ” into a horror movie .
“we continue to diversify our portfolio with films adapted from novels, video games and board games and look forward to translating 2t’s graphic novel into a spine - chilling film for moviegoers and comic book fans alike. it is yet another example of the strong underlying intellectual property on which our film and television content is based. ”
the deal for “z - men” was orchestrated by lionsgate motion picture group president of business and legal affairs patricia laucella .
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was 10 titles too many out of the gate? sounds like it could’ve been. if they started with 3 and grown slowly they might have lasted longer, but who knows ?
it’s clear that they took risks in reaching a larger market it must have burned through a lot of money .
man. would have been nice if the trade dress even hinted at that. because nothing says “grisly horror” like mostly - white, clean block - letter logos and a design that looks like supermarket - brand mac and cheese .
xcom could make a great comic, but the inherent problem i see with it is that there’s no real reason its premise would * need * to be an xcom comic. ultimately, it’s about a bunch of military grunts trying to repel an alien invasion, making hard decisions, and dying in very large numbers. it’s a fantastic hook, but you don’t need the xcom brand to tell that story; it might even be a liability.
double take comics was a comic book imprint of the american multinational video game publisher and distributor take-two interactive . it was founded in 2013 by former marvel publisher bill jemas . the group closed in november 2016 . its titles and characters were loosely inspired by the 1968 film night of the living dead . lionsgate announced a film adaptation of z-men , double take 's best-selling title , in august 2016 . 
double take comics was a comic book imprint of the american multinational video game publisher and distributor take-two interactive. it was founded in 2013 by former marvel publisher bill jemas. the group closed in november 2016. its titles and characters were loosely inspired by the 1968 film night of the living dead. lionsgate announced a film adaptation of z-men, double take's best-selling title, in august 2016.
double take comics was a comic book imprint of the american multinational video game publisher and distributor take-two interactive. it was founded in 2013 by former marvel publisher bill jemas. the group closed in november 2016. its titles and characters were loosely inspired by the 1968 film night of the living dead. lionsgate announced a film adaptation of z-men, double take's best-selling title, in august 2016.