dvd-4-life

What about a third company that would deal only in reprints from defunct comic book companies(as long as the rights where available)? I could see a market for hard cover books and omnibuses but as far as reprinted comic books ,that would be the big question.

fujishig

Isn't that kind of what Fantagraphics does with it's Carl Barks collections, Peanuts, etc? They're not exactly abandoned properties or anything, but then again if there were any defunct comic book companies with the rights out there and there was money to be made, someone would have snapped it up already, I think. Occasionally companies will try to resurrect the old properties: Dark Horse with the Gold Key stuff done by Shooter, DC with their Impact line resurrecting the Archie superheroes, etc., but none really had any legs unless integrated into bigger universes (the Charlton and Fawcett characters in DC, Gold Key characters in early Valiant, etc.)

kodave

Usually the characters from defunct publishers that aren't owned by someone are those in the public domain since those are usually the golden age comic books. I think various groups have tried to do reprints and various creators have tried to relaunch/reinvent various public domain characters. But there's just not a huge market for those characters. The most popular golden age characters are owned by Marvel/DC and they've already released plenty of reprints of those materials. I think more recent defunct publishers had the rights to their characters sold to other publishers or the rights reverted back to the creators.

I can't even think of a comic book where the rights aren't owned by a current company where there's been any kind of sizable demand for reprinting.

Josh-da-man

I don't really think of characters like Cable and Gambit as 'new' characters because they're X-Men, and don't really have any impact or appeal outside of that franchise. X-Men has a history of introducing new characters into the mix; some of them catch on more than others, but they never really move beyond the franchise.

Deadpool is kind of marginal because he did debut in New Mutants, but he's really grown beyond the X-Books.

resinrats

Wolverine sort of has moved beyond X-Men with him being an Avenger & getting tons of merchandise. He can appear in stuff without any other connections to X-Men.

Ninja Turtles are characters that were not DC/Marvel that are still hugely popular today. Spawn might have been big in the 90's but nobody gives a crap about him for a decade or more.

dvd-4-life

Just about every tv show from the 1960s had a comic book(some only a few issues). Don't know if a revival of or release of the tv show would help in the revival of a comic book. These were mostly published by Dell and Gold Key.

I would assume that DC owns all the Hanna Barbera characters ,but not sure.

robin2099

Yeah but how many people outside of hardcore fans know Ninja Turtles was a comic book first? They became popular because of the toy line and cartoon not really the comic book.

PhantomStranger

Various reprints of certain Whiz Comics and other Captain Marvel related books have popped up on Amazon as public domain versions. Anyone actually checked one of these babies out for quality? The Amazon Kindle preview gives the impression they are scanned copies of okay original copies.

kodave

Whether it is a new version of the TV property or a re-release of the original TV property, I highly doubt there would be much demand for the original comic books to be re-released. Chances are collectors of those TV franchises have already found their copies, or even if they haven't, a re-release isn't the same as the original for collecting purposes. And I doubt most of those of any quality to be worth re-reading in a re-released format. So it would be kind of a stretch to think there is much demand for those. Like if there were Dukes of Hazard comics back in the day (I have no idea), what would the market be for reprints of those comics today? The market for that is so small. All the remaining money is left in DVDs/syndication/novelty products like mugs. It seems like the most successful TV properties with comic books are the cartoon/toy inspired lines like GI Joe and Transformers, which IDW has reprinted (I think) in addition to making new comics.

stingermck

Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson: "We Want to Be Number One"

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?p...ticle&id=49889

madcougar

I think the challenge for a company like Image is the fact all of their properties do not share a universe. If DC wants to sell a crap load of books, all it has to do is have an intercompany crossover and BAM! They're No. 1 (see the month recently where they did all foil covers). Same thing with Marvel.

While these events don't happen that often, just the fact DC and Marvel can publish multiple titles with the same popular character (see Batman and Wolverine) will make it hard for anyone to compete.

Unless Image starts publishing like 5 more Walking Dead titles, I don't see them ever gaining true market share.

Obi-Wanma

Image used to be more of a shared universe and did a bunch of crossovers in the early days, but then it became more and more splintered and focused on creator owned titles.

starseed1981

Good for them. If anyone is gonna do it it's gonna be Image. There push on creator owned titles are some of the best things on the market in recent years.

fujishig

The Image superhero characters are kinda in the same universe, though obviously complications arose when the creators themselves splintered off. With creator-owned stuff owned by different creators, things get dicey... see the whole Angela mess, or the fact that Chapel was so heavily involved in Spawn's origin.

Invincible has had several spinoffs but nothing really lasting, so I don't think they're going to create a big superhero universe (they tried that again when Invincible first launched). Their strength is obviously creator owned stuff. The hard part about that is the lack of cross pollination, plus the lack of strong, long lasting brands which the big 2 are swimming in. The best part about it is that for many top creators, the big 2 is a way to get their names out there and they save their best stuff for the content they own, and you can see the results in the quality of the work. But yeah, when one property like Walking Dead makes it big, it doesn't cross pollinate into the rest.