This week at New York Comic Con, I’m participating in a few panels exploring the importance of creator branding and creator ownership to the future of the business. Creator-centric work is nothing new of course, but it feels like we are living through a moment when licensed comics are capturing fan interest and we haven’t had a big creator property hit it big in a while.
However, in this case, I’m not just talking about folks who are popular enough to bring fans over to a creator-owned book. I’m looking at creators who are able to leverage their popularity to create a business that adds something useful to the industry. Think Robert Kirkman with Skybound or James Tynion IV with Tiny Onion, for example. Stuff like that adds to the infrastructure of making and selling comics in ways that benefit fans, retailers, creators and even other publishers, as well as attracting media interest and dollars.
Secret origins of comic creator brands. As with many comic industry firsts, when we’re looking at the history of creator brands, we need to start back in the Golden Age with Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Simon & Kirby were the first real “name above the title” talent produced by American comic books. By the late 1940s, they set up shop at the Prize imprint of Crestwood publishing, where they spearheaded the wave of crime and romance comics that ended up dominating the industry until the arrival of the comics code.
Fast forward to the 1970s, when Jim Steranko parleyed his massive reputation as an art revolutionary into his own company, Mediascene. Neal Adams followed in the 1980s with Continuity Studios, and then Turtle-meisters Eastman and Laird spun up Tundra. Even if the output of those companies didn’t exactly take the industry by storm, they did help set the template for the big bang that followed.
Image is everything. The founding of Image Comics by seven of the industry’s biggest artists in 1991 is the stuff of legend – good and bad – for all kinds of reasons, but it is definitely the case that set the template for everything that’s followed in the last 35 years.
The founding creators successfully translated their popularity with fans into an entirely new company that leapt instantly into the top three (and sometimes top two), selling millions of books, paying the salaries and launching the careers of a new generation of writers and artists, keeping many industry veterans employed for as long as the money was rolling in, and becoming an iconic brand to two generations of post-Silver Age fans whose spending has kept the industry afloat.
McFarlane went so far as to brand his studio “Todd McFarlane Productions,” and eventually extended his brand into toys, media and other areas. Again, you don’t have to love everything McFarlane did in either his business or artistic career to recognize this was an important moment for the industry, and likely inspired others to take the same steps.
Quick plug: if you’re curious to hear McFarlane’s own take on this, I’ll be discussing it with him live on stage at ICv2’s Insider Talks on Wednesday at New York Comic Con, 5:30 pm (see “ICv2 Insider Talks at New York Comic Con“).
Creator branding in the 21st century. Post-Image, we’ve seen a lot of big figures in the comics world try to parley their fame and popularity into business ventures. Some of these, like Stan Lee Media, are best forgotten, but others have gone on to lasting success.
Robert Kirkman is probably the poster child for this movement, crowding neatly under the Image umbrella with Skybound Entertainment, but also pursuing a number of lucrative media, game, and toy licensing deals on the strength of his reputation. When Skybound did its unusual crowdfunded equity deal, a lot of it hinged in Kirkman’s proven ability to launch new franchises, including Invincible.
Since the early 2000s, creators have had some big advantages that previous generations did not enjoy. The advent of social media makes it possible to build up a huge following outside of comics, and crowdfunding platforms enable creators to monetize that following for their own projects. We’ve seen the rise (and sometimes fall) of a lot of creator brands through this mechanism, leading to the creation of a bunch of content that might not have otherwise seen the light of day.
On the business side, the biggest creator-driven development of note is Tynion’s Tiny Onion, which sits somewhere between a creative services company and a book packager, while also serving to promote, license and commercialize Tynion’s projects in other media. They are not an imprint per-se, but they serve as important infrastructure for mid-tier publishers to get books produced and out to market at a time when a lot of companies are tightening their belts. Tynion is also speaking at the business roundtable following the ICv2 sessions.
What’s missing from the picture? When you tick off the successes of the 21st century, not only Kirkman and Tynion, but also others who have used their personal creative brands to branch out into other media, it’s an impressive list (again, not making value judgments about the quality of their work or characters). Off the top of my head, I can count Mark Millar, Brian Michael Bendis, Scott Snyder, Kelly Sue De Connick, Chip Zdarksy, Geoff Johns, and probably eight to ten others. They didn’t necessarily start companies or imprints, but they are all “name above the title” talents who got their start in comics.
The curious thing is, unless I am missing someone conspicuous, just about every one of these names is primarily a writer.
There’s a lot to say about why artists, who are pretty important in a visual medium, have had such a rough go of it after being the examples of branded creators up to and including the Image moment, while writers have been able to build their own empires large and small. You can bet it’s something I’ll ask McFarlane about, as I suspect he has thoughts.
More plugs. We’ll be getting into all of this at the ICv2 Insider Talks, followed by more great business conversations on distribution and new sources of IP, featuring ICv2’s Milton Griepp and Eisner winning comics journalist Heidi MacDonald, followed by the annual ICv2 White Paper that sums up industry trends in the past year.
I’ll be participating in a couple of other programs at NYCC as well. If you’re in town on Wednesday, I’m the “comic relief” on a panel of legal eagles delving into the hornet’s nest of AI and copyrights, part of the ABA’s continuing education program. On Thursday, I’m moderating Webtoon’s future of digital comics panel, featuring Marvel President Dan Buckley joining a constellation of Webtoon folks. That’s at 2 p.m.
Then, for more focus on creator issues, join me alongside Liam Sharp, Amy Chu, Leanne Krecic (creator of the hit webtoon “Let’s Play”) and attorney Gamal Hennessy for “Creator-Owned Comics: Myths and Realities,” Friday at 2:15 p.m.
If I don’t see you at any of those great panels, I hope we can catch up on the floor or after hours. There’s lots going on in the business these days and the best part of giant cons like NYCC is getting everyone together to have the conversations.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Rob Salkowitz (Bluesky @robsalk) is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, a two-time Eisner Award nominee, and a proud longtime contributor to Eisner-nominated ICv2.
Source: ICV2
