Requiem Vampire Knight: The lost years

Jacques was a key person in establishing the Anglo-French comic scene. It would have been nothing without him.

Hardly had Requiem 11 been published, when catastrophe hit us.

Nickel, our publishers, had mismanaged its affairs and couldn’t continue.

Worse, it left me owed a significant amount of royalties, and Olivier even more. Tens of thousands of Euros. So we both had to find work elsewhere.

The Millsverse English Language digital comic, using Nickel’s original cover

It would be over ten years before Nickel sold Requiem to Glénat Éditions, Olivier was available again, and Glénat could publish Requiem 12: The Fall of Dracula.

Meanwhile, Olivier and I acquired the rights to publish digital English language editions of the existing Requiem volumes, so it wasn’t all bad. It was the basis of Lisa, my wife, publishing them as part of our Millsverse imprint. But it would be some years before the money we accrued equalled the thousands we had lost.

The American audience loved digital. The British audience, not so much.

If I sound a little laid back about this disaster, it’s for three reasons.

Firstly, ten years have passed and wounds heal.

Secondly, Jacques Collin was an excellent publisher of Nickel comics. He had previously been the publisher of Zenda, which was the game-changer for Anglo-American comics in France. He published Watchmen, Dark Knight, Marshal Law and Sláine, opening up Europe to British and American creators.

French edition of Marshal Law, Zenda Editions 1989

French edition of Watchmen, Zenda Editions 1987