Comic book news sites (like this one) are reporting that Crossgen Comics has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
I occasionally get messages asking me if the comic book industry is healthy, if it's rebounding from its major downturn, etc. There are many ways to measure that kind of thing, and certainly the fortunes of one company could be an exception. But I suspect this announcement tells us a lot that is not optimistic. As with an awful lot of previous crash-and-burns — anyone remember Tekno Comics? — the business model seems to have been to use the publishing of comic books not for standalone profit but to promote characters who might be made into lucrative TV shows or movies or toys. In theory, that is not a bad idea but if you're not at least breaking-even on the comics, it puts you on a very critical time limit: You have to get someone to make the movie or the toys before the losses from loss-leader publishing takes you down.
That's what has killed a lot of comic book companies and no small number of Internet Content Providers. Entrepreneurs look at the grosses of the Spider-Man movie, forget it took decades to get that thing made, and think they can engineer a deal before the money runs out. Some can but many can't, and Crossgen has apprently landed in the "can't" category, at least so far. One report says they've gone more than 30 million in the hole, which is a staggering amount to lose, given how relatively modest their publishing efforts were. (Last December, I reported that though I am pretty well-connected in comics, I had never seen one of their books. That has since changed. As of now, I have never seen one of their books unless a free copy was handed to me by the guy who wrote it.)
I have no idea if Crossgen will survive, though pessimism is probably not unwarranted. That's based on my observation over the years that when you hear that a company is not paying its artists and writers or is paying horribly late, said company is not long for the world. Marvel has recently announced that they've managed to retire the debt that drove them into bankruptcy protection so it's not impossible…but I don't think Marvel ever did miss a payment to its freelancers, which is one of the points of bankruptcy protection.
It is also important to note that Marvel did not crawl back out of the hole just by (or even largely by) publishing comic books. Movie, TV and toy deals were the big factor in their rebound. As I said, there are many ways to measure whether or not the comic book business is healthy but a good one might be to assess how many publishers are actually making a profit publishing comic books. Clearly, there are not enough of those these days.