After roughly a year of anticipatory hype and a year of faltering output, Gorilla Comics is gone. Gorilla spokesperson Kurt Busiek announced in April that, as of May 1, the Banana Trust partners would shut down their website, which as far as anyone could tell was all that remained of Gorilla.

In a year in which every faint sign of improvement in the health of the invalid comics market has been trumpeted as heralding a long-awaited economic rebound, the failure of such a well-publicized new comics line threatens to put something of a damper on the industry's fragile optimism. It's hard to break out the champagne in celebration of the single X-Men title to break through the 100,000 mark in sales when there's a dead 900-pound proverbial Gorilla in the room reminding you that once upon a time any Marvel title with sales below 100,000 would've been canceled.

Furthermore, Gorilla represents that holiest of grails: the self-published, creator-owned comics line. If ever there was such a line with a guaranteed shot at success Gorilla seemed to be it. Propelled by hot creators like Busiek, George Pérez and Mark Waid and hot concepts like Empire and Tellos, basking in the spotlight of Image's privileged position in the Diamond catalog and bolstered by Image's well-oiled production and distribution machine, Gorilla seemed destined to be the next big thing.

But even while it was generating expectant buzz among fan networks, Gorilla was unraveling. In a very real sense, as Busiek explained to the Journal, "Gorilla never existed as a company. It never existed except in the sense of 'My uncle's got a garage; your aunt's got some costumes; let's put on a show.'"

Although the creators who had come together to found Gorilla ultimately were able to put out many of the comics they had promised, the company, along with its financial backing, had turned out to be a mirage.

For that reason, Busiek would like it to be understood that Gorilla's failure is not the death knell of self-published comics. It was a sad and unique case of a comics line that had begun to vanish even before it appeared. "I don't think this says anything about self-publishing," Busiek said. "I don't think this is a self-publishing model. The first rule of self-publishing is to be prepared, and we found out at the last possible minute that we didn't have the money we had been told we had."

Gorilla was initially eight guys who collectively called themselves The Banana Trust: Busiek, Pérez, Waid, Tom Grummett, Mike Wieringo, Karl Kesel and Barry Kitson. Those writers and artists -- soon joined by Stuart Immonen and Todd deZago -- were to build a comics line on a financial foundation to be supplied by Internet start-up company eHero.com. Under the terms of the deal, the money for Gorilla's operations was to be fronted by eHero, an e-commerce enterprise that was expected to benefit from the publicity generated by its link to the comics line. EHero was founded by Chief Executive Officer John T. Wells, former CEO of Entertainment Media Inc. and founder of eMerchandise.com, an online retailing company. Much of the capital for eHero and Gorilla was apparently expected to come from his recent sale of eMerchandise.com's parent company, the eMarket Group, for $12 million, as well as from investors attracted to the credentials of Gorilla's big-name content providers. The intermediary between Gorilla and eHero was Malibu Comics founder Dave Olbrich, who held the title of president at both companies.

Though a print publisher, Gorilla's fate was tied to that of an Internet start-up, and on the face of things, the comics line would seem to be one more victim, albeit indirect, of the dot-com bust of 2000. But to Busiek, that is simply one more false lesson not to be learned from the Gorilla experience. "There was no dot-com," he said. "We weren't trying to build an Internet venture. I keep hearing that our investors pulled out. The investors didn't pull out. The investors didn't exist. There was no money."

When the Banana Trust partners came together to announce their grand intentions in 1999, however, they believed there was a great deal of money behind them. No specific figure was mentioned, but the creators were encouraged to spare no expense in launching a website, producing preview ashcans, hiring art models, appearing at conventions and taking out costly ads in Wizard magazine. The Gorilla creators were so sure of their financial cushion that they decided to price their initial titles below the going rate despite warnings from others in the business.

According to Pérez, "[Image Executive Director] Jim Valentino and everybody told us we should price the books at $2.95, but we wanted to sell them for $2.50. We figured, 'The fans will love it.' We were stupid. We kept thinking we wanted to be good for the fans, but we weren't looking out for ourselves. The plan was to raise the prices if the comics had continued, but the damage was already done."

Busiek told the Journal, "If the books had been priced at $2.95, then, based on what I see out there, sales would have been just the same, but with a better profit margin. That 45¢ per copy makes an enormous difference to the bottom line."

Pérez compounded his error by generously offering the first issue of his Crimson Plague title as a double-sized issue for the same price. He wanted to make sure readers were brought up to date on plot elements he had already unveiled in his first abortive attempt to launch the series under the Event Comics banner, so he reprinted material from the earlier issue along with new pages. Keeping the price at the same level as regular-sized Gorilla comics, he believed, would prevent owners of the Event issue from feeling ripped off. "It was a good fannish thing," Pérez said. "I wanted to give them a bargain price. Of course, my printing costs doubled."

