Lit Obscure, Unsubstantiated Rumor Indirectly Denied by Randy: Star Wars comics moving to Marvel?

Both are great ID, both are great, but I wouldn't hold your breath for a reprint!

 

The bolded part is where I see an issue. Ideally, of course we'd like to have innovative, fresh new stories that can sustain themselves, if not based on monthly sales, then with other methods. But if I were in charge with an eye aimed solely maximizing profits? I don't think I'd be looking at it nearly as favorably. Monthly sales targets are easy measures. You put series up against each, the losers get cut, the winners taken as reference for the next series that comes along.

DH probably does very good business with their TPBs, but I'm not optimistic that the return is greater than what Marvel makes on a monthly basis.

 

You will need a stronger drug if half the speculation in this thread becomes reality....or at least I will.

 

From Randy...

Yodazone's post: "Who is blueskyDisney? One random blog entry with no reliable links and it's being posted everywhere on the net."

 

Isn't that how the internet works?

 

That's too bad. I could probably still get them both, but I'm not exactly made of $100 bills, and by the time I have some money I'm willing to throw at comics, their prices might have skyrocketed. I'm not sure why Marvel doesn't keep them in print, honestly. I'm not business expert, but it seems like that would be more profitable in the long run, especially since the deluge of superhero movies seems to be reinvigorating an interest in superhero comics.

Then again, I suppose those massive things are much more costly to keep in print than, say, Star Wars omnibuses.

 

Okay, so the rumor report says that Dark Horse will publish until the end of 2013 and that Marvel won't publish SW comics until 2015. Does that mean there will be no SW comics for all of 2014? Am I reading that correctly??

 

There might be a small gap between the winding down of one company's output and the ramping up of the other's, but not a full year. That the article suggests as much is another reason not to put excessive trust in it.

 

Except then all those innovative, risk-taking series you've probably been wanting for years go out the window!

On an anecdotal level, I know Marvel are killing themselves with double-shipping - the only reason I see for there being no drop is there are enough people who buy superheroes out of habit and, all declarations to the contrary, they ain't breaking that habit any time soon.

Is the same true of SW? Perhaps, but to a lesser degree. For instance, I allow DHC $3.99 an issue as they're a smaller company and production costs are going to e higher, Marvel? Don't have that excuse, they're big enough to sell more issues at lower per issue price and there's evidence to suggest more people experimentally buy at $2.99 than $3.99.

At the same time, the quarterly return business cycle is becoming more criticised as it is arguably that which was one of the major causes of the 2008 crash. Corporations seem to be stupidly short-term, but where comics are concerned the longer view pays off. Get a story right and you've a collection that will sell and sell, which is why DC regularly top the trades chart year on year, with books like Watchmen and Batman Year One that they keep in print. (Though there are other, infamous reasons for keeping the former in print!)

 

Yeah even I don't believe DH will lose the license as early as 2013. They'll lose it for sure, but my feeling is that it'll be about August of 2014 when DH sales their last Star Wars comic and marvel picks it up starting that September or waits till January of 15 to have a series that'll tie into the movie.

 

An unfortunate loss, but DH has always been extraordinarily generous in that department (and in others). I wouldn't expect any other company, especially one that just got handed the license, to take the kind of risks they have or to engage the community to anywhere near the same degree. What we've had until now has been the exception, rather than the rule.

 

So you're actually willing to support financially less risky, probably more mediocre work just because it has Star Wars in the title?

Because I wouldn't be.

And to say being handed the licence excuses a lack of risk-taking, when that licence is Star Wars, is far too generous.

 

Who said anything about supporting? I'm not saying I'd like it, or that I'll buy whatever they put out (or any of it). It's just what I expect they do, and I don't see it necessarily as a bad thing: just the natural outcome.

 

Actually, I'm not certain the outcome would be that.

I mean, IF this were to happen there would be a lot of very hacked off DHC SW fans.

The only way to possibly win those people over would be to do the biggest, most-risky, ballsiest SW comic story going. A latter-day DE as it were.

Because cautious sure as hell ain't going to do it, not in the comics marketplace now and definitely not a year or so down the line.

 

Alternatively, they might simply give up on those fans and retool the comics into more superhero-esque series to try and tap into their preexisting market.

 

Except superheroes already do space operas and cosmic stuff and the buyers tend to be quite conservative in that respect.

Even if pitched as a new comic, it'll still have to have that something to make it stand out from the hundreds of rival books. For that reason caution won't cut it.

