Platinum Studios Has A Really Bad Week

Things aren't going well for the "doesn't really want to publish a whole lot of comics if at all but the licensing and movie deals would be nice, thank you," comics publisher Platinum Studios.

* they've filed to pay all of their employees minimum wage and company stock until further notice. Can someone out there .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) who is actually employed by the company? Because if this is just Scott Rosenberg and whomever else is owning and operating the company, this could be just a formal step that's akin to reported past suspensions. In other words, there's a big difference between Marvel busting everyone down to minimum wage and Comics Reporter busting everyone down to minimum wage, and I'm not sure where this fits on the spectrum. Also, I can't figure out what exactly a Platinum employee would do.

That being said, if they do have some sort of support staff that was making more than minimum wage and now isn't, this would be really bad news, to the point of embarrassment.

* they may be paying other people less than minimum wage, as is nothing at all. DJ Coffman writes about an overwhelming wave of anecdotal evidence that suggests many providers of services other than employees are simply not getting paid, either. This is also really bad in terms of the company's survival, and despicable in terms of the number of people owed and length of time they're apparently not being paid.

* their pay model for the Wowio downloadable comics service they bought may not work in a lot of ways, and my not inspire the confidence to work in others. Here's a long article by Todd Allen talking about the development of the Wowio pay model under Platinum's ownership, including both the reasonable and unreasonable expectation that may have formed around that company.

* their time with Wowio hasn't exactly increased the buzz around that company, and if it has, it may be negative buzz. Sean Kleefeld looks at some of the rough measures by which one can get a very rough sense of Wowio's currency within on-line culture.

* they're getting punk-slapped on a daily basis. Heidi MacDonald pulls up that advisory board press release just to make fun of it.
 
posted 8:24 am PST | Permalink
 

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