Boom! Studios

Boom! Studios (stylized as BOOM! Studios), is an American comic book and graphic novel publisher. They are headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. As of September 2024, the company is a subsidiary division of Penguin Random House.^{[failed verification]}

Ross Richie and Andrew Cosby had been working in Hollywood with Dave Elliott and Garry Leach in 2004 to revive 1980s comic book publishing house Atomeka Press. While working with Atomeka, Richie cut a deal with Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis to publish their series Hero Squared, with the Hero Squared X-Tra Sized Special one-shot.

They went on to found Boom! together in 2005. They had been helping to option comic book projects as producers, and working to develop them into films with the studios, but became increasingly frustrated with what they felt was the "tights and capes" focus of most mainstream comics companies. When Giffen was featured as a guest at the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention, he persuaded Richie to start his own outfit, Boom!.

Boom!'s first publication was Zombie Tales #1, a horror zombie anthology, released under the Boom! and Atomeka Press logos on June 29, 2005. The first edition was published by Atomeka, but released after Richie had left the company to start Boom! Studios. Giffen and DeMatteis imported their Hero Squared series from Atomeka to Boom! and Hero Squared became the very first Boom! comic book sold solely under the Boom! logo. shipping July 27, 2005.

During this time in its history, Boom! focused on publishing an array of original series created by a slew of industry veterans: Giffen worked on Hero Squared, Planetary Brigade, 10, Jeremiah Harm, and the Tales titles like Zombie Tales and Cthulhu Tales. DeMatteis collaborated with Giffen on Hero Squared and Planetary Brigade and brought his own series, The Stardust Kid, with Mike Ploog, over from Image Comics. Mike Mignola and Troy Nixey's Oni Press series Jenny Finn migrated to Boom! and finally completed its story. Eisner Award winner Dave Johnson created covers for Zombie Tales and Cthulhu Tales.^{[citation needed]} Joe Casey created The Black Plague while Rafael Albuquerque's first American work debuted in The Savage Brothers.^{[citation needed]}

In 2006, Boom! moved into licensing for the first time with the debut of Games Workshop series Warhammer 40,000: Damnation Crusade, based on the tabletop miniature wargame. In 2007, Boom! published Steven Grant's crime/action comic 2 Guns which Cosby and Ritchie co-produced for Universal Studios in 2013.

At the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, Boom! announced plans to launch its first imprint, a new line of comics for children originally announced with the name Zoom!, but when the imprint launched in 2009, the imprint debuted as Boom! Kids. Boom! also signed a deal with Pixar to produce comic books based on their properties and secured newsstand distribution. The first included The Muppet Show by Roger Langridge and The Incredibles: Family Matters by Mark Waid and artist Marcio Takara. In February 2011, Boom! re-branded Boom! Kids as KaBOOM!, re-focusing the imprint to be appealing to all ages rather than only children.

Also, during the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, Boom! announced the appointment of Mark Waid as Editor-in-Chief. This role would eventually grow to Chief Creative Officer in August 2010 before his eventual return to freelance work in December of that year. While in these leadership roles, Waid also created multiple successful titles, including Irredeemable in 2009, which became Boom!'s longest-running series at that time, lasting 37 issues, and a sister book Incorruptible.