STATE OF THE (APE) NATION:
HOW HEALTHY IS GORILLA?
By Beau Yarbrough
It's been a bumpy ride for the Gorilla Comics imprint.
When it was initially announced in November 1999, Gorilla was to be a creator-owned haven for some of today's most popular superhero creators turned partners in the new imprint: Kurt Busiek, Mark Waid, George Pérez, Barry Kitson, Joe Kelly, Mike Wieringo, Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett, and was to be underwritten by a major comic book Web site much like CBR.
A year later, though, eHero.com remains stillborn, and without financing for the books, Kelly had to drop out before his first title was even formally announced. In recent months, Waid, whose "Empire" has been less-than-speedy getting to the stands, signed an exclusive contract with CrossGen Comics, casting the long-term future of "Empire" in doubt. And just last week, he was followed to CrossGen by Pérez.
What that means for "Crimson Plague" by Pérez is yet unknown. "With all the problems that Gorilla has had, it's been a tough haul," he told the Comic Wire last week.
So what does all this mean for the future of Gorilla Comics? One partner, who is staying put, said it's wrong to characterize the imprint as being unhealthy.
"Gorilla can't actually be 'healthy' or 'unhealthy,' in the traditional sense, because Gorilla's not really a company in the traditional sense," Busiek told the Comic Wire on Sunday. "We intended to be one when we started out, but since our backer never actually produced any financing and we wound up walking away from him and funding the operation ourselves, we never wound up building a traditional business structure -- each ape or ape-creative-team has been responsible for their own finances.
"Accordingly, each ape does whatever he wants to and can afford, and we make our decisions solo. If any of the apes decide they don't want to, or can't afford to, keep going, that doesn't affect any of the other apes -- there are no dues, no common charges. So we're kind of banded together as an idea, as an approach, but we're an alliance more than a company.
"Thus, Gorilla doesn't make decisions about 'dropping books' -- each of the creators does that solo. And if someone decides to go do work-for-hire for a while, so they can build up a war chest to do something else self-financed -- as the 'Tellos' guys have, with Mike [Wieringo] doing a Superman book while he and Todd [Dezago] launch 'Tales of Tellos' with other artists -- that's entirely their call. And if one of the apes should stop publishing through Gorilla for a while, it doesn't mean they can't come back and do something else later -- just as Stuart [Immonen] and I haven't had anything out since October, but we've got 'Superstar: As Seen on TV' on the horizon.
"What each of the apes will do, I can't say -- for my part, and Stuart's part, we've finished 'Shockrockets' first mini, and are doing 'Superstar: As Seen on TV,' just as announced. After that, we've talked about a variety of projects -- including more Shockrockets, more Superstar, a Shockrockets TPB and other ideas, but we're not ready to schedule or announce anything at the moment.
"That's all I know for sure. If someone like Mark (to pick a handy example) decides it's in his best interests to sign up with CrossGen, then that's a decision he's free to make, and nothing any of the other apes would try to prevent him from doing. Conversely, that doesn't prevent any of the others from doing anything under the ape-logo that they choose to."