Time to talk! Check this:
Villard Books will publish the recently completed Goats story arc, The Infinite Pendergast Cycle, as a trilogy — in the style of the great sci-fi sagas Goats so affectionately parodies.
Oh, my. Villard, for those of you keeping score at home, is an imprint of Random House, and is known in our community as the current home of the Flight series. And check me on this, but I believe this would be the first color reprinting of a story-based webcomic by a major publisher (possibly excepting Jellaby, which featured/will feature strips that didn’t appear online prior to publication). Actual suit-and-tie publishing moguls have reached a deal to reprint a work that they don’t own. They’ve put this into their schedule, sunk the money into the plans and the printing and the promotion, they’ve committed to Goats for the next two years.
Aside from an unprecedented development for capital-w Webcomics, this seems like a fairly big deal for Mr Jon Rosenberg, so we at Fleen did a quick talk in the popular “Q&A” format.
Q: So the basic deal is for three books of Goats material in color, right?. What stories do they cover, what are you going to call them, and when do we see them?Â
A: Each volume will be full color and published at six-month intervals. The first volume, Goats: Infinite Typewriters, set for July 2009, will include newly revised and created material intended to introduce new readers to the colossal and complex Goats universe — and set up the audience for the rest of the epic. Book 1 will cover material published on the Goats website from December 2003 to January 2006. The second book, Goats: The Corndog Imperative, scheduled for a November 2009 release, covers January 06 to March 2007. And the third book , Goats: Showcase Showdown, due out in April 2010, covers March 2007 to April 2008.
Q: Any idea of the print run on these books? What about the possibility of further books covering the stories up ’til the end of the strip/world in 2012?
A: I’m not sure how large the print runs are going to be, they haven’t shared that information with me yet. I tried to guesstimate based on the contract terms and I came up with a number large enough to make me suspect my methodology might be flawed.
My intention is to publish a second cycle of 3 or 4 books following this one that takes the storyline up to 2012 and the true end of the story. Whether or not Villard decides to publish them will probably depend on how sales of the first three books goes, I imagine. But I suspect they will find print in some fashion or other not long after the current trilogy is released.
Q: Any of your other material — earlier strips, the tantalizingly incomplete Patent Pending and Worlds of Peril, your minicomics (including the long hoped-for Operating Thetan III) — that might now see print as a result of this deal?
A: Anything is possible, but a lot of the projects you mentioned were ended for good reason. Patent Pending needs to be completely rethought and redone if I ever decide to work on it again, it would have made a better novel than comic I suspect. The Worlds of Peril comics were the inspiration for a lot of what makes up The Infinite Pendergast Cycle, I like to think that it’s the story of what takes place in the aftermath of Goats proper. It’s not canon, though, so don’t be reading too much into that.
The first minicomic is going to be reworked slightly to serve at the intro chapter for Infinite Typewriters. The second one could theoretically be included as an extra in one of the other volumes. I don’t have any plans to produce OT3 at this time but if I can fix some of the plot issues I could see it appearing in the future in some form, either as a standalone or as an arc of Goats.
Q: Now that you’ll be in bookstores and comic stores from coast to coast, what kind of followup can we expect? More toys, new merch, a 26-episode deal on Adult Swim?
A: Oh man, who knows? Obviously I’m interested in doing as much with the property as we can, but I suspect a lot of what we’re able to accomplish will be determined by just how aggressively folks purchase the book. If it sells well I’m sure my agent will be pursuing all sorts of things.
I love Adult Swim! Goats on Adult Swim would be a natural fit, but I think 26 episodes just about anywhere would be super-neato, though.
Q: For the benefit of everybody that thought your wife was wasting her time with a failure addict, any words of wisdom to share?
A: Success is just an opportunity to fail on a grander scale.
Fleen will be following this development closely. Congratulations to Rosenberg, and to Villard for investing in the future of webcomics. Press release should be up various places by now, but I recommend you click below the cut.
Edit to add: Rosenberg’s apparently been spreading his interviews around; check out the discussion with Rick Marshall over at ComicMix.
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