ICv2 Interview: PUG Worldwide CEO John Nee

We caught up with John Nee and talked about his path from President of WildStorm Productions to Senior Vice-President at DC Comics to Co-Founder and CEO at Cryptozoic Entertainment to Publisher at Marvel Comics to CEO of Pan-Universal Galactic Worldwide, and PUG Worldwide’s Marvel Artist Archive: Jim Lee (see  “‘Marvel Artist Archive: Jim Lee’”).

ICv2:  Your career is unique in that it spans executive roles in the top three comics publishers over 30-plus years: President at Image studio WildStorm, SVP at DC, and Publisher of Marvel.  Tell us about that path and what brought you to PUG Worldwide (see “Nee, Former IDW Execs Form New Company”).
Nee:  In my 20s, I helped Jim [Lee] start WildStorm.  I think I was employee number four.  It was Jim, Joanne Mendoza, Joe Mendoza, Brandon Choi, and me.  We started as part of Homage Studios.  We were originally called Aegis Entertainment, which we found was hard to explain to people how to spell on the phone.

Jim had come up with the name WildStorm as an amalgam of WildC.A.T.s and Stormwatch, our two flagship titles, and we ran that as an independent company for six years and then sold to DC Comics in 1998. I stayed there another 10 years, and we did a bunch of stuff. Our creators ended up owning and being able to set up their IP separately for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or The Boys, or Red. 

We sold WildStorm to DC in 1988.  I stayed there until 2008.  By the end of my tenure there, I had a pretty large remit.  The big thing was the interactive, but also the WildStorm imprint, which I had continued to run with Hank [Kanalz] and Jim [Chadwick], and the manga imprint CMX, which I ran with Hank, and Asako [Suzuki], and Jim Chadwick.  Lots of other folks made CMX work at DC… Claudia Chong, Allison Gill, Dana Kurtin.

There was so much Japanese content airing on Cartoon Network and eventually getting distributed through Warner Home Entertainment.  There was a significant initiative to have a Japanese cultural export initiative inside of the company.  We started the CMX manga imprint with the hopes that we would grow our connectivity to the Japanese IP holders.

I ran the video game group and we were responsible for creative development and brand assurance on various game titles.  Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, Arkham Asylum, Lego Batman, and the DC MMO were our four big initiatives.  Now, it’s a pretty significant business at Warner Bros.

If I had to describe my job at DC, I was Paul Levitz’s outbox.  As Paul Levitz’s outbox, I got to get all of the incredibly fun assignments, like build a manga imprint or go make video games.  My group ended up doing the business case and initial strategy for what became the DC made-for-video films.

That was a really fun assignment where we made the case inside of Warner Bros. of making the animation targeted to a more adult customer.  Now, everyone’s doing it, but at the time, it was a pretty innovative thing to try and do.

We got to run with scissors a lot.  I look at how things are now in the business, and it was so much easier then for us.  We didn’t have the barriers or the scale of what things would become.  I could go call the head of Marvel, and he’d pick up and have a meeting with me, which is unheard of now. 

After 10 years, I had decided that I wanted to do something else, and so I left and took a little bit of time off. I worked for a tech company for a little bit called E-Line Ventures.  Then we started up Cryptozoic in 2010, and our flagship product was the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, which we’re very proud of.

We were able to diversify that business into other lines of products like trading cards, figures, and board games.  We ended up also making a digital game called Hex – Shards of Fate.

I had a consulting practice that I started up, and that’s where the name Erasmus Fox came in. In 2017, I incorporated Erasmus Fox [PUG Worldwide is a D/B/A of Erasmus Fox – ed.], and we do all kinds of things.

As an example, we worked with Ryan Kalil, who was the center of the Carolina Panthers, who is a USC graduate and a big, big film buff.  He had created three IPs that he wanted to work on.  We made comics for him.  We made comics for a company called Wedgwood Circle and one called K Pictures.  I was doing that in addition to my work at Cryptozoic. 

In 2017, I was recruited to join Marvel, which was a lifelong dream.  I’d had four opportunities to work at Marvel.

Once with Ronald Perelman.  MacAndrews & Forbes had wanted to acquire WildStorm and ostensibly put me and Jim in charge of Marvel, which would have been an incredibly fun thing to watch.  I don’t know how that would have worked out. 

Then again, I was approached to be publisher in 2002, 2003.  Because of my Warner contract, I wasn’t able to pursue that further, and then, again, in 2012.  I’d spent my life saying I would never get the opportunity to work in Marvel Comics.

In 2017, they offered me Publisher, and I had to, of course, say yes.  Who would not say yes to that?  Then my partners at Cryptozoic were very cool with it.  They let me go do that, and I did that until the pandemic.

I was swept away in a pandemic restructuring, and they allowed me to come back to Cryptozoic in my role. John Sepenuk was the CEO at that time.  I did Crypto stuff and I did consulting stuff with Erasmus Fox.

