Reinventing Comics Publishing with Ross Richie

Orlando Wood (00:00)
if there is any weirdness or delay, mean, if something catastrophic happens, like we could stop and stuff, but ⁓ if there is any delay or pixelation or whatever, it's all recording locally. So when we're done and we stop recording, it'll take a minute and it'll just slowly upload in the background. So you'll see up at the top, there's like a percentage meter in purple. ⁓ That's how much is uploading at the same time.

There's delay or stuttering. We can always start over because I'll just edit around it. But ⁓ you usually don't have to worry because it'll record locally and that'll be the highest quality version. And then it'll slowly upload that over time. But what it does mean is I'll do a sort of showbiz goodbye. We'll sort of say goodbye. Thank you so much. This has been great. That kind of thing. And then when I stop recording, we'll hang on and then we'll do our sort of real goodbyes because that'll be the time we'll need to upload.

Ross Richie (00:42)
Great.

That's great. That makes sense. Thanks for explaining that. Does the background work? I'm a little worried about the background because it looks like it's backwards.

Orlando Wood (01:01)
⁓ yeah, no, problem at all.

It's no, it's it's definitely not backwards. I'm getting it the right way around. It's ⁓ some of it's coming in and out, ⁓ but it's it's completely up to you. I mean, it looks it looks fun. I like that you've got the big boom logo back there. ⁓ But, you know, it's completely up to you.

Ross Richie (01:29)
I figure we'll stick with it because I think it helps the sort of convention thing helps people kind of process and ⁓ understand. That's been my experience when I do podcasts.

Orlando Wood (01:40)
Sure, yeah, great. ⁓ Okay.

Ross Richie (01:43)
A lot of people think I'm

actually at a convention when I'm talking.

Orlando Wood (01:46)
Right. ⁓ Well, listen, that's I'm so excited to talk to you. So I'll get ready to. so a little bit more housekeeping. The only other thing that I will say is if I look like while you're answering a question, if I sort of look like I'm looking through or I'm not online shopping or anything, if I'm typing, I'm just adding and changing my notes on what to talk about and that kind of stuff. ⁓ So.

Ross Richie (02:10)
Yep. Cool. Yep, you're making a show. I get it. Yep.

Orlando Wood (02:16)
⁓ and then I guess, ⁓ is there, are there any things that like, know, in terms of sort of what you're up to now, I'm going to introduce you as the, the founder of, ⁓ of boom, which is, you know, now owned by Penguin Random House. ⁓ but is there anything else you'd like me to add on top of that or any, any other way you'd like to be kind of mentioned or referred to or anything like that?

Ross Richie (02:28)
Yes.

Well, the bio I sent you is pretty unwieldy. So going through all of that is nuts. I think you could say that ⁓ I ran the company for 19 years. So ⁓ I'm the founder, I'm the CEO for 19 years and sold Boom to Penguin Random House. And I think that will ⁓

Orlando Wood (02:45)
What?

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (03:11)
give people enough of a texture.

Orlando Wood (03:14)
Yeah, great. ⁓ Yeah, great. That's terrific.

Ross Richie (03:17)
I mean,

⁓ technically, the last three years I was chairman. So I don't know if that your audience that might judge it up a little bit because folks like chairman.

Orlando Wood (03:23)
No.

Yeah. And I think founder

kind of, kind of covers all, all manner of things, founder and CEO. ⁓ great. Yeah. Cause I mean, you know, I'm, I'm really excited to talk to you. I loved your, your email. I've I'm actually going to use that as a lot of the structure. ⁓ cause, ⁓ yeah, I'm really excited. Cause you know, we work with DC, ⁓ a fair amount and we're doing sort of AI things with DC, but everything we're doing is kind of back office stuff. know, Jim has been very vocal about kind of saying that.

You know, they're absolutely not going to use anything. But some of the things that we're building for them are just tools to help the publisher and tools to help the writers and artists as they're navigating around the incredible canon and and non canon items that are there in those stories. So but yeah, and yeah, just very excited to kind of talk to you about all of it. So with that, I'll get started. ⁓

Ross Richie (04:20)
Cool.

All right, sounds great.

Orlando Wood (04:25)
Great. ⁓

air.

up together.

Okay.

Hi Ross, I'm ⁓ so excited to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I've been wanting to speak to somebody in comic books on this podcast. A, cause I'm a fan, as you can see from the stuff behind me and ⁓ B, because you know, I think there's obviously so much change that's happened in it over the last 20 years. It's happening in it now and you're a real Titan of the industry and somebody I look up to. So Ross Richie, you are the founder of boom studios, which is one of the

Ross Richie (06:37)
Thank you.

Orlando Wood (06:40)
incredible indie comic shops that that sprung up in the last 20 years, and you recently sold it to Penguin Random House. And so as far as I'm concerned, you are an absolute unicorn. is incredibly different, difficult ⁓ industry. And so to have navigated it so well, had so much success and then sold it, I'm I'm incredibly impressed. But welcome and thank you for coming on the podcast.

Ross Richie (07:00)
Thank you.

Really appreciate you having me. Thank you so much. Thank you for the kind words.

Orlando Wood (07:08)
it's a pleasure. So, I mean, I was debating whether to kind of ask this question right up front or to kind of eke it out over time. But, you know, as somebody who's run a comic book company, you know, granted as a hobby and we released 10 titles and but we went to the Comic Cons and sold an artist's alley and we do it, did all of that work. it's understanding just how hard it is to make an impact in a world that's increasingly digitized. You're selling a physical product.

⁓ you know, what do you think you did differently that made boom such a success?

Ross Richie (07:45)
Well, I had the benefit before I started Boom. I worked at a company called Malibu Comics and Malibu was one of the major publishers outside of Marvel and DC back in the late 80s and early 1990s. And Marvel Comics ended up acquiring Malibu and I worked in the marketing department there. And so I literally saw how do you sell comics? And I'm not sure anybody knows how.

So I'm not sure, know, if you talk to real marketing people, I'm not sure. Yeah. Well, you know, I think I have friends in the advertising business and I don't think anybody knows how anybody sells anything really, but sort of seeing behind the curtain and a big machine like Malibu certainly helped. And I was there for a while after the transition to Marvel. So seeing how Marvel worked helped.

Orlando Wood (08:14)
thank God. I was worried it was me that was having the problem.

Yeah, it's true.

Ross Richie (08:36)
⁓ but what I, my approach that was a little different, ⁓ came from my personal background, which was my mom was an entrepreneur. My dad was an entrepreneur as well. But what my mom's business was, she started a gift shop on the river walk in San Antonio, Texas. And so when I was 15, I spent my Saturdays and Sundays working at her gift shop. And what I learned was when someone walks through the door, ⁓ you have a moment when you say hello.

and they say hello back and then you have an opportunity to sell them something. So what you need is something that's easy to sell. And that sounds a little fatuous, but, you know, there are things that are easy to sell and there are things that are not. And you need to be able to describe it and understand what your one liner is because you have one line. You don't have two lines. You don't have three lines. And in that moment, that's when you have the opportunity.

Orlando Wood (09:26)
Mm-hmm

Ross Richie (09:35)
And so what I knew from my time at Malibu comics when I started them was that I was going to send in information about a new comic book series. And I had a one line description.

to be able to get everybody's attention. Now, I had the benefit afterwards in the marketing materials of a paragraph that I could use to describe the rest and flesh out the details, but it needed to be in the top line. The top first that's needed to sell the book.

Orlando Wood (10:06)
Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (10:06)
And

if I can do that, if I could identify who would buy this in a comic book store and indicate to a retailer, that's who I'm aiming at. And that's who you can aim at. And I don't know how many of those fans you have in your shop. That's what really got it done. And so, you know, one of the earliest things I had was a book called Zombie Tales. And this is when before the walking dead.

