Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: humanoids, metal hurlant

The French Half Of Humanoids Has Been Placed Into Liquidation

The French half of comics publisher, Humanoids has been placed into liquidation and staff say layoffs are coming

Les Humanoïdes Associés, or Humanoids, is a French-American publishing house specialising in comics and graphic novels, founded in December 1974 by comic artists Mœbius, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, Philippe Druillet, and financial director Bernard Farkas. Its initial goal was to publish the magazine Métal Hurlant, which focused on science fiction, which would later inspire the US magazine Heavy Metal. Humanoids was bought out in 1988 by Fabrice Giger, who founded a US offshoot, before moving the headquarters from Paris to Los Angeles in an attempt to secure Hollywood investment and productions, but still maintains a sizeable French operation. Or, rather, it did.

French publishing trade magazine Livres Hebdo has reported that the French side of Humanoids was placed into administration two days ago, under "judicial liquidation".  In France, the liquidation procedure applies to any commercial enterprise, craftsman, trader, or legal entity when there is a state of cessation of payments, that is, when existing assets cannot meet current liabilities. Judicial liquidation occurs at the request of the debtor or creditors and is decided by the court when amounts due are greater than the available assets of the company. The court then appoints a receiver, a liquidator and an employee representative and removes the former manager. The aim of the liquidator is to find a buyer or successor in order to recover as much money as possible to repay the debts of the previous managers.

Owner Fabrice Giger told Livres Hebdo that the restructuring, which only concerns French teams, should allow Humanoids to "adapt the overall structure to the realities of the market… We have very positive points like Métal Hurlant, but we are also, and like everyone else, facing a decline in comic book sales, which forces us to restructure"  into a form that will be "modest and more flexible." And that new projects, around thirty a year, will continue to be published. But the focus will be on Métal Hurlant, which had its fiftieth anniversary in March and sells around 45,000 copies an issue. It also saw a new English-language quarterly edition of Metal Hurlant published, which included new work from Yann Becu, Masha Moran, Karla Pacheco, Peach Momoko, Sagar and more.

However, there is a need for "several layoffs" and "we are restructuring, we are looking for a different way to operate". The eighteen employees were warned on June 26th in a meeting by Fabrice Giger, and one is quoted as saying, "He announced at the same time the non-payment of our June salaries and the judicial settlement. No one expected it." And another said, "We are all in shock. With the 50th year of Métal Hurlant we've been working hard. Been an intense year, physically and emotionally. The CEO told us the news without explanation before leaving for the United States. We're looking for another way to operate."

While an employee of La Boite à Bulles, a French publisher bought by Humanoids but not involved in the layoffs, says that the financial director of Humanoids and the staff representative of the Associated Humanoids were summoned to the Commerce Court on Thursday. Another employee was quoted as saying, "We're losing half of our team, including our general manager, our financial manager, as well as our manufacturer… At this point, we don't even know how we're going to be able to print our books".

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