In the meantime, it’s a good time to clear out my inbox of stuff that’s accumulated over the past weeks or months.
There are a couple of reasons why this might have happened. Over at Forbes, I speculated that this could involve Mintz’s very strong relationship with the entertainment industry in China. Mintz has long been a big player in the Chinese market. His roots there go back to the early 1990s, when it really took foresight and fortitude to invest heavily in such a volatile economy, where the all-powerful government harbored deep suspicion of outsiders. Needless to say, the bet paid off. And China would be a fine market for Valiant, where audiences don’t necessarily have a nostalgic preference for one set of American-created costumed heroes over another.
After the story was published, I received an advisory claiming this was not really about China; that it was mostly about the domestic market. If that is actually the case and not PR spin, then there are a couple of other reasons to make a move like this when you already have effective control of a company.
One possibility is that a payday is (finally) coming and you want to clear the decks so you don’t have to split the proceeds. We know that Valiant has been pursuing an aggressive big media strategy, with various film projects and TV projects in the pipeline. Maybe there is some big news on that front. But the record of non-Marvel superheroes has been pretty spotty. Even a well-done Bloodshot movie is no slam dunk.
Another possibility is that the private money behind the company is planning an exit – either an acquisition or an IPO. In that case, it’s good business for DMG to move the minority owners out before the exit comes if the company bylaws allow it, even if it’s a cold way to treat people who built the company. That said, does Valiant look like a company ready for an IPO?
Finally, it could be that Mintz lost patience with the leadership team’s strategy and hit the eject button. But if that were the case, as the controlling partner, he could conceivably have removed them from management without increasing his equity position, unless something in their agreement required it.
It is unclear how any of this affects Valiant’s short-term publishing strategy or the warm relationship the company has built up with many retailers over the past few years. It is definitely worth watching to see when the next coin drops.
After that, Marvel and DC go tit-for-tat down the thick middle of the list. Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #15, #109 on the top 300, is the last book to sell more than 20,000 copies. Spots 171 on down are all less than 10,000. By contrast, only two titles on the list, Doomsday Clock #3 and Dark Knights Metal #5, both from DC, sold over 100,000 copies.
In statistics, we’d call a bottom-heavy distribution like that a “long tail.” In a retail environment where stores have limited dollars to stock shelf copies every month, the big clump of anemic-selling books in the middle of this chart looks more like a death spiral.
For folks like me who know only the basics about Asian comics, each of its 300+ pages is crammed with essential information and beautiful images that make me want to discover more about these works and their creators. I’d venture that even experts will find this volume indispensable.
That’s about all for me. See you in Wakanda!
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.