Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities You're suddenly rich. What comic book (and related) projects would you pursue?

So you won the lottery. Or your rich-ass great-great-aunt left you a pile of money.

I imagine that those who are artistically inclined would look into publishing their work. I remain talent-free, so these would be my projects:

1. Reprinting "lost" genres. I'm particulary interested in crime and romance comics from the 50s. I only know these from Overstreet - and if they go for the prices in Overstreet that's the only way I'll know them (I'll still be thrifty when I'm filthy rich).

At the very least this would involve tracking down the current ownership/holders of the copyrights. I don't recognize the publishers of many of the books, and I'm guessing that most or all have been out of comics (if not out of business altogether) for fifty years.

I wouldn't expect this project to be a huge money-maker.

2. Developing better storage boxes. I'm thinking something along the lines of the Rubbermaid storage boxes that have become so popular over the last decade or so.

Hey Teeds, I love your storage box idea!!!!

I'm suddenly rich? Then I'm buying the rights to The Legion and setting up my own publishing/animation house to start work on a series and a cartoon/movie.

Depends on how much money we're talking about here. If I'm suddenly in Bill Gates territory, I'm probably buying the WB outright.

If not, I'm probably giving a lot to the likes of ACTOR and the CBLDF, and getting a truckload of sketches from artists I admire, but I'm probably not getting into the business.

I'm pretty sure Steve Wacker could be "persuaded" to let me write the issue of THE LEGION that re-introduces INFECTIOUS LASS once he meets my friend Ben Franklin 100 times or so....

I'd get Mike Baron, Steve Rude & Gary Martin to do more episodes of NEXUS. This was my #1 favorite book for 15 years, and inexplicably never had sales to match its quality.

I'd also get Dave Cockrum to do THE FUTURIANS.

And, I'd probably get Mike Allred to revive MADMAN full-time. It's simply my favorite by a mile of anything he's done.

If I had the dough to buy DC I would:
-- create a studio of artists that would produce a *weekly* Legion book.

-- bring back Hal Jordan as Green Lantern

-- Bring back the Question in an adult oriented crime book (well, he's coming back next year anyway).

If I didn't have the money to buy the company outright, I'd approach TPTB and tell them to do the books and I'd simply hand over enough money each month to make these books financially feasable regardless of sales.

What pleasant dreams you all have!

If I had millions and millions, I'd have a new library built in this region that would have an entire wing devoted to comic books, trades and graphic novels of all sorts. There would be talks on sequential art, workshops to teach and encourage aspiring creators, movie/animation showings.

"Cramer", I like how you think!

Develop some sort of program that allowed for more comics to be shipped to schools for the dual purpose helping kids read and teaching older kids and adults that comics aren't just for kids! More college courses, high school classes, etc...


Oh, and a Legion movie! Starring Jessica Biel, Alyson Hannigan and others !

The rumor is that this is in the works, and that Grant Morrison has been tapped to do it.

Yeah, I've heard that -- but so far only from the "gutter" rumor page. I'm not holding my breath -- overeager fans have been proclaiming Hal's imminent return for a coupla years now.

I copied an article about a company doing something similar to this here . Their focus seems to be comic strips, though.

I would make sure that all characters of all eras of Legion history are represented with action figures; I would build a life-size replica of the Legion clubhouse out of pure gold and have legionworld parties there; and I would hire Alan Moore, Steven Bissette and John Totleben to re-make Cap'n Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew as a dark fantasy/horror comic.

I own 9 acres of land. I have been threatening my wife for years that, at any moment, she may come home and find that I have hauled a silo onto the property, painted it yellow, and welded big red rocket fins to it.

If I were suddenly rich, this is the first comic book geeky thing I would do. Of course, I would abandon the silo idea, and instead do the idea right.

I would buy the 40 acre lot behind me, and on it erect a life size Super-Hero Clubhouse. The road I would build to it would be, natuarally, christined Weisinger Boulavard. The Clubhouse would be a climate controlled facility built especially for housing and preserving my comic book collection. It would also be a museaum of sort housing original comic art, toys, collectables, micronauts, pez, action figures, books, etc, etc, etc.