 

What the BlueSkyDisney Blog Said : The Suits in the know have determined that no new contracts will be given to Dark Horse after the current ones expire. So all new projects after 2013 will be handled internally by Marvel.
It's not known yet if titles will be worked into the regular line up, or will Marvel create a special branch of the company that deals with Star Wars. It'll take a couple of years for the old deals to work there course, but the stories that Dark Horse have coming down the pipeline will be the last. And you can expect anything new from Marvel dealing with Star Wars to arrive around 2015. ..... What they actually men't : "In order to ensure our security and continuing control over the STAR WARS Brand, Dark Horse Star Wars comics will be reorganized into the MARVEL STAR WARS COMICS.. for a controlled and less creative society."

 

This. It's not quite the time for us to get our collective panties in a bunch. Some wisdom from perennial letterer Michael Heisler:

That's responding to a post from Ryder Windham on facebook where Ryder awesomely said:

 

As I said elsewhere, don't believe what you read on the Internet.

 

Thanks Randy.

And now, back to speculating about the new Legacy...

 

STRAD

 

Agreed.

Admittedly, though, I can't help from wondering if Dark Horse would be that much different when Episode 7 came out either, as inevitably it'll be 1999 all over again with all cylinders firing on pumping up interest in the prequels. Certainly, it was the same year Del Rey launched the NJO, which isn't something I see being copied this time, but even if DH were to keep the licence, I could see us only getting one, maybe two series that were for the hardcore fans, with everything else sequel focused for the foreseeable future.

Where I see a major difference in approach, however, is what happened after the ST. DH kept the brand alive by becoming ever more experiment -- Legacy, and now DOTJ, being the most extreme culminations of that. But when Star Wars starts being a staple in every child's bedroom again, I can see the focus changing significantly whoever the licence holder was.

That, though, is where I suspect Jedi_Ben may prove to be correct in suggesting Star Wars could become more standard superhero faire with spin-offs that are just tied into whatever the latest movie happens to be (with I expect an OT remake before 2030). Like TFU, it's easy money, with toys, video games, novelisations, comics, etc, and doesn't require any of the risks that DH and DR have had to take if Disney do indeed deliver on their current ideas of constantly releasing new films to keep Star Wars in the public consciousness. At the end of the day, there's just more money in it.

Of course, how much you can keep doing that before it becomes stale, who knows... which is where Star Wars is slightly different to Marvel's other series, since a Star Wars film will always be a Star Wars film, whereas different superheroes can be totally different, so how successful Marvel and Disney are in changing public attitudes to "what" Star Wars is is what I think will prove the biggest question of them all: if casual fans continue to just expect Sith and Jedi, they'll get bored, and Star Wars films will stop being made again (cue OT remake). If they do something different, it's more risky again, and could keep Star Wars going longer -- but that'll depend on them not having audiences asking "Where are the lightsabers? If I just wanted to watch stormtroopers shooting each other I'd watch the Halo film."

But obviously that's all decades away. For 2015-2020 though, I see pretty much everything just being sequel fanfare since unlike back in the 80s (or even early 00s) there's much more merchandising that can be sold these days, from video games, to iPad covers, to whatever other junk there is on top of the usual bedsheets and t-shirts.

 

I feel bad for DH, a little of topic but they made a series of ALIENS comics that took place years after the movie before Alien3 was made. The comics had Hicks, Newt, and eventually Ripley in them. Then Alien3 came out and all those characters died. To retcon, later printings and the novelizations gave Hicks and Newt different names (same basic backstory) and Ripley was a robot programmed to think she was the real Ripley.

DH seems to always get screwed by more movies of their licensed material.


And if it turns out Marvel does get SW think of the possibilities: Continuity reboots every few years, dead characters coming back to life for no reason (villains quicker than heroes), writers deciding to not age someone so they erase a whole marriage to save an 80+ year old woman, a new #1 with each new writer, and crossovers with the Avengers where Wolverine takes on Kyle Kartan and loses a few limbs....only to regrow them even if thats not his power.

 

Did Disney earn Star Wars? And from what I understand Marvel lobbied to get the license back the last time the contract was up for grabs. Marvel will get the license in probably about 2 years. The only thing I don't believe about this whole thing is the 2013 part. Marvel has nothing to gain from getting the license 2 years before the movie. In late 14 or 15 Disney and Marvel will be able to take advantage of the release, they don't have that advantage now.

So it's only good business to have DH keep the license in which case both STAR WARS and LEGACY 2 can have good runs that could amount to what maybe 25 issues each. With the added possibility of continueing in Marvel, though unlikely.

Fan boys shouldn't have anything to worry about for the next couple of years.