Episode 5: NYCC 2019 News and Notes

The following is the original script from which I recorded this podcast. I do have a tendency to wander off it from time to time…..

Magnetic Press Out From One, Now Under Polarity

If you’re not familiar, Magnetic Press is a company that prints translated European comics here in the States.  I’ve reviewed a few of their books on PipelineComics.com. Great books, Excellent high production quality.

Lion Forge bought them up a couple years ago.

Then Lion Forge and Oni had a corporate merger, where Oni took over comics production, and Magnetic Press got folded under them. I wrote about this a couple months back.  The takeaway was that Lion’s Forge was part of an intellectual property pipeline, looking to create IP that can be used in movies and animation, where the parent company might actually make money, not in comics publishing.

We learned at the show this year thanks to that Comics Beat report that Magnetic Press is back on its own now, operating directly under Oni’s parent company, Polarity.

This is just a gut feeling, but this feels like a good thing.  Magnetic Press should be doing its own thing, running at its own pace, maintaining its own culture.  Being on its own like and reporting directly up to Polarity will mean that the publisher can call his own shots.

The downside of it is that Magnetic Press is running its own P&L statement now.  They’ll be directly responsible for their own success again, but also their own losses.  If they have a bad quarter or a bad year? There’s nowhere to hide that line item under a larger organization in the Polarity portfolio.

We’ll see what happens.  I have to think this is a good deal for Magnetic, which doesn’t necessarily fit into that IP Pipeline that I described earlier. They license, translate, and print books.  They live and die in publishing. They need to follow a different business model, and this will let them do that.

From a fatalistic point of view, it also makes them easier to spin-off, sell off, or cut loose.  So, we’ll see.

The article also mentions some upcoming books from Magnetic Press, most of which I know nothing about, but I am excited for “Paris 2119”, a book by Zep and Dominique Bertail that I have seen pages from in the past.  My curiosity is piqued on that one.

Reviews of Magnetic Press Books:

Black Label: DC Tries Its Hand at BD?

Second story, and this one is a bit speculative.  There’s a lot of me reading between tea leaves here.  DC announced some new Black Label titles. This includes a new four part Harley Quinn mini-series, “Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey” by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, with Conner providing the art.

32 pages each issue.  Bi-monthly release. $6 an issue, oversize pages. Maybe a cardboard cover?

Out of continuity tales.  Big name creators. Evergreen titles once they’re collected.  In high end formats on oversized pages.

It’s beginning to sound more and more like DC exploring the BD album model, doesn’t it?  A slightly Americanized flavor of it. Longer lead times, higher end format, larger page size?  It’s not going quite so far as to make single issue stories of 48 to 64 pages, but —

— no, wait, they’re doing that, too. Remember the Frank Miller, Rafael Grampa, and Jordie Bellaire “Dark Knight” book? That’s a 48 page one shot in prestige format.

This new prestige format that Black Label is using is a little wider than your typical single issue staple comic.  I ran the numbers. The ratio is nearly 20% wider. It’s a half inch taller and nearly 2 inches wider.

Ever wonder why that is?  Why are Franco-Belgian albums that size?  Why would DC care to move that way? Why so wide?  Just my initial guess: It fits in better with other books at the bookstore, or it stands out better in the crowded bookshelves of the Graphic Novels section at Barnes and Noble.

My one big question: It’s $6 for that Dark Knight book.  That’s a 48 page book. Now, why’s the new Harley series only 32 pages for the same price?

Just some food for thought, and some ideas that might go into a longer form article at some point. I don’t know.  Maybe just talking it out here is enough, I don’t know. We’ll see what the future holds.

DC’s Black Label line is still an odd assortment of formats, reprints, and creators.  It seems to be the dumping ground for their evergreen standalone titles. I’m hoping this more European flavor will come to be its legacy over just the way it rebrands so many other things, also.

The Harvey Awards

The Harvey Awards happened. I have a huge rant on awards I need to do a podcast on some day, so I’ll save the analysis and commentary on this one, but it is worth noting that there is a European comic category. The winner for that is a book titled “Waves” by Ingrid Chabbert and Carole Maurel.

Originally published in French in 2017 Archaia, owned by Boom!, did a print edition in English last year.   

Congrats to one and all. Thanks to Boom and Archaia for continuing to bring European books to America. 

R.I.P. Tome

Finally, we end on a sad note, not related to NYCC.  Philippe Vandervelde died over the weekend at the far too young age of 62.  You know him by his pen name, Tome. He’s the front half of the creative team of Tome et Janry, who had a lengthy run on “Spirou and Fantasio.” in the 80s and 90s.

Many of those books are available in English today digitally and in print through Cinebook. You can see the three I’ve reviewed so far above.

Together, Tome and Janry also created “Le Petit Spirou” in the1980s, at a time when everyone was doing a kids version of popular characters.  (Here in America, we had A Pup Named Scbooy Doo and Muppet Babies and The Flintstone Kids. France got Le Petit Spirou, or “Li’l Spirou.”)

He also wrote stuff of his own, including a series named “Soda” that featured at one point the art of Bruno Gazzotti.  Gazzotti started as an assistant on Spirou for Tome and Janry before doing Soda and heading off to do “Alone,” a great series with 10 volumes in print through Cinebook. (I’ve reviewed the first 9.)

Another assistant the two would use would be Ralph Meyer, who is the amazing artist of “Undertaker”:

So we’ve now firmly established here that they have INCREDIBLY GOOD taste.

You can read Tome’s full biography at Lambiek.net, which is invaluable for information on Franco-Belgian comic creators.  The story of how he and Janry came to be the Spirou creative team in 1981 is an interesting political power struggle behind the scenes of publisher Dupuis.Maybe I’ll delve into that another time.

Tome started as a co-artist, but an eye condition kept him moving more towards a writerly role.

And as I never fail to point out because it amuses me so, the two pen names of Tome et Janry were, indeed, chosen as a pun on “Tom and Jerry.”

A new “Soda” story had been announced for 2020.  I don’t know what the status on that is now. Hopefully, the script was completed, but we’ll see…

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