I would also build it with an art studio and a state of the art entertainment center with the biggest baddest tv, sound system, dvd, and video games.

Assuming I won enough money, I would quit work and dedicate myself to travelling around the country going to auctions, comics shops, antique stores, etc, for purposes of stocking my clubhouse. I would also become a power ebay trader, natch.

For comics, I would hire the best artists I could find, along with the best biographers and historians to produce non-fiction comics on world and American history. The goal would be to first sell these in comics shops and retail location, then to sell collections to book stores. The hope would be to place tghe collected works in schools and collages for use as textbooks.

Hmmm, well with just any amount of money I'd probably be funding myself writing my own comics.

But there's a part of me that would be tempted to negotiate the rights with DC to do an imprint [ala Wildstorm, I guess]. It'd be called Quality Comics, and I'd have the rights to all the old Quality characters, plus their modern day decendents [and maybe Damage, if I could get him]

Along with the relaunch of a few key hero types, I'd also try to relaunch GI Combat and Heart Throbs. Since I've got bazillions I can spend some money trying to get the war and romance genres back into the minds of the buying public. I can't remember the name of Quality's Horror anthology, but I'd relaunch it as well. I'd consider running a Blackhawk revival in the GI Combat as its "continuing series" while the rest was pure anthology. If I could get a good hook for a romance character or for the horror stories, I'd do the same there, but at the moment nothing particular leaps to mind.

The three anthologies would all start at either quarterly or bimonthly most likely but I'd try to keep them around and build an audience with them, particularly if I can get them into the hands of people outside the comic shops. I really think in this day and age of pricey comics and creators with late deadlines you could probably get a bimonthly title over with the buying public. Its cheaper and as long as it comes out on time you're probably about as regular as some of the more inconsistant titles out there.

I would not expand the line very fast. Mostly the hero line would be a few characters I think could be interesting, Kid Eternity, The Ray, Black Condor, Plastic Man and a Freedom Fighters title most likely. Any other revivals would get miniseries, and possibly a series of miniseries to test the waters out. No sense overexpanding the line, as that is usually the death knell of a comic company.

If my experiment with genre works, my fourth anthology title would bring back Betty Bates, Attorney at Law, and try to return to the field the crime comic [although the Betty Bates series certainly wasn't as lurid as the stuff that is most infamous in comics circle, the character was an interesting one, and I think true detective and crime stories can succeed]. My idea is that Betty Bates would be the main feature ala Blackhawk with other crime stories filling out the anthology; case files perhaps but nice little crime stories at any rate. Of course that probably depends on a lot of mitigating factors at the time of the launch.

Once Quality was re-established, and hopefully selling well, I'd look to the people already working with me and consider looking into publishing creator owned works, preferably limited runs rather than series. Personally I'd like to offer a venue for the creators to come up with something good, rather than requireing them to stick to superheroes [although if they wanted to, that's fine, just don't want to limit them on that angle].

I'd imagine by this point I'd be 7-10 years in and it'd be time to re-evaluate the line and see where I could go from there. I think while each book should be evaluated on a variety of factors there probably should be semi-regular evaluations of the entire output as a whole to see what can be learned from the past and to see if the line is still focused. Just putting out anything doesn't work, you have to think about what your doing and where you're going, so occassionally you need to check and make sure you have a direction.

Preferably I'd like to have some way to work with new talent; a submission policy of some kind. Probably need to do some heavy work on that to figure out the logistics of it.

I'd probably edit the line myself to begin with, to make sure I was getting what I wanted out of the books.

Or something. Most likely it'd whitter my fortune away by sitting on my duff posting to newsgroups all day.

