[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: How did you get started in licensing?
Stephen L. Stern, Comic Book Author/President of Storyboard Graphic Novels: As I mentioned earlier, we get this enormous publicity in USA Today. Within a day or two I get calls from a number of licensing agents. The only one whose name I’ll mention is the guy I went with, Mark Freedman, who had a company (it’s still in existence) called Surge Licensing. Mark a few months earlier had picked up a little account called the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and they rode that everywhere because [of] the cartoons, the movies, all the licensing.
Mark said to me Steve, I really like Zen. Would you like me to be your licensing agent?
I was pitched by a few others but I liked Mark. He was from Long Island in New York. We had that kind of bond and went with Mark for several years. He handled all the licensing and that thus became the two video games from Konami, which was the Game Boy and the NES game, Nintendo Entertainment System and the Just Toys and the Vinyl model kits and the pens, pencils, notebooks, Halloween masks, chromium cards, phone cards and probably a few dozen other things I cannot remember.
That was fortunate, but again, this is why I say had I not placed that press release through PR Newswire and had it not been picked up by USA Today and had not Mark seen it and contacted me…you see this is life. You either react to these things or you don’t…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Stephen L. Stern is the president of Storyboard Graphic Novels. Steve is best known as the creator/writer of the indie comic-book Zen Intergalactic Ninja that has sold over three million comics and graphic novels and been licensed for video games, action figures and numerous other products. He is also the creator of Shygirl and Frickin’ Butt-Kickin’ Zombie Ants, and the author of Beowulf: The Graphic Novel and the A Christmas Carol Graphic Novel, both published by the UK’s Markosia. His other works include Alien Hero, a collection of novellas and stories about Zen, and the upcoming Majestic Comics Graphic Novel. Stern is a native of New York and former advertising agency president with clients including Johnson & Johnson, Rosenthal China and The Singer Company. He lives in Los Angeles, where he launched Storyboard Graphic Novels in 2011, working with several of his longtime friends and associates—who just happen to be some of the highest-profile artists and writers in the industry today.
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