Moonlake Comics

Moonlake Comics is an American comic book publisher, being founded by Emilia Houghton and her husband Zachary Duncan, being founded in 1991, known for comic strips and comic-books. The company's mascot is Samara Everdeen.

Early history
In 1989, Emilia had started production on the Badly-Damaged Face Paints (the zombie Face Paints horror comic the earlier years, but it was retooled into the comedy series that is known and love today) with the series become a sensation. Amazed with the series' success, Emilia then decided to take an opportunity to make more comics, but noticed that she has no comic company at the moment. Influenced, she decided to read most comics from the European comic companies like The Smurfs, Tintin and Astérix and look up inspirations for her comic company.

W.I.P.

Comic strips

 * The Badly-Damaged Face Paints (1990-2021, 1991-2021 under the Moonlake Comics branding)
 * Doggone It, You Chicken! (1993-present)
 * Vampires Next Door (1996-present)
 * Dino Tails (1997-present)
 * Luchador Café (1997-present)
 * Stacy's Evil Reflection (1998-present)
 * The Perilers (2001-present)
 * The Guardian Dragon (2002-present)
 * Comet 145 (2006-present)
 * Emma: Hero of the Jungle (2008-present)
 * Orcs Inc (2010-present)
 * Brandon vs. Landon (2015-present)

Comic books

 * Samara: The Ultimate Sheriff (1994-present)
 * The Dreamwalkers (1995-present)
 * Bloodi Cuties (1996-present)
 * The Athenaeum Wizardry (1996-present)
 * Night Creek (1997-present)
 * Legacy of the Valkyrie (1999-present)
 * The League (1999-present)
 * The Badly-Damaged Face Paints (1999-2021)
 * Legends of the Werewolf (2000-present)
 * Ferd the Zombie Horse: The Supernatural Adventures (2000-present)
 * The Children of Superheroes (2000-present)
 * Project Prism (2001-present)
 * Olympus, USA (2001-present)
 * My Secret Life as a Vampire (2002-present)
 * Agent Wolf (2003-present)
 * Dino Tails (2003-present)
 * The Iron Might (2003-present)
 * Shanna: Bringer of the Apocalypse (2004-present)
 * The Alien in Earth (2004-present)
 * The Superb Adventures of Captain Nocturne and Light Gal (2004-present)
 * Welcome to Dreamland (2005-present)
 * Ginny and the Odd Girls (2005-present)
 * The Mermaid in My Pool (2005-present)
 * Five Lives (2005-present)
 * Killing It (2005-present)
 * Wander of Wonder (2005-present)
 * Lily the World Wanderer (2005-present)
 * Take to the Skies (2006-present)
 * Annie Watts: Junior Superhero (2006-present)
 * Call of the Zodiac (2007-present)
 * The Richest Animals in Town (2007-present)
 * Body Mates (2007-2015)
 * The Powerful Heracles (2007-present)
 * My Father's A Mad Scientist (2008-present)
 * The Outrageous Misadventures of Triple X Vision and Gem Woman (2008-present)
 * The Elusive Capers of Annie Lupin (2008-present)
 * Todd of the Urban Jungle (2008-present)
 * Tales of Advancement (2009-present)
 * Ghost Walkers (2009-present)
 * Metropoliptic (2009-present)
 * Law Bound (2009-present)
 * Bloodtide (2010-present)
 * Blots (2011-present)
 * Legend of La Giganta (2011-present)
 * Wander of the Galaxy (2011-present)
 * The Love Man (2012-present)
 * Branchnut 101 (2012-present)
 * Superneutral (2012-present)
 * Renegades of Space (2012-present)
 * The New Wrath (2013-present)
 * Shift (2014-present)
 * Andrew Jackson: Monster Slayer (2015-present)
 * The Cat President (2016-present)
 * Brittney the Witch! (2017-present)
 * Agranado: Legacy of the Kaiju (2018-present)
 * Markus and Angela: Treasure Hunters (2019-present)
 * The Blood List (2021)
 * The Epic Adventures of Chad and Wesley (2021-present)

Based on ViacomCBS IPs

 * Nickelodeon Comics (2021-present)
 * Star Trek Evolution (2021-present)
 * Mission Impossible: Ethan Hunt (2021-present)
 * CSI: Pittsburgh (2021-present)
 * South Park Presents: Coon and Friends (2021-present)
 * Beavis and Butt-Head Are Back (2021-present)
 * Night of the Video People (2021-present)
 * Crazy Adventures of Bridgett and Frank (2021-present)
 * TBD

Comic book miniseries

 * The Immortal Ninja (2011)
 * The Flooded Earth (2012)
 * Arcade'd (2014-2015)
 * Daniel Frost and the Elemental Gun (2015)
 * Moonlake Heroes Unite (2019)
 * Moonlake Heroes Unite Again! (2021)
 * Adventures of Fiddlesticks (2021)
 * The Badly-Damaged Face Paints: Moving On (2021)

