Valiant Comics bought out by DMG Entertainment 0

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/valiant-acquired-by-dmg-entertainment-comic-book-shake-up-1078980

[valiantman]

There's a lotta nervous Valiant fans over this one.  Multi-billion dollar company takes over.  Fan-who-bought-the-company-in-2005-and-became-lovable-CEO is being pushed out.  So, the net result is... positive? negative?  

Nervous.

[WolverineX]

3 hours ago, valiantman said:

There's a lotta nervous Valiant fans over this one.  Multi-billion dollar company takes over.  Fan-who-bought-the-company-in-2005-and-became-lovable-CEO is being pushed out.  So, the net result is... positive? negative?  

Nervous.

Jim Shooter here we go

[fastballspecial]

Havent we seen this happen before?

 

[Aweandlorder]

Are all valiant titled now cancelled?

if so, i wonder which would be the last to come out w low circulation for investment potential 

[ComicConnoisseur]

52 minutes ago, Wolverinex said:

Jim Shooter here we go

Just what I was thinking. Time to bring back the godfather of Valiant Comics.

[wormboy]

Ugh. 

Valiant has been making some of the highest quality comic books coming out for the last few years. Always at the top of my “read”pile.

Any changes to the existing program will be unwelcome.

Losing the guy who built it all is a horrible idea.

Nervous indeed.

[valiantman]

15 hours ago, Aweandlorder said:

Are all valiant titled now cancelled?

if so, i wonder which would be the last to come out w low circulation for investment potential 

For now, DMG is keeping the Editor-in-Chief (or Executive Editor) Warren Simons and the Publisher-in-Power (title I made up) Fred Pierce.  I wouldn't expect any changes to the publishing as long as Warren and Fred are allowed to keep doing their job.  If something changes with the publishing schedule, it will definitely be DMG involvement because Warren and Fred have never missed a deadline on a monthly book from Valiant 2012-to-present.

As far as investment potential goes, it's probably easiest to say that the first appearances of whichever characters DMG decides are worth bigger media (tv, movies) would be the obvious choices, but most of those are from the 1990s and print runs were higher (not Marvel and DC higher, but higher than now).  Just about every "highest variant" for the Valiant books 2012-2017 are nearly impossible to find a few months later (if there's any heat at all, they disappear).  Books like Harbinger #3 variant (2012) are in high demand for being the first appearance of a significantly-different version of Livewire, but whether DMG makes a big deal about Livewire is yet-to-be-seen.

Edited January 30, 2018 by valiantman

[ygogolak]

19 hours ago, valiantman said:

There's a lotta nervous Valiant fans over this one.  Multi-billion dollar company takes over.  Fan-who-bought-the-company-in-2005-and-became-lovable-CEO is being pushed out.  So, the net result is... positive? negative?  

Nervous.

Do you know that's how it went do and it was not amicable?

[valiantman]

2 minutes ago, ygogolak said:

19 hours ago, valiantman said:

There's a lotta nervous Valiant fans over this one.  Multi-billion dollar company takes over.  Fan-who-bought-the-company-in-2005-and-became-lovable-CEO is being pushed out.  So, the net result is... positive? negative?  

Nervous.

Do you know that's how it went do and it was not amicable?

Yes.  He was not done with Valiant, but DMG says that he is now.

[Buzzetta]

Isn't this what Acclaim did?  They wanted the characters for other platforms which led us to Iron Man vs X-O Manowar, Shadowman, Turok and the forgotten Armorines video games?  We saw how that ended...

Well if it tanks it wouldn't kill me.  It might make it easy again to buy a couple of high grade back issues and artwork. 

[valiantman]

1 hour ago, Buzzetta said:

Isn't this what Acclaim did?  They wanted the characters for other platforms which led us to Iron Man vs X-O Manowar, Shadowman, Turok and the forgotten Armorines video games?  We saw how that ended...

Well if it tanks it wouldn't kill me.  It might make it easy again to buy a couple of high grade back issues and artwork. 

