A tangent from the Stan thread. Icct mentions how Image took their careers in their own hands, and succeeded. In fact the kept going when other direct market companies, that had initial success, failed.
Valiant, First, Malibu..all started well and then went out.
Does anyone know who, on the business side, kept Image going when the 90s crash happened?
I've covered this in my Other Guys thread, on individual cases; but, here is a rundown of the independents, in the 90s and the industry woes.
Pacific Comics went under in 1984, after a brief existence. They went from regional comic book distribution to publishing, after Capital had success with Nexus, which they published themselves. They were already paying on a $300,000 loan, from 1979, at 25% interest, before the decision to publish. They were able to recruit big industry names to publish through them, including Kirby, Mike Grell and Neal Adams. However, their cash flow was already strained. Their new comics were doing well; but, their distribution side was not, as they had over-extended credit to retailers, who were not paying them back and their debt skyrocketed, leading to delays, which led Mike Grell to take Starslayer to First and the dominoes started toppling.
First started small and slowly expanded and did quite well, while Mike Gold ran the publishing side and they had a big hit with Lone Wolf & Cub, along with solid sales on Jon Sable, American Flagg, Nexus, Dreadstar and Grimjack. Gold went ot DC in 1985 and recruited Chaykin, Grell and Tim Truman to come work there. Also, in 1986, First tried newsstand distribution, which ate up a lot of cash, In 1989/90, they launched the revived Classics Illustrated, with major bookstore distribution, including point-of-sale displays, which cost them a lot of money. It ended up failing and it completely killed thei cash flow and they ceased publishing in 1991 an went out of business in 92.
Comico tried newsstand distribution, in 1986, and lost a ton of money and then several top creators left with their properties.. They briefly partnered with DC, to distribute their titles, then declared bankruptcy, in 1990. Andrew Rev bought their assets and tried to revive it, centering around Elementals, which they owned outright. It flopped and they were done, for good, by 1997.
Eclipse Comics suffered a flood of their warehouse, in 1986, which destroyed most of their back issue inventory, which was a big cash cow for them. Their titles often had low initial orders, but gained in popularity and they sold back issues directly, in their comics. This hurt their cash flow, severely, and they cut back on output, and had erratic publication schedules. They made a deal with Harper Collins, to distribute trade titles to book stores; but, HC was slow in paying them their share of sales and it further hampered their cash. They had some hits with trading cards; but that didn't generate enough cash to keep their publications on a steady schedule. They went belly up 1994 and out of business in 1995.
Now Comics started in 1986, but had cash flow problems from the start and filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, in 1990. They were bought up by General Learning and started up again, in 1991, with an infusion of cash; but, their best sellers were licensed titles, like Married with Children and Real Ghostbusters and their piece of the pie was small and they were done by 1995.
Malibu Comics is kind of complicated; but, the gist of it is, Scott Rosenburg was running Sunrise Distribution, a regional comic distributor, on the West Coast and funded a couple of different comic publishers, before starting Malibu Comics, in 1986. He was funding Eternity and a couple of other smaller ones, then bought Aircel and Adventure and brought them under the same umbrella. They followed the black and white boom, but were able to sustain after the fallout, thanks to a few select titles and some licenses. They were publishing partners with Image, from its launch, with Youngblood, in 1992 and handled publishing for them until 1993. The influx they got of cash from the Image deal led to the Ultraverse line; but they spent a ton promoting it and the sales weren't at Image levels and they went looking for a buyer, in 1994, with DC looking to make a deal. Marvel found out about, swooped in with an offer and bought out the company, then shuttered everything, after a brief transition period, in 1996.
