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Q & A: ENEMI ENTERTAINMENT COMBINES WITH HAVEN DISTRIBUTION | | Wizard interviews Enemi Entertainment's CEO regarding the company's new partnership with Haven Distribution and what fans can expect from the publisher | | | By Josh Wigler | | Posted 5/27/2008 | |  | | There's a large faction of comic books that often go unnoticed: independent comics. It's easy to miss the smaller press books when Marvel's Secret Invasion and DC's Final Crisis are towering over the competition. The comics industry is filled with hundreds of hidden gems that can be overshadowed by the Big Two. Luckily, Enemi Entertainment is here to make life easier for indie lovers—and make no mistake, Enemi is most assuredly a friend.
The company recently announced a partnership with Haven Distributors to produce a new catalog of independent comics and provide easier access to fans and retailers around the world. Wizard got a chance to speak with Enemi Entertainment's founder and CEO John Kotsis about the new alliance, what their goals are and what new books fans can look forward to collecting.
| |  WIZARD: Enemi Entertainment and Haven Distributors are combining. What do you hope to accomplish through this new partnership?
KOTSIS: With Enemi publishing the catalog that will serve as an umbrella for our member companies' titles and Haven's list of publishers, in concert with Haven's warehouse and fulfillment capability, we hope to provide greater exposure for independent publishers to retailers. Our partnership is intended to effectively advertise those publishers and efficiently satisfy orders that we receive.
Can you tell us which publisher's books you'll be distributing? Any big names?
KOTSIS: The largest publishers, at the moment, that we're distributing are Arcana, Platinum and Dabel Brothers. I think that the added exposure for others already getting a lot of buzz, such as BloodFire Studios with just one of many of its standout titles being Intergalactic, Arzynart with One Live Beast and Monarch Comics' Witch Hunter, may increase the amount of high-profile publishers we have in the near future. I'm leaving out many independent publishers that deserve a much closer look, which will be evident when people get to see them presented well under one catalog cover. There are a lot of retailers and fans who just want a good comic to follow and don't care what event or company it's tied into or what source they get it from, as long as it gets to them in a timely manner and at a fair price. They just need to be exposed to these comics, and I think then that list of big names will continue to get bigger.
Are there any books you're working on that you're particularly excited about?
KOTSIS: As a distributor, I'm particularly excited about the out-of-the-box creations Arzynart, Monarch Comics and BloodFire Studios are producing. I'm mentioning these companies specifically because they're publishers that many more people will be in awe of once they're exposed to these comics, and are some of the best being created now that not enough people have seen.
Arzynart's One Live Beast is an amazing foray into a dystopian future with chilling visions, identifiable characters and an exciting story at its heart. The creator, Jeff, has begun to branch out and distribute One Live Beast through Barnes and Noble, as well, while working on his next vision of the future.
Monarch Comics, with its flagship title/character Witch Hunter (featuring covers by Frank Brunner beginning with issue #2) and its upcoming anthology title—Monarch Comics Chronicles—really pulls out all the stops when it comes to world-building, laying the foundations for a universe of stories that are packed with adventure, irreverence and more fully realized characters than companies that have been around for 20 years. When you read Witch Hunter, it's like pulling the best of the late '60s/early '70s Marvel, the '40s Universal Monsters and the pulp serials of the '30s into a postmodern, thoroughly hip world with a lot of heart and action. | |  BloodFire's Intergalactic and Vampyrates turn the concepts of space adventure and high-seas adventure/vampire tales on their ears. There is no formula, no way to expect what will happen next and no concepts that cannot exist in a fun way side-by-side in BloodFire's comics. They're one of a handful of publishing houses that do not limit what is possible in their stories and that's what makes these comics so much fun. Anything can happen, so when you open up a BloodFire book you can expect the unexpected, and I can't say I've felt that way often since I was a kid in the '70s when reading comics.
As a publisher, I am very proud of the development of an Enemi character I created (Mane), the ground-breaking—and panel-breaking—work being done now by Helmut Eppich on his space epic, Astro Legion, and the exciting, dark adventures of Michael Brewer's Bloodbat, whose first issue is nearing completion.
How is Enemi's distribution plan more appealing to the indy comics market than distributing through Diamond?
KOTSIS: I think there has been a myth created to fuel some kind of adversarial relationship between Enemi/Haven and Diamond, possibly based on some belief that the industry can only bear one distributor. There are many publishers out there and lots of stores that sell comics. We plan to offer publishers and retailers good prices, great exposure and friendly service. If a publisher feels that we can give them a better degree of exposure than any other channel, we're happy to work with them. We're non-exclusive, however. If a publisher wants to diversify their marketing and get the word, and their products out, in a number of ways, I think they should.
The point is this isn't about Enemi, Haven, Diamond or any other service. It's about the publishers and other creative venture companies, and giving them as many choices as possible, because if you run a good business, and treat people well, I think there is more than enough business to go around for everyone and for everyone to get seen.
The industry has to be healthy, not just any one of us in any capacity. The industry crashed in the '90s because there were too many titles by too few publishers choking the market with gimmicky comics and tactics and not a lot of content. That shouldn't happen again in publishing or distribution. Comics and their related industries like film and merchandising are big business, and their audience just wants a choice—they want to have fun, and they want to be able to find this variety easily and at a good price. So, if we can proceed with an outlook toward entertaining and serving our customer base humbly, with a childlike appreciation for the products and a mature, professional approach, the comics world would be a much better place. I don't mean to get on a soapbox, but I know a lot of people are tired of being arrogantly marketed and poorly represented to death. If, for instance, the media would like to see this change, broadcast and truly support the solutions instead of just advertising for the problems. Take from that what you will.
| |  What services does Enemi offer that other distributors don't?
KOTSIS: Again, I don't want to turn this into an Enemi versus the world stance. We are just following what we feel is a good business plan by giving professionally made comics with something to say good exposure at a good price to a large market, and we hope that our retailers and their customers appreciate the variety of choices for fun reads and a diverse line of products that they can order through our catalog. We're not kicking sand in anyone's face. [We] wouldn't think it was nice if it was done to us. Nobody likes the kids who yell "fight," so can't we all just stage a super-powered melee in the comics instead of in the business world, where it would actually be a kick to see?
Finally, what kind of response have you been getting from retailers?
KOTSIS: Every retailer we've contacted is interested in seeing what we have to offer and we think that will be an even better business model once we get the partnership with Haven in order, which is a big undertaking that we want to do right and, as such, are not rushing it. The problem with the get-it-done yesterday, attention-deficit society we live in is that people are already asking the next question before they hear your first answer. Things aren't allowed to jell and grow because we've all been so trained to keep moving. In Europe, a title that a publisher likes is given time to find an audience in many cases. Here, if something doesn't pre-sell well by any amount of arbitrary standards, it's yanked out of print and considered a failure. That needs to change.
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