We recently caught up with writer Garth Ennis (The Boys, Battlefields, Preacher), and Dynamite Comics publisher Nick Barrucci for a conversation about Ennis’ work for the company and what’s coming next. In part 2, of this two part intrerview, we talk about what’s coming from The Boys, the amazing sales on the trade paperback collections, and The Boys Trading Cards. In part 1, we talked about Ennis’ new three volume war story series, Battlefields, and the new Just a Pilgrim collection.And then I also wanted to get brought up to date on The Boys. I see you’re doing a couple different types of collections of The Boys, trade paperbacks and then these hardcover editions. What are you doing with the hardcover editions, are you putting material in there that’s not in the shorter collections or is it more of an omnibus type?
Barrucci: It’s more of a definitive edition where the storylines that we are putting in there we’re putting in all the material that was of course in the trade paperbacks but we are also adding in any additional material that didn’t make into the collection. To Garth and Darick's credit they put as much material into the original trades as possible so creating more material for the definitive edition was whatever was at hand.
Ennis: I believe that in the first definitive one there’s going to be one of the scripts. I think there will be a script and art comparison, the collection of that CBLDF story, I think there are a number of features and a slew of Darick's sketches as well.
You said the first definitive edition. So you’re going to keep doing those?
Barrucci: We’ll see how the first one does. It would be nice to continue to do them. It will be a lot of factors that will weigh in. One of the things we’ve been dealing with, which is a good problem, is that the trades keep selling out. I think in Garth and Darick's mind it’s more important to focus on keeping the trades in print because they’re affordable collections to try and garner as many readers as possible. The first trade paperback has just gone into its fourth print and the second trade paperback, which we printed as many units as the first trade’s first printing and second printing has sold out as well. The third trade paperback, we just went hog wild and printed as many of those as we did of the first three printings of the first trade paperback.
Ennis: It’s enormously encouraging, the reaction to those three. I think you’re right, Nick, when you say that that is a priority.
Do you think you’re reaching new readers with the trade paperbacks that you didn’t have with the comics?
Ennis: I’m pretty sure we are. That’s been my experience all along with these collected editions. With Preacher is obviously the one that (clears) the way. It’s gone on to discover an audience far in excess of the readership of the comics. I think generally when you get one of these ongoing concerns like Preacher of The Boys, that’s what you find. You find that people who wouldn’t normally go into comics shops or read comics are more than happy to buy the trades and pass it on to their friends. Spread the word that way.
Barrucci: I’m going to agree with Garth. We have to be getting new readers because of simple math. The trade paperbacks have higher print runs now than the monthly comics.
Where are you at in the cumulative runs for that first volume?
Barrucci: I’m going to go by memory here. But I believe we printed (now keep in mind each printing we’ve gone higher) over 70,000 on volume one. Now I believe the fourth print was the highest print run we had. I may be wrong. I’m going by memory. If it’s not the highest print run we’ve created, it’s the second highest after the first print. We keep selling them day in and day out.
Are you getting good response from book stores and libraries or are most of them going to the comic stores?
Barrucci: I don’t know that these are going into libraries. I could not give you that answer yet. They are being sold in bookstores and actually outside of the direct market our best customer has been Amazon.com.
That’s still a sixty issue story you have planned there, Garth?
Ennis: That’s right. There will be one, probably two miniseries spinning off from it. The main story itself is still set at sixty issues. I just finished issue thirty so I’m halfway done.
You said you were going to spin off a mini-series. Do you mean after the series is over, or while it’s going on?
Ennis: They would spin off during its run. There will be one next year and possibly one the following year.
Where are we at in the storyline right now? Can you give us a little look forward in terms of what readers have to look forward to?
Ennis: We just started the new storyline which is called “We Gotta Go Now.” That’s eight issues. It’s seven issues and an epilogue. That has The Boys investigating the G-Men. It’s not too hard to guess who the G-Men are supposed to be. Just go a little bit further along the alphabet. The G-Men are
Something to look forward to. Did I see something about Boys’ trading cards?
Barrucci: There will be Boys’ trading cards. We solicited them early they will be coming out in the first quarter of 2009. We’ve got a nice little surprise in the cards that we haven’t announced yet.
Will they be sold as packs or sets?
Barrucci: Packs.
How many cards in the set?
Barrucci: Seventy-two, plus chase.
Have you announced what any of the chase cards are?
Barrucci: We have not yet. One of the surprises that we have that we are getting ready to announce over the next few days and I guess we’ll be announcing it in this interview is that our friend who Hughie has been based on will be signing some cards. He’s going to sign 500 cards and they will be dispersed intermittently into the packs. They’ll be nice chase cards.
It’s actually good news being delivered in not the best way. We realized we were able to get Simon Pegg to sign some cards and also some of the extra covers we were doing with people like Dave Gibbons and Jim Lee. If we wanted to get those cards autographed we wouldn’t be able to get it in for this series. We’ve decided to resolicit the series for spring of next year so we can give the fans even more autographs and chase cards.
And when were they originally solicited for?
Barrucci: They were originally solicted for, if memory serves, this coming November. It will give retailers a better chance to gauge the demand and also give them a fair time frame on when they’re going to get everything.
