How 'Star Wars' Marvel Move Could Affect Fans, Publishers (Analysis)
The announcement today that Lucasfilm will move the Star Wars comic license from independent publisher Dark Horse Comics to Disney sibling Marvel Entertainment may not have come as the greatest surprise to most, but that doesn't mean that it won't have an impact -- if, admittedly, an impact felt by Dark Horse and Star Wars fans more than Marvel Entertainment itself.
After all, this is a purely additive move for Marvel, which is already the single largest publisher in the American comic book industry, at least in so far as the direct market -- which is to say, the comic book speciality retail market -- is concerned ; there's almost no discernible downside in gaining this license for the publisher. Adding Star Wars to its line-up just means that it can boast a wider range of material than its predominantly superhero portfolio.
Unfortunately for Star Wars fans, Marvel has a somewhat varied track record when it comes to licensed material in recent years. For every Dark Tower or Ender's Game -- both properties that lasted for years at Marvel, via a number of mini-series and relaunches -- there have been properties that have been less successful; Philip K. Dick's Electric Ant and Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake had much shorter runs, for example.
More appropriately, the Disney relationship has produced tie-in graphic novels for ABC's Castle and Once Upon A Time, as well as sporadic attempts at exploiting Pixar, Henson and Disney animated properties, the latter three a group license that Marvel inherited from indie publisher Boom! Studios. In 2010, ahead of Tron: Legacy, the publisher pushed out a mini-series Tron: Betrayal, and in 2011 through 2012, a number of John Carter mini-series trailed the Andrew Stanton bomb. As you can see, corporate synergy has been alive and well at Marvel since its buyout.
Well, that's not true -- it's been alive, but hardly "well." Not only have the various licensed Disney titles failed to set the sales charts alight, but the publisher has been criticized for a seeming lack of focus (or interest) on the material, despite what would appear to be customer demand for it.
As Chris Butcher of the respected Toronto comic store the Beguiling wrote in 2012 [6], "At the height of production, BOOM! Studios had been publishing as many as 10 comics a month featuring the Pixar and Disney characters. During their tenure with the license from January 2009 through December 2010 (2 years), they produced roughly 200 comics, and more than 30 trade paperbacks of that material… In the two years since Marvel acquired the license (January 2011-December 2012), they will have produced approximately 8 comic books, 8 magazines, and near as we can tell, 4 graphic novels (only 2 in 2012)."
Of those releases, Butcher noted, some reprinted from the Boom! material or earlier material from other publishers. "What you’re seeing there is a 90% drop in production on highly salable product," he wrote. "Books with international name recognition that we were selling a ton of, and those sales basically evaporated."
Last month, Dark Horse Comics published five separate Star Wars series (Star Wars, Star Wars: Legacy, Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi, Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Cry of Shadow and the adaptation of the original screenplay, The Star Wars), almost the equivalent of Marvel's core X-Men franchise, which boasts six core titles bearing the X-Men name. Even without a track record of reducing the amount of licensed material published under independent publishers, what would be the likelihood of Marvel maintaining Dark Horse's level of output on a regular basis?
(Worth noting: Marvel's cancellation level has traditionally been around 20,000 orders in the U.S. direct market, which means -- looking at the November order estimates, the most recent estimates available today [7] -- that only two of those five Star Wars series would survive.)
For readers outside of the comic book speciality market, moving Star Wars to Marvel may mean reduced availability. Not only has Marvel recently pulled its single issue comic books from the bookstore market, but the publisher's bookstore presence in terms of collected editions and graphic novels remains surprisingly small despite a switch to distribution by Hachette in 2010 to grow its market share [9]; according to Bookscan figures for 2012 [10], Marvel was only the eighth most successful comic book publisher in bookstores, with its entire collective sales for the year less than the sales of The Walking Dead Omnibus Volume 1 during the twelve month period. By comparison, Dark Horse was the sixth most successful comic book publisher for the period.
Whether in the comic book direct market or mainstream bookstore market, for Dark Horse, the loss of the license means a definite loss of sales -- in November, the publisher's three best-selling titles inside the direct market were Star Wars titles (although historically, its Buffy The Vampire Slayer titles, on hiatus until later this month, sell better) and of profile.
In his statement regarding the loss of the license, founder Mike Richardson wrote that the publisher had found "new and exciting projects" to replace the franchise in the schedule for 2015 and beyond, but admitted that it was "a tall order" to say that they would take the place of Star Wars in anything other than publishing slots. Even other high profile Dark Horse licenses like Buffy or Aliens pale in comparison with the recognition factor of Star Wars, after all.
Going on current evidence, the transfer of Star Wars from Dark Horse to Marvel suggests that the outcome will be less Star Wars comic product released from 2015 than we currently see -- barring a significant change in operating procedure at Marvel, which isn't impossible -- and that Dark Horse is very likely to suffer to some extent without the license, as well. It's possible that we'll see some great Star Wars comics from Marvel as a result of today's announcement, but it's difficult to shake the feeling that this move is more akin to the Empire Striking Back than any kind of New Hope, at least for now.