Orlando Wood (10:29)
This was a Malibu

or boom

Ross Richie (10:33)
Now this was at Boom when I started Boom, one of the first titles was Zombie Tales and that was targeted clearly at the Walking Dead fans. Now Walking Dead wasn't a TV show yet, but it was a phenomenon as a publishing phenomenon. And so it sold and it sold because they knew that they could order it for the Walking Dead fans.

Orlando Wood (10:43)
Yeah. yeah.

Ross Richie (10:53)
And I had another series called Hero Squared, which was from the guys that did the funny Justice League for DC Comics. And it was very clear that they could order that book for the funny Justice League fans that were in their shop. And so that sort of governed what I was looking at filling the publishing slate with. And then I was

Orlando Wood (11:12)
So you were looking at things

and going to comic shops and going, if you like this, you're gonna love this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ross Richie (11:18)
Right. Well, it's an articulated audience. And

if you're doing it right, there's space and you're selling it into a need, a market need. Right. So the market need for Zombie Tales was Walking Dead is a hit. There is not enough zombie content yet. Now,

Orlando Wood (11:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (11:36)
Pretty soon, the market would be flooded with zombie content, but we were one of the early publishers that went in there and sold to the Walking Dead fans. And then ⁓ with Hero Squared, the funny Justice League fans were completely abandoned. They didn't have anything to read, and we could just sell that right into them.

Orlando Wood (11:51)
Mm hmm. That's amazing. I mean, because I, you know, one of the first titles I sort of, you know, remember you guys having is Farscape. ⁓ And I sort of didn't I didn't realize how much you were kind of niching down that early. I sort of knew you were licensing things. ⁓ And then I really became aware of you around the time of like Klaus and Berserker. You know, those were, ⁓ you know, kind of artist driven. Yeah, you worked with Grant Morrison, I mean, who's obviously a giant. ⁓

Ross Richie (12:00)
Yes, great example.

Yep. The biggies.

Orlando Wood (12:21)
And then with something like Berserker, have Keanu Reeves as a major selling tool. But yeah, that's so interesting. So, know, and so did you, sir, sure.

Ross Richie (12:30)
But let me jump in. Farscape's

an example of the strategy. So Farscape had a small audience that was not enough to sustain it for a tremendous amount of time on Syfy channel, but it was loved.

Orlando Wood (12:40)
And if people don't know

that's a TV, it was a TV show and then it had a real cult sci-fi following and then you guys kind of picked up the forgotten license of it.

Ross Richie (12:47)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And part of that is the luck that I have living in Los Angeles. So I had published a comic book called Mr. Stuffins and that comic book had drawn the attention. It was like, it was like the Mark Wahlberg project Ted, but as James Bond or like a secret agent, it was like a secret agent.

Orlando Wood (12:59)
Mm-hmm. Great,

Mm hmm. Right.

Ross Richie (13:09)
Right. There's your one line, secret agent Teddy Bear. Right. And so the Teddy Bear had

Orlando Wood (13:10)
Great. Yeah, yeah. Mr. Stuff.

Ross Richie (13:15)
attracted Jim Henson's attention, the company, which was run by Lisa Henson. And so I ran around town and pitched the project with Lisa Henson. And I was sitting in the lobby at 20th Century Fox and I turned to Lisa and I said, hey, I want to do Farscape comics. And she was like, OK. And that's how that all happened.

Orlando Wood (13:20)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (13:36)
And so

Orlando Wood (13:36)
Yeah.

Ross Richie (13:36)
I knew that there was a hardcore dedicated Farscape fan base with Jim Henson and Syfy Channel. And I knew that if I managed that properly, that I could hit those fans and that that would be a building block for us to get us at that point. We really only doing originals and that really got us into licensing space and I could build on that.

Orlando Wood (13:51)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's that's phenomenal. I mean, so and that was I mean, how long ago was that? That was 15 years ago. Yeah.

Ross Richie (14:07)
Yeah, that was

probably 2007, 2008 ish.

Orlando Wood (14:13)
Yeah.

So we're talking kind of the year, two years after Twitter came out or something. I mean, it's, it's, you know, yeah, that's, that's phenomenal. And so, I mean, licensing that underappreciated or underserved IP, you seem to really understand the market and really understand the amount of eyeballs or interest. mean, now we have these social media communities and Reddit threads and all those sorts of things where you can kind of go.

What gave you that instinct of understanding how dedicated that, I mean, because it's one thing having a dedicated fan base. It's another thing knowing that that fan base is going to transition to comics, going to buy your comic, you know, reliably. Where did your instinct from that come from? I mean, was that just what you learned at Malibu Comics?

Ross Richie (15:01)
Well, my mom was, you know, as a gift shop owner, she was always very mercantile ⁓ in the way that she thought. And so she used to do this ⁓ exercise where she would hand me a catalog and ask me to go through the catalog and try to find things that she thought that that I would think that the store would carry. Now, I'm 15 years old, maybe 16. And basically the clientele of the gift shop are middle aged women that are on vacation.

Orlando Wood (15:28)
Mm-mm.

Ross Richie (15:29)
So I just couldn't have gotten it more wrong, right? Like I am not the demo, okay? But she was interested in my input and then she went through and showed me what she was gonna order and why. And that kind of shifts you, makes you think, okay, because a lot of times you're too bound by your own perspective. And that got me out of sort of like, oh, okay, some of these things, you're like when I would go to the shop when I was in a comic book store when I was in college.

Orlando Wood (15:32)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (15:56)
I could see different series that were big hits that were uninteresting to me, but I could recognize that there was a fandom for them and there was a consumer for them and it wasn't my thing, but that didn't make it invalid. And so when I got to Malibu, Malibu in particular had a practice that was really interesting, which was this is, this is going to go deep Malibu history here. So all

Orlando Wood (16:03)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ please!

Ross Richie (16:22)
The Malibu historians will lean forward, all two of them. But that company was really, it was an ⁓ effort of consolidation. We would nowadays call it a roll-up that happened after the black and white boom in the 80s because by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And so it had a bunch of imprints. And so as a marketer, I could see that the Planet of the Apes fans that we were publishing Planet of the Apes for,

Orlando Wood (16:31)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Ross Richie (16:49)
were not the same as the Ultraverse fans or the superhero fans, which is not the same as the Bravura fans that wanted sort of creator driven comics. And I could see the bifurcation of all these different fandoms and how you can target and focus them. And using imprints was something I did at Boom that was different than what my competitors were doing.

Orlando Wood (17:09)
That is, mean, that is so fascinating that you kind of saw that first. And, you know, what you just said that I wrote down bound by your own perspective and getting released from that, because especially in comics. And I think this is the mistake that we made as a company is we went, what isn't being made and what isn't being consumed? And we will make that happen. We will make that a thing. And of course, we made 10 titles, very, very proud of them. But

they didn't, selling was a real changing one mind at a time kind of game. And now I think we know from social media, you want a wide funnel up top. You want people to understand where you are. And I mean, and even when you talk about, and we as well, like we put gloss on the covers and we were so excited when we got to do color and our first things were black and white. Then we got to do color.

But even things like the ⁓ zombie, where am I spacing? The Walking Dead, you know, they chose black and white as a cost saving technique right out of the gate. know, like everybody who's a success plays the game more so than a lot of us independent creators are kind of like, we want to change the game. And it's like, now's not your moment. Get in the game, play the game, play it well, compete, and then you can start doing some really interesting.

Ross Richie (18:18)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Right.

Orlando Wood (18:35)
things. I'm fascinated by that and I'm fascinated how much the market has bored you out. But you saw it before we had all of the data points or the what are now the social media data points that allow us to understand these bespoke niches.

