Marvel acquires Marvelman: Has anything like this ever worked out well before? Part 3

Go here for Part 1, and here for Part 2.

This time I hope to explain why I think that there may be opportunity costs involved in investing in these new acquisitions and that in order for them to work in their new settings these concepts must have some unique or exceptionally strong qualities that complement the existing library into which they are being placed, which unfortunately has rarely been the case.

First off: Captain Marvel/Shazam. I think it's a given at this point that the similarities between Superman and Captain Marvel are such that as long as they own both the whole "Shazam Family" will be surplus to requirements at DC.

Ive already conceded that the money DC paid to buy the Fawcett characters in the 1970s must have been paid back many times over by now by the returns from the various comics, TV shows, cartoons etc. But would the company have made that money anyway without the character?

Who can say that, without Shazam/Captain Marvel, the money that was invested to launch those products would not have been put to better use on Superman or even another, more unique DC property like say Green Lantern? DC has never lacked for concepts - surely one of them could have generated a higher return? after all none of those Shazam products were runaway successes.

Over the last year, DC has acquired the rights to three different sets of old superhero properties - the Milestone, MLJ and THUNDER Agents characters. I cant see that I see the logic in any of these moves.

The company already has an excess of characters - are these concepts so unique that they add something significantly valuable to their library? I have enjoyed stories about characters from all three lines in the past, but I think that's a testament to the work of the various creative teams rather than any unique properties inherent in these concepts.

For example, what stories can you tell about Hardware that you cannot tell with Steel instead? couldn't you use the ideas from the Shield revamp on a new version of the Americommando or one of the other many patriotic trademarks DC owns? is the THUNDER Agents such a unique concept to justify all this investment, when DC already has strong properties like Suicide Squad that they haven't been able to get right?

There has never been, to my knowledge, significant demand out there for any of these concepts to return. There may be a market for reprinting the old material, but even the acclaimed THUNDER Agents stuff has probably only a niche audience at best.

Why is Marvelman different? well chiefly because the concept continues to be in demand, independent of nostalgia. There is an aura of prestige around the whole property that comes from the caliber of talent have worked on it, making Marvelman the most credible candidate to fill the "Superman distaff" role in Marvel's catalogue. Also that quality work, by creators with proven crossover appeal, makes the potential audience for the Marvelman back catalogue wide and deep.

Marvel acquires Marvelman: Has anything like this ever worked out well before? Part 2

Go here for Part 1.

So if they never really work out for the characters how do I explain the fact that these acquisitions continue to happen?

In a few of these cases there have been obvious reasons for these sales that have little to do with getting access to the intellectual property involved. It's well known that the main motivation for Marvel's acquisition of Malibu and, to a lesser extent, DC's of Wildstorm was to the acquire the sophisticated coloring departments both companies possessed.

Wildstorm also had exclusive contracts with arguably the two biggest creators in the business - Jim Lee and Alan Moore - and DC hoped to make use of those relationships. The other big benefit for Marvel and DC in buying Malibu and Wildstorm was that it immediately increased their market share by taking a potential competitor out of the marketplace.

It is this second, somewhat controversial motivation that I think explains why so many other properties have been bought up by the big two. Buying these characters removes the possibility that another competitor will figure out a way to utilise and disrupt the marketplace.

Valiant is an example of just that happening. Jim Shooter set-up this company in the early 1990s using a bunch of nearly-forgotten characters from 1960s Western/Gold Key Comics to launch his new line of comics. With solid production values and the full resources of a talented editorial and promotional team behind them, the company took off and quickly became one of the biggest comics publishers in the country.

Their success was brief, and in part based on peculiar market conditions of the time, but the example is as stark reminder of the potential disruptive power of new comic company using old concepts in a focused and well promoted manner. If Valiant had only been an imprint of a larger company I don't think it would have been anywhere near as successful, just remember Shooter's earlier attempt to a launch a new superhero line - his failed "New Universe" project at Marvel.

It is for this "spoiler" reason of wanting to block potential competition that I think DC may be kicking itself now that it didn't actively pursue Marvelman. The character probably wouldn't add a huge amount to DC, but he has the potential to help Marvel enormously in areas that DC traditionally dominates.

