August
26
Virgin Comics no more
Publishers Weekly has confirmed that Virgin Comics has been shut down, with its New York offices closed and its staff laid off. Details here.
Virgin was one of the recent high-profile launches looking to make comics-to-film an official business plan. It had limited success in selling comics — they never set the charts on fire, though some of their books were decent reads — and it's not clear what the company's plans are for the many projects it had begun with Sci Fi Channel and talent like Hugh Jackman, Ed Norton, Guy Richie, John Woo and NIcolas Cage.
What this means for this kind of business plan as a viable way to make money is not completely clear, though it does seem to indicate that even companies with deep-pocketed parents can't survive indefinitely without making some kind of success and money at publishing actual comics.
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Too bad Virgin Comics wasn't given more time to establish themselves. Feels like they just launched a few months ago. I have to wonder what kind of overhead they took on, though, and whether that contributed to having the plug pulled so abruptly. Whatever, just like anything else, high concept in comics is one thing; actually solid storytelling is another.
Posted by: FilmTurtle | August 26, 2008 at 02:59 PM
Never liked the Virgin stuff. Too much emphasis on Indian mythology/lore, big names in the bylines, but not enough substance on the page.
Posted by: Wolfgang | August 27, 2008 at 06:08 AM
To be fair, I think they were puting out some decent stuff - the news comes as something of a shock to me actually. I think their downfall wasn't just emphasizing the Indian content (they were targeting the Indian subcontinent market after all) but also emphasizing characters and celebrities that were much bigger in Britain than in North america where they were suffering their weaker sales. This despite having access to Virgin stores as another retail point.
Posted by: comic book movies | September 01, 2008 at 05:07 PM