Earlier this afternoon, Marvel announced Disney•Pixar Presents, a 96-page magazine featuring comics starring characters from Disney/Pixar films including Toy Story, The Incredibles and Cars. Ross Richie, CEO & publisher of previous Pixar license-holder BOOM! Studios, sent Newsarama official comment on the news:
“The team over at Marvel is some of the best in comics publishing — Dan, Joe, Axel, and Tom are great at what they do, and I’m sure the characters will be in excellent hands. I certainly love the material they’re collecting from our CARS: RALLY RACE graphic novel. Landy Walker and Marcio Takara were unable to finish their last arc of THE INCREDIBLES so I hope Marvel’s able to complete the story, I for one would love to read it. Working with Disney and Pixar was a highlight in my 6 years of BOOM! publishing. Those are some great folks! Meanwhile, Mickey, Donald and Darkwing fans can look forward to some great stories from BOOM Kids! and all the BOOM Kids! fans need not fret — BOOM Kids! 2.0 is right around the corner.”
Cars: Rally Race was published in collected edition form by BOOM! in May of last year, and originally appeared in print as Cars #0-3 in early 2010. Though Marvel did not explicitly state that they were reprinting BOOM! material in their press release, the statement disclosed that the magazine would be “a mix of brand new stories, classic adventures,” and the creative team and concept mentioned by the publisher match that of Cars: Rally Race. Newsarama’s Vaneta Rogers interviewed writer Alan Porter in an article published in January 2010.
Richie’s allusion to “Mickey, Donald and Darkwing” appears to confirm that, for the time being, BOOM!’s non-Pixar Disney licenses — which include currently ongoing titles Mickey Mouse and Friends, Donald Duck and Friends and Darkwing Duck — are unaffected by today’s news.
BOOM!’s Disney/Pixar licensed comics launched in 2008, and announced the acquisition of the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck license in June 2009. Disney announced their acquisition of Marvel in late August 2009. Despite that, BOOM!’s licensed Disney comics remained largely unaffected until the cancellation of previously solicited Pixar titles last month. The first Disney product published by Marvel following the acquisition was Tron: The Betrayal, a limited series that debuted in October and tied-in to last December’s Tron: Legacy feature film.
February 16th, 2011 at 5:03 pm
I would bet that Mickey and company will be moving to Marvel before long.
February 16th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
If they purchased the rights to the classic characters one year later, maybe they have twelve more months.
February 16th, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Speaking of Boom, does anyone know what happened with their Muppet titles/license? They all seemed to simply vanish.
February 16th, 2011 at 6:11 pm
BTW, all articles/opinion pieces on Newsarama should be turned into blog entries like this one so we can actually talk about them if the Talk@ forum is permanantly gone.
February 16th, 2011 at 10:01 pm
when this article was first posted, it stated that when questioned about the Muppets, both Marvel and Boom! Declined to comment. Why is that part now gone?
Hurm….
February 16th, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Internet fail on my part…the “no comment” comment about the Muppets license is in CBR’s version of this story. No conspiracy here.
February 17th, 2011 at 2:00 am
While this is unfortunate for BOOM!, it wasn’t exactly unexpected. And I’m sure that over time, as contracts expire and licenses run out, the majority if not all, of the publishing for DISNEY properties will become managed by Marvel.
Now they just need to find a way to use this opportunity to get more comics in front of more kids and start rebuilding that market.
February 17th, 2011 at 5:07 am
Fantastic Four/Incredibles cross-over?
February 17th, 2011 at 8:00 am
The Muppets are currently owned by Disney. I would expect them–along with all Disney properties–to be published by Marvel in the not-too-distant future. And of course something like this was always going to happen. It’s just the first move in Marvel publishing all Disney comics. Once the contract with Boom! expires, it’ll be “Make mine Mickey.”
Frankly, it amazes me that people were saying Boom! might keep the license even after the Disney/Marvel deal. Once Disney bought the largest comics publisher in America, why would they farm their characters out to somebody else for just licensing fees when they can publish themselves for the whole ball of wax?
February 17th, 2011 at 5:59 pm
I’d like to ask Mr. Richie if he feels that aquiring &publishing those licenses was a sucess for his company and how they feel that the fan response was to them leaving Boom!. Will this be a crippling blow for the company or somewhat of a relief or something in between?
February 17th, 2011 at 8:23 pm
I find this a bit disappointing, though it was expected. I have been very disappointed with Marvel over the last couple of years, leading to me dropping most of their titles. I really enjoyed reading The Incredibles to my son each month, but am unlikely to follow it to Marvel Comics with their past track record on their core titles. I suppose we will only be getting Young Justice (based on the cartoon) over at DC for the foreseeable future.
February 18th, 2011 at 12:22 am
Marvel had the license for Disney TV cartoons and feature film characters in the mid-1990s. They ruined Darkwing Duck and the Little Mermaid, among others, with some truly wretched, pandering and badly drawn “kids’ stuff.” No amount of bad press could change their direction; kids and fans could either either buy condescending comics, or buy none at all.
They chose none. After awhile the line predictably sank and was reduced to just one or two monthlies (one called “Disney Comics Hits,” I believe) until the license period ended.
Now let’s look at Boom. They didn’t do right by Mickey and Donald at the start. They tried to make the comics “cool” without remembering that the characters still had to sound like themselves. They took a lot of flak until they improved… but they did improve. The books are now at a nice midpoint between the classic flavor of Gladstone and a more modern, dynamically designed product.
To see the license given to Marvel, who (it’s easy to imagine) will screw things up again by making the same mistakes they did in the 1990s, or that Boom did initially, will be a shame. Have we always got to wait while a new publisher kicks out the “old blood” and then learns the hard way… again?
The worst is that when the books fail and the line implodes, it may not have anywhere else to go, even if another publisher wants it. To save face, Disney won’t dare take it away from Marvel no matter how badly they do; or how few comics per month they eventually put out.
I’d love to be proven wrong.
February 19th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Darth_Board, it’s very likely that Marvel will ALSO have to pay a licensing fee to Disney/Pixar in order to publish the comics. They are two separate companies under the main Disney conglomerate as far as I understand it. I don’t think the indicia of Marvel Comics says “Copyright 2011, Disney,” right?
Just as DC has to pay Warner Bros. for rights to publish a Looney Tunes comic and Warner Bros. has to pay DC for the movie rights for a Superman movie — at fair market value as we learned from the Siegel case — so, too, Marvel would have to pay Disney/Pixar.
Of course, being two companies owned by the same parent would and should give Marvel the edge in publishing Disney properties, just as DC should be able to publish Bugs Bunny and Scooby-Doo before another company could.
However, as far as Marvel publishing the Disney stuff, that’s a more difficult undertaking because if they want to reprint the European stuff, they’d have to hire people to acquire and translate it just as Gladstone and Boom had to. If they try new stuff, again they have to hire new staff to do so because those characters have a core audience that has strict expectations so you couldn’t just assign Uncle Scrooge to Rick Remender or Bendis.
Marvel will likely publish the duck/mouse characters, but it will take awhile to put the pieces in place — moreso than it did for the Pixar stuff. They may even decide that it’s not worth their effort and continue to let Boom do it because for the kids of today, the Pixar stuff is worth more and may even have a higher recognizability than the Donald and Mickey characters.
Anyway, either way, the upshot is that Marvel will have to pay Disney or Disney/Pixar for the rights to publish stuff with those characters.