In part 3 I'll go into the opportunity costs inherent in buying and promoting these new acquisitions and explore the most obvious benefit these companies see in buying the rights to old properties - the idea that these new characters will add value to their pre-existing catalogues -and explain why I think that, except in rare cases (like Marvelman), this is usually a mistake.

Marvel acquires Marvelman: Has anything like this ever worked out well before? Part 1

Here's my take on this: no, nothing like this has ever really worked out perfectly in the past. There is a long history of the two biggest comics publishers acquiring the rights to other company's characters and failing to fully exploit the potential of those properties. Once acquired, the characters never manage to regain the heights of popularity they enjoyed at the peak of their success at other publishers.

The one possible exception I can think of is the 1944 merger of Detective Comics and All-American Publications which united Detective's characters like Batman and Superman with All-American's properties such as Green Lantern, Flash and Wonder Woman to form National Comics (which eventually changed its name to DC). That merger has obviously been an unqualified success for both companies' characters. I'm not sure that it really qualifies for what I'm talking about here though, as it wasn't technically an acquisition and both companies had never really been separate entities anyway.

Probably the biggest and most successful acquisition of the type I'm talking about has been the sale of the Fawcett Comics library (basically the "Captain Marvel/Shazam" characters) to DC Comics. DC has probably made their initial investment back many times over since they bought those characters in the 1970s. There have been numerous comic series, a TV show, an animated series and even plans for a big screen movie featuring the characters.

However, whatever success the property has had at DC pales in comparison to the popularity that the various Captain Marvel series enjoyed in their heyday in the 1940s, when the character was the most popular superhero in America, outselling even Superman, who was also at his peak at the time. At DC, Captain Marvel has never been more than a mediocre success, a property given a third rate priority by the company.

Since then DC has acquired lots of other libraries of characters including the Quality, Charlton and Wildstorm Comics heroes. Though these concepts have had periodic upsurges in visibility, all these acquisitions have followed the same pattern of fading popularity post-sale, as DC focuses its resources on promoting the Detective/All-American stable of characters.

Marvel has been down the same road, buying Malibu Comics in 1994 and then being so derelict in managing their "Ultraverse" characters that they are now unusable, victims of arcane rights issues that were triggered by Marvel's negligence in not producing new material featuring the concepts.

So if never works out, why do comics companies keep doing it? what are DC thinking in acquiring the rights to the MLJ, Milestone and THUNDER Agents characters - all in the space of the last year? and why do I think that Marvelman could be an exception to all this?

In the next few days I hope to post part two where I explain some of my theories!

Capsule Reviews For Last Week's Comics

In the future I hope to do these earlier in the week, but anyway...

Marvel Zombies 4 #4

The series ends on somewhat of a whimper, as the zombie virus is defeated too quickly and easily for my tastes. I really enjoyed the series overall though, and Van Lente did a great job using some obscure characters and making them seem pretty cool (the Piranha Men in #1 were a highlight for me). I guess I would definitely read a Midnight Sons series by this team.

New Avengers #55

Yeaaaah Immonen!!! Ive been a fan of this guy since he started out ages ago on Legion of Super-Heroes and he is just what this series needed. Clear, fluid and attractive storytelling with each character in the large cast looking different and dynamic. The trouble within the Hood's crew is a good hook and a long overdue development given some of the guys involved. I like the fact that the fallout from Clint's media war with Osborn continues to boil over, but I have to say that the character's murderous intentions are pretty out of sync with past depictions.

Justice Society of America #29

A pretty standard set-up issue. I love Fables so I'm hoping that this new team are a success, but going on this issue alone I'm not hugely confident that the book will take off. It just needs something extra, a bit more pizazz and a little less exposition.

Thunderbolts #134

I have been pretty disappointed in Diggle's stint on this book. I had high expectations due to his work on The Losers, and while it started promisingly, this run was derailed by the awful Deadpool crossover and hasn't been able to recover since. This issue is okay, but nothing spectacular. Here's hoping that Remender is Diggle's replacement. I have been very impressed with his work on Punisher, which has some similar themes to this book.