We formed Erasmus Fox [the parent of PUG-Worldwide] as a publishing company.  It’s existed all this time but we pivoted from doing service work to working to be a publisher around 2021.

We’re involved in several lines of business.  One of our main lines of business is we do custom publishing. We did a comic with Marvel for the Golden State Warriors.

We just do lots and lots of stuff like that, ranging from IP development, where someone will want us to help them develop original story and characters based on something they’re creating or we will create with or for them, or something that’s a marketing-based thing.

In a sense this new project that you’re running a Kickstarter for, the Marvel Artist Archive: Jim Lee (see “‘Marvel Artist Archive: Jim Lee’”) brings together a bunch of those threads.  You obviously worked with Jim at WildStorm and DC.  You’re publishing his work for Marvel, where you also had an executive role.  This is PUG Worldwide’s first art book per se, although you’ve done an artist edition-type book before.  Is this going to be a new category for PUG Worldwide?
Yeah, we’re looking at the Artist Archive line really as this hybrid thing that does give you a real good feeling of the art, but it’s not just 300 pinups. We have editorial material; you get behind the scenes.  It’s written by Stuart Moore, who has gone and interviewed everyone.  We interviewed Jim for the book.

Licensed art books from Marvel have also been a category for Clover Press.  I know there’s some overlap with the people (Nate Murray was a co-founder at PUG Worldwide, and is also a co-founder at Clover).  How did this particular Marvel art book end up at PUG Worldwide instead of Clover?
They are different.  There is a different approach on the books.  We have a bunch of text, so we’re writing a full manuscript of editorial content. 

The Kickstarter is supposed to ship Spring 2027, when do you expect the trade release?
I’m going to say fall of 2027.

Anything else that our readers should know about this volume?
I think the add-ons we have are really cool fan service.  To the extent that they’re open to supporting it at retail, it makes sense.

Are the tiny covers trading card size?
No, no, they’re not.  They’re more narrow than trading card size. It’s two and a quarter by three and a half instead of two and a half by three and a half.

Then we want to go back to your long background in the comics business and ask you some general questions about the comics business now.  We’re obviously at a unique time in the comics business in that we just had a pandemic which changed people’s behavior in pretty profound ways, obviously changed publishing and distribution.  We’ve had tariffs that have impacted costs on the publishing side.  What’s your evaluation of the state of the comics business in the United States here in 2026?
I haven’t been optimistic like this in years.  It just feels like we’re at an inflection point and we are healthy.

What’s changed?
The hobby of comics, which invariably involves collecting, is healthy.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being an obsessive collector, I think that’s a normal healthy mammal behavior or human behavior except when it starts treading into absurd speculation, which I have been part of in the past.  We’ve been able to bring back the hobby of the Wednesday Warrior.  That has been an ordeal for a long time.  It feels easier, and they weren’t gone, they were just lapsed.

Gen Z is more interested in bespoke than mass-produced, and comics are one of the last bastions of bespoke media in the world.  When you look at people drawing stories, the fact that it’s handmade matters.

Let’s talk a little bit about these companies you’ve worked for.  Marvel recently announced they’re going to move to Burbank.  They’ve obviously had some management changes there.  What are your thoughts about what’s going on at Marvel?

I think that the need to be in New York has diminished as ways of communicating have improved.  FedEx was the first wave of innovation where you could live in San Diego and FedEx pages to New York.

Then, the fast modems, ISDN, cable modems and just increasing Internet space has made it so you don’t need to be in any particular location.

I can see that having all of Marvel in one place with studios being in Glendale and Burbank makes a lot of sense.  John Barber, who is our editor-in-chief at PUG Worldwide referred to this phase of Marvel as Marvel 818 [the Burbank area code], which we thought was cute.

DC right now from most people’s perspective, and you can see it in the numbers, are really rocking it editorially.  Their books are selling great, Absolute changed the business.  Any thoughts on where they are and where they’re headed?  They’re obviously going through a transition on the media side too.  Any comments you have on where DC is and their position in the market?
I’m really stoked for DC, and I think that Marie [Javins] and her team have just killed it.  Absolutely, period.  The market was ready for this and they met it.

What are you seeing as the trends in the interaction between comics and media?
I think that civilization peaked when Steve [Rogers] caught Mjolnir in Avengers: Endgame, and that it’s been downhill ever since, and that fan service has just become a checkbox in an overall franchise plan, and that standing out has been difficult.  I think that things aren’t exciting because there’s nothing to be excited about, which is a really dour thing to say. 

In the movies, though, we just had a record box office weekend with a Marvel movie (Spider-Man: Brand New Day, see “Boffo“).  It’s not like people aren’t going to the Marvel movies, at least that one.
That really is a testament to how well they’ve grown Spider-Man.  Spider-Man is now as big as Batman.  That’s cool.

Any other comments on the comics business or PUG Worldwide, or anything else you want our readers to know about what’s going on?
We have a bunch of stuff coming.  We’ve been working in stealth for three years, and things are going to start popping every other month or so.