Comics Trip

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On a recent morning, Scott Mitchell Rosenberg sat at his desk, scanning eight different computer monitors, displaying his address book, stock quotes and the Web sites his company runs. The scene could have appeared in one of the science-fiction comic books published by Platinum Studios Inc., the company Rosenberg founded in 1997 to turn comics into movies, TV shows and merchandise. The company bought the rights for “Jeremiah,” a European comic that became a successful series on Showtime from 2002 to 2005. Before starting Platinum, Rosenberg ran Malibu Comics, a tiny publishing company most famous for selling film rights for “Men in Black” to Columbia Pictures. He sold it to Marvel in 1994. Platinum has sold film rights to several of its comics and they’re in various stages of development. “Witchblade” is set for filming at DreamWorks, “Dead of Night” is in preproduction, “Atlantis Rising” is in

development at DreamWorks and “Unique” is in development at Walt Disney Co. Rosenberg took Platinum Studios public in February. It trades over the counter as a penny stock with a market capitalization of $24.5 million. He spoke with the Business Journal at his 14th-floor office in

West Los Angeles.


Question: At what point in life did you get into the comic book business?

Answer: When I was 13, the only way to feed my habit of buying comics was to start selling them. So I started a mail-order company and rented booths at conventions.


Q: That was your first business?

A: First, I sold gumballs. I used to hermetically seal them in a baggie with an iron. My brother showed me how to do it. I sold a package of five gumballs for a quarter at school. The price at the store was 49 cents for 100 gumballs. Nice little mark-up.


Q: Gumballs, old comics what next?

A: When I went to college, I went out-of-state, and my comics were at home, so that ended my business. But eventually, I needed money for school. I started a different kind of comics company. I would buy the comic books that I figured stores would run out of, paying wholesale price, and then sell them to the stores often above the cover price.


Q: That sounds incredibly speculative.

A: Incredibly. But I like that kind of stuff. This is where I look creatively at problems. I would call up the comics creators and ask them what’s coming up. They would tell me about killing off a character in a few issues, or the introduction of a new artist. If I thought it was cool, I would order a whole bunch of those comics, guessing the stores would blow it. We had more good guesses than bad guesses.


Q: What happened to that company?

A: Here’s where I made my big mistake. A big retail chain asked us to become their distributor. I would order directly from the publishers and sell to them with a guaranteed profit margin. Not thinking to check references or find out if they had cheated other distributors, I said great.


Q: And then?

A: One day they slipped a letter under the door. It said, “We started ordering with another distributor two months ago, sorry you’ll be stuck with the orders, no we won’t pay you, sue us if you like.” They knew we couldn’t afford to sue.


Q: What did you do?

A: There were some comic publishers I ultimately couldn’t pay, but I never declared bankruptcy. We worked it out. I found another distributor who took the retail store accounts and staff. But it was quite a failure one year out of college.


Q: How did Malibu Comics happen?

A: A group of creators asked me to publish their comic. I didn’t know how to publish and I had no money. But they talked me into reading their comic, and I liked it.


Q: What was it?

A: “Ex-Mutant,” kind of the opposite of X-Men. In a future apocalyptic Earth, mutants become humans, hence ex-mutants.


Q: How did one comic become a company?

A: I said, “Guys, I can’t lose money. It will be black-and-white with the highest price ever seen on a comic $1.80.” Well, breakeven was 10,000 copies. It sold 130,000.


Q: What was the turning point of your career?

A: I have a lot of turning points. My whole career is turning points.




Q: Pick your favorite.

A: In 1992, Malibu Comics made a deal with Marvel’s top half-dozen artists who weren’t happy with their treatment. Marvel had an issue giving credit you weren’t going to see Todd McFarlane’s name over “Spider-Man.” We made a distribution deal for them to defect en masse and launch their own imprint. We broke every independent sales record in the book. It certainly raised our market share and put us in the world of mainstream comics, with print runs in the millions.


Q: How about your second-best turning point?

A: Then I found “Men in Black,” a comic book that already had collected 70 rejection letters. I don’t care if someone else doesn’t like a project it has been irrelevant in my career. I ask if I like it, and if I can do something with it.


Q: Was “Men in Black” an instant success?

