The moment that Disney announced its acquisition of Marvel Comics, the good people at BOOM! Studios had to know the relationship with the mothership wouldn’t last forever. First, Disney pulled the Toy Story and Cars books, only to have them show up at Marvel. Then, most recently, The Muppets disappeared, only to show up as reprints at – you guessed it – Marvel.
Now, according to a report from ICv2, BOOM! Studios is no longer soliciting the Classic Disney properties under the Kaboom! banner. The site also notes that you can no long buy subscriptions to Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Mickey Mouse,and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories.
One way to look at this is that the properties are owned by Disney, and since they now have their own comic book company, it makes sense for them to pull everything back in house. On the other hand, it sure sucks to put the burden of making these titles popular (or popular enough) on a company like BOOM! Studios, only to yank the property back once the title is viable. We’re not privy to any inside information here, and BOOM! might very well be walking away with a tidy sum in this deal.
For now, it looks like BOOM! still has the rights to the Disney Afternoon properties, but if this trend continues, I’m going to bet we see Darkwing Duck move to the Magic Kingdom after issue #12 hits the stands in July (roughly one year after issue #1 arrived).
