Author: Glenn Hauman

Good grief. You wouldn’t think the unit that owns the
licensing rights to Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the rest of the “Peanuts”
gang would go for less than tonight’s Mega Millions jackpot, would you?

E.W. Scripps Co. said it will sell United Media Licensing and the “Peanuts” brand to Joe Boxer owner Iconix Brand Group Inc. for $175 million in cash.

The
sale of United Media Licensing also means Iconix has a new partnership
with the family of the late “Peanuts” creator, Charles Schulz. They’ll
receive 20 percent ownership in the unit that owns “Peanuts” and pay
that percentage of the sale price.

United Media Licensing
represents other character brands such as Dilbert and Fancy Nancy, but
the bulk of its licensing business comes from “Peanuts.” The
acquisition grants Iconix with its first character brands. Until now
Iconix owned mostly fashion brands from Candie’s to Joe Boxer.

The
unit’s licensed merchandise has annual sales of more than $2 billion,
but the owners of the licenses receive a fraction of that. In 2009,
revenue of the unit fell 10 percent to nearly $92 million. That figure
includes United Media’s syndication operations, which Scripps will still
own, meaning it will still syndicate comic strips and editorial
features.

United Media Licensing has more than 1,200 licensing
agreements and relationships with companies and retailers such as Warner
Bros., Old Navy, CVS, MetLife Inc. and Hallmark Co. Some 20,000 new
products are approved each year in more than 40 countries.

Scripps
first brought “Peanuts” to market in 1950. By the time Schulz retired
in 1999, Peanuts was in more than 2,600 papers.

Iconix said it expects “Peanuts” to generate about $75
million in annual royalty revenue and noted a pre-existing revenue share
with the Schulz family, separate from the new 20 percent arrangement.
Iconix, based in New York, owns and licenses brands such as Joe Boxer,
London Fog, Starter and Mudd, to retailers, wholesalers and suppliers.

“The
Peanuts characters have been our entertaining co-workers and the Schulz
family has been our trusted partner for nearly 60 years. But this is
the right move for all involved as we go our separate ways in
recognition of changing times and new strategies,” said Scripps CEO Rich
Boehne.

Iconix CEO Neil Cole said the purchase moves the company
away from being one focused solely on fashion into new realms that
include theme parks, media and financial institutions– although one can easily presume that various characters will now be appearing on even more t-shirts, etc.

First, it was interracial dating… and now it’s homosexuality. With all the changes going on, it’s driving some people to drink… if only they could.

Join us back at Munden’s Bar with writer John Ostrander (GrimJack, Suicide Squad, Star Wars: Legacy) and artist Chris Burnham (X-Men, Elephantmen) as a young man must make the hardest choice of his life, one he’s been putting off for decades…

Click here to read the story– free!

The Hollywood Reporter has the skinny on the Cartoon Network upfronts, and there are many familiar faces for comics fans this year.

Young
Justice: Being a teenager means proving yourself over and
over—to
peers, parents, teachers, mentors and, ultimately, to yourself.  But

what if you’re not just a
normal teenager?  What if
you’re a teenage super hero?  Are
you ready to join the ranks of the great heroes and prove you’re worthy
of
the Justice League?  That’s
exactly what the members of Young Justice—Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash,
Superboy,
Miss Martian and Artemis (the renamed version of Arrowette)—will find out, whether they have what it
takes
to be a proven hero. This
all-new series is based on the series by Peter David and Todd Nauck, and is produced by Warner Bros. Animation. Sam
Register (Teen Titans, Ben 10, Batman: The Brave
and the
Bold) is the executive producer. Brandon Vietti (Batman:

Under the Red Hood, Superman
Doomsday, The Batman) and Greg Weisman (Gargoyles,
The
Spectacular Spider-Man, W.I.T.C.H.) are the producers.

MAD:
Produced by Warner Bros.
Animation and using the iconic MAD magazine,
published by DC Comics, as inspiration, MAD is an animated
sketch-comedy series utilizing a chaotic
mix of animation styles and twisted humor to pull back the curtain and
expose the truth behind movies, TV shows, games, pop culture and, of
course, curtains! Classic MAD magazine
characters and features such as Alfred E. Neuman and Spy vs. Spy pop
up,
and no subject matter or individual will be safe from MAD’s
barrage of parodies and sketches.  In the end, viewers
won’t get even,
they’ll just get MAD!  Sam Register (Teen
Titans, Ben 10,
Batman: The Brave and the Bold)
is the executive producer.  Kevin
Shinick (Robot Chicken) and Mark
Marek (KaBlam! The Andy Milonakis Show) are the
producers.

The Looney Toons Show will star Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, along with
Yosemite Sam,
Tweety, Sylvester
— the whole gang. The network is having each episode as a
half-hour story along with “cartoons within a cartoon.” It will also having classic characters singing original
songs in two-minute music videos called Merrie Melodies and the Road
Runner and Coyote in CG shorts.

We regret to announce the passing of George Scithers, who died Monday after suffering a heart attack on Saturday at the age of 80. He was an award winning editor, winning the Hugo award four times, and a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2002.

Scithers’ first published fiction, the story “Faithful Messenger,” appeared in If magazine in 1969. His involvement in the field, however, dates back to 1957, when he began submitting to the fanzine Yandro. Two years later, he began publishing the Hugo Award-winning fanzine Amra. The term “swords and sorcery” first appeared there, and Amra became a leading proponent of the genre. Several of the articles originally published in Amra were later re-printed as part of two volumes about Conan the Barbarian which Scithers co-edited with L. Sprague de Camp.

