Aftershock Comics has announced plans for a merger with a TV/film distribution company, with a new umbrella name for the combined company: AfterShock Media.
AfterShock has had TV and film development since its inception in 2015, but this merger with the distribution company Rive Gauche will allow this new, combined company to better leverage AfterShock's comic book properties more in TV, film, gaming, and podcasts.
Rive Gauche has been around since 1994, and is best known for distributing the reality TV shows Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, Homicide Hunter, and Something's Killing Me.
AfterShock has been connected to Rive Gauche since it's foundation in 2015, as Rive Gauche CEO Jon Kramer was one of the comic book publisher's founders, and has served as CEO there as well. As part of this business relationship, Rive Gauche previously negotiated TV and film deals for the AfterShock comic book series The Kaiju Score and Undone by Blood.
"Today is a milestone day for both Rive Gauche and AfterShock Comics, two companies I've had the pleasure of building alongside amazing visionaries, colleagues, and collaborators," Kramer said in the announcement.
"The significance of this strategic union cannot be understated because our ground-breaking, diverse comic IP will now have a team to support and drive its growth into TV, film, gaming, and podcasts, fueled by the development, production, and distribution of both scripted and unscripted content. Rive Gauche and I were looking for a way to reenter the scripted space because we saw an insatiable appetite with the proliferation of channels."
AfterShock Comics will now be a division of the umbrella media company that is its namesake, alongside a division for Film & TV. Currently, the staff at the comics division will remain the same, led by editor-in-chief Mike Marts and CCO/publisher Joe Pruett.
AfterShock's comics are available simultaneously in print or digital formats. Check out our list of the best comics readers for Android and iOS devices.
