Company Town : Blam! Comic-Book Agents Hit the Scene : Entertainment: As the funnies are adapted for film and CD-ROM, agencies such as Star-Reach are on the rise.

Behind most successful actors and directors stands an agent. Mike Friedrich is the best-known agent in the field that delivered the movies “The Mask” and “Timecop,” the TV series “X-Men” and “Lois and Clark” and the multimedia sensations “Batman” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

Friedrich is an agent for comic-book creators.

From 1982 until the early 1990s, his Berkeley-based Star-Reach Productions was virtually the only agency devoted strictly to comic-book writers and artists. Today, Friedrich and other agents negotiate deals ranging from a flat fee for drawing a comic-book cover to complex multimedia royalties in the volatile industry.

“When you’re giving people percentages of characters in perpetuity, and people are getting 10% of this and 20% of that and creator ownership and creator co-copyrights, it gets complicated,” says longtime comic-book writer Mark Evanier. “It becomes good business to open things up to negotiations. And once things are open to negotiations, that’s when you need a Mike Friedrich.”

Born in Oakland in 1949, Friedrich had written comics since high school and been an assistant editor at comic-book publishers DC and Marvel. In 1974, he founded Star-Reach as a publishing house where creators owned their stories and characters.

He closed Star-Reach in 1979. “I was having tremendous sales and got myself into tremendous debt because I didn’t know how to handle my inventory,” he says.

Marvel hired him as a sales manager. In 1982, as publishers began offering free-lancers better deals, Friedrich quit and reopened Star-Reach as a talent agency.

By the 1990s, business had exploded. “Speculators had moved into the field,” agent-publisher Laurie Bradach says. Around 1991, collectors of trading cards “thought that there was a good opportunity for investment here. So the industry suddenly found itself--and, I’m telling you, in a matter of six months--with books going from maybe a normal circulation of 50,000 or 60,000 to selling 750,000.”

Moreover, the adaptation of “Batman” and the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” to movies and TV brought comics attention that remains strong. Journalist Andy Mangels, who follows the connection between Hollywood and comics, estimates that more than 40 comics-based movies are in development or production, including “Batman Forever,” “Richie Rich” (starring Macauley Culkin and due for release Dec. 21) and the futuristic adventure “Judge Dredd,” starring Sylvester Stallone.

Lastly, the purchase of Marvel by the investment firm MacAndrews & Forbes in 1989, and the decision to take the company public in 1991, encouraged investment in the field. Says Friedrich: “Comics are now treated as a small but significant leg in any entertainment organization.”

In 1991, Friedrich hired a second agent, and today, his agency has approximately 40 clients. Others have started rival agencies.

Harris Miller was an attorney for such diverse clients as the Rolling Stones and the City of West Hollywood. Laurie Bradach had managed art galleries. Stephen Donnelly of San Francisco’s Creative Interests Agency and David Campiti of Glass House Graphics in West Virgina are, like Friedrich, former comics publishers. Each has amassed enough clients to rival Friedrich.

Still, some creators remain unrepresented. “I don’t like agents, I don’t like lawyers, I don’t like contracts,” says writer-artist Todd McFarlane. “I’m the guy that just thinks he can do it all himself.”

In 1991, the former Friedrich client and six other artists formed League Comics to publish their own titles--including McFarlane’s “Spawn,” one of the industry’s top sellers.

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The artist also runs Todd Toys (which manufactures and distributes Spawn action figures), supervises merchandising licenses and participates in developing an animated “Spawn” for HBO and a live-action theatrical feature for New Line Cinema. McFarlane and his director of creative development, Terry Fitzgerald, negotiate deals themselves, although a lawyer puts their contracts into legalese.

Not all comics creators work in as many media as McFarlane, but many do branch out--as do their agencies. For example, Friedrich represents developers of entertainment software. David Campiti’s artists have contributed to television animation, listing Warner Bros. Television Animation and Putman New Media among their customers. Harris Miller negotiates with Hollywood; his client Chaykin was executive script consultant on the TV series “Viper” and “The Flash.” Agent Donnelly says, “It’s amazing how the basic skills and artistic talents that have built the comic-book industry now have applications in all these other areas.”

Comics creators may need those other areas. Comic-book sales are down. Bradach estimates a 30% drop from fall 1993 to fall 1994, partly because many speculators left the field on finding that they couldn’t profitably resell comics that they had bought. In the past year, the prominent publishers Eclipse and Defiant suspended publication. Miller calls the comics business “completely unpredictable” and adds, “I couldn’t even tell you which companies will be around a year from now.”

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Nevertheless, he and others believe that agents are here to stay. DC’s Levitz predicts that professional representation “is going to be more important in the future than it is now.” Friedrich says that’s because now, “there are well-paid artists and writers out there who can afford representation and who recognize that the time they spend doing their own business is time they’re not making a lot of money.”

He adds, “I see the field continuing to expand despite its current troubles. And, therefore, I believe that there will continue to be a growing body of talent that will want and can afford representation.”

Inside Hollywood

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