In the meantime, Olbrich was discovering that the promised Gorilla nest egg did not exist. EHeroes had been passed over by investors and could not pay its own bills, let alone Gorilla's. That left Olbrich with two executive titles and no paycheck, since his salary at both companies was supposed to have come from eHeroes. In addition to not being paid, he apparently began using his own savings to cover bills in an effort to keep things afloat and to prevent the Gorilla partners from finding out how bad things were. "Exactly how long Dave knew and was keeping it from us is a big question," Pérez said. "He was digging into his own pocket, trying with all good intentions to spare us from having negative thoughts, thinking it's all going to be fixed soon -- until the day when we found out that eHeroes didn't have any money. As it turned out, eHeroes never even got out of the starting gate. I think they deceived him as well as us."

A pressing engagement prevented Olbrich, who has since moved up the evolutionary ladder from Gorilla to Humanoids Inc., from responding to the Journal's questions by press time.

At that point, in early 2000, the Gorilla founders were faced with a tough decision. They had spent the past year creating and promoting a line of comics, with five titles already in production and scheduled for imminent release. Tremendous costs had already been incurred even if they decided to come to a screeching halt and put Gorilla out of its misery immediately. Instead, they decided to take their chances and move ahead to put out at least those titles that had already been promised, solicited and put into production. The Gorilla that went forward, however, was a looser formation than had initially been intended.

Busiek told the Journal, "Gorilla was an imprint that was supposed to become a company, but those agreements were never finalized." Every title that came out shared the Gorilla logo, but when it came to financing it was every man for himself. Each creator's title was entirely self-funded.

Busiek had been through this before and had even succeeded in self-publishing a major hit with his Astro City series. "It's definitely possible to self-publish acomic book," Busiek assured the Journal, "but with Astro City, the time and money was budgeted. Here there was no chance for that. I had money from Marvels, The Avengers and all, but having money doesn't necessarily mean it's available. My network is largely in my house, so I financed my [Gorilla comics] though a home equity loan. That made my money easier to get at than if I'd put it in original art or something. Not everybody was able to make the same adjustment."

By going through Image, Gorilla was able to get its books before the public without having to pay printing costs up front, because Image guarantees payment to the printer. Essentially, a self-publisher is able to use Image's credit in order to get his or her books in print. Image charges a flat fee for its services, which, along with printing costs, is paid out of the self-publisher's income from gross sales. As long as sales are enough to pay promotional and printing costs, the self-publisher has won the biggest part of the gamble. And at first, Gorilla seemed to be off to a good start. Initial orders on the first issues were tentative, but re-orders were high.

This response from former Gorilla president Dave Olbrich arrived too late for inclusion in the print version of this article. It is here appended for your edification.

TCJ: I get the impression that eHero's inability to come through with promised financing took you as much by surprise as it did the Gorilla creators, but I understand that you learned how bad things were before they did and tried to keep things afloat by digging into your own pocket without telling the partners. So I have the traditional senate subcommittee questions: What did you know and when did you know it?

DAVE: I didn't keep a diary of the exact times and dates of what happened when and my memory isn't good enough to go on the record with information that is little more than impressions and vague recollections.

TCJ: How long did you avoid passing the seriousness of the situation on to the Gorilla partners -- assuming you did hold back information?

DAVE: I've got no idea about the actual length of time in this matter either.

TCJ: Did you initially try to cover Gorilla bills from your own resources?

DAVE: Money came in from John Wells, the guy who came up with the business plan for eHero.com, on a semi-regular basis right up until a very short time before everything separated with the creators. This on-going funding just wasn't enough to cover all the debts that were being created. So, based on promises from John Wells, I covered some of the shortfall. I acted stupidly, but with the best of intentions. I was naive. And I paid a HUGE price for my mistakes.

TCJ: If so, how much did your whole Gorilla experience end up costing you?

DAVE: There is absolutely no value in revealing my financial situation in this matter. Quoting a dollar figure would also require me and everyone who reads this to agree on accounting techniques. If you want a ballpark idea, I would say I easily lost more money than anyone in the Gorilla deal, including any of the creators or John Wells.

TCJ: I thought eHero was supposed to have been flush with cash from John Wells' $12 million sale of The eMarket Group. Now Busiek tells me there was never any money. What happened to the $12 million and, if it ever existed, why wasn't it available to Gorilla?

DAVE: This was never adequately explained to me, certainly not to a degree that would allow me to attempt to explain it to anyone else. I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone getting into business or believing any promises made by John Wells.

TCJ: In your opinion, what does Gorilla's failure say about the viability of a self-published, creator-owned comics line in today's market?

DAVE: It says nothing. The success (or lack of success) of a comic book in today's market has nothing whatsoever to do with its status as self-published or creator-owned.

For the full story, please see Comics Journal #234