EXCLUSIVE: Hollywood studios should be drooling as yet another comic book company is on the rise. Mike Marts has exited Marvel Comics as executive editor to join with industry veteran and former Marvel writer Joe Pruett to start AfterShock comics. Marts was at Marvel for about a year, where he had had been editing the X-Men and Guardians Of The Galaxy comics but is also well known from DC Comics, where he edited the Batman series.

The move comes as Disney/Marvel has its world premiere tonight of Avengers: Age Of Ultron.



The upstart AfterShock is in build mode. Pruett was the man behind Negative Burn and also is a former Marvel writer on X-Men Unlimited, Wolverine and Cable. Pruett, who has won numerous awards for his work, is no stranger to starting new businesses: He also founded Desperado Publishing in 2004.

AfterShock will also soon has among its ranks a new co-CEO in Michael Richter, who was a senior exec at eBay and Facebook, serving as the latter’s chief privacy officer. He will be leaving FB in the coming months to join AfterShock. He also was the head of development at Fog City Pictures. The other co-CEO, Jon Kramer, has been involved in production of reality TV and features for many years. AfterShock President Lee Kramer was the head story analyst at Endeavor and before that worked with Cathy Schulman at Mandalay Pictures on such films as Crash and The Illusionist. The last of its executive team is SVP Investor Relations Jawad Qureshi, who worked in Silicon Valley investing in various companies.