Boom! Launches Disney Imprint
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on July 26, 2008 Sign up now!
By Laura Hudson -- Publishers Weekly, 7/22/2008 2:28:00 PM
Boom! Studios announced the formation of Zoom, a new children's comic book imprint for licensed Disney properties, at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday. The new line, which launches in spring 2009, will publish original comics based on Pixar films like the animated hit movie Wall-E, and also on The Muppet Show. Waid expressed excitement over stepping back into his former role as a superhero comics writer. “As someone who has written The Fantastic Four in the past, it seems like a natural fit. I still feel the itch to dabble within the superhero genre. Plus, The Incredibles is probably my favorite animated movie ever.”
According to Boom! publisher Ross Richie, the imprint’s first title will be The Incredibles, a four-issue miniseries based on the Pixar animated movie about a superhero family. The comic book will be scripted by Kingdom Come writer and Boom! editor-in-chief Mark Waid, with covers by The Spirit artist Darwyn Cooke.
With the dominance of superhero titles in comics shops, “The Incredibles is the most obvious book that will have an audience in the direct market,” added Richie. “There’s also a big crossover with comic book fans who are also Disney fans, and that will drive sales as well.” A miniseries based on the Toy Story movie is slated to follow in the spring as well as the first of four one-shot comics based on characters from The Muppet Show. Centering on Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fonzie and Gonzo respectively, the comics will be written and drawn by Fred the Clown creator Roger Landridge. Other titles planned for 2009 and beyond include Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc., Cars and Wall-E. Each four-issue miniseries will be collected into a trade paperback and sold both at mass market bookstores through Boom!’s distribution deal with Perseus Books and in direct market comic shops. The licensing deal with Disney has been two years in the making, said Richie, in part because of the approval process involved in licensing high-profile Disney properties for new content. All Zoom comics will feature original stories that take place within the world of each property, rather than translating existing plots.
Waid lauded the creative latitude Disney offered to the comics creators handling its properties. “They were after us to not feel bound by style sheets,” Waid said. “They don’t want us to try and emulate the faux 3-D graphics; they want it to look like line art. And with the Muppets stuff, they're letting us go crazy with that.”
Waid calls the child-oriented imprint the result of his and Richie’s commitment to making sure that comics find their way to the next generation of readers. “As much as I appreciate that we have hundreds of thousands of hardcore superhero fans, I'm smart enough to realize that we're going to die off,” particularly now that the comic book readership has become so dominated by adults.
“I hope that [a Zoom comic] will be the first comic for some six-year-olds—the age I was when I got my first comic— and that it helps them fall in love with the medium and progress with it as they get older,” said Richie.
