Dynamite and Coffin Comics to Co-Publish

Coffin Comics is the indie publisher owned by Brian Pulido that has pubished a number of series, with the big one being, "Lady Death," since he got the rights back some years ago following some nasty lawsuits with Avatar Press. That said, Lady Death used to be a part of the Chaos! Comics publishing line, along with other characters including Evil Ernie, Purgatori, Chastity, and more. The rights to those characters ended up with Dynamite, making it quite interesting that the Chaos! Comics line, in a sense, is reunited now that it has been announced Coffin Comics is going to partner with Dynamite and co-publish.

When Diamond Comic Distributors went under it was hard for Coffin as they were bigger than a micro-publisher but not large enough to interest Lunar/PRH, it would appear. By partnering with Dynamite, they can do more than direct to consumer and Kickstarter (although they've had immense success with those methods), and it makes the rights a bit less messy to republish a bunch of old Chaos! Comics--which is already planned via an, "Evil Ernie," three-volume set of his earliest adventures that haven't been collected in years, or ever. Diamond going under made things hard for lots of publishers, but many have--thankfully--found a way to survive and even thrive!

SCOUT Comics Blasted Over Creator Nonpayment and General Questionable Behavior--Why Isn't This Getting More Press?

SCOUT Comics was a cool little publisher for a while. They put out cool stuff. Then they seemed to start just cranking out more and more books in an effort to get them optioned and the quality of said books really dipped. I rarely read anything from SCOUT now but try the debut issue of a cool-sounding series now and then. However, lately a scandal has emerged regarding SCOUT that we've seen with other publishers too. Unfortunately, SCOUT is turning into another publisher in hot water for not communicating with creators, paying them money they are owed, and so forth.

SCOUT has at least put out a press release admitting, "Missteps," and, "Miscommunication." Perhaps they were too busy to talk to creators with their near-constant shows on Whatnot selling their variant covers. I kid, but from what creators who are speaking out have said, things sound suspect. Talks of threats, lies, and SCOUT seemingly intentionally sitting on sellable stock out of either ignorance or spite whilst refusing to terminate contracts unless outrageous monetary demands were met. It isn't good.

One SCOUT book with a displeased creative team.

Did SCOUT simply drop the ball as it became a bit too big for its britches and will hopefully improve? Would SCOUT have kept pulling questionable moves against creators if a number hadn't gone public? Will SCOUT even survive or end up being another publisher who emerged with a splash but ended up burning out in a relatively short period of time? Time will tell, but it is odd more sites aren't reporting this. 

I linked above to a great article by Chris Arrant at Popverse and saw Comic Book Club mention the hubbub too, but that's about it. Bleeding Cool loves tabloid drama but has been oddly silent on this compared to other scandals. Then again, they seem to have close relationships with certain publishers and companies (they waited a long time to talk about the CGC mess too) so maybe I shouldn't be surprised anybody they're chummy with seems to get lighter treatment. I mean, Avatar Press ostensibly still exists and does own Bleeding Cool so when Brian Pulido sued Avatar for the rights to Lady Death that was a huge story weridly enough never acknowledged by the site. There are plenty of other sites that could talk about SCOUT too and while Comics Beat has not yet, I think they will as they're pretty good at digging out the truth in big ol' messes. It just gives me pause when a decent-sized publisher has a huge fiasco going on and it isn't getting as much press as one would expect. Time will tell if this gets more coverage and who exactly it is that covers it.