Devil’s Due in Deep Doo Doo?

The Hack/Slash publisher is apparently thousands of dollars in debt, and will be so for years to come.

Devil’s Due is probably most well known for it’s work on the GI Joe series before IDW took over and for Tim Seeley’s indy horror hit Hack/Slash, which will soon be made into a major motion picture. Despite these successes, and being a moderately sized publisher of some renown, it seems that the company is in serious trouble, according to Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool, who was able to get this quote from company head Josh Blaylock, also creator of the series Dead@17:

We’re still dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars in book store returns that rocked us in late 2008 and into 2009, right in the middle of an already aggressive restructuring. This lasted for almost the entire year, and subsided only a few months ago. Now we’re dealing with debts incurred by the distributor from those returns that are still being passed down to us. To stabilize the business all of these debts had to be set aside, to be paid off over time, while we focus on expenses related to current titles. This will continue for approximately another year by my estimation. Were it not for the returns I believe we would have had a very solid year, but as it is for much of the rest of the world. We showed a loss for 2008 and will as well for 2009, which is the case for many companies right now. Payments will be made to termed-out debts either as publishing profits come in or when there is a cash influx of any other sort that would allow it.

Tim Seeley, who is arguably the company’s most popular and successful creator, is reportedly in a tough spot, along with other debtors, as moving his comic to another publisher would not only likely insure the death of Devil’s Due, but also ensure that he never receives the money he is owed.

Head to Bleeding Cool for more details.

Source: Bleeding Cool
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Posted originally: 2009-12-07 17:03:35