Marvel ‘Destroying Comic Book Industry’ Says ‘Walking Dead’ Creator

Marvel Comics, along with DC Comics, is one of the two largest and most powerful companies in the comic book business. And with a string of hit movies, compared to just a select few for rival DC, Marvel is arguably the only company that matters, as far as the general public is concerned.

But ask the creator of the comic book that gave rise to the hit TV series The Walking Dead, and he’ll tell you a different story about Marvel Comics. In addition to his top-selling Walking Dead comic published by the renegade company Image Comics, Robert Kirkman has written numerous comic books for Marvel, including Ultimate X-Men, Captain America, and The Irredeemable Ant-Man.

But to hear the 35-year-old Kirkman tell it today, Marvel is just about the worst thing on the comics landscape. The writer, who is also credited as a producer on AMC’s The Walking Dead TV series, is one of five partners who run Image Comics, and when he spoke this weekend at the Image Expo in San Francisco, he lambasted Marvel.

“I don’t have bad blood with Marvel per se, aside from the fact that I think they’re a poorly run company that is partially destroying the comic book industry,” Kirkman said, quoted on the ScienceFiction.com web site.

He went on to blast Marvel’s management team as “short sighted.”

“I always try to look at the long game,” Kirkman told the audience at a panel discussion entitled, “I is for Infectious: A Conversation with Robert Kirkman”.

Kirkman at least throws his barbs at Marvel from a position of strength. Not only is he riding the wave of a hit TV show based on his signature work, his Walking Dead comic was among the best selling comic books of 2013 despite lacking the marketing muscle of Marvel, which is owned by the Disney Corporation, or DC which is an arm of another media giant, Time Warner.

Diamond Comics Distributors, the company that acts as middleman on sales of almost all comic books in the current industry, released its 2013 list of the top-selling 1,000 comics of 2013. The Walking Dead Issue # 115 came in at Number One, according to the industry news site Comic Book Resources.

Every other comic in the top 10 was published by either Marvel or DC.

The Walking Dead also placed 19 of its trade paperback collections in the top 100 bestselling graphic novels on the Diamond list.

The rivalry between Image and Marvel has a well-established basis in history. As Daily Finance recounts, in 1992, the new company was formed by a group of high-profile artists who defected from Marvel.

So what do you think, comic book fans? Is Kirkman right? Is Marvel destroying the comic book industry?