Now BOOM! Studios is the latest to give it a try, announcing at San Diego Comic-Con that it had acquired the WWE license and would begin publishing comics this Fall (see “BOOM! Announces WWE Comics”). Given that the license was fairly well-travelled, we wondered why BOOM! thought it would have more success than the previous publishers.
With previous attempts, “WWE Comics have taken the superstars and personalities and mashed them up with other genres, and they didn’t have any actual connection with the WWE product,” BOOM! Studios President of Publishing and Marketing Filip Sablik explained. To decide how to handle the license, Sablik said that at BOOM! they asked themselves what they would want to see as fans, and found a rich area to be mined.
“There are lots of backstories and things that happen between shows that because of budgets and locations they can’t do onscreen,” he continued. “We’re going to tell a lot of the off-camera elements.”
The first story arc will focus on a faction called the Shield, exploring what led to their dissolution. BOOM! also plans to focus on classic superstars, with stories fans haven’t seen, or tribute pieces.
The first BOOM! release is WWE Then Now Forever #1, by Dennis Hopeless and Dan Mora, which will debut November 9. The oversize issue will include the one-pager released at San Diego, plus new content celebrating the WWE throughout its eras, including a 20-page story “The Breaking of the Shield.”
Sablik is confident that the approach will be successful. “A year ago we showed up at San Diego and announced that we were going to do Power Rangers, and there was a large group of retailers that looked at it skeptically,” he said. “We were able to crack that one, and we’re optimistic that we can do the same thing with WWE. This logically should be something that works in the direct market.”
