Archive for August, 2009

The Walt Disney Company has just announced that it acquires Marvel Entertainment and its portfolio of over 5,000 characters for $4 billion.

“This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories,” said Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company. “Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney.”

“We believe that adding Marvel to Disney’s unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation,” Iger said.

“Disney is the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses,” said Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s Chief Executive Officer. “This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney’s tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world.”

For more: Google News

Boom! Studios is releasing the first issue of Monsters, Inc. tomorrow. It’s the latest comic book based on Pixar’s animated feature films. The first four issues are written by Paul Benjamin and drawn by talented artist Amy Mebberson. Besides drawing for the Monsters comic, she’s also working on the upcoming Muppet Peter Pan comic as well as covers for Finding Nemo and The Muppet Show. I asked Amy some questions about her work.

Disney Comics Worldwide: How did you get started at Boom! Studios?

Amy Mebberson: Much like Alan Porter said in your last interview, I had worked with editor Paul Morrissey at Tokyopop. Through the grapevine I heard that Boom! were building a stable of artists and writers for their Pixar and Muppet comics and basically, they couldn’t NOT hire me. I wouldn’t let them! So I got in touch with Paul, made some phone calls, followed him home a few times, received a restraining orde-… okay, moving on.

All the artists have to be approved by Disney as well, so I had to submit a whole lot of character model sheets for various titles and Monsters Inc. was the first one they approved me for. By a pleasant stroke of luck, I was paired with writer Paul Benjamin, whom I also knew from Tokyopop, so I got to start working with some familiar faces!

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I’m started a new category on this blog in which each time I’ll feature a different Disney comic title from around the world. The first one is Kisah Hidup Paman Gover (or The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck) from Indonesia. This new series, which was launched in July 2009, collects The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck in chronological order: the original 12 chapters as well as the additional “in-between” chapters. The work, for which Don Rosa earned the Will Eisner Award in 1995, tells the story of Scrooge’s life from 1877 to 1947 using references found in Carl Barks stories. Look at this gorgeous cover of the first issue:

Kisah Hidup Paman Gober is published by Kompas-Gramedia, the largest media conglomerate in Indonesia, which not only publishes books and magazines but also owns 5 radio stations and a TV station. Disney comics have a solid presence in Indonesia with several regular titles, including classic Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics and trade paperbacks, as well as modern titles such as Tinkerbell, W.i.t.ch. and Princess. The country’s flagship title is Album Donal Bebek, which has been published weekly since 1976.

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Disney comics are back in the United States thanks to Boom! Studios, a relatively new publisher that recently landed the license for Disney Pixar’s movie characters as well as Disney’s classic characters like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.

Boom’s first two Pixar titles, featuring all-new stories, were Cars and The Incredibles, which both hit newsstands in March 2009. The first issue of “Cars: The Rookie” sold out in one week and is now in its 2nd print-run. The Cars comics are written by Alan J. Porter with beautiful artwork by Albert Carreres (stories) and Allen Gladfelter (covers). I had the chance to ask Alan some questions recently about his work for Boom and his love for Cars.

Disney Comics Worldwide: How did you get involved in writing the Cars comic for Boom?

Alan J. Porter: I begged to do it! OK the serious answer, I already knew Paul Morrissey the editor on the BOOM Disney books as we had worked together at Tokyopop where he had published my manga story GOD SHOP. The day that BOOM announced the Disney*Pixar deal at San Diego Comic-Con in 2008, I found Paul and told him that I just had to write CARS. I pitched him a story idea there and then that he liked, so he asked me to send him some more story ideas after the convention. It seems that both Paul and the folks at Disney liked my ideas enough to give me the gig.

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Back in May, Walt Disney Studios launched Kingdom Comics, a new division tasked with re-imagining and rejuvenating Disney’s live action films as 128-page plus graphic novels. The company’s other goal is to create original material that will have the potential to be made into new film projects.

The new division is overseen by actor and novelist Ahmet Zappa, producer Harris Katleman and graphic novelist, actor and producer Christian Beranek. Zappa commented: “The ability to create new publications based on properties from the Disney vaults, and to develop original ideas for graphic novels and possibly future Disney films, is a dream job filled with enormous fun and potential. Being a storyteller myself, I can’t wait to work with some of today’s top writers and artists in bringing a fresh approach to graphic novels and the movies. We’re also excited to discover and develop promising new talents in this field.”

At last weekend’s Wizard World in Chicago, Kingdom Comics co-founder Christian Neranek gave out some more details about his Kingdom Comics. “Think totally in the spirit of National Treasure and Pirates of the Caribbean,” he said. “Our purpose is to go back and re-imagine stuff that Disney may not have thought of, or they may have a mandate like ‘Look, we have a lot of equity in something that is thirty years old that people are fond of.'”

“We’re not going to be interested in doing the single-issue format,” he said. “It’s going to be on a book-publishing schedule every four months when we launch. We’re shooting to have the books out Fall of next year.”

Read more on last weekend’s panel at Wizard World on Comic Book Resources.

In last week’s giveaway I asked people to give their favorite Disney comics character. There were nearly 150 answers, so this was just a small survey, but it’s still fun to see what the results were. The most popular character was Donald Duck, with his rich Uncle Scrooge in second place:

It’s also interesting to note that 59% were ‘standard’ characters like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, 21% of entries were Pixar characters, while 11% were from classic Disney features like Alice and Princess Jasmine.

Amazon has recently lowered the pre-order price on the upcoming hardcover editions of Don Rosa’s Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck books from $24.99 to $16.49. That’s 34% off! Most of the other future hardcover books from Boom! Studios listed on Amazon are $16.49 now too. They are:

• Cars: Radiator Springs
• Cars: The Rookie
• Donald Duck Classics: Quack Up
• Finding Nemo: Reef Rescue
• The Incredibles: City of Incredibles
• The Incredibles: Family Matters
• The Life & Times Of Scrooge McDuck: Volume 1
• The Life & Times Of Scrooge McDuck: Volume 2
• Mickey’s Hero Squad
• Monsters, Inc: Laugh Factory
• Toy Story: The Mysterious Stranger
• Walt Disney’s Christmas Classics Volume 1
• Walt Disney’s Valentine’s Classics Volume 1

Last week’s DCW giveaway has ended. I used random.org to pick a random number and the winner of the six comics of The Incredibles, Toy Story and Cars by Boom! Studios is … (drum roll) … Alan Huestis with comment #103.

There were a total of 152 entries, but 7 of these had not read the instructions correctly and did not comment with their favorite Disney comics characters, so I did not include those 7 in the drawing. Sorry guys.

Alan, congratulations! I will will be contacting you shortly so that I can send you the comics.

It was fun to do this giveaway and I’ll definitely do more of these in the future. Follow this blog via RSS Feed, email or Twitter to find out about future giveaways.