Ross Richie (18:52)
Well, another way to kind of visualize or think about the business is and this is helpful for all retail, but could be abstracted to the Internet. But like when you're selling something in a comic book shop, it's all a comic book store is, is display space. It's a series of boxes. So the question is, is where does your product go in the boxes? And so

Orlando Wood (18:56)
Mm. Mm.

Beyond. Beyond.

Ross Richie (19:21)
You need to understand your place in that ecosystem. And if you don't have a clear place, these retailers are busy, right? And so it is so hard to get how many copies of Batman should I order this month? Right. That's extremely difficult. Okay. They have to do that every month for Batman. That's plenty. Okay. Now they have to do it all the Marvel comics, all the DC comics.

Orlando Wood (19:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Ross Richie (19:49)
Now they have to do it for everybody that's publishing that's not Marvel and DC. And you're expecting them to see you as a unique snowflake. And they're not. Right? They can't. They're bandwidth is too consumed. And so your job is to say, this is where you put me. I go here. Right? And you've done your market research and you understand how big that is. You know, a way to think about it is as a percentage of whatever the audience is.

Orlando Wood (20:07)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (20:18)
You know, like if you're like with Walking Dead, we were like, okay, well, you know, there's probably going to be a third of the people buying Walking Dead or it was probably more like 25 % of the people walking dead are going to be interested in this. And that's where the numbers were, you know, one in four people like that.

Orlando Wood (20:18)
Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. That's.

Yeah. Yeah, that's I mean, that yeah, that's incredibly compelling. ⁓ know, you kind of you, know, so you grab those those licensing opportunities, you clearly really understood the market, what was selling and then you both created to those niches and ⁓ got licensing agreements to be able to create known IP for those those markets.

Ross Richie (20:40)
Thank you.

Orlando Wood (20:58)
But then you kind of moved over to to kids. And that seemed, again, like a quite a specific jump, especially because at the time people weren't really creating kids, you know, comics for kids in that way. You kind of opened it up and then everybody was like, wait, that's still on the table. We've been marketing to middle aged guys like me, you know.

Ross Richie (21:10)
They were not.

Yeah, well, I got a phone call. I had a guy that was basically doing a biz dev for me that was sort of out looking at deals and he came to me and said, what do you think of doing Pixar? And he thought ⁓ I would say no. And I was like, let's go. And at the time, Pixar had never authorized anyone to do new original content. So if you bought a Pixar look,

It was just a retelling of Finding Nemo or Toy Story from the movie. And we've all bought that for our kids with those books look like ⁓ that. We were really fortunate that Pixar was in a place where they were open to doing original content. And ⁓ my philosophy with that was that I had begun reading comics when I was a kid and I was seven when I read my first comic book and ⁓ nobody was publishing. I mean, Diamond Comic Distributors, who was the monopoly of comic book distribution,

Orlando Wood (22:11)
Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (22:21)
told me point blank, kids don't read comics. These books are not going to work. And so I'm just enough of a maverick where I was like, look, I got Pixar. you know, call me crazy, but I'm feeling like we're going to be OK. And this was 20 years ago when Pixar was the preeminent animation force in the business, pre-illumination and all these other folks. And so it ultimately bore out

Orlando Wood (22:26)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ross Richie (22:50)
And, you know, we sold the books into Walmart and had a lot of opportunities and some really great stuff that happened for us. And I think one of the greatest downstream things that happened was we were approached by ⁓ Peanuts, Charles Schultz's company. Schultz had passed away, but when he was alive, he had done a new original content in comic books. And we got approached by Charles Schultz. ⁓

peanuts worldwide to do peanuts comics. did that did that well. ⁓ And then we were approached by Jim Davis, who had Garfield, we did Garfield comics. And that led to doing a deal with Cartoon Network for Adventure Time and that book sold over a million copies.

Orlando Wood (23:42)
Hello, sorry about that.

Ross Richie (23:46)
Hey, can you hear me? Can you see me? ⁓ I can't hear you. There we go. I can hear you now. Yes. Yeah. I just stayed on and finished my thought. So because I knew this before. Yeah. So you can edit it later.

Orlando Wood (23:47)
Hello. Yes, I can hear you and see you. ⁓ you can't. Can you? Okay, great. ⁓ Okay.

Okay, great. That's fantastic. So yes, that will be that will be recording.

It is still recording now. So ⁓ we are good. ⁓ Okay, great. So we were we got through you. And where did you end up? Just to catch me up.

Ross Richie (24:18)
Where did I end up?

So I moved through, I sort of went through the email. So I went through how we got to Peanuts and Garfield and that led to Adventure Time, full to million copies.

Orlando Wood (24:23)
Mm-hmm.

Great.

Yeah. Okay, great. And then, yeah. And so, so moving into those bigger IP things, did, did that, I mean, you're now on a kind of sales role, you know, or, you know, your, your, your sales is kicking up. You're getting a lot of traction. Obviously. I mean, the comic book stores must be kind of paying a lot more attention to you guys when you do release new titles.

Orlando Wood (24:56)
Sorry about that, Ross. I don't know what's happening here. ⁓ Everything says it should be working. My I've done an Internet health check. It says everything's fine. You know, if it happens again, I'll well, we can kind of see, but I don't want to waste your time if this is just going to keep happening. So sorry about that. ⁓ OK, so so I think the other thing is, you know, I think that one of your.

Ross Richie (25:14)
No ⁓

Orlando Wood (25:24)
You had mentioned when we had spoken before about that one of your strategies, well, wasn't chasing after the same old talent for everything, you know, that when you were doing original series, everybody's vying for the same people. We actually one of the great artists I got to work with was Shaky Kane, who's just a ⁓ madman and and so talented. But yeah, as well, like, you know, he doesn't take everything. Not not everybody's clamoring to get at him, but he's clearly like such an unique artist.

Ross Richie (25:42)
awesome.

Orlando Wood (25:54)
You know, what was that like? I mean, was that a conscious choice that you went, okay, we're going to go off the beaten path. And what made you so confident to do that? Because so many people buy for the artist and you think to yourself, well, if I align myself with a great artist or a huge writer, that's going to do the salesman the selling for me.

Ross Richie (26:15)
Well, it does, but the problem is there's four other companies doing that. And so one of the problems you have is how are you distinct from those four other companies? And so now all of sudden the creator has you in a horse race and the creator should. I support that the creator's doing that. Like who's going to give me the best deal? Who's going to give me the most creative latitude, get to do what I want to do.

Whereas I had a bit more of an editorial approach, which was I can take this guy with this project and put it together in a unique way. ⁓ know, like I an example I would give to you is like ⁓ understanding. So like Stephen Grant is somebody that ⁓ is important to comic book history because he wrote the first.

Punisher standalone mini series. It's not the first appearance of the Punisher. Frank Miller develops the Punisher in Daredevil, but really Stephen Grant made ⁓ Punisher a lead character and Punisher number one is written by Stephen Grant in that first mini series that was a big breakthrough. And ⁓ as a result, Stephen Grant had a fandom, but people were not clamoring and beating down Stephen Grant's door. Now we had worked together at Malibu

And so I knew him. so I knew I could sell Stephen Grant. Stephen Grant had not been oversold. So if I had a guy with a gun, then, you know, and it's, it's, doesn't need to be a Punisher clone. But if, but I know you have Punisher fans in your store and I have Stephen Grant. And so if I can get Stephen Grant to do crime, which is actually one of the genres he loves to write, then I can sell a book.

Orlando Wood (27:37)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Right.

