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Dark Horse Secures Rights to Conan Series
Press Release from Dark Horse Comics, Thursday, November 07, 2002
Dark Horse Comics has announced that it has acquired the rights to publish comics featuring Robert E. Howard's most popular creation, Conan the Barbarian. The monthly ongoing series will include all new stories, while also incorporating adaptations of his original tales. "I am very honored and excited to bring this classic character back to the comics world," said Dark Horse Comics President Mike Richardson. "We will be working closely with Fredrik Malmberg of Conan Properties to ensure the highest quality stories and art to do this legendary character justice."
"Since word leaked out that we got the Conan license we have been overwhelmed with requests for information on this classic property," explained Dark Horse Comics Publicist Lee Dawson. "The anticipation level for new Conan material has just knocked us out. When Conan fans see what we have in store for them I think they will be very, very pleased. We are all big fans of Robert E. Howard's character and can't wait to get these books out!"
First introduced as "Conan the Cimmerian" in the 1930s, Howard's character quickly garnered an enormous following the world over. Over the past 70 years, the barbarian hero has been brought to life in books, comics, television, and film. This new series should further please retailers since it will help them profit from the buzz surrounding the new Conan film being spearheaded by Conan the Barbarian director John Milius and The Matrix's Andy and Larry Wachowski.
"Conan has been a major comics franchise for many years," added Malmberg. "Dark Horse was our number one choice when we looked for a new licensee, and we are extremely pleased with the creative approach they are planning."
Dark Horse's Conan series is scheduled to launch mid-2003.

PVP Moves To Image Comics
From Diamond Comics Retailer Website
Image Comics has announced that it will begin publishing Scott Kurtz's tremendously popular humor comic book series, PvP, in March. The Image-published PvP #1 will feature a cover by award-winning cartoonist Frank Cho.
PvP follows the staff of Player Versus Player Magazine on their daily routine of covering the world of pop-culture, but Kurtz is quick to point out that it's not a comic book about about socially inept geeks who can't get a date or manage to wear a clean shirt.
"PvP is about people like me who were raised as much by popular culture as we were our parents," said Kurtz. "We eventually grew up, but a part of us is still playing Atari somewhere."
Kurtz distinguished himself as a cartoonist early by choosing to bypass the traditional route of syndication by taking his comic strip, PvP to the Internet instead. Since its debut on the Web in 1998, PvP has grown to a daily readership of over 70,000 people and with Internet traffic of around eight million page views a month. He began collecting his cartoons and publishing them in comic book format through Dork Storm Press in 2001.
"This time last year, Image Comics was publishing a grand total of zero humor comics," explained Image Director of Marketing Eric Stephenson. "With the addition of PvP, we've got two of the best on the market. We're incredibly pleased that Scott has chosen to bring PvP to Image to join [Frank Cho's] Liberty Meadows in broadening the perception of what an Image comic is."

CHAOS! COMICS FILES CHAPTER 7 BANKRUPTCY

According to both Newsarama.com and CBR.com, Chaos! Comics has shut down all operations following a filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Apparently the offices were closed, perhaps perminately, on Thursday, August 15th.
"It wasn't fair for us to continue at [freelancers'] expense," Goldfine told CBR News. "At the point that, we realized that we stopped making promises we knew we couldn't meet...Hard to say what the real cause was. The source of it really was our declining sales. What caused our declining sales is really difficult to say." Goldfine also said that no new books would be hitting the shelves and that the future of the characters was up in the air.
Brian Miller, founder of Hi-Fi Colors, which did coloring for Chaos for much of 2001, said they had seen evidence of Chaos!'s financial troubles for some time.

