The Platinum Studios Perception

Platinum Studios continues it’ shenanigans with not paying creators, even a year past due now… emails and quotes inside, and about 2400 more words if you’re interested…

It’s been no secret that I have a bit of a bug in my pants about Platinum Studios and it’s money troubles, from my own situation back in May where i was pretty much fired for blogging about not being paid, and many other creators weren’t paid, and where they went back on their word about granting me webcomic and print rights to Hero By Night? I wish it hadn’t gone that way, but this is what happens when you have people in charge at companies who don’t have a friggin clue and frankly who really don’t care about your creations or dreams.

The money troubles and bad PR continued as their recently “acquired” Wowio.com are way late on paying the creators and authors from there. (56 days as of this post I guess) There are many authors talking to one another and I’m kept in the loop. I see some have contacted lawyers now, which Wowio is aware of because it was reported that the legal eagles who represent Wowio were contacted. So yeah, that’s turning into a major headache for people… it’s a shame. It’s not really effecting me, but I do know some creators who had their earnings in upcoming budgets for things and they’re left hanging with no communication or clarification.

Platinum Studios was proud back in June and July to exclaim that all creators had been paid… but as it turns out, this was a lie. I’ve received emails from some people involved in their old Mobile Wallpapers stuff, I had heard rumors last year at Wizard World Texas that some of the Drunk Duck creators were upset they hadn’t been paid for their mobile wallpapers on Platinum’s mobile site. The guy I talked to back then said he was told there had been no sales, but he was positive there was because his own family went and bought some there to support him. Nobody was publicly vocal about this until now. I’ve received an email I’ve been given permission to quote here… but it’s clear that Platinum owed a lot more creators than just the comic book line. Read for yourself.

Hi Mr Coffman,

I read your blog with great interest, as I am one of those “Drunk Duck Kids” (all be it a 25 year old design engineer kid) who was sucked in to making Mobile Wallpapers.

I find it shocking that you, as an employee of Platinum, also had pay disputes with them; that must be quite a horrible situation to be in if you rely on the money they pay you to live, where as I was just hopeful of some extra cash.

Platinum spun the line to me that “no wallpapers were sold”, even though I was told by a previous platinum employee that I was owed money. Platinum eventually came round to this idea and told me I was owed $133. They promised me payment about a year ago, and again two months ago. Jason Leon (who I find worse than useless) is now ignoring my emails. I spoke to Scott through Facebook last week, he said he’d look into it, I doubt you’ll be surprised to hear that I haven’t heard from him since.

Now I read that PS are losing money faster than banks can go bankrupt, I guess I’ll never see that $133. I wonder if Robert Downey Jr knows what he’s letting himself in for?

My comic is no longer updated. This whole experience with platinum has rather sowered my comic making experience, which is a shame because I used to really enjoy making comics, and I think people enjoyed reading mine too.

I hope you find continued success with you comic with better partners, I quite enjoyed reading Hero By Night on DD.

I’d be more than happy for you to quote my email on your blog; I think you’re right that we need to make sure other people don’t get scammed. I already had a career in Engineering when Platinum contacted  me, but I imagine that some of the kids who platinum contacted through Drunk Duck thought they had a real opportunity to make it big.

A couple of months ago, about a month after Carly Wagner left PS, I sent a mass email around to all the other mobile content creators to see if any of them had any contact with PS or if they had been paid or received quarterly royalty statements as promised by the contract we all signed. Apparently no one had received a copy of their contract signed by Platinum, no one had received any quarterly royalty statements and no one had been paid. Jason Leon and Scott were copied into these emails and the growing mass unrest seemed to galvanise Platinum into action; Jason labelled the lack of royalty statements in the past year as “totally unacceptable” and promised that statements, contracts and payment would be sent out. This didn’t stop quite a few creators demanding release from the contract, and I believe platinum agreed without too much fuss.

Eventually after a month of bi-weekly emails Jason managed to send me a scanned pdf version of my contract (signed the day after I sent it back to them in February 2007, so I’m unaware of why there was an 18 month delay in getting me a copy), and I believe most of the other creators managed to get a copy of theirs too-however royalty statements and payments have not been forthcoming.

Like I said before, musical farm isn’t currently updated, but I’m proud of the fact that it still sits well within the top 500 comic strips on DD. Maybe one day I’ll start drawing again, but not until I have the time to do it properly again. You should keep going though, your work is much better than mine was!!!
Thanks for letting me send you rant filled emails!

This makes me sad to hear. Skeletons in the closet. I use to cheerlead Platinum because behind the scenes there was a lot of positive talk about plans for Drunk Duck, and I had even submitted a “micro-branding” plan for creators where I’d do what I’d done elsewhere before and help put a system in place that would allow creators there to actually make money. It was turned down. In fact, all of Drunk Duck has been neglected and rundown, and teetering on the bring of collapse at times. See their forums for unhappy moderators and creators there.

Scott Rosenberg use to say to me a lot “Perception is reality.”– He showed a lot of passion for promoting Drunk Duck and letting the creators do their own thing there and not interfere with the site. But now the PERCEPTION is that he did, or somebody there did, see this place as a mine for young creators. Many roped into contracts with that mobile side, not paid… lied to, as the above email suggests. The truth though is that Platinum Studios is poorly, poorly managed. And right now, there’s just no money to be had. They’re holding on for that big deal to come through, and it just might. And that’s ALL they care about. But at what cost?

