LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Platinum Studios, Inc. the owner and rights holder for one of the world’s largest independent libraries of comic book characters, today announced that the company recently completed a $5 million round of equity financing, and has also filed its SB-2 statement with the SEC to become a public company.

Utilizing its vast library of comic book properties, Platinum Studios generates revenue by adapting, producing and licensing the comic book characters for all forms of media including print publishing, film and television, digital publishing, mobile/wireless, gaming and merchandising.

Brian Altounian, the company’s President and Chief Operating Officer, led the successful $5 Million capital raise. “Capitalizing on the surging wave of interest in the worldwide business of comic book and graphic novel material as a source of new content, we have accomplished a fundamental step in our business development plan. This recent capital infusion enables us to confidently move forward and implement the next stage of our company’s growth,” he said.

As an example of this, the company recently announced the winner of the “2007 Platinum Studios Comic Book Challenge™ Presented by AT&T,” where comic book creators