Tales of Syzpense #32
Comings and Goings, a Saucer sighting, the Ghost of Christmas Spinner Racks, Part 3, and a bonus holiday KISS
Has-Beens
In 2005, we finalized a deal to bring the Transformers comic license to IDW.
It was a longshot from the start — IDW was largely just known as a horror publisher, and even after a few trips to Pawtucket to pitch for the license resulted in us somehow becoming a finalist in the bidding process, the licensing fee caused some sticker shock for the company’s owners and they said to let go.
I didn’t do that. It felt like the kind of thing the company really needed to help establish us as a real player, and to help bring in an entirely different audience, and it was something I wanted, too.
So we kept talking. And ended up winning the business. Which was great. I was only on the job as the company’s EiC for about a year at that point, and developing an entirely new take on the property was an exciting time. Hasbro was supportive to our efforts, and the fans (mostly) liked what we did at the start.
But neither the Transformers comics, nor the broader relationship to come with Hasbro — a partnership that later involved adding G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, The Micronauts, M.A.S.K., Action Man, Stretch Armstrong, Battleship, Go-Bots, and ROM (I’m forgetting a few more titles, too, I’m sure) — would have thrived the way it did without Hasbro’s head of publishing, Michael Kelly.
Michael Kelly, who moved the Transformers and G.I. Joe to Skybound a year ago, resulting in the best sales in the company’s history for both property’s relaunched comic series.
Michael Kelly, who was let go from Hasbro this week, along with something like 1,100 other people. A reported 20% of the company, two weeks before Christmas.
Now, having been subject to, let’s say, corporate decisions that perhaps benefit the bottom line and not the actual people or products that those people helped make, I’m definitely sensitive to this kind of situation even if I didn’t know any of the folks involved.
But in this case, I had a working relationship with Michael Kelly that lasted something like 15 years, and it was due to his championing of IDW’s efforts that the comics were able to attain the relative highs that they hit during our time managing them. It never felt like the kind of “licensor/licensee” relationship that people warn you about when getting into the licensed comics business. Rather, Michael made smart decisions, he took chances, he pushed management to do the same, and he allowed and enabled and encouraged the wild creative leaps we wanted to take at times.
Some of the things we accomplished are pictured below. The Cobra Commander 2-page spread was shocking within the story where it happened, but even moreso when you consider that this was one of G.I. Joe’s most enduring villains; the Tom Scioli Transformers/G.I. Joe series was batshit wild in all the best ways — it really read like a story developed by a kid playing with his toys; we got to bring ROM and Micronauts back after decades out of the market; and My Little Pony not only launched far better than we expected but we sold its one millionth comic in pretty short order, too; and we pulled off Revolution, a massive crossover involving nearly all Hasbro characters.
(You could also maybe argue that the Hasbro titles never recovered from Revolution, which was a crossover whose timing was necessitated more by sales needs than our initial plans, but so it goes. The larger point is, all of these things took some daring to pull off, and they all took the support and smarts of a licensor who did what was best for the brands he managed.)
I could, and probably will, share Hasbro stories and comic imagery for years to come. I don’t really have the heart to do so right now — mostly, I’m sad to see one more smart, talented, and caring employee who made his staff, his brands, and his division better, end up where so many Hasbro folk ended up this week.
But the good memories remain. Here’s hoping our paths cross professionally once again somewhere a bit further down the line.
Saucer Sighting
Speaking of things that once were, DC/Vertigo once published a comic called Saucer Country, by Paul Cornell and Ryan Kelly. It offered us UFO fans a pleasant mix of alien conspiracies coupled with political intrigue. It was one of my favorite comics at the time. And then it ended after 12 issues, but before getting the full ending the creators intended.
DC kindly agreed to give the series back to its creators, something that isn’t often done. When I heard that news, I reached out to the creators and told them I’d love to continue the story at IDW. I’d done this before with another former DC series, Fallen Angel, and it worked nicely. Creatively if not necessarily sales-wise. But it’s a nice feeling, to be in a position to save and bring back series that I personally enjoyed.
So IDW launched Saucer State, a continuation of the story that was planned for another 12 issues. It made it to six. So it goes at times. But there was still a final chapter that needed to be told. Paul and Ryan, no doubt frustrated by the start-stop-starts, decided they could end the story properly in one more issue.
And that final issue is finally coming. We’re releasing the final issue in February, and then a full collection of the entire series will be released in a single volume called Saucer Country: The Complete[d] Edition.
It’s been a long journey but the end is coming and hey, even with all the time it’s taken to get here, it’s still likely to arrive before the full UFO/UAP disclosure we’ve been promised for so long now.
R.I.P., Ian Gibson
Irish comic artist Ian Gibson passed away this week. Ian was a longtime artist on UK anthology mag, 2000 AD, but my admittedly limited exposure to his work came largely from some DC Comics he drew in the 1980s. I think Green Lantern Corps was where I first saw his stuff. He did some fill-in issues that felt stylistically of a type with the then-series artist, Joe Staton. He had a fun cartoony style that fit those series well, but it was only after first seeing those that I saw some of his more acclaimed work, like “The Ballad of Halo Hones” with Alan Moore.
It was an exciting time, the mid-1980s, as the UK writers and artists made their way into the American comic-publishing houses and served to reinvigorate both stories and art thanks to their pleasantly off-kilter styles.
Anyway, I always liked what I saw of Ian’s work and I’m sad we lost another good talent. 2000 AD ran a much better remembrance of Ian than this so if you’d like to get a broader sense of Ian’s work, check out their tribute here.
A Final Tales to Tell
Advance copies of the last Syzygy comic to be released in 2023 arrived today — Tales of Syzpense #4 by TP Louise and Ashley Wood, and also by Nelson Daniel and me. It’ll arrive just after Christmas and just in time to help you use any errant gift cards — in stores on December 27. It’s been a challenging year for the comic market as a whole so if you get a chance to end your year with one more stop-in at your local comic shop, to grab this or anything else, we’d all appreciate the support.
In other Syzygy news this week, I did an interview with Dynamic Forces about my coming The Colonized comic, which you can find here.
The Ghost of Spinner Racks Past, Part 3
Lots of fun covers here but it’s pretty hard to beat the Spider-Man cover that features two reptile-guys…
Merry KISS-mas
As I was compiling all the holiday-themed covers for my spinner racks, I remembered that I once contributed a Christmas cover. Years ago, while publishing various KISS comics, we launched a kids’ comic with the maybe-regrettable-in-hindsight title, KISS Kids.
The comic was a lot of fun to do, in large measure because series artist, Jose Holder, along with colorist Jeremy Colwell, did a great job bringing to life the silly stories that Tom Waltz and I came up with. And their Christmas cover now takes its place in my rack alongside all the other great covers from decades past.
The cover is here and as a special KISS encore, since the band has now officially retired (again) for good (again), I thought I’d offer up my two holiday-themed stories from this issue in the space below. So if you like KISS-related puns and L’il Archie-level storytelling, these are for you!
Great stuff Chris!
Sorry to see you on the naughty list. Reading the KISS Kids story was a hoot!