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History repeats itself as one more of Roger Langridge’s Muppets comics has been put in the vault by a business move.

Fans of his near-universally acclaimed run on BOOM!’s Muppets franchise may recall that his run on the beloved puppets began as a strip for Disney Adventures magazine, which was cancelled before the strips could run. Langridge made a few mini-comics which he furtively handed out at cons, and the legend of the strips greatness grew. Result: when BOOM! got the license, a call went out.

But now, he reports, Disney taking back its comics license from BOOM! means that several completed books are now in publishing limbo again:

To be honest, I have no idea. As far as I understand it, the unpublished work I’ve done for Boom isn’t technically Disney’s until it’s published, and obviously Boom can’t publish it without a license. So it’s in a kind of limbo right now. In the best of all possible worlds, I’d like to think that Boom and Marvel can come to some kind of arrangement whereby Marvel can eventually release the work. I’m only a cartoonist, real business stuff makes my brain hurt, so I’m not sure how that would work – I guess Disney/Marvel buys the rights from Boom or something. Or maybe they have to go out into the woods at midnight and bury Kermit in effigy with some chives in order to break the curse. Something like that. However it happens, I would very much like for it to see the light of day eventually.


While we’re guessing it wouldn’t quite be accurate that Disney doesn’t own the rights to publish Muppet comics now, they might also have to buy the rights to this story back from BOOM!, since the story was not published. Given that so far Marvel’s new Disney comics have consisted of reprinted BOOM! material, couldn’t they make just THIS ONE EXCEPTION and get the end of this story into print?

Hopefully history will repeat itself in that regard as well.

1 COMMENT

  1. Not the first time something like this has happened…

    Destino, designed by Salvador Dali, lay dormant in the Disney Archives. When the artwork was rediscovered, Disney did not legally own the artwork until the feature was produced. So 58 years later, Roy E. Disney had it finished as a secret project, it received an Oscar nomination, and $1.5 Million was spent so Disney could own Dali’s original artwork.

    Hopefully we will not have to wait that long for these comics.

  2. Keeping my fingers crossed on this one. Roger’s got a lot of supporters at Marvel, so if there’s a way to make this happen, I’m sure they’ll find it.

  3. Fingers crossed that Marvel can eventually publish the rest of the already-produced Muppet comics!

    While I’m at it, I’ll cross my fingers that Marvel could also acquire the rights from Del Rey Manga to publish the half-completed X-Men: Misfits series as well. ;)

  4. Love Langridge’s work. Didn’t know about this Muppets thing, but it seems like a great fit. Hope I can pick it up somewhere.