A new transformation

Newsarama posted a press release from Devil's Due announcing that the publisher had jumped into the exclusive contract game by signing up artists Stefano Caselli (DEFEX), Don Figueroa (Transformers) and colorist Sunder Raj as permenent staff members.

What's interesting about this? Well, Rich Johnston rumoured on Monday that DDP was either in the lead or had already nabbed the license to produce Transformers comics after Dreamwave went belly up. It's probably not a coincidence that they went after one of the artists most closely identified with the Transformers comic franchise.

On the other hand, this could merely be a bargaining chip which people are seeing as something someone would do after the fact. Maybe they don't have the license, but are setting up a pretty effective smokescreen to make everyone think they do. Either way, they end up with a pretty consistent artist on staff. And in an ideal world, they get closer to getting the license. It's a good argument: Hey, look, we like Transformers so much, we signed the guy that used to draw them!

Just a thought.