Over at his blog, Jim Shooter spills a truly surreal fact about the comic industry from the 1980s: Marvel almost bought the license to publish DC Comics:
The first part of the business plan was the publishing plan. I decided that we should launch with seven titles and build from there, if all went well. The titles were:
SUPERMAN
BATMAN
WONDER WOMAN
GREEN LANTERN
TEEN TITANS
JUSTICE LEAGUE
LEGION OF SUPER HEROESI projected that we would sell 39 million copies the first two years generating a pre-tax profit (gross revenues less cost of goods sold, royalties, staff, SG&A, etc.) of roughly $3,500,000.
That was huge money for a comic book publisher in 1984.
That was with just the original seven titles—no expansion of the line—though if we were doing that well, obviously, we’d add titles. Slowly and carefully, if I had anything to say about it.
The deal fell apart, of course, and DC ended up doing Crisis On Infinite Earths and revitalizing itself soon afterwards but – if ever there was a “What If?” for fans to play with, this is it.
August 29th, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Although some people like to discount everything Jim Shooter says (sometimes with good reason) I remember hearing about this in 1984. Basically DC at the time was willing to license its characters to any publisher with the $$$. But apparently the money they were looking for wasn’t offered to them.
August 29th, 2011 at 8:54 pm
It wasn’t just money. Like the article says: around the same time, First Comics sued Marvel alleging anti-trust violations, since Marvel at the time had something like a 70% market share. That’s a horrible time to even think about taking control of the publication of the IP of your biggest competitor.
August 30th, 2011 at 6:09 am
I am so glad it worked out the way it did. I have fallen away from Marvel and have moved to DC. I believe that right now DC has the better talent and the better books.
The way Marvel is heading, in my view, they will crash very soon.
August 30th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
If this deal had gone through, I doubt many of the classics of the ’80s & ’90s would have come about. Watchmen, DKR, Sandman, Preacher, Arkham Asylum etc. possibly would never have existed.
Competition is a good thing even though I feel someday Time/Warner/DC and Disney/Marvel will eventually merge. Super Mega-Corporations will likely be the wave of the future.