In 1963, Scithers chaired Discon I, the 21st Worldcon, held in Washington, D.C.. He was a regular parliamentarian for business meetings of the World Science Fiction Society (the people behind WorldCon) and authored an invaluable guide to running science fiction conventions, The Con-Committee Chairman’s Guide.

In 1973, Scithers founded Owlswick Press, a small independent publishing company.
In 1977, he was named the first editor for Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, staying in that position until 1982 and winning two more Hugo Awards for his work there. After leaving IASFM, Scithers took the helm at Amazing Stories, and edited that magazine until 1986.

In 1988, he worked with John Gregory Betancourt and Darrell Schweitzer to re-establish Weird Tales, the magazine that had introduced one of his earliest interests, Conan the Barbarian, to the world, which won him a World Fantasy Award in 1992.

He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac
Asimov’s fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers.

He was the first publisher of many SF and fantasy talents, including Esther Friesner.

For a good look at the man, here’s an essay about George Scithers written when he was Fan Guest of Honor at the Millenium Philcon in 2001.

We’ve just been informed that American anime producer and pioneer Carl Macek died Saturday of a heart attack. He was 58.

Carl created Robotech out of editing and redubbing three separate anime series Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada, co-founded Spumco with John Krickafalusi (Ren & Stimpy) and
co-founded Streamline Pictures (Akira, Vampire Hunter D, Fist of the North Star,
Laputa, My Neighbor Totoro) with Jerry Beck. Jerry remembers him here.

His history with comics was long-standing, as he directly wrote some of the Robotech comics for Comico, the books that pushed that company well into the black. Gerry Giovinco, publisher of Comico, has his own remembrance here. In later years, he was also responsible for the animated movie of the Chaos Comics character Lady Death, and had been working on translating episodes of Bleach and Naruto.

It could be argued that he was the most influential man in animation that never worked at Disney or Warner Brothers. He was a one of a kind guy, and will be missed.

Pop culture continues to find new and innovative ways to plant itself on the web and two of our contributors, Aaron Rosenberg and Bob Greenberger, along with fellow novelist Steven Savile, are trying something new. ReDeus is a new fictional world that will come to life on the Internet as a subscription-based site that will offer, for starters, three serialized stories set in a shared world. Not only that, they’re fundraising in an unusual way too, through Kickstarter.  We wanted to know more, so we digitally sat down with the three for a conversation.

ComicMix: Where’d the idea for ReDeus come from?

Steven Savile: I was actually invited to the party after Aaron and Bob had already come up with the core concept of the gods and monsters returning, so it’s best I let them field this particular question.

Aaron Rosenberg: Me, it was all me! :)
No, seriously, it was Bob, our friend Paul, and I. We’d been talking about the economy, and writing projects, and the changing face of publishing, and we agreed that we needed to find new ways to get stories out to our audience. I had an idea about putting things up on the Internet, and Bob and Paul both liked the notion, so we ran with it. Then we started talking about the kind of world we’d want to build, something cool and unique and interesting with enough room for all of us to tell stories and then some. We all agreed that near-future was the way to go, and then the question was “how is it different from today? What changed?” I don’t remember which of us came up with “the gods were all real—and they’ve returned!” but the minute it was stated all three of us said “YES!!!” And we took it from there. Paul had to bow out, unfortunately, but Bob and I both already knew Steve and were already working with him on some other projects, so we approached him and he was happy to step in.Bob Greenberger: Basically we had to forgo one Jew with a beard for a Swede with a beard. We think it’s an upgrade.

CMix: Why three writers rather than one of you?

Savile: Personally, I love the collective aspect of it. Writing is by necessity a lonely business but there is something very gratifying about the act of collaboration, the idea that what comes out of all three of us together is greater than what might emerge from my mind alone, or Bob’s or Aaron’s, plus it is an absolute delight to learn from these guys. They’re not only great people, they’re great friends, and how often in this life do we get to work with real friends? Not often enough would be my answer.

Rosenberg: Two reasons, really. First, the world is just so much richer for the three of us. I can come up with a world on my own—I’ve done it enough times—but that means it’s all from my perspective, my style, my tone. With three of us, one of us will come up with something and one of the others will say “Hm, that’s cool, but what if we do this to it?” and it’s something the first person never thought of but it makes everything that much better. We really build off each other’s creativity, crafting a setting that’s more complicated, more engaging, more exciting than any of us would have had alone.

The other reason is the scope of the project. Putting up a new piece of content every single day—if any one of us were to do this, he’d run himself ragged. With three of us, we can split that up. Each of us writes one storyline. Each of us handles one type of additional content. It becomes more manageable. And you get materials from three different viewpoints.

Greenberger:  I love collaboration and brainstorming so have a blank slate and starting to fill it in is very exciting. This is a huge concept worthy of deeper exploration, which three can do better than one. Who knows, maybe it will grow from there and more will be invited to come explore with us?

(more…)

Okay, you all want to talk about it, go ahead.

Note: this is only for the episode that premiered tonight on BBCAmerica, and the clip show that precedes it. No chatter from those people who downloaded the episodes from England that haven’t aired here yet.

Bad Internet downloaders. Baaaaad.