Nice thread, Thriftshop! Hm... I'd definitely do something about bringing more comics to Asia, especially the East Asian region, like Southeast Asia and Japan. Andif I bought WB, I'd see about turning Zoe back to normal, and maybe another Legion series that continues where the Adventure era left off, and another where the Magic Wars left off. And more Justice League titles so more characters could be rescued from obscurity! And I'd get them to introduce a Legionnaire who was the descendant of the female Doctor Light in the Legion. And a Legion Clubhouse in every national capital! Um, okay, someone can give me a tranquilizer now...

I'd buy my own comic book store. Man how cool would it be to spend my days talking comic books!

I'd have Ron Marz and Chuck Dixon writing their old CrossGen books. I don't care if they sell well or not, I'd pay more than enough to keep the books around.

Ditto Jeff Matsuda drawing NewMen. Yeah yeah yeah... it's my money dagnabbit.

And Ben Abernathy would be paid an awful lot to pay me a minimal salary as his assistant editor.

Oh... and Robert Kirkman

Firs of all, I reprint the Vertigo/DC superhero books in their entirety.

Then I reprint the Elseworlds books, including the annuals and the Legends of the Dead Earth books.

I'll order the writers at DC to begin using the characters from Quality, Fawcett, and Charlton no one knows about anymore, and some of the odder Wonder Woman villains like King Neptune, the Blue Snowman, and THEM!.

I actually spent the night thinking about it. Other than the awesome idea Teeds had about developing better storage boxes (something water and fire resistant!!!), I think what I would do is spend as much time and money as possible to develop an alternate distribution system for comic books.

My goal would be several fold:

- alternate distributer to break the monopoly Diamond has. Competition is good for everyone, even if it means a slight hurt in the short run to comic book companies and retailers.

- try to get comics in the hands of new readers, which means spending an enormous amount of time figuring out new places to market comics other than comic book stores and online.

- give better deals to independent companies and creator-owned properties so the Big 2 need to dip into the Time-Warner Bros. and Disney deep pockets just so they can compete on a distribution level. Unfair yes, and by design.

An obvious idea: TV commercials.

Absolutely. There a few obvious ones that I can't believe have been missed. And I think a lot of that is that Diamond has exclusive rights to distribute, and they only use retailers (comic book shops).

I'd buy some sense and a muzzle for Alan Moore, and get him back into the biz with DC, after of course I bought DC/Warner.

Then I'd hire more staff to help co-ordinate DC and replace the idiots that drove him away.

Then I'd hire Paul to write Legion along with George Perez as co-plotter/artist,with an assist from Phil Jimenez.

Then I would get in touch with Will and get DNAgents back online.

Then, I'd do a massive 200 page book getting bruce back in the fold, rehire tomasi and kramer and get get nightwing going again.

Get the idiots that caused Dixon to leave a brainscan, and when they came back from it, their s#it would be boxed up, and Chuck Dixon would be writing for DC again with a nice raise. First task, rescue Barbara from Batgirl, Dinah from GA and rebuild the team.

Sad would be kept busy on artwork for JSA.

DC's space line of books would recieve mighty mighty revamps, with Hawkman from thanagar out there, and Carter back on earth in the JSA.

I'd give Leonard Kirk a Superman book to draw and watch the arty goodness.

Kitson on a Batman book. And Silver St. Cloud would be back.

Denny would be paid craploads of money to write Batman novels, and possibly a Wes/Sandman pulp novel or two.

Pat Broderick, Mike Decarlo...where are you, I would have craploads of money for you too.

Steve Lightle...write your ticket. Seriously.

DC digests would return.

Full color reprints of silver age and golden age books, 100 pages for $3.50. I would have a lot of money, but it has to pay off.

I would go after getting the books in places where they can be seen and found. Places like Dollar General and Family Dollar. Spinner racks don't take up a lot of room.

I would initiate deals with Libraries around the country to get comic books in their collections. Kids wont find them if they don't know about them.

JSA LIVE ACTION MOVIE!
LEGION LIVE ACTION MOVIE!
GL LIVE ACTION MOVIE!
FLASH LIVE ACTION MOVIE!

MORE FLASH, GL, LEGION ANIMATION MOVIES.

ELVIRA!..no, not in a comic or anything, I'd just have her over to dinner.