Ross Richie (28:04)
And that created two guns and two guns was universal and got turned into a film by with Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington back in 2012. And so that was a knowing strategy where I could go after talent that was recognizable comic book stores. You know, the original hero squared from Jam De Matis and Keith Giffin was similar to that work. ⁓ Giffin and De Matis were working in the business, but they were not.

you know, sort of at the, the grant Morrison, my dance card is full Alan Moore. I'm not taking her calls level. ⁓ and they were good dudes that love working and love the project. And so I knew that they had an audience. And so for me, I would much rather

Orlando Wood (28:40)
Yeah.

Ross Richie (28:51)
rather than shoot the moon and do the spectacular project that maybe doesn't last that long and then you have to follow it up and you're chasing it forever and you're trying to figure out what's your next hit. I wanted to build from the ground up and be consistent and show comic book stores that they could count on us. We could ship on time. We provide a good product that was driven by a storytelling sensibility that really delivered a good experience.

and that we could just build this company brick by brick. And you do that with creators and understanding how to position them for maximum effect. So I would have looked at somebody like shaky and looked at his profile in the business of like where retailers were comfortable with him. And then I would have thought, what writer can I bring in that could compliment and accentuate that? And then how do we get them to work together in such a way?

Orlando Wood (29:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (29:45)
that it's clear to a retailer where this belongs in their store.

Orlando Wood (29:50)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, shipping on time, I think, is such a big consideration in that. think that understanding, you know, and again, it goes back to what you said here, bound by your own perspective. think if you're if you know the pressures that the comic book display and comic book stores are under being reliable and them knowing that if they're going to take a shot on ordering a, you know, a box of this new comic from you.

Ross Richie (29:51)
That would have been my part.

Orlando Wood (30:19)
You're going to deliver. You're likely to come out with, you know, with issue two. You're likely to have a trade paperback. You're going to be good enough at selling it that you're going to be able to let this thing continue. Cause that's the other thing. So many people, mean, especially when you talk about indie comic producers, they come out with two issues. The money dries up. They weren't able to sell it. And now you've got a comic brick base that kind of going, well, I, I had two issues. This it's sort of the,

the comic equivalent of the next flicks thing where they do it one season or two seasons. They get a lot of people really excited and then they don't produce another thing.

Ross Richie (30:54)
They've got to be able to count on you and credit where credit is due department. My editor in chief for the vast majority of my run, which who took over after Mark Wade ⁓ left. ⁓ He came from comic book retail and he came to me and was like, we can be better, more consistent in shipping. And he and I had a conversation and he was like, look, you know, stores got cashflow.

and they need to know that they can count on us. And I want to be every four weeks instead of every six weeks, for instance. And I was like, let's go. Let's do it. We ended up with a 94 % on time shipping schedule, which is actually better than Marvel and DC and was that way for a decade. And that credit is due to my editor in chief. He was the one that made those ships run on time. We had a push and pull relationship because I would often see

Orlando Wood (31:32)
Yeah.

Wow.

Well then.

I bet. ⁓

Ross Richie (31:52)
Yeah, I would see

situational opportunities. I would move the schedule around. I'd be like, we need to pull this project up because that's the time right now. ⁓ It'll hit bigger now instead of later. And ⁓ we need to switch these things around. We need to push this back. You know, I made his life hard, but he did an excellent job.

Orlando Wood (32:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you talked about kind of calling between calling really specific shots and then as well kind of supporting artists that were kind of on the come up, but everybody wasn't kind of ⁓ clamoring for such that it would a take them longer to produce and be ⁓ make your negotiations even harder. Did that make you more attractive to the bigger artists that you then worked with later, like Grant Morrison and Brian Azzarello?

Ross Richie (32:41)
Well, with those guys, what they're looking for in my experience was they would, you you pursue them for a long time and they're busy. And then finally, if you're persistent enough, they give you a shot and you've got 15 minutes. Right. And so what you need to do is you need to walk in the door with proof that you have done work that they would respect, which we were able to pull off. And then editorially,

Orlando Wood (33:07)
⁓ Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (33:11)
You need to be sitting at a table with creative that they respect. So I had benefited. So Grant is close with Mark Wade and Mark used to be my editor in chief and is a legendary comic book writer. So Grant was willing to entertain the conversation. And then meanwhile, Brian, I had an editor that was working for me, Sierra, and she

had a long standing relationship with Brian. And so they had been wanting to do a project together. He was willing to give her a shot and basically needed to sit down with boom and see what we were about. But you know, these guys are seasoned professionals. They're not screwing around. They're they're not taking a shot on anybody. They need to know that if they're going to spend the time and the energy on something that it's going to get its full support and it's going to get a full launch. And we were able to do that with both of those guys. And once they saw

Orlando Wood (33:55)
Yeah.

Ross Richie (34:06)
that we would put the entire company behind their efforts and they'd be a priority, they did multiple projects.

Orlando Wood (34:13)
That's phenomenal. I with somebody like Grant Morrison specifically, I'll just he's a he's a tremendous writer. He's written incredible ⁓ runs on big properties like Superman, but he's also done things like, you know, that are really off the beaten path, like the filth and things like like that. Does he when working with you insist on a certain amount of creative freedom because he's clearly able to work within a structure like Superman or Batman. But does he?

Does he bring, does he throw that weight around at all? Not to disparage him at all, but is that something that you have to work with? Is his desire for certain amount of editorial freedom?

Ross Richie (34:54)
Well, never, so sort of the way that I would handle it, like the way I handled Grant was walking into the situation, understanding that generally speaking, Grant's experience with Marvel and DC is going to be, if he wants to do anything really crazy, Marvel and DC have to approve it. So he's not really in charge, right? And so some of the editors he's worked with in his 30, 40 year career,

have said no to him and he's more than to have a bigger career than they'd have. There are very few people he's worked with in the business that have had an comparable would be considered a peer, much less someone that's had a bigger career. So on one side, he's having to in a certain way, bow to work for Marvel and DC. Okay. Then he can go to image comics where if he creates his comic book on spec, so he doesn't get paid.

Orlando Wood (35:25)
Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Ross Richie (35:53)
and he puts three issues in the can, he does three entire issues for free before he starts. He can do whatever he wants to do. Okay, so here's the polarities, which is I have to say, know, father, may I over here? And then over here, I can do what I want. Okay. So my approach with grant was to actual have editors that have a story sense that understand that when they give feedback,

Orlando Wood (35:58)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (36:22)
that the feedback isn't we're just here to put our stamp on it. That the feedback is driven to make the story better. And there is there are no egos in the room. The ego is the story. Let's serve the story. Okay. And if we come forward genuinely with perspective on what if we did this, what if we did that? What if we did this? What if we did that at the end of the day, grant you get to be in charge.

Orlando Wood (36:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (36:51)
You get to say, that's a great idea, I'm in. Or I understand your perspective, but it doesn't really work for me. Or, hey man, leave me alone, I'm doing my own thing. And all those answers are perfect. Like, let's go, I'm totally cool. You're Grant Morrison, I don't have any illusions about who I am. I don't have any illusions about who you are. Right? So if you're just Grant Morrison, you want to show up and you want to do your thing and I get to say thank you, I'm going to say thank you. Okay, hallelujah.

Orlando Wood (36:53)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Ross Richie (37:20)
Cool, right? But if I can come forward, if you're open to it and I have some observations and you find merit in them, you can adopt these suggestions or not. And on Klaus, he was absolutely terrific. I actually personally did a lot of work on Klaus and made a lot of editorial suggestions and he accepted a lot of them. I was actually quite stunned.

Orlando Wood (37:35)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Ross Richie (37:45)
And

we had terrific working relationship when we got to the end of it. He said it was the best editorial experience he'd had since he did Legends of the Dark Knight with Andy Helfer in the early 90s, which is a career highlight for me. That's like one of the my most favorite. I love Grant was what it is a wonderful guy and he was a delight to work with. And the product that we made, I am incredibly proud of. And it was a really fun process and he's a great dude. And it was terrific. But part of it is to be

Orlando Wood (37:55)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's awesome.

