Well, it looks like Marvel aren’t hurting for money right now, if their 1st Quarter 2007 report is anything to go by. Tuesday’s release from the Corporation of Ideas gave the mothership the chance to report that

Marvel today reported its 1st Quarter, 2007 numbers with net sales rising to $151.4 million, and net income increasing $46.8 million (56 cents a share), compared to $90.1 million and $17.5 million (17 cents a share) of the same time last year. Marvel credits licensing operations plus “increased contributions” from both comics and toys. Spider-Man 3’s minimum licensing guarantees are reflected in the numbers. Analysts were predicting nets sales of $102 million and 35 cent per share profit.

Not that that’s stopped Joe Quesada caring about fans’ budgets, as he showed in New Joe Fridays this week, answering a fan’s question about how best to spend his limited budget:

If you take on a second job, then definitely pick up the upcoming X-Men event at year’s end. Heck, how old’s the baby? Can you put him or her to work yet? Come on, Junior’s got to earn his keep!

Not that it’s all dollar dollar bills, “y’all” - Even as Tim Roth joined the cast of the next Hulk movie, Spider-Man 3 dropped a pretty big 72% in earnings between the first and second Fridays on release, and in the world of comics, Marvel superstar artist Gary Frank signed an exclusive contract with DC despite being the big-name launch artist for Marvel’s latest big event, World War Hulk (And if you don’t know what World War Hulk is, then editor Mark Paniccia and writer Greg Pak have you covered). Remember when things were much simpler, and Marvel’s movie connections were limited to Roy Thomas adapting Star Wars?

Over at DC, their big news - outside of stealing Frank away - was the launch of their next big series, Countdown. How big a series is it, you may ask? Well, big enough to have an interview with DC head cheese Dan Didio (who also talked about the end of the last big series, 52, this week), the first in a series of weekly interviews with series editor Mike Marts, an article about the histories of the two characters who have the most pagetime in the first issue and a roundtable review of the first issue. So, you know, pretty big. Thankfully, some people still remembered 52, as Didio’s interview about the series was accompanied by interviews with writers Greg Rucka (”We tried to go on vacation twice last summer, out to the Oregon coast, and each time, I spent the whole time writing. Man, did that suck. That just really sucked. I will say that one of the big things 52 taught me was the value in taking a vacation, and the necessity of down time. I’m not good at it, and I really need to learn to be better at it. I think the other work really suffered during this series. You want – no, in today’s market, you always have to bring you’re A game to everything you do, and 52 just didn’t make that possible as much as I would have liked.”) and Grant Morrison that really made you realize why comics are hell:

There was one week somewhere in the mid-late 30s where I went into total meltdown - I was working on five issues of 52 at the same time, as well as plotting future issues with the guys and doing proofreading and corrections on the upcoming stories… When we started writing, we were handing in scripts 10 months ahead of their release date but by the time issue 52 rolled around, the finished dialogue went in three weeks before publication! Luckily, it wasn’t called 59 or you might have seen that NASCAR crash Keith always talks about.

(People who are about to discover just how hell comics can be? Indie publishers Arcana and Chimaera, who are launching their own “hero” shared universe this year. I see an unforgiving Direct Market in your future, friends.)

Not that everything in comics is hell. After all, there’s always Free Comic Book Day - about which retailers reminisced on Wednesday - and the exceptionally under-reported First Helpings Scholarship:

he winner of the first annual First Helpings Scholarship is Sean Ford, a student at The Center for Cartoon Studies. The announcement was made jointly by Mark Siegel, Editorial Director for First Second Books; James Sturm, Director of the Center for Cartoon Studies; and Matthew Murray, Editorial Director of The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Ford won for his mini-comic entitled “Only Skin.” …The scholarship is intended to give a young graphic novelist studying at the Center the opportunity to showcase his or her work and learn more about the publishing industry. Ford will be rewarded with a five day internship at First Second Books in New York; free admission to the MOCCA Arts Festival; a $100 gift certificate to the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art; and a one year membership to the museum. In addition, Ford’s work will be posted on the First Second website (www.firstsecondbooks.com), and his manuscript will be read by and receive editorial comments from Siegel.

Maybe it’s just my love for things First Second (such as Eddie Campbell’s upcoming book, the Black Diamond Detective Agency, only one subject of which he talked about this week: “It has become my habit to alternate the different types of book. More for survival reasons than aesthetic ones. Thus, following After the Snooter, I painted a 48-page Batman comic, Batman: The Order of Beasts. Then came The Fate of the Artist, so it was reassuring to know that if the world decided I was unemployable after that one, I was already contracted to do a more straight-forward blazing guns adventure novel.”), but that kind of thing is almost heart-warming enough to make me want to pull back on my intense hatred for all things comic for at least another seven days…

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 13th, 2007 at 8:36 am and is filed under 'Rama Rampage, Books, Comic Books, Creators, DC Comics, Events, Graphic Novels, Independent, Industry, Internet, Interviews, Marvel, Movies, News & Views, Retailers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.