"Kong of Skull Island," New "Adventure Time" Series Launch in BOOM!'s July 2016 Solicitations

[CBR News]

Grant Morrison & Dan Mora's "Klaus" concludes, Brian Stelfreeze gets an art book, Justin Jordan & Raul Trevino launch "Sombra" and more.


Full article here.

[The Big G]

Dat lord zedd variant!

[GreenLanternRanger]

Lets see out of the July solicits, i'll most likely check out....

KLAUS #7
KONG OF SKULL ISLAND #1
LUMBERJANES/GOTHAM ACADEMY #2
MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS #5
MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: PINK #3

[Kaled]

I'm looking forward to Kong of Skull Island but how many "official" authorized sequels are there? The book by Dark Horse serveral years ago was supposedly the official sequel.

[Flash Gordon]

Klaus #7
kong of skull island #1

[Angilasman]

I'm looking forward to Kong of Skull Island but how many "official" authorized sequels are there? The book by Dark Horse serveral years ago was supposedly the official sequel.

The rights to Kong are so confusing. You should read the wiki article about it! Basically: studios own their particular movies with Kong in it (Warner, for instance, owns the original Kong and Son of Kong, originally made by RKO). Universal Studios owns the majority of rights to Kong; they attempted to make a remake of Kong in the '70s but there was a dispute about who had the rights and Dino De Laurentis made his remake instead, with Universal taking a cut of the profits. Universal then got the majority rights to Kong and proceeded to make Kong theme park rights - they have a new attraction coming to Universal this year, as a matter of fact. Universal almost made their remake of Kong in the mid-'90s with Peter Jackson, but it ended up delayed 'till a decade later when Jackson had the enormous clout of the LotR trilogy behind him. Universal also has licensed Kong to Legendary Pictures who're making Kong movies with Warner (the upcoming Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla vs. Kong). Merian C. Cooper (now Cooper's estate), who came up with the original idea and directed the original movie, spent decades after the release of the movie trying to assert that he had the rights to Kong, but he found he only had the rights to the novelization of the story in his name. Meanwhile, RKO licensed Kong for toys, cartoons, and a couple of Japanese films in the '60s - eventually a judge ruled in favor of Cooper's estate who proceeded to then sell those majority rights to Universal like I mentioned above, but Cooper's estate still owned the rights to that original story because they retained the rights to the novelization, remember? But the novelization itself had fallen into the public domain.

Confused yet?

So, the Cooper estate has made due with their cache of owning the story to a novel that anyone can reprint. They licensed a comics adaptation of the original novel to Fantagraphics in the '90s, and commisioned Joe Devito to rewrite the original novelization (so they could own that outright at least) and a sequel novel. Since then they've licensed a comics adaptation of the sequel novel, endorsed a Kong/Doc Savage novel (and an upcoming sequel where Kong meets Tarzan), licensed a musical stage version (with an awesome giant puppet!), and are now doing this comic.

... and there's a public domain angle to Kong! Basically, since the rights to Kong are split up in different ways and the novelization is public domain and all that nonsense it seems that if you play it safe and don't infringe on anyone else's particular version you can make your own slightly off-model version of Kong: a direct to video animated movie in the '90s called The Mighty Kong, a Kong animated series from the late '90s/early '00s, and a brand new Netflix cartoon called Kong: King of the Apes are all apparently unlicensed. Notice how none of those come right out and call it 'King Kong.'


So, 'official' and 'authorized' are relative terms when it comes to define anything about King Kong!

[TotalSnorefest]

So, 'official' and 'authorized' are relative terms when it comes to define anything about King Kong!

Hahaha wow, great history lesson right here! Though I'm still confused why Universal would license out Kong to Legendary, since they're affiliated with Universal's direct competitor Warner. All of that just to make crossover with Godzilla possible? Do they just like Legendary's work with big monster movies? (Pacific Rim had a very ape-like kaiju in it.)

[Samurai Jack]

Might get these:

Sombra 1
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 5
Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy 2

I'm waiting to see a Giant Days volume that collects more than 4 issues a book. It'll probably be an overpriced omnibus book though.

[Angilasman]

Hahaha wow, great history lesson right here! Though I'm still confused why Universal would license out Kong to Legendary, since they're affiliated with Universal's direct competitor Warner. All of that just to make crossover with Godzilla possible? Do they just like Legendary's work with big monster movies? (Pacific Rim had a very ape-like kaiju in it.)

Since Godzilla is the center of the shared universe of films (which Legendary and Warner have partnered on) Universal got cold feet about making a movie that essentially would promote movies from another company. So they just loaned them Kong, so they made a but of money essentially with no risk - and it inadvertently promotes their fancy new Skull Island theme park attraction (which is based on the Peter Jackson King Kong).

Back to the topic at hand: the new Adventure Time ongoing seems really interesting.

[ChastMastr]

Klaus, and that's it.

[Kaled]

Thanks Angilasman. I took your suggestion and read the wiki article. All I can say is wow!