It’s sickening to me to see the press releases come out about Platinum offering a better line of communication to their investors once their stock hit 5 cents…. and then they toss out name-drops in a press release saying they have a new board of advisors compossed of Hollywood types and buzz.… but they can’t pay that guy up there 133 bucks?

Then they’re plan is to go on this “Money TV” show, where you pay 15k to be featured for so many weeks and “updates” – it looks like it’s run out of somebody’s house, a pay for PR type thing. And Brian Altounian the C.O.O. , has gone on every one of those they paid for in their package and smiled this whole time and said how Wowio has been a great success, they talk alot about how well other comic book movies are doing, and he touts all their success “online” with Drunk Duck and WOwio, and then he says how they have the 5600 character library, and caps it off with them being “rights holders”. Basically it amounts to 2 minutes of 95% bullshit. I’ll give them the 5% truth because they do have a library of 5600 characters, and they do hold the rights to them, but other than that, it’s just bullshittery beyond belief. — Then they pay to put out a press release saying how they were featured on “MONEY TV” to put icing on that bullshit cake.

I wonder if that advisory board of respected industry pros will tell them the truth when they advise them? I wonder if they’ll do any research at all about what a clusterfuck this has been…. but no matter how much of a clusterfuck it has been… they still have that one last thing as “value” — those 5600 characters (supposedly)– let’s talk about that as well…

You know, Sean Oreilly, who has been running their comic publishing side as a consultant wasn’t the only person to mention to me that he looked through that “library” and it was abysmal. He said there were maybe 3 or 4 things in there that were “salvageable”, and most of them were just brain farts of Scott Rosenberg, but he candidly told me that ANY idea is worth something, it might only be “15k” worth of an idea if it’s not something that screams “Summer Blockbuster”, but they build that “library” — But what they don’t tell you is, those 5600 aren’t all “concepts”, they include the secondary and third characters in stories and plots that haven’t even been made into anything yet. Some projects I saw were just a one sheet with a cast of characters… BOOM! Add 25 to the “library!” It’s just….that….easy! — There was also a time a group of us who are far more creative saw this as an opportunity and a challenge. What if we could go in and actually make the Platinum Universe a coherent project of some kind? There was even some talk of flying us out to have us do sort of “think tank” work on these things as a group.

It’s true… if you paid us money, could you imagine what a room full of Jason Embury, Jorge Vega, Adam Black, Brandon Carr and a couple others could come up with!?! Ideas that pretty much walk in and elevator pitch themselves! And honestly, when I looked through the “big book” of onesheets, I saw quite a few concepts in there that it was a shame weren’t followed through on or put to the top of the stack. It made me wonder… and if this business model was actually working, Jason Embury and myself actually thought, hell, we’ll develop our own library of concepts and sell things that aren’t made to Hollywood. It’s diabolically genius!

I think I remember they said I added “80″ or something characters to that library in the course of creating the Hero By Night series. And that was digging through the 300 pages online and even adding characters who only slightly even appeared in one panel somewhere or were mentioned off hand. at one point I was going to develop mini concepts based on characters who appeared in Hero By Night, or develop new things for them, but it never came to pass. Basically mini pitches from the HBNiverse, like a Saul Simian one shot, etc… but I would argue that there are probably only 10 or 15 REAL characters that they clearly own that belong to the core concept of Hero By night. Anyways… my point is, that it’s more than likely that only 15-20% of their “5600″ library is likely REAL characters that could be honestly developed into their business model, and others have confirmed that to me.

So you have the fact that they put out this ever growing character library number and use it as value. Then they “acquire” places like Drunk Duck and tout what a success that is, even though the creators there are unhappy. The “acquire” places like Wowio, and claim just this week that it’s all been a GREAT success, but authors haven’t been paid there. They have over year old debts to creators who provided content, whom they’ve lied to and not paid…. and that’s the problem I have here. They’re running around hollywood touting all these things based on content they haven’t paid for, or very very skewed things.

If I was on their board of advisors I’d tell them to pay EVERY SINGLE CREATOR right now. Wowio included. If you don’t have the money? Either close up shop and file bankruptcy now or –Communicate every day–business experts like Jack Walsh just mentioned that in times like these it’s better to OVER-communicate with investors and clients, or your creative staff…. but instead, they’re dodging this kid’s $133 bucks. Seriously, Scott? If you still read this blog, i mean…. 133 bucks to this kid? Owed for how long??? But they still tout “all the things we’re doing online”—- indeed.

If I was on their new board of advisers I’d tell them to shut DJ Coffman up by doing what they originally agreed to do, grant him the “webcomic and print” rights back, in full, to his Hero By Night project with a clause that he’s not allowed to talk about past dealings with Platinum or the deal reverts or something. It would shut him up! I’d probably run along happily and continue to develop the universe and get good comics back out to the readers… I’d publish online and then print collections of the work. Platinum would still have their golden egg of being able to represent the concept to film and other media. Instead, they chose to be petty.

Beyond not paying people and the very poor and non-existent management there, Platinum is doing nothing wrong. They acquire things and try to amass a big library of concepts. And hell, if someone should burp in the office and say… Wow, what if there was a guy who had POWER BURPS and knock down buildings!? What if his burps were portals to new dimensions? — Add two concepts to the library! 5602! Things are looking up! But the bigger a library gets, how long before someone says something like… wait you have 7000 characters after all these years, but you don’t have any movies made yet??? At what point do the numbers begin to flip and make them look bad or leave people scratching their heads?

Perception is reality.