Virgin Comics Enters Kali Yuga Stage



Comics companies tend to open with an endless barrage of convention appearances, interviews and press releases; they tend to close with whispers, disconnected phone lines and message board threads. And so it looks like Virgin Comics has gone the way of so many ambitious start-ups before it: almost certainly dead, certainly altered if any future salvaging is done (it looks like the Southeast Asian comics efforts may have a second life). Virgin Comics started in 2006 with a burst of big-name and semi-big-name signings, a rolling series of partnerships with Hollywood types that seemed to want to use the comics form to develop a property or two, and the unique promise that their books might gain entry into an Indian market that has a rich tradition of editorial cartooning and a recent past of English-language graphic novel sales, but didn't offer a pulp-fantasy tradition in the way that Virgin might be able to provide.

As it moved forward, Virgin began to look less like the shiny new car it was in those first few weeks and more like a lot of other comics companies of its type: nothing really had a market impact, despite the names involved; comics and books came out in a haphazard way when one noticed them coming out at all; and rumors of frustration and inside-company pressures became more prevalent than public excitement over the actual publishing efforts -- although a lot of people seemed to like the recent Garth Ennis-written Dan Dare series and I would imagine that many of their individual offerings had their fans throughout their short run.

I would be hesitant to put all of the blame for Virgin's predicament or even a significant amount of blame on the Direct Market of comic book and specialty shops. I would point to a broader reason: they didn't make comics that a lot of people wanted. Certainly the DM is calcified to an unbelievable degree. Not only is it absolutely conditioned to sell American mainstream superhero comic books, it's at the point where it's becoming more and more defined by its ability to sell certain books of that type rather than all of them. You can count the successful crasher to that particular party on one hand.

At the same time, Virgin certainly seemed to offer bookstore-ready books in addition to comics. Since I don't recall the books setting the world on fire any more than the comic books, and without some inside knowledge of the company that tells me they were banking on serial comics sales to the exclusion of any other revenue stream, it's hard for me to say that it's the market rather than the works themselves that were at fault.

My gut feeling is that this is more of a case where results didn't match a) expectations, b) investment, and finally, c) bottom-line projections. Dirk Deppey's use of CrossGen as an example sort of makes my point. That company was extremely forward in its book publishing efforts, and it was much more aggressive than a lot of successful companies in that specific arena by a wide, wide margin. In the end those efforts weren't enough to make a success of CrossGen given the framework of talent and support infrastructure they were being asked to sustain, and the world was not as hot and heavy for the creative output CrossGen was able to offer as a best-case scenario might suggest. I don't think there's a Sigil-shaped hole in anybody's heart, or at least not in the hearts of a significant cross-section of the American comics-reading public. It's an amazing enough feat to create a single property that reaches a significant audience like Jeff Smith and Neil Gaiman have; creating a whole line of them like CrossGen and Tekno and now Virgin wanted to, that seems to be almost impossible. The irony of this being announced two days before Jack Kirby's 91st birthday shouldn't be lost on anyone.

I would bet that everything that Virgin was selling in multiple areas -- including film and television development rights that would likely have delighted a smaller publisher -- wasn't enough to sustain big contracts, full-color production, multiple involved executives, probably a few consultants and an infrastructure that had offices at least in New York and maybe somewhere else as well. They came in big and went out big, signing writers and hinting at major announcements as recently as last month's CCI 2008. I have a sneaking suspicion Virgin could have met 80 percent of their goals with a single LA-based office put together on the cheap, modest contracts aimed at workhorses rather than stars and a staff of smart multi-taskers you could count on one hand even if that hand were Thomas Covenant's, but maybe I'm wrong about that, too. We'll likely never know.

My best wishes to all staffers and freelancers that feel the impact of this development.

(my apologies for any inexactness or offense in the headline: I was looking for the Hindu equivalent of Armageddon)
 
posted 8:10 am PST | Permalink
 

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