Dynamic duo break into comics world
Sheryl Kristal sifted through a pile of comic books on the first hour of the first day of Wizard World Los Angeles until she found it: the very first issue of "Tag," a series featuring half-dead, decomposing humans.
For weeks, she held off reading Issues 2 and 3. Now, she could begin at Issue 1.
"I can't stop smiling," Kristal said Friday. "I'm a 49-year-old absolute geek."
She was one of about 28,000 comic-book fans who attended Wizard World, a three-day show that ended Sunday at the L.A. Convention Center. Her acquisition is a product of Boom Studios, a Los Angeles company that is feeding Hollywood's appetite for comic-book-based features and is building a mass audience of readers.
In 2005, Boom's first year, Wizard Magazine named it best new publisher. Last year, it sold two story lines to Universal Studios. And this fall, Boom will become the only label to turn "The Godfather" into a graphic novel.
"A lot of people think that if you're not Marvel or DC, you can't compete," said Rob Felton, Wizard Entertainment's associate publisher. "I don't agree with that, and I think Boom is a perfect example."
Ross Richie and Andrew Cosby, the characters behind Boom, got their start in the industry in the marketing department at a Westlake Village comic-book company in 1993. Richie, a film-school graduate, recently had been put on "hiatus" as a television production assistant. Cosby had just moved from Atlanta, where he had run a tattoo parlor and sold T-shirts out of a basement.
After two years at Malibu Comics, they were downsized from their jobs. They went their separate ways only to team up again with Boom. Now, instead of cubicles, they have window offices.
"We are not guys that can have bosses," said Cosby, 37. "And you get to a point in your life where you're like, 'I'm either gonna take this path and I'm gonna work for somebody else, or I'm gonna take this path and work for myself.' "
The pair started Boom after a decade in show business convinced them that the comic-book cannon had stalled in the early 1960s, when Marvel Comics had created characters such as the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, X-Men that only recently were appearing in film.
"Who's doing the new?" Richie, 36, remembered asking himself. "Who's doing the next thing?"
