Comics have always been a big part of Disney Worldwide Publishing, but in the coming year look for comics publishing to have a much higher profile at the Disney trade book unit Hyperion Books for Children. Hyperion has announced plans to team up with the Center for Cartoon Studies, a newly launched school for cartoonists, to produce a series of graphic biographies. In addition, Disney Publishing is publishing new graphic novels in its ongoing W.I.T.C.H. series and Hyperion released more information about the forthcoming Abadazad series, acquired last year from the bankrupt comics firm CrossGen.
Brenda Bowen, v-p and editor-in-chief of HBFC, told PW the graphic bio deal took form at last year's San Diego Comic-Con, where she met many of the artists. The Vermont-based Center for Cartoon Studies, founded last year by comics artist James Sturm, will act as a packager and produce the books with a creative team of acclaimed comics artists and writers as well as students recruited from the CCS program.
Bowen said the program will publish two books a year beginning in fall 2006. First titles will be a bio of the escape artist Houdini, written by Jason Lutes (Jar of Fools) and Sturm (The Golem's Mighty Swing) and illustrated by Nick Bertozzi (The Masochists). Next will be a book on Satchel Paige written by Sturm with an illustrator to be named.
Disney's W.I.T.C.H. franchise, which includes comics, prose and quiz books, plus a weekly animated TV series, is releasing its first full-length graphic novels in the spring. The series has sold millions of copies abroad, and Bowen said it has done "as well or better" since it was released in the U.S. last year. Bowen said the Abadazad property (by writer J.M. DeMatteis and illustrator Mike Ploog), acquired from CrossGen in a bankruptcy proceeding, will be an ongoing fantasy series in a format that will encompass fictional diary entries, illustrated prose and straight comics in each book. "We think we're expanding the form," said Bowen.
Bowen said the new comics ventures are part a of company mandate to "integrate graphics throughout everything we do here at Hyperion. And at Disney we're in a unique position to be able to do that."
