The Platinum Age of Comics

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on May 15, 2007 Sign up now!

by Thomas J. McLean, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 5/15/2007

After 10 years as the go-to place for new comic book properties in Hollywood and breaking ground into mobile, online and merchandising, Platinum Studios has finally added a line of comics to its slate.

As with all things Hollywood, it was all about timing, said founder and chairman Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. "We were never in a rush to put out [comics] because we needed them to come out at the time we were executing everything else or it doesn't really make sense," he said.

That fits in with the company's motto: "Comics fueling media everywhere."

"This is the 10th anniversary of [starting] our libraries and acquiring all the things we needed to acquire in terms of properties and building up our deals with studios and creating our film slate deal," said Rosenberg. "So maybe it's our 10th, but it's also our first as well."

Platinum handles all its editorial and production in house, though distribution is handled by longtime ally Top Cow Comics. Platinum's first title, the graphic novel Cowboys & Aliens, hit in December, followed by another graphic novel, Watchdogs, and a line of comic book miniseries such as Web comic graduate Hero by Night, sci-fi title Unique and the Russian vampires tale, Blood Nation. Platinum also has an ongoing series, Kiss 4K, licensed from the rock group and set to start in June. Upcoming books include Atlantis Rising, a five-issue series that Rosenberg describes as a tentpole release; a demonic love-triangle comedy called Consumed; a martial arts adventure The Weapon; and a supernatural story about college hazing called Ghosting.

Adam Rosenblum, the studio's manager of intellectual properties, said the company plans to release about four books a month, with most comic books running as miniseries of no more than five issues.

These comics are part of the company's overall plan to put characters into as many media as possible. In addition to its film and TV projects, Platinum has a mobile-device division; an apparel company called Number Zero Ltd., which sells reversible T-shirts; a comics news site, Broken Frontier; an online store; and Web comics site DrunkDuck.com. It also hosts the Comic Book Challenge, a talent contest held at Comic-Con International in San Diego for comics creators, now in its second year.

"To us, it's a business model, but more so, it's cool," said Rosenberg. "We like seeing [characters] walk and talk and be used, whether it's a wallpaper or a toothbrush or an action figure or in a game. It's just fun doing that."

Creating characters has always been part of Rosenberg's work, dating back to his role in starting Malibu Comics in 1986, where he sold a book called Men in Black to Columbia Pictures.

When the overheated comic book market collapsed in 1994, Rosenberg put Malibu on the block. While DC Comics was interested, it was Marvel that took home the prize (though counter to urban legend, it wasn't because of Malibu's computer coloring). "What Marvel and DC both wanted at that time, because they weren't creating new characters, was that Malibu ostensibly only created new characters," Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg took a year off from the business side to develop a bible for what became Platinum's Macroverse. He opened Platinum in 1997, pitching properties like Cowboys & Aliens its first week in business. The company produced 35 episodes of Jeremiah, based on Hermann Huppen's graphic novels, and searched for characters to add to its library. That search lead to acquiring rights to the Hexagon Comics characters from Europe and Rob Liefeld's Awesome Comics characters. Platinum also represents Top Cow's characters in other media and is developing a line called Crisis Comics in conjunction with a real-life espionage expert, Col. John Alexander.

Platinum approaches publishing much the way it does the movie business, by looking at its properties' global potential. On the domestic front, the direct market is reliably steady, and trade paperbacks do well in bookstores and online. "What works for us are a lot of the limited editions that we'll sell to the collector market, and then selling the foreign rights for publishing. That actually can make comics profitable," he said.

Platinum's model does not require it to own every property it represents, only to have the rights to develop it in other media. Deals with creators are made on an individual basis, and there is no standard agreement, Rosenberg said.

DrunkDuck.com and the annual Comic Book Challenge are proving fertile ground for finding new creators and properties. DrunkDuck registers 1.5 million users a month and hosts more than 3,000 Web comics, some of which run hundreds of completed pages that could easily be turned into graphic novels. Last year's challenge winner, Hero by Night, began as a Web comic that shot to the top of the rankings shortly after its debut on DrunkDuck and has since jumped to print with new material.

Rosenberg says having comics in print and online increases the audience instead of cannibalizing it. It also makes it easier to bring in new readers. "If you like it, you go there each day and read it, as opposed to trying to hunt it down at a newsstand or a comic store where, unless it's one of the big titles, you're going to have a hard time finding it," he said.

While comic book movies have dominated the box office in recent years, there still is plenty of opportunity as Hollywood looks beyond superheroes. "The market has finally realized that comic book does not equal superhero," Rosenberg said. "And now there's independent financing. That's going to allow comic books a lot more opportunity—and there already is a good amount."