Acclaim was a video game company that attempted to buy Image comics in the early 1990s, but Image was all independent creators so I'm not sure they could have been "sold" anyway.  Valiant was created in 1989/1990 by investment bankers as well as comic creators and by 1994, the investors were ready to sell.  Acclaim bought Valiant in 1994, but they really wanted Image, so you'll notice that a lot of Valiant comics after 1994 start looking more like Image.  The investors pushed Jim Shooter out of Valiant in 1992, so he wasn't part of the Acclaim sale and didn't financially benefit from it.

This time around, Dinesh Shamdasani and Jason Kothari purchased Valiant from the Acclaim bankruptcy in 2005 and created Valiant Entertainment.  Valiant Entertainment got investment from Peter and Gavin Cuneo in 2011 after the sale of Marvel to Disney.  Valiant launched the monthly comics in 2012 with Dinesh as chief creative officer. Valiant Entertainment got more investment from DMG (movie/tv company) in 2015, but DMG didn't have 50%+ yet.  It's likely that DMG got to the 57% control mentioned in the press releases by acquiring Kothari's "shares" (private percentage, Valiant isn't a public company).  Having 57%, DMG had enough to "overthrow" anyone else (Cuneo, Dinesh, and whomever else, if anyone), and DMG did that this week.

I'm of the opinion that Valiant is in good hands as long as the people in charge care about creating Valiant. It would be hard to say that Jim Shooter and Dinesh Shamdasani didn't do all they could to show how much they cared about Valiant.  Without Jim Shooter, Valiant wasn't the same.  Without Dinesh, I can't imagine Valiant will be the same.  There are still people who care about Valiant staying with the company, so hope is not lost. 

When the people in charge (of anything) care more about creating profits (quantity) than quality, then the fans will suffer (even if the profits temporarily increase). That was the story with Acclaim.  We'll see what happens with DMG.

[ygogolak]

1 hour ago, valiantman said:

Acclaim was a video game company that attempted to buy Image comics in the early 1990s, but Image was all independent creators so I'm not sure they could have been "sold" anyway.  Valiant was created in 1989/1990 by investment bankers as well as comic creators and by 1994, the investors were ready to sell.  Acclaim bought Valiant in 1994, but they really wanted Image, so you'll notice that a lot of Valiant comics after 1994 start looking more like Image.  The investors pushed Jim Shooter out of Valiant in 1992, so he wasn't part of the Acclaim sale and didn't financially benefit from it.

This time around, Dinesh Shamdasani and Jason Kothari purchased Valiant from the Acclaim bankruptcy in 2005 and created Valiant Entertainment.  Valiant Entertainment got investment from Peter and Gavin Cuneo in 2011 after the sale of Marvel to Disney.  Valiant launched the monthly comics in 2012 with Dinesh as chief creative officer. Valiant Entertainment got more investment from DMG (movie/tv company) in 2015, but DMG didn't have 50%+ yet.  It's likely that DMG got to the 57% control mentioned in the press releases by acquiring Kothari's "shares" (private percentage, Valiant isn't a public company).  Having 57%, DMG had enough to "overthrow" anyone else (Cuneo, Dinesh, and whomever else, if anyone), and DMG did that this week.

I'm of the opinion that Valiant is in good hands as long as the people in charge care about creating Valiant. It would be hard to say that Jim Shooter and Dinesh Shamdasani didn't do all they could to show how much they cared about Valiant.  Without Jim Shooter, Valiant wasn't the same.  Without Dinesh, I can't imagine Valiant will be the same.  There are still people who care about Valiant staying with the company, so hope is not lost. 

When the people in charge (of anything) care more about creating profits (quantity) than quality, then the fans will suffer (even if the profits temporarily increase). That was the story with Acclaim.  We'll see what happens with DMG.

Nice recap. Wouldn't expect any less from you.

1. I don't think DMG cares about the comics except to link them to the movies.

“This is about taking it to the next level,” said DMG founder/CEO Dan Mintz. “I am not looking on expanding from a publishing standpoint but from a motion picture standpoint.”

Mintz said that "the plan is not to go in there and take apart what's working," and that Valiant's comic writers and artists will continue working - and expand to working more on film, television, and other platforms.

https://www.newsarama.com/38368-valiant-entertainment-sold.html?utm_source=nar-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20180130-nar

 

2. I'm not sure how you can state that Dinesh wasn't worried about creating profits when they had so many incentive variants. And very high ratios for what their distribution was to boot.