Valiant started in 1988 and built up success with the publication of the former Gold Key properties of magnus, Solar and Turok, plus new titles they created, that were related to them. In 1992, in a power play, Jim Shooter was ousted. The venture capital firm backing them were looking to sell and he stood in their way. Through conniving, he was out and they started looking for a buyer and sold to Acclaim, who had done great business with a Turko video game and were looking to own properties to use in the gaming market. However, Acclaim lost a major sports license and declared Chapter 7, in 2004. Their assets were later bought up, in 2005, minus the Gold Key properties.
Shooter started Defiant, in 1993, but was done in 1995, after a lawsuit over Plasm, from Marvel, which hit them with $300,000 in legal fees. Shooter next went to work for Lorne Michaels, with Broadway Comics ( a subsidiary of Michaels' Broadway Video Entertainment), in 1995. Broadway was sold to Golden Books, in 1996, who soon went bankrupt, after multiple acquisitions, forcing them into bankruptcy and liquidation.
So, why did Image survive? Well, for one thing, Malibu financed their start up, though McFarlane, Liefeld and Lee were all doing quite well on royalties, from marvel. So, they started from a position of strength. They rode the speculator boom, with massive overbuying on their original launches. By 1993, they had the cash to cut ties with Malibu. However, the speculator boom started to unravel in 1993 and Image was in trouble with Diamond and Capital over late books. They were threatening fines for undelivered titles, after a certain point and Image stood to lose a lot of money, as they were the worst offender and the initiative was aimed squarely at them. They cut loose most of the non-core creator titles, except the Maxx and recruited Larry Marder to run the administrative side of things, based on his experience with comic book retailing and the Direct Line Group. They heavily curtailed their output, after a while, then recruited several independents to bring their books to them, including Collen Doran's A Distant Soil and Jeff Smith's Bone, which was a big seller for them, before Smith went back to self publishing and distribution.
By 1995, most of the marginal publishers had gone under or sold out. Also, by that point, nearly 2/3 of all comic retailers had gone out of business. The final ail in the coffin was Marvel's acquisition of Heroes World, in 1994, and their switch to them as their exclusive distributor, in mid-1995. Too many retailers over-spent to get Marvel, to get better discounts and went under, due to cash flow problems. Heroes World did not have the staff to handle so many accounts and they suffered huge problems and Marvel ended up back with Diamond, in 1997. Meanwhile, their acquisition touched off the Distribution Wars, as Diamond sought to sign other publishers as exclusive clients, with DC entering an agreement, with an option to outright purchase Diamond. Image signed with them, killing any chance of Capital surviving, as only Kitchen sink and some lesser accounts went with them. Dark Horse had also signed with Diamond, seeing the writing on the wall. Capital sold off to Diamond and Diamond, by 1997, was left with a virtual monopoly.
McFarlane made his money with the toys and licensing deals with Spawn, way more than the comics, though Spawn remained a top seller for Image, for a while. Liefeld was pushed out in 1996, after the issues with Silvestri (including poaching some of his staff, after Silvestri was about to reject a merger offer). Lee sold Wildstorm in 1998. Top Cow left in 1996 and came back, but mostly operated on its own. Valentino's work slowed down significantly, by the mid 90s and he was busy acting as publisher, by 1999. Larsen chugged along with Savage Dragon and some other titles and followed valentino, as publisher, in 2004. he remained the most active of the individual members.
An additional part of how they survived was Hollywood film options. Liefeld had a couple of properties optioned, Lee had Wild CATS turned into an animated series, Savage Dragon got a cartoon, Silvestri had the Witchblade tv series. Similarly, several of the Legend guys, at Dark Horse, got a cash influx from Hollywood options.
The Image guys benefitted from several factors in the market, at the time they left Marvel. Those forces were not in place in 1981-82, when Kirby & Grell went with Pacific. Grell did better with First; but, the royalty system at DC benefitted him well, with Green Arrow. Kirby was working in animation, which provided him health coverage and better pay and steady work. Those forces were largely gone, by 1995 and long gone by 1997. By the mid-200s, Image fell behind Dark Horse, in market share. They regained some of that by the mid-2010s.