Buying Marvelman – potentially the biggest deal of Quesada’s tenure as Marvel Editor-in-Chief

From what I can piece together from interviews over the past weekend Joe Quesada seems to have been the first person to realise the inherent potential to Marvel of acquiring the Marvelman rights. Quesada credits publisher Dan Buckley with doing the (by no means insignificant) legwork but seems to claim the idea and the initial enthusiasm for it as his own. As such I think he deserves enormous credit for seeing what no one else did – that this is potentially a huge deal for the company.

It's only in considering the deal in the few days since its was announced that I've realised that the property has enormous potential, especially for Marvel. Just publishing the back catalogue (specifically the Quality/ Eclipse 1980s material) would be a windfall. There is already a huge pent-up demand out there for this material and even without the scarcity issue similar titles such as the Watchmen, V for Vendetta and Sandman trades have been perennial sales juggernauts for Marvel’s rival DC Comics – a phenomenon Marvel has no doubt envied for some time and are anxious to replicate.

There is even the possibility that because Marvel/Miracleman is much more of a mainstream comic superhero story it could even surpass the popularity of those other titles. I know that many would question this – could a more mainstream super-hero story actually mean higher sales in the largely bookstore dominated trade business? However consider of the three other examples I cite - the best selling of them is Watchmen. I think that one of the key factors in that book’s success is that it is a mature, intelligent story wrapped in the traditional trappings of the super-hero genre, the genre that most people have been trained to expect from comics. Marvel/Miracleman has the same strength, perhaps even moreso.

Then when you consider the potential for new interpretations – new comics, videogames, animation, movies – which if handled right (with due deference, respect and compensation given to the original creators) the company could be onto a major new property here.

Of course, all Marvel has done so far is acquire Mick Anglo’s rights to the character – and unquestionably the real value of the character at this point lies in the 1980s material. But the genius of this move is that Marvel now owns the character – which essentially stops anybody else from trying to publish stories featuring him. This means that all the other rights holders essentially have to deal with Marvel. And Marvel is one of the only organisations with both the resources and now, crucially, a real interest in sorting out the tangled mess of legal issues that remain unresolved.

Anglo and parties representing him have apparently been trying to exploit the character independently over the last few years, but were unsuccessful. I imagine the legal morass surrounding the character was a huge contributory factor to this. What independent party would be willing to invest significant amounts of cash in a largely unknown property with huge legal uncertainties surrounding it, and without access to the stories which make the character most attractive?. I think Marvel was uniquely positioned here.

Marvel have always lacked a credible “Superman” type figure in their catalogue of characters – a single hero with enormous power and all the iconic imagery and themes that go with that simple idea. Their recent attempts to build such a character from the ground-up – characters like the Sentry and the Blue Marvel - have been interesting but ultimately unsuccessful. Marvelman has the potential to credibly plug that gap – the name itself seems to suggest such a role (one note: Im not necessarily suggesting here that Marvelman should be placed into the Marvel Universe – that’s an issue I hope to deal with in a subsequent post).

And while some may point out the graphic nature of the 1980s work as a barrier to the characters future broad potential I would strongly disagree - just look at the wide variety of depictions of Batman, from The Dark Knight Returns to the current Brave and the Bold cartoon. Marvelman’s origins lie in children’s literature after all and that is what he was originally designed for.

DC, perhaps the only other credible company which could have also made this move appear to have been uninterested. They already own Superman and they have the rights to most of Moore and Gaiman’s most popular comics, so it seems they were complacent about it all and didn't see what Marvel sees. It seems ironic though that at a time in which they are spending a lot of resources acquiring the rights to old properties – such as the Milestone characters, the old Archie MLJ heroes and most recently the THUNDER agents - they have missed out on potentially the most valuable property out there.

Of course the legal issues are nowhere near settled yet – there are many interested parties whose rights have to be reconciled before Marvel can fully exploit the character and his back catalogue. Such parties include (but are by no means limited to) – Alan Moore, Garry Leach, Alan Davis, Chuck Austen, Neil Gaiman, Mark Buckingham, Todd McFarlane, Dez Skinn and DC comics. I hope to deal with some of those issues surrounding these parties in future posts.