 

[valiantman]

16 hours ago, ygogolak said:

2. I'm not sure how you can state that Dinesh wasn't worried about creating profits when they had so many incentive variants. And very high ratios for what their distribution was to boot.

That's a valid argument, but the variants are an unfortunate necessity.  Companies like Dynamite have variants of their variants and they still fall outside the Top 300 for their "GoldKey/Valiant" wannabe books.  Dinesh put quality first, so his Valiant universe without Magnus, Solar, and Turok had more long-term readers than any other knockoff attempts who might have had those 3 "old-school Valiant" licenses.

[WolverineX]

On 1/30/2018 at 6:52 PM, valiantman said:

Acclaim was a video game company that attempted to buy Image comics in the early 1990s, but Image was all independent creators so I'm not sure they could have been "sold" anyway.  Valiant was created in 1989/1990 by investment bankers as well as comic creators and by 1994, the investors were ready to sell.  Acclaim bought Valiant in 1994, but they really wanted Image, so you'll notice that a lot of Valiant comics after 1994 start looking more like Image.  The investors pushed Jim Shooter out of Valiant in 1992, so he wasn't part of the Acclaim sale and didn't financially benefit from it.

This time around, Dinesh Shamdasani and Jason Kothari purchased Valiant from the Acclaim bankruptcy in 2005 and created Valiant Entertainment.  Valiant Entertainment got investment from Peter and Gavin Cuneo in 2011 after the sale of Marvel to Disney.  Valiant launched the monthly comics in 2012 with Dinesh as chief creative officer. Valiant Entertainment got more investment from DMG (movie/tv company) in 2015, but DMG didn't have 50%+ yet.  It's likely that DMG got to the 57% control mentioned in the press releases by acquiring Kothari's "shares" (private percentage, Valiant isn't a public company).  Having 57%, DMG had enough to "overthrow" anyone else (Cuneo, Dinesh, and whomever else, if anyone), and DMG did that this week.

I'm of the opinion that Valiant is in good hands as long as the people in charge care about creating Valiant. It would be hard to say that Jim Shooter and Dinesh Shamdasani didn't do all they could to show how much they cared about Valiant.  Without Jim Shooter, Valiant wasn't the same.  Without Dinesh, I can't imagine Valiant will be the same.  There are still people who care about Valiant staying with the company, so hope is not lost. 

When the people in charge (of anything) care more about creating profits (quantity) than quality, then the fans will suffer (even if the profits temporarily increase). That was the story with Acclaim.  We'll see what happens with DMG.

Any reason why Jason Kothari sold his shares and screwed everyone else ??

[RockMyAmadeus]

[BlowUpTheMoon]

4 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

At first glace I thought the title of this thread was "

Vintage Comics bought out by DMG Entertainment

[valiantman]

22 hours ago, Wolverinex said:

Any reason why Jason Kothari sold his shares and screwed everyone else ??

Why he would help the company that wanted to make Valiant movies for China, rather than the people making comic books for the U.S.?

 Nostalgia? 

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/did-you-know-that-ex-housing-com-ceo-jason-kothari-worked-as-jackie-chans-assistant/articleshow/57307427.cms

EDIT: Now I'm being told that it wasn't Jason Kothari, so I don't know how DMG went from under 50% to 57% (and therefore, able to takeover to 100%).

Edited February 1, 2018 by valiantman

[ParamagicFF]

Very disappointed by this. Dinesh was the face of the company, and a good one at that. Probably the only non-creator industry person I know by name and face. I can't say I know much about the inside of the company, but his leaving doesn't look good. He obviously loved comics, and his company. One of the few people to lay out a reader oriented publishing plan and stick to it.

 

After reading comments from the new guys in charge, it is clear comics are not something they are interested in. IMO valiant was the only superhero company still doing story driven comics where creators have control. I have a feeling that is coming to an end.

[FormerReader]

This is very disappointing as a fan of not just Valiant, but Dinesh.  Nobody treated their fans better.  I believe Dinesh would want the fans to continue to support the company that means so much to him.  I hope the new CEO does right by all of the employees who have worked so hard to get Valiant to where it is.