Boom! Studios (styled
BOOM! Studios) is an American
comic book and graphic novel publisher, headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States.
History
In the early 2000s, Ross Richie and Andrew Cosby had been working in Hollywood, helping to option comic book projects as producers and working to develop them into movies with the studios, but were getting increasingly frustrated with the process. Richie planned to start Boom! to get away from Hollywood.
Before BOOM!, Richie and Cosby worked briefly with Dave Elliott and Garry Leach in 2004 to revive 1980s comic book publishing house Atomeka Press. While working with Atomeka, Richie cut a deal with Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis to publish their series Hero Squared, with the Hero Squared X-Tra Sized Special one-shot. When Giffen was featured as a guest at the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention, he grabbed a drink with Richie after the show and persuaded him to part ways with Atomeka Press, and start his own outfit, BOOM!. BOOM!’s first publication was Zombie Tales #1, a horror zombie anthology, released on June 29, 2005 under the BOOM! and Atomeka Press logo. The issue was originally solicited by Atomeka but released after Richie had left the company to start BOOM!. Giffen and DeMatteis imported their Hero Squared series from Atomeka to BOOM! and Hero Squared became the very first BOOM! comic book solicited solely under the BOOM! logo, shipping July 27, 2005.
During this time in its history, BOOM! focused on publishing an array of original series created by a slew of industry veterans: Giffen worked on Hero Squared, Planetary Brigade, 10, Jeremiah Harm, and the Tales titles like Zombie Tales and Cthulhu Tales. DeMatteis collaborated with Giffen on Hero Squared and Planetary Brigade and brought his own series, The Stardust Kid, with Mike Ploog over from Image Comics. Mike Mignola and Troy Nixey's Oni Press series Jenny Finn migrated to BOOM! and finally completed its story. Eisner Award winner Dave Johnson created covers for Zombie Tales and Cthulhu Tales. Joe Casey created The Black Plague while Rafael Albuquerque's first American work debuted in The Savage Brothers.
2006 saw BOOM! move into licensing for the first time with the debut of Games Workshop series Warhammer 40,000: Damnation Crusade, based on the popular miniatures game of the same name.
In 2007, BOOM! published Steven Grant's crime/action comic 2 Guns which Cosby and Ritchie co-produced for Universal Studios in 2013.
At the 2007 San Diego Comic Con, BOOM! announced plans to launch its first imprint, a new line of comics for children originally announced with the name ZOOM!, but when the imprint launched in 2009, the imprint debuted as "BOOM Kids!". BOOM! also signed a deal with Pixar to produce comic books based on their properties and secured newsstand distribution. The first included The Muppet Show by Roger Langridge and The Incredibles: Family Matters by Mark Waid and artist Marcio Takara. In February 2011, BOOM! re-branded BOOM! Kids as KaBOOM!, re-focusing the imprint to be appealing to all ages rather than only children.
Also during the 2007 San Diego Comic Con, BOOM! announced the appointment of Mark Waid as Editor-in-Chief. This role would eventually grow to Chief Creative Officer in August 2010 before his eventual return to freelance work in December of that year. While in these leadership roles, Waid also created multiple successful titles, including Irredeemable in 2009, which became BOOM!'s longest-running series at that time, lasting 37 issues and a sister book Incorruptible.
Former Managing Editor Matt Gagnon was promoted to Editor-in-Chief in July 2010.
At the beginning of 2013, the company launched its #WeAreBOOM! campaign, spotlighting a philosophy that BOOM! isn't just composed of its writers, artists, and staff but also of the fans that read its comics and the retailers that sell them. In June 2013, Boom! acquired Archaia Studios Press, merging it into BOOM! and retaining it as a stand-alone imprint. In October 2013, Boom! signed a first-look deal deal with 20th Century Fox giving Fox the right of first refusal to develop any Boom! comic properties into a film or TV series, and Boom! would get first-dollar gross on any profits. As a publisher of creator-owned works, that share would be split between Boom! and the creator(s) of the adapted work.
In January 2015, Boom! launched "Push Comics Forward", a public relations campaign aimed at generating a discussion about how comic book publishing can become more inclusive and diverse.
In June 2017, 20th Century Fox purchased a minority stake in Boom!, valued at $10 million. The Walt Disney Company inherited Fox's stake in Boom! after Disney acquired 21st Century Fox's assets on March 20, 2019.
Wikipedia
