More on Disney/CrossGen

Here are the press release, a follow-up wire story, the local news angle, and the Publisher's Weekly weigh-in (summarized by Kevin Melrose if you're not a PW subscriber) on the Disney purchase of CrossGen Entertainment assets, comic book titles like Ruse, Negation (my favorite) and Route 666.

I can't help but think this is yet another indication for the crazy money times in which comics currently live. In the last month we've had a largely non-existent comics line reach a big deal; now it's a failed comics line. The only thing left is for a fictional publishing line that only exists within a bunch of comic-book stories to get a three-picture deal at Paramount. Quick! Call my lawyer!

My gut feeling is that these projects aren't so unique that they couldn't have largely been replicated (the most unique thing the line offered, a specific connecting mythology, will no doubt be avoided like the plague), despite the enthusiasm Disney Publishing Worldwide President Deborah Dugan expresses for projects like Meridian. I mean, as someone who wrote me pointed out, plans for the JM DeMatteis and Mike Ploog property Abadazad are slightly odd in that Disney already had a quirky kids fantasy property that starts with the letter "A." It makes me wonder if the purchase wasn't one of those things where it's simply more cost-effective to buy a bunch of standard properties in bulk than to make your own by hand.

I'm also thankful that today's round of articles has qualified claims that Disney Worldwide publishes half the world's comics to half the world's non-manga comics, because that had me baffled.
 
posted 9:02 am PST | Permalink
 

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