Posted in: Comics | Tagged: AWA, be good studios, bill jemas

Bill Jemas Statement About Leaving AWA, Starting Be Good Studios

Yesterday, Bleeding Cool reported on Bill Jemas leaving AWA Studios to set up a new company, Be Good Studios. He just issued the following statement;

Leaving AWA, starting Be Good Studios.

Last Wednesday, I resigned as AWA CEO & Director. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to help get the business up and running and wish nothing but the best for AWA.

Last Thursday, I started Be Good Studios LLC. Be Good is an entertainment business owned and operated by the artists, writers and artisans who show and tell the stories and work for the business. We publish webtoons, comic books and graphic novels, produce and distribute animation and live action, mint & market NFTs, and license our properties for media & merchandise.

We do not do what other publishers do: commissioning comic book writers to create the original stories, then optioning those stories to Hollywood and hoping for others to re-write the stories, then fund, package, greenlight and produce TV programming and feature films.

Instead, we start with award-winning independent film makers and animators who co-create original stories with wonderfully talented webtoon and comic book artists. Then, we build audience with promotional partners and raise funding for feature films and TV series with strategic Web 3 investors.  So, we disintermediate Hollywood from our creative and funding processes and do our film & TV distribution deals from a position of strength.

Twenty-two years ago, as Publisher & COO, I worked and played on the team that turned Marvel from a bankrupt comic book publisher and toy company into one of the great turnaround stories of this, not-so new, millennium. Four years ago, I co-founded Artists Writers & Artisans.

At AWA, I've been recruiting, teaching, and learning from a cadre of up & coming creators and producers, including the key players on the team that created the Lesser Evils' Universe) and are writing, drawing, and publishing the webtoon and comic series and writing, directing, and producing the first short film.

Be Good,

Bill J.

Lesser Evils was the series that was mistaken as an imprint and appeared in its own solicitation slot in Diamond Previews rather than with the rest of AWA (though Diamond has now rectified that). At the time we thought it was an attempt to separate it from Axel Alonso's Upshot books at AWA but it seems it may have foreshadowed decisions to come that led to Jemas' departure.

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