"Hi-Fi chose to scale back the number of titles we worked on for Chaos! Comics around of October 2001 due to ever frequent late payments," Miller told CBR News on Friday. "We ended our working relationship with them in February of this year for fear that something like this might happen.
"I am really disappointed with Chaos! Comics, personally. They kept using people right up until the end, telling them that everything was going to get better. In any business, communication is the biggest key to success. I clued in early on that when they dodged questions about late payments that all was not well in the world of Chaos! It is a real shame that they didn't handle themselves better.
"I think that a lot of hard working, innocent individuals and companies will end up paying the price for what essentially boils down to poor management and non-existent communication between Chaos! Comics and its vendors."
Chaos Comics form of sexy horror is most epistomised by Lady Death, a character who originally premiered in the Evil Ernie comic. A Lady Death movie was previewed only two weeks ago at Comic-Con International in San Diego and was scheduled for a late 2003 release. Its future is equally uncertain.
"We're not sure at this point," Goldfine said. "We're doing what we can to make sure it can continue."
Filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy effectively is a straight bankruptcy and liquidation of all assets Chaos! holds, which in turn wiped their debts clean. The company's remaining assets would then be turned over to their court-appointed trustee who in turn would sell them off and pay off debtors, most notably including freelancers who have done work for the company. Several notable freelance writers have worked for Chaos! in recent months, including Peter David and John Ostrander. Goldfine said that simply filing to reorganize the company under Chapter 11 bankruptcy "didn't seem worthwhile."
"It's tough. It's sad for us. We put a lot of heart and soul into this. We put a lot of ourselves into Chaos! Comics. It really is tough to let all that go."

KISS COMIC ARRIVES RIDING RETRO TREND
Dark Horse Comics announced its comic series based on the rock band Kiss at last year's San Diego Comicon without a lot of fanfare. After all Image's Kiss: The Psycho Circus comic had sort of just faded away and expectations for Dark Horse's book were not very high. Well a year later, Gene Simmons, the tongue-wielding bassist and driving force behind Kiss licensing, will be back at San Diego, and he will be touting Dark Horse's number one comic for July. Written by X-Men scribe Joe Casey and penciled by Mel Rubi, Dark Horse's new Kiss comic is riding a revival of 70s and 80s properties that almost no one foresaw at last year's San Diego show (see "Why Is Retro Better Than Ever" for an examination of the current phenomenon). Because of its connections to the broader world of popular music, Dark Horse's Kiss comics have even more outreach potential than do most of the other retro revival properties, which are based on toy lines or cartoons.
Since Kiss was one of the most visually interesting rock groups in an era that saw more than its share of flash and glam, it comes as no surprise that Gene Simmons and his mates were interested in comic books almost right from the beginning. Marvel Comics Super Special #1 appeared in November of 1986, and those old enough to remember those days can reflect on how Marvel kept pumping those comics out to serve demand, a practice which the modern Marvel eschews, but one which hasn't hurt the back issue value of MCSS #1, which has a guide value of $120 in mint condition, the same as MCSS #5, which also featured Kiss. No other MCSS book even comes close to the Kiss-themed issues in value.
Todd McFarlane's legendary love of heavy metal led to another series of Kiss comics in the late 90s. Kiss: The Psycho Circus, published by Image, debuted in 1997 and lasted some 30 issues. McFarlane has gradually reduced his comic publishing activities and the Kiss comics series ended, but McFarlane Toys is continuing to create Kiss figures and busts, which retailers can cross-merchandise effectively with the Dark Horse Comics series.
The new Dark Horse Kiss series includes considerable input from Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley (who control the entire Kiss property), but it also benefits from the professional touch imparted by Joe Casey, a veteran writer of Marvel X-Books, and Mel Rubi, who has drawn Aliens vs. Predator and Joss Whedon's Angel. The talented (and ubiquitous) J. Scott Campbell provided the cover to the first issue of the Dark Horse series. The continuing success of the Dark Horse series will depend on retailers' ability to reach out and snare non-traditional comics fans who like Kiss -- and on pitchman Gene Simmons' ability to keep the band and its ancillary products in the news.

Witchblade Gets The Axe
Although it managed to hang in with respectable, if not stellar ratings, the Witchblade TV series has been cancelled. Although reviews within the comic industry were mixed, the Witchblade TV series still pulled in enough of the prime 18-49 age group that TNT was initially very happy with the series' prospects. Yancy Butler starred as Sara Pezzini and had made tabliod deadlines with various problems during the series produtcion. This news, combined with the cancellation of Dark Angel may leave a significant gap in the "hot chicks in leather" crime drama niche.