Ross Richie (38:15)
You know, for me, it's a sincerity, right? It's like I want to I want to recognize I'm not here to be Mr. Big Pants. I'm here to make a great comic. And maybe you think my version of great comic sucks and maybe you disagree and you don't want to, know, like like with Azzarello. Azzarello, when Faithless was done, we went out to dinner and we had a celebration dinner and I said, Brian, I'm to tell you secret. And Brian, of course, leans forward because Brian loves

Orlando Wood (38:19)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (38:43)
you know, the skinny. All right. And I said, Brian, I didn't look. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, I knew you were going to be doing a book that was too sexy for me. And the point of the book was to be too sexy. Right. It was sexier than the sort of thing Boom typically did. And I knew it would turn heads because it was designed to make you go, they're doing what?

Orlando Wood (38:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ross Richie (39:10)
I mean, you and I can have a separate conversation about one of the things I believe in business is that if you are too consistent, you are boring. So you need to continue to change it up. You need to surprise your audience. You don't need to shock anybody. You don't need to be crazy, but you need to garner attention by changing it up. And faithlessness point was to change it up. And so with as a Rello, I said, I didn't look, I didn't read. I read the book as it came out.

Orlando Wood (39:28)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

⁓ Mm-mm.

Ross Richie (39:40)
I had an

Orlando Wood (39:40)
Mm-mm.

Ross Richie (39:40)
editor that I trusted, had an editor in chief that I trusted, I knew what we were doing, everybody informed me, people would say, hey, do you want to see this cover? And I would say, no, I don't want to see the cover. And Azzarello said, you didn't see the covers before we published? I was like, no, no, because I said, Brian, if I'd have looked at the covers, I wouldn't have let it get published because it would be too sexy. And the point was to be too sexy. So I stayed away from it.

Orlando Wood (39:55)
That's great.

Yeah.

God.

Ross Richie (40:09)
and it was a hit and everybody went crazy for it and we were in a good place. And then we went out to, you know, celebration dinner and when I see as we get along great. Like I know, in my lane.

Orlando Wood (40:18)
That is,

that's awesome and incredibly rare. And I think it's like, that's the, editorial equivalent of like throwing it's of the Admiral Lagasse throwing spice in the mix is actually going, I don't want to see it. Just put it out. That's incredible. Yeah. I mean, what I'm hearing is that your knowledge is so deep of not only the industry, but the trends going on within it. What's selling, what's not.

Ross Richie (40:32)
Right? Right? Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Orlando Wood (40:46)
identifying new trends, being immediately able to capitalize off them and being able to have a production pipeline that can so quickly create something ⁓ that capitalizes and ⁓ amplifies that opportunity. And that sounds really good for where the comic industry was at. But then you took boom through this incredible shakeup. Like everything you just said sounds so sensible for them.

And then you've got this like, you know, changing by behaviors, people ordering from online people, the whole digital revolution that kind of happened, but didn't happen. know, and, and, you know, to, have thrived in that much change, how did you do that? I mean, I don't know which thing to start with. mean, but yeah, I mean, how did, how did you make boom? ⁓

Ross Richie (41:40)
you

Orlando Wood (41:45)
Not recession proof, but change proof like that.

Ross Richie (41:49)
Well, one of the things is you've got to make a one of one. So you've got to be distinct. And so ⁓ one of the things that I knew was if we could separate ourselves. like Faithless was a great example of a book that I knew was definitely too sexy for Boom and too sexy for our rivals. And so now people's eyebrows are raised. They're like, I didn't expect that to come from Boom.

Then we followed that up with ⁓ Once in Future, which was a book from Karen Gillen, and they didn't expect Kieran to be a boom, and they didn't know who Dan Morrow was at the time, and we knew that Dan was the star. So that surprised people. And then the book that came out after Once in Future was Something is Killing the Children, which has now sold four million copies. And so we were, I think it might actually be at five, but the, we're, ⁓

Orlando Wood (42:39)
Unbelievable.

Ross Richie (42:45)
we sort of were able to then deliver hit after hit after hit. within that context, ⁓ staying honest about sort of the books that were the fastballs and what was going to work. ⁓ COVID hit and there was so much disruption and what people forget. mean, now, now we're in sort of the way we remember COVID is everybody went online and bought things. But I'm talking about like the first four weeks, the first eight weeks, the first 12 weeks.

Orlando Wood (42:59)
Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (43:15)
And the distribution pipeline shut down. And so we were sitting here with no way to pay our employees. And so one of the things I did was I started to pivot ⁓ graphic novels that we had in the pipeline that were designed to be graphic novels and not be serialized comics. I pivoted them into individual issues to be published, which is a scandalous thing to do. And I led

Orlando Wood (43:19)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Ross Richie (43:44)
everybody know that it was scandalous and, you know, wow. Hey, scary, crazy. That Ross Ricci guy is nuts. Look at the bird. And that differentiated us. And one of those books was a book from James Tynan called Wind. And that was happening at the time that he was taken off on Batman. And that turned into this massive success story on an issue publishing ⁓ basis. But it was through the scandal of breaking the rules.

Orlando Wood (43:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (44:13)
And so, you know, one level, one of the things.

Orlando Wood (44:13)
Yeah. And how did you release?

Did you just announce that you were now going to sell these through your website? Was it you know, because that change has to be then communicated to everybody. You're not going to find anything in stores. The stores are closed anyway. How do you is it? Comixology. Did you release them digitally? Did you use the release them just as you printed them and then sent them out physically? How did that work?

Ross Richie (44:29)
Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we use the conventional process, part of what happened was the diamond distribution conventional distribution model was so old school and stodgy that it required.

Orlando Wood (44:41)
Right, okay.

And if people don't know, Diamond

Distribution is the company. have basically the monopoly on all distribution. Every comic book seller gets the Diamond Distribution catalog. It's absolutely massive. they, well, now it's kind of digital and whatever else, but that used to be it. And that catalog is where absolutely everything is sold from. You have to have a Diamond number to be able to get anyone to buy you really. Sorry, just to give context to people who might not know.

Ross Richie (45:17)
Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, absolutely. No, appreciated. And they are now defunct. So that's worth ⁓ noting. ⁓ The distribution is fractured. But at the time it was this monopoly and it was old school and you had to get your solicitation into the book. And I knew that retailers actually ordered their books on computer. ⁓ so Diamond sent out ⁓ weekly, hey, final orders due.

Orlando Wood (45:22)
Yeah. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (45:47)
Right.

And so I talked to enough retailers because you got to know your market to know that they would look at the book, but really every Sunday night they're placing their final orders. Okay. And so what I did was I said, let's skip the book and nobody had ever skipped the book. And so diamonds, you're suicidal. Right. And my marketing

Orlando Wood (45:56)
Right, yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Right.

Right. Because they'll suppress you in

that they were basically saying, we'll suppress you in the book or, you know, or just not include you get rid of your diamond numbers.

Ross Richie (46:19)
Well, they were basically like nobody had ever sold something at Diamond without being in the book. So what else are they supposed to say? that's your model for 30 years, they're being wise by saying you are crazy to skip the book. Like they're doing their job. Like no shade on Diamond. Those folks were my friends. I worked with them for decades. I love those guys, right? But I'm crazy, right? I'm an entrepreneur. Okay. So it's just like I'm a chaos goblin.

Orlando Wood (46:23)
Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm getting that Ross. I'm getting that. I'm digging that. I think it's fantastic.

