Dabel Brothers Sells All Properties to Dynamite Including Dresden Files, WoT, and Mercy Thompson

In a not all too surprising development Dynamite Entertainment has bought the rights to all existing and in-development projects from Dabel Brothers.  This includes the graphic novel adaptations of The Dresden Files, The Wheel of Time, Anita Baker's Mercy Thompson, Warriors, and GRRM's Wild Cards.  Here is a bit from the press release:

Dynamite Entertainment announced today that they have signed a comprehensive agreement with Dabel Brothers Publishing to transition all of their titles to the Dynamite brand.

Dynamite will immediately assume creative development, production, printing, marketing and sales for all titles handled by Dabel Brothers Publishing. This includes books that were in the works and projects not yet announced. For the bookstore market, all graphic novels (unless pre-existing agreements prohibit from doing so) will be published by Dynamite and distributed through Diamond Book Distributors. The first books will be shipping in April 2010, with subsequent titles shipping thereafter.

This is most welcomed news.  Dabel Brothers has always put out a very high quality product, but they've always been plagued by mismanagement with creators and artist being paid very late and projects continually slipping months in production. The whole Song of Ice and Fire calendar debacle also comes to mind, where people didn't get a 2009 calendar until a couple months after the year began. Also, Dabel already once sold some properties to Marvel including George R.R. Martin's Hedge Knight adaptations from the A Song of Ice and Fire prequels.  I was hoping the worst was over when Dabel signed with Del Rey for distribution, but it appears things didn't even after the huge success of The Dresden Files adaptations. 

Hopefully, with the change over all hiccups with production will smooth out.  Dynamite is already well respected in the comics industry known for graphic novel adaptations of other properties such as Army of Darkness, Buck Rodgers, Battlestar Galactica, RoboCop, and Highlander.  Dynamite also publishes many original series such as Garth Ennis's dark The Boys and Alex Ross's Project Superpowers centered on public domain superheroes.