Comic crossovers

 * Moonlake Gone Wild (2019-present)
 * Moonlake Academy (2019-present)
 * Moonlake Next-Gen (2020-present)
 * Moonlake Tower of Doom (2021-2022)

Video game collabs

 * x Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout collab
 * Minecraft - Moonlake Comics Mash-Up Pack
 * Samara and Stacy in Fortnite
 * TBD

Partnership with ViacomCBS and consequent acquisition
In August 2014, Viacom and CBS Corporation (merged into ViacomCBS in 2019) signed a 5-year deal with Moonlake Comics, being recently renewed the same month in 2019 and it was originally set to expire in August 2024.

Both companies expressed long interest on setting a partnership with Moonlake Comics, especially due to Time Warner (currently WarnerMedia) owning rival publisher DC Comics and The Walt Disney Company acquiring fellow rival publisher Marvel Comics in 2009 as representatives for Viacom expressed that "a deal with Moonlake would be beneficial for the ones who want to see projects based on comics on theaters, television and streaming platforms, but don't want them to just be superheroes".

The deal allowed the company to use Moonlake's IP library to produce film adaptions through Paramount Pictures as well as to produce television adaptions for CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon and Showtime, with Nickelodeon mainly aiming for animated adaptions and CBS and Showtime aiming for live-action adaptions, while MTV aims for a mix of live-action and animated.

When asked about a possibility of renewing the deal after the deal expires in 2024, representatives for ViacomCBS stated that "although we'd be glad to renew our partnership, it's a little soon to discuss about it".

On August 2019, various rumors surfaced that ViacomCBS would buy the rights to Moonlake Comics for $5 million dollars. However, on May 2020, nine months after the rumors surfaced, ViacomCBS confirmed that they have no intentions of buying the comic company, especially due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the fact the company intended to sell Simon & Schuster soon to focus exclusively on film, television and streaming, as it would only renew its ongoing deal, ultimately debunking the rumors.

Despite this, during a recent interview, Emilia stated that she is actually interested in letting ViacomCBS buy Moonlake Comics for a decent amount, but also stated that "it's up for them to decide if they would do that, or do the deal for the third time" and will bring that up when "they meet again whether or not they'd extend the deal, or when she ever gets a chance".

Later, on January 13th, 2021, ViacomCBS announced their interest on purchasing Moonlake Comics for $78 million as they intend to keep Emilia Houghton as CEO and promote synergies with the company's brands such as Paramount, CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon and Showtime, aside from expanding the publisher into publishing titles based on the company's IPs such as Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, CSI, NCIS, SpongeBob SquarePants, Ren and Stimpy, The Fairly OddParents, Avatar, The Loud House, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Garfield and South Park.

The deal was finished on April 18th, 2021, with Moonlake Comics being integrated as an unit of ViacomCBS Domestic Media Networks. Shortly after its acquisition, its logo was slightly tweaked by including stars surrounding the moon as an allusion to the company's flagship brand Paramount Pictures, aside from the creation of three new labels: Paramount Comics (for comics based on Paramount's live-action film library), CBS Comics (for comics based on CBS and Showtime's television library) and MTV Comics (for comics based on MTV and Comedy Central's library), aside from inheriting Nickelodeon Comics from IDW Publishing.

Tropes
See /Tropes.

Trivia

 * The company creates comics targeted for different ages, like children, teens and adults.
 * Much like Dark Horse Comics, IDW Publishing and Boom! Studios and unlike Marvel Comics and DC Comics, the company doesn't focus almost exclusively on superhero titles, presenting a variety similar to European comic publishers and Japanese manga publishers.
 * Emilia has stated European comics such as Tintin, The Smurfs and Astérix as an inspiration to bring a variety similar to the ones in Europe, as well as Garfield, Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes as domestic influences for their comic strips.
 * The company has a policy where comic book series would have two issues release each month.
 * The reason behind this is due to it being more efficient to publish issues and keep readers invested.
 * Despite that, that policy is confirmed that it would not affect the comics with story arcs or the miniseries comics, with the former having 3 issues a month while the latter only having one issue a month.
 * During one interview, the Moonlake Comics company all use the Macintosh and iMac computers due to them being easier to use and can have them multi-task at once compared to Windows.
 * Despite that, creators are exempt from it, having freedom to work on either Windows, Macintosh or Linux.
 * Moonlake Comics has shown to be against NFTs (non-fungible tokens), calling them "ridiculous" and a "waste of money", even to the point they did a poster of three Moonlake icons (Samara, Squawks and Esther Skirton) both holding a "No NFT!" sign together.