Ross Richie (46:48)
All right, let's just call it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Well, look, like, let's take three steps back here for a second, right? Like, people don't go see Mick Jagger because he works at an insurance company, right? It's like this kind of, you like you're gonna buy a ticket to a Matt McConaghy movie because you don't know what he's gonna do, right? It's like entertainment needs to surprise you. There needs to be...

⁓ positive fun people love surprise birthday parties right it's like there's an association that's negative with surprises of course bad news is surprise right but it's like if you're on the right side of that fun where in entertainment you're showing up with surprise gifts and fun cool things that's a great way to command an audience and so what I knew was we could go to the press and we could tell a story and the story was

James Tynan, who was a creator who had the industry's attention, has this new project. It's really exciting. We really believe in it. It was scheduled to come out in this particular way, which was through graphic novel format first. And we believed in it enough that we wanted to serialize it as comics first. We're going to pivot and change the product. And...

we're going to skip conventional solicitation process and we're going to go straight to the Sunday Night Digital and we said to the press, part of what you should do is you should say, are these guys crazy? Are they going to fail? Okay. Because people love to pull a chair up and see people fail. Let's be real. Okay. We've all done it. Right. And so that got attention where people were like, this is crazy. This is weird. What are these guys doing?

and they all pulled up a chair. And the truth of the matter was, was James Tynan was exciting in their store and we had a great project and it was a great way to get eyeballs on James by making him special and different. Michael D. Linus, terrific artist that had worked on the woods. They had track in their store. knew, they knew that it was, it was something that they could order, that they could count on. And we could spike it and make it special and get attention with that. And bam.

Orlando Wood (49:09)
Hmm.

Ross Richie (49:11)
You know, the book sold through the roof and I think we're I can't remember how many graphic novels in were like six graphic novels in now. ⁓ And so it was it was a very successful project for James, which were thrilled. You know, we really wanted James's work to succeed. He had ⁓ come to us when he was very early in his career. And so it was great to pay off for him.

Orlando Wood (49:19)
Mm-hmm.

That's fantastic. So that's yeah, that I mean, it's it's funny how not only did you kind of survive shifts, you also kind of set new trends and how to deal with comic book shops and then sell to them. And again, it's just through knowing the industry back to front clearly the way you do. mean, there's been obviously, comixology is a big thing now. There's been this kind of this sort of. There's always been this specter that.

the digital comics were to become a thing. And I've got my DC Infinite and I've got comixology and things like that. But it sort of never really happened in a real way for me. mean, you know, and why?

Ross Richie (50:12)
You want in the line?

You ready for the Ross perspective? Look, I'll.

Orlando Wood (50:16)
Because I have my

theory. My theory is that comics are more like vinyl than we give them credit for. But I'm sure you have a, that's a great little sound bite, but I'm sure you have a much better, yeah.

Ross Richie (50:23)
Yes, that's true.

No,

that's true. But here's the thing is if you take over Marvel tomorrow, for instance, and I'm friends with the Marvel folks and have a very high opinion of Dan Buckley and company. But if you took over Marvel tomorrow, you're stepping into a seat. Let's say they're doing $100 million in publishing a year. Now, your job will be to increase that by 8 to 10 % every year.

You're going to look at what you have and what's already in process that's coming up. Here's Hulk, here's Spider-Man, here's Avengers, blah, blah. There's a certain amount of that that it's already going, right? And the immediate pressure that you're going to have is you're going to have, what's next? I got to have the next big thing, okay? And I have to have the thing that everybody's got to have, okay? Now, that's an existing paper empire that is working.

Okay, profitable forget all the licensing all that the core comic book publishing is profitable It's not the most money in the world. It doesn't make as much money as the other media or the light whatever But they are requiring their publishing paper empire to be working. Okay now You want to protect that? Because you're gonna get fired if you don't if the numbers go down if you make less than 100 million if you make 99 They're gonna fire you they're gonna bring somebody else in. Okay

Because the last guy did 100 million. And why can't we do 100 million? And you're going to do 8 % more. OK? And your job is to grow. OK. Now, are you going to bring in a format, any other format, that is going to compete with your paper?

Orlando Wood (51:58)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ross Richie (52:13)
No. No. So why do you care about digital? You don't.

Orlando Wood (52:13)
Absolutely not, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Ross Richie (52:21)
So at the end of the day, if you want to take a bunch of old comics from the sixties and the seventies and eighties that have already made you money and you want to put it on an all you can eat subscription model, Netflix style, that people can pay a monthly and they can go read that. Great. But if I'm, but my next fast fastball, if I've got my next fastball, my next Spider-Man slam dunk, sure thing, I'm going paper, right? And I'm to protect the paper.

Orlando Wood (52:32)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Ross Richie (52:51)
And if you want to pay $3.99, $4.99, $5.99 the paper price to read digital, I'll take your money, right? Because that's obviously too expensive because you don't get the paper. You only get the digital, right? But that protects my paper empire, right? So Marvel and DC are in the business of perpetuating and protecting what they have that works. And the bird in the bush of a digital comic book

Orlando Wood (52:57)
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-mm.

Ross Richie (53:21)
Thing like what webtoons is doing. Okay, it's not worth risking their paper empire Right and say the same thing about Ford and electric vehicles. The model is the same, right? The future comes from outside the ecosystem The future comes from Tesla who's a new startup that forces forward Webtoons is successful. It forces change within the business. The change doesn't come from within the business from what's already working

Orlando Wood (53:22)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because very often when I'm on something like DC infinite, like I reread hush on it, I've got a copy of hush probably to sitting either a storage or in a stack somewhere. Like I know I've got it, but if I want to reread it, I'm probably going to do it on digital just to save me. know, so essentially I'm buying something I've already purchased.

Do you think, yeah, sorry, no, go ahead. How are you for?

Ross Richie (54:17)
No, I just love the

reading experience. It's great. I love comics too. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Orlando Wood (54:20)
Yeah.

How are you for time? Just because I know we've had a few hiccups here, but I don't want to take up your time. if are you OK?

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Great. ⁓ so, mean, but do you, got me thinking, I mean, you mentioned Karen Gillan, you obviously you did Berserker with Keanu Reeves. Was that a response to the crowded field and the crowded, you know, conversations one is having to have about getting people? it, was that a response to a change you were seeing in the industry? getting, allying yourself with celebrities more for bigger launches.

Ross Richie (54:29)
Yeah, I'm great. No worries.

Well, I'm going to sound like the most simplistic dude ever. ⁓ Keanu Reeves happened because Keanu Reeves happened. So ⁓ I'll tell you a bit of the long story. ⁓ So Boom had a deal at 20th Century Fox before Disney bought them. And 20th Century Fox had invested and bought a piece of the company. And so we had a project.

that was at the time Fox was looking to make more movies. And so they were looking to green light more material. And we learned later that was they were trying to beef things up for acquisition purposes. And so we had a project called the empty man, which was a $17 million horror film that the studio was looking to make. And Kenos agent called up and said, Hey, what do you think of Canada for empty man? And we said, that sounds terrific.

And we went to the studio and the studio said, we have other people in mind and we were shocked. We're huge fans and couldn't believe that they want to go in a different direction. And so we got a phone call from Kano's agent. said, she said, Kano has a comic book idea. Would you listen to it? And the answer is, of course. And so I was stunned.

Orlando Wood (56:04)
Mm-mm.

Great. Yeah, obviously.

Ross Richie (56:26)
as Keanu literally acted out the first issue of Berserker to me, physically stood up in front of me and basically said, want to, think the first line he said was, I want to punch through dude's chests. And so, yeah, yeah. I actually think Berserker is a, Berserker is like a UFC bloody barbaric answer to John Wick. John Wick is like beautiful and almost balletic.