A: It was one of our lowest sellers. I pitched it to the all the studios and was turned down and kicked out two or three times each. I still believed in it. So I teamed up with a producer named Walter Parkes. We went back to the studios, and two were interested. Parkes later went on to run Amblin Entertainment for Steven Spielberg.


Q: How did you choose between the two studios?

A: My concentration was merchandising. George Lucas was on my mind people didn’t believe in merchandising so he kept it. Essentially, I wanted a 50-50 deal on merchandising. Columbia-Sony was willing to do that.


Q: Did you have to give up movie credit or money to get merchandising rights?

A: No, they didn’t see it as a big deal. Merchandising wasn’t a major part of the world yet, and they didn’t see the movie as very merchandisable. It was a point they were willing to give up to win the project. It turned out lucrative for them and us.


Q: Superheroes are the dominant type of comics in the U.S. market, but you don’t seem to like superheroes. Why not?

A: We have a wonderful line of superhero comics, but Marvel has a lot of movies out there. To differentiate us from other comics companies, 90 percent of our characters are not superheroes.

Q: Is it true that girls don’t like comics?

A: In the U.S., superheroes are the dominant genre for print comics. They have about a 7 percent female audience, and about 80 percent of the total dollars. But Web comics are vastly different. Females are about half the audience. Superheroes have a minor market share. The audience is vastly bigger, and the genres are pretty much the same as in a bookstore, with more science fiction and fantasy.


Q: Do you see Hollywood’s hunger for turning comic books and graphic novels into movies as a bubble or a trend?

A: There’s every genre you can imagine. “Road to Perdition” and “A History of Violence” were comics. Everything is cyclical in the entertainment business, so superhero movies might be a bubble, but some other genre will take its place.


Q: Have you ever drawn or written a comic book?

A: Yes, but I wouldn’t hire myself for those assignments. There are people much better than me. I’m not going to write a comic book script from Page One to the end. That’s not me. I don’t consider it fun, so I find people better at it than me.


Q: If you weren’t a comic book executive, what would you be?

A: Early on, I would have thought business executive or lawyer. But I love the entertainment business. I like stories and marketing. Ultimately, I would be exactly what I am right now.


Q: What were your favorite comics growing up?

A: Green Lantern and every DC comic I could get my hands on. I collected their 1950s comics because they had lots of science fiction. I always loved horror. Obviously, Spider-Man. And Richie Rich.


Q: What was the craziest project you ever worked on?

A: After I sold Malibu, I worked at Marvel for a time. Then I left Marvel, and I spent a year at home developing the Macroverse, a fictional world. I had papers spread over the floor with all these circles and flowcharts of different dimensions. It had everything from talking toasters to straight-ahead aliens. You couldn’t get any wackier than that. A lot of Platinum characters come from the Macroverse.


Q: Every year, you send out holiday cards that are four-page comic books starring your family as superheroes. How did that tradition start?

A: Every time a child was born, I had something drawn to announce the birth of my super-baby. So now we do the comic book adventures of my kids growing up. Everyone in town loves it. Besides, my wife and I don’t want to age and when you’re drawing characters you can play around with that.




Q: What is your favorite book?

A: “The Success Principles” by Jack Canfield. I buy maybe 15 books per month, mostly self-help, marketing, management, biography or mythological. I love fiction books, but never seem to finish them.


Q: What’s your advice to entrepreneurs?

A: Everything takes longer than you think. If the rule says it takes twice as long, double it again, and maybe again. Just go exponential.


Q: Anything else?

A: Consider the business world like a video game. You just want to go up to the next level. Finally, don’t over-think. Just do. You can plan forever, but sometimes you have to lean into it.


Q: What’s your favorite business saying?

A: “No” is just an opinion. That’s my mantra. When people say “no,” there may be an opportunity. It is not a definitive answer. When people tell me something’s impossible, I ask: “Is it impossible or just very difficult?”


Scott Mitchell Rosenberg


Title:

Chairman


Company:

Platinum Studios Inc.


Born:

1962; Los Angeles


Education:

B.A., management and marketing, University of Denver


Career Turning Point:

Helping six artists leave Marvel by distributing their work with Malibu Comics


Most Influential People:

David-versus-Goliath personalities. “In movies, all those actors or directors whose life was a

nightmare but they never gave up. I don’t want to single out individual people.”


Personal:

Lives with wife, two daughters and semi-domesticated squirrel in Calabasas


Hobbies:

Movies. “I could see many every day.”

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