February 18, Mt. Laurel, NJ: Dynamite Entertainment announces a duo of new hires, bulking up the publisher's new business development, ongoing publishing, and production efforts for continued success and growth.
As Dynamite continues its business and creative achievements over its 15 plus year history and increased sales including the recent uptick with the success of The Boys on Prime Video, as well as commercial and critically acclaimed relaunches of flagship titles including Vampirella and Red Sonja, new blood has been brought in to keep up the momentum and kick things up another notch. Two key new hires add both collective decades of experience and fresh outlooks on the industry.
Jim Sokolowski, known to colleagues as "Ski" will be taking on his new role as Dynamite VP and Associate Publisher. With multiple stints at leading comic book publishers including Marvel, DC, Archie, and other great publishers, he brings a wide scope of knowledge and experiences to apply and innovate at Dynamite. At previous companies, he has been significantly involved in expanding sales and business partnerships in many categories. With Dynamite he will be working both with licensors and creative talent to hone and expand the publisher's initiatives.
"Having worked at Marvel and DC as well as other publishers, I'm excited to work with one who has also had an incredible track record and in multiple genres and categories," said Jim Sokolowski. "Looking at the entire publishing library that Dynamite has, from comics to prose, retrospective books, instructional and art books, and so much more, this is a new challenge that I'm looking forward to. I'm psyched at the opportunity to work with the Dynamite team in continuing their momentum as one of the most unique and visionary forces in the industry."
Nick Barrucci shared, "I've had the greatest amount of respect for Jim, in the 25 plus years that I've known him. His knowledge of not only the comics industry, but the book and magazine industry, has accumulated through decades of experience. His track record speaks for itself as he helped grow and strengthen the publishers he's worked with. We're very fortunate to have him join the team and I'm looking forward and excited to see how well the company grows with his being a part of us."
Dynamite's production and design team grows as well, adding fresh face Nick Pentz to the bullpen, formerly of Diamond Comic Distributors. Over 7 years in his previous role, he laid out the monthly Previews catalog and created graphics assets for events and promotions like Free Comic Book Day and Halloween Comic Fest. With a young forward-thinking eye for design, Pentz joins Art Director Alexis Persson in making sure all of the publisher's periodicals, graphic novels, logos, and much more are sharp and appealing to retailers and fans.
"With our growth comes the need to staff up multiple departments," added Nick Barrucci. "Nick Pentz came highly recommended by Jim (Kuhoric), and we were able to bring him on board. He's incredibly talented and has worked with the department extremely well, and we couldn't be happier to have him on board."
###
About Dynamite Entertainment Dynamite was founded in 2004 and is home to several best-selling comic book titles and properties, including The Boys, The Shadow, Red Sonja, Warlord of Mars, Bionic Man, A Game of Thrones, and more. Dynamite owns and controls an extensive library with over 3,000 characters (which includes the Harris Comics and Chaos Comics properties), such as Vampirella, Pantha, Evil Ernie, Smiley the Psychotic Button, Chastity, and Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt. In addition to their critically-acclaimed titles and bestselling comics, Dynamite works with some of the most high-profile creators in comics and entertainment, including Gail Simone, Christopher Priest, Leah Moore, Kevin Smith, David Walker, Vita Ayala, Danny Lore, Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis, Darick Robertson, Mark Russell, Brandon Thomas, Amy Chu, Reginald Hudlin, Nancy Collins, David Walker, Steve Orlando, Greg Pak, Jenny Frison, Matt Wagner, and a host of up-and-coming new talent. Dynamite is consistently ranked in the upper tiers of comic book publishers and several of their titles - including Alex Ross and Jim Krueger's Project Superpowers - have debuted in the Top Ten lists produced by Diamond Comics Distributors. In 2005, Diamond awarded the company a GEM award for Best New Publisher and another GEM in 2006 for Comics Publisher of the Year (under 5%) and again in 2011. The company has also been nominated for and won several industry awards, including the prestigious Harvey and Eisner Awards. |