Orlando Wood (56:30)
Amazing.

Well, it's delivered.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (56:53)
and it's execution

Orlando Wood (56:54)
Yeah.

Ross Richie (56:55)
specific and clean and very art directed and berserkers the reverse berserker is like just a complete sprawling mess. And I think I would agree with that. So we were at that point punching through and really what we wanted to do was we wanted to go to creators whose work that we loved with a model that was not like image where you had to do everything on spec.

Orlando Wood (57:04)
Mm.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (57:24)
with no support and

was not like Marvel in DC where you were just working on corporate characters that you don't own. And if you created anything, they could turn it into a franchise and you wouldn't get paid. And we wanted to be a partner and we wanted to go to creators and say, want to partner with you and we want to support you editorially and give ideas that you can take or not take. And we want to work hand in hand with you in a cooperative way where it isn't

Orlando Wood (57:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (57:53)
whatever you say goes and you don't get paid and it's not we're in charge and you're working for us and we get everything. It would be an equal partnership and people really responded positively to that. But the editorial team had really executed, you know, the execution had come through with Grant Morrison and Brian Azzarello and James Tynan and Karen Gillan and had given us the track to be able to approach folks in a credible way. And the freelancers talk to each other and they know that, you know, if you're executing

Orlando Wood (58:01)
Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (58:23)
They say good things.

Orlando Wood (58:25)
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Well, so I mean, one of the main things I also want to talk about as well is AI is obviously a big part of the broader creative conversation right now. Jim Lee, obviously the creative director of chief creative officer of DC Comics and a legend and ⁓ legendary artist, has said very publicly that he refuses to use AI in comics. Obviously, I think that that's a broad statement. I think that clearly, you know, comics and so many ⁓

industries can be helped in terms of speed and output and things like that by and cost reduction by things like AI. But I think that what he really means is we will not be using it for creative output. We will not disenfranchise artists. ⁓ And I think that that's what he means. And I think it's just a lot of the press about it tends to like that big brush stroke. But I'm sort of interested in the practical impact on publishing workflows, discovery and marketing.

audience building and creator economics. What do you see the tech doing to help the industry and where do you think it kind of creates real risk?

Ross Richie (59:33)
Well, I think, you know, the I don't think that the comic book business like the comic book business is not going into the AI age with a face forward. Let's engage. It's looking to preserve the small sort of small batch vodka approach, protect the creators and preserve sort of the audience is invested in specific creators. And so ⁓

They want the publishers want to protect the creators and protect the fans relationship with the creators. Now where there's opportunities is to use digital. know, like social in particular. mean, this was an area that before I sold boom, I was trying to explore, which was how do we take digital and identify our audience and then take our product directly to our audience. And that's part of what we did with Kickstarter and Keanu Reeves with Berserker.

is we found Kiano's audience and we took Berserker to them directly through Kickstarter. Now there's a much more refined approach that could happen through Instagram, through Facebook, specific demographics and targeting folks and bringing content to them directly. And I think AI can amplify that and support those efforts. But, you know, I spent the last three years at my company working on selling it.

And a lot of those new opportunities were too in the weeds for me to sort of supervise and get involved with one-on-one personally. So a fun area of exploration, which is how can you take creators work closer to its audience? How can you support your creators? How can you augment the fan experience ⁓ using these tools? That's something that would be very exciting if somebody could figure it out.

Hey, let's get it's got a suck on your and I'm sorry you're going through that that's

Orlando Wood (1:01:34)
Hello.

my God, is this? I'm so

sorry, especially because I'm having so much fun with this conversation. It's just yeah, I'm having a great time. Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of tempted. Let me just stop this for a second.

Ross Richie (1:01:47)
It was a lot of fun. Yeah.

Thank you.

Orlando Wood (1:01:59)
And I'm sure you probably did the same bless you thing of continuing the answer. But I'll just get back into it. ⁓

Ross Richie (1:02:10)
It was basically the notion of using tools on a marketing basis, how AI could digitally target people while preserving the handmade nature of the art and the fan relationship with the creator.

Orlando Wood (1:02:24)
Right. Okay, great. me, let me, if it's okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just jump back into that main and first question, which was AI is obviously part of the broader creative conversation right now. Jim Lee has very publicly said that he refuses to use AI in comics. I think that, I personally think that he's speaking much more to the creators there, him being an artist himself. ⁓

and not wanting to disenfranchise ⁓ the creators and the artists and the people that they work with and rely on every day to put out so many DC titles. But I'm more interested in the practical impact on publishing of workflows, discovery, marketing, audience building, and creator economics. What do you think the impact is going to be on the broader industry of these AI tools? And are you seeing it already?

Ross Richie (1:03:13)
I haven't seen much of anything on an impact basis. And I think there's going to be ⁓ companies that will develop tools that will be platforms that help editors upload files to printers quickly, move files around, be able to process digital files as you make comics. A lot of that AI will be invisible.

Orlando Wood (1:03:17)
Right.

Ross Richie (1:03:39)
to the editors, designers that are generating the materials that you would print as a comic book. So and maybe some designers will be using ⁓ tools to help them design covers and inside front covers and ads and things quicker and faster. There's a certain amount of a desire for a company to have a designer in house.

Orlando Wood (1:03:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (1:04:02)
because you can you're doing a lot of work designing a lot of pages. And so that would speed up with AI tools, but you'd want to have control over in-house control as opposed to, you've got a freelancer and maybe the freelancer is on vacation or in a different time zone or whatever. You need the ability to be able to go to a designer and say, do this now. Right. ⁓ So I think a lot of that stuff, I mean, to me, the opportunity is to

Orlando Wood (1:04:07)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ross Richie (1:04:31)
use right now we have social media platforms that can target fans and can send advertising marketing content to those fans to alert them to things that they are unfamiliar with or that would match their profile that they don't know about. And I think AI could improve that. ⁓ think comic book fans are open. They love new ideas and they love new series.

And so they would be open to cool stuff and those tools deployed properly ⁓ as in not spamming them with a bunch of nonsense that they're not interested in, but would correctly ⁓ could really help publishers find their audience and maybe expand or increase that audience.

Orlando Wood (1:05:19)
Yeah, I mean, because my concern obviously is that watching Comic Cons grow, you know, I've been a fan since I was a kid. You've been in it for a long time. And obviously there was that time where Comic Cons were all about the comics. They were all about the art and Artist's Alley, which is where artists were coming out with self-published things. And there's a lot of creation happening there. You know, since 2008 with Iron Man coming out, Artist's Alley has been getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Do you think that like creators

You know, my fear is that that gets even smaller, but then there's another point of view that now with these tools, they can be publishing whole comics in shorter periods of time, doing more output. Maybe it grows back up. What do you think? Are they facing an extinction level event or is this going to throw gasoline on that creative fire a little?

Ross Richie (1:06:09)
Look, I believe that great content and great creators are unstoppable and they don't need a convention. ⁓ know, comics is one of the only things where you don't need anybody. You need a sheet of paper. You need a pencil and you need ⁓ creativity and desire to create and you can draw that page and you can upload it to the internet and off you go.

And if you pick your community properly, you can have people will champion your work and get excited about it. And ⁓ there's all sorts of stories about people breaking through doing that. So what's happened with conventions is the rise of Marvel and certainly ⁓ the ⁓ Joker, ⁓ the depiction of the Joker and Chris Nolan's legacy really through.

and made

Orlando Wood (1:07:03)
Yeah.

Ross Richie (1:07:03)
these concepts mainstream and it made a place where the normal will call we could call them muggles would feel comfortable to go to explore and discover that actually they like Legos and they like trading cards and they like all these things that are around it. Now the people that are running the conventions their job is to make money right there. Their job is not to be an incubator for creativity and so they're going to maximize the booth sales.

Orlando Wood (1:07:12)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (1:07:33)
And I have an 11 year old daughter. She made her own comic book. We went to the Pasadena Comic Con. They were incredibly generous and gave her ⁓ a table. she ⁓ sold her comic book, made 200 bucks in two days. And then she walked around the convention and it was like an Etsy shop where there was a lot of women that had made

Orlando Wood (1:07:49)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Ross Richie (1:07:59)
female

oriented material, ⁓ craft projects. ⁓ yeah, it was really cool. And so my 11 year old took her money that she'd earned from making her own comic and started buying these cool bracelets and you know, flowers and things that were, ⁓ of interest to her. And so it's really exciting that that can be done. It wasn't strictly comic book material. Now she was a comic book creator. She sold her comic book, but the point being the convention experience is much more

Orlando Wood (1:08:02)
Wow great

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (1:08:28)
comparable to a fair or going to a swap meet ⁓ where it's sort of organized around this concept of fantasy science fiction superheroes. And I have nothing but positive things to say about that. ⁓ Creators, ⁓ you know, there are forums that you can go, there are places that are supportive. ⁓ New talent is emerging constantly. Go on Instagram ⁓ because it will suggest

Orlando Wood (1:08:31)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (1:08:57)
people to you and you will discover ⁓ how there's new creators breaking through all the time and it's exciting and fun and cool. ⁓ So, you know, I really believe that there's great stuff coming and that creative talent can punch through and do really cool stuff. And I'm excited about what the next generation is going to do that the place that's wide open is more in the world of webtoons. So

Orlando Wood (1:09:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (1:09:27)
We know that there's a huge audience that reads manga and manga is different than Western comics. The storytelling sensibilities are different. Absolute Batman is a huge hit mainly because it embraces storytelling conventions from manga, which is completely different. There's a bunch of probably 10 other reasons that I can enumerate why Absolute Batman's a hit and we could talk about that. But the point is you look at Webtoon's numbers in North America, there's a ton of kids

Orlando Wood (1:09:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ross Richie (1:09:56)
And their kids, which is not saying adults aren't doing it, but their kids, people that we say, why is it the next generation reading comics? They are. They're reading them on their phone on the Webtoons app. So that's not Marvel and DC's purview. If you give them an opportunity, I think they just announced a deal with Webtoon, great. They'll go pursue it. But it's an additional.

Orlando Wood (1:09:58)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (1:10:22)
It's a side dish to their business. They have their paper empire that they need to perpetuate, and that's their main job. But somebody could launch their comic book online, looking at a different audience that's not Marvel and DC and the ecosystem that sprung up around that. That storytelling in the tradition of manga, that would be something from North America, because part of your audience doesn't know.

Orlando Wood (1:10:27)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (1:10:47)
Manga strictly defined is from a Japanese writer a Japanese artist and it originates from yeah, and that's manga and if it's not from Japan Right. Yes. Exactly Yeah, and so there's a big audience that doesn't care about that definition and they would read a North American kid Writing and drawing their own kind like the next hit is gonna come from there

Orlando Wood (1:10:55)
Yeah, it's the champagne of comic books. It's you know, it's got to be from that region by those people. Yeah.

Ross Richie (1:11:16)
And it's going to be something that's easy to discover online that you can find that you don't need to know anything before you start it. And you're going to come to it like we used to come to newspaper comic strips, knowing nothing, you're going to blunder in, you're going to read it. It's going to be accessible. It's going to be relatable. It's going to be simple and you're going to be captivated by it. And people are going to be blown away and they're going to not be able to have enough. And then that's going to start a revolution.

Orlando Wood (1:11:16)
Yeah.

Mm. Mm. Mm.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (1:11:45)
Like that's what's next.

Orlando Wood (1:11:45)
Mm.

Wow, that's amazing. So one last question, if I can before you go, you've been so generous with your time. If you were still running Boom today with all these AI tools out there, what is the number one, where would you be focusing the most amount of your effort on using these tools for the biggest impact to your business?

Ross Richie (1:12:05)
I'd probably really be interested in ⁓ getting I think there's a lot of folks that are open to reading comics and they either don't because the format is something that they're not familiar with or they haven't read a comic book. And so I'd probably be interested in using those tools to get to people that might read comics.

and give them a chunk to read like 10 pages, 12, 20 pages, like some sort of a reader, a simple, easy, accessible thing. And like, you know, try this out. And if you like it, pick up a copy. And to me, the direct to consumer relationship is wide open in comics. And that would be in addition to where comic books are at retail in the comic shops and in the bookstores.

Orlando Wood (1:12:47)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, I got incredible. mean, do you think it just one more quickly? Do you think that, you know, with comics being a medium that that a lot of people are sort of still, you know, we we need that new blood of readers coming in to to appreciate the medium with everybody being able to take an image that they have and turn it into a video. Is there a risk that people jump over comic books? They're excited and interested in characters and stories that are.

coming out of independent creators, but then with a comic book, everybody, even the creator, has the ability to potentially turn it into short form video, and then people would rather consume it like that rather than consuming what I grew up loving. I love the medium so deeply. ⁓ Is that a risk, do you think?

Ross Richie (1:13:51)
Well, you know, I think Scott McCloud when he did, created the book, Understanding Comics really enumerated what makes reading comic books special. And if you haven't read the book, the way, what I would say to you is you probably are familiar with Calvin and Hobbes and that has never been adapted as a cartoon. And so Calvin has a voice and you and I know what his voice is. And if they made a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon,

Orlando Wood (1:13:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Ross Richie (1:14:19)
We

would know instantly if they had voiced Calvin properly. Now, Calvin didn't have a voice, but he does. And it's in our head. And it exists only there. And that's a magic that comic books have that nothing else has. You can read them at your own pace, unlike short form video. And what I find is when people take comic books,

Orlando Wood (1:14:24)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Ross Richie (1:14:46)
and they try to migrate it into something that's adjacent to animation, but isn't full blown animation that the audience rejects it because it's sort of light beer version of animation. And it's not really a comic book and it's not really animation. And it's just alienating and people are out. know, look, I'm excited about innovation. I'm excited about the next generation. I know that they're going to look at what we're doing and take it to the next level.

Orlando Wood (1:15:06)
Mm-hmm.

Ross Richie (1:15:16)
And I can't wait to see it and engage with it when they do it and marvel at how amazing it is. know, the kids are growing up with digital tools to create materials and they can do all sorts of incredible things and they will. And it'll be a lot of fun. But right now, I think I'm not particularly worried about short form being something that's used to kind of end around ⁓ the product.

Orlando Wood (1:15:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm hmm.

Yeah. Well, on that note, thank you so much. That's especially the Calvin and Hobbes thing. That was really an uplifting. I was going to talk to anyone that was going to get make me jazzed to pick up a comic right now and read it for the rest of the afternoon. That was it. That was so odd. It really is. It really is so special. 100 percent. I have that that big that three volume thing. It's so great. ⁓ You know.

Ross Richie (1:15:55)
It's the best, man. Go get some Bill Waterston. He's genius. He's the best.

Orlando Wood (1:16:08)
I, ⁓ there was a, one of the panels is him saying, you know, I'm, waiting for inspiration to strike and Hobbs goes, yeah, what's that? And he goes, last minute panic. Yeah. Ross, thank you so much. I've, I've really enjoyed this. I was really excited to talk to you. I have been for weeks and this just really delivered on, on all of that. Thank you so much for spending your time. It's, was fascinating for me.

Ross Richie (1:16:18)
Yes, we can all relate to that.

Thank

I had a blast. you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Orlando Wood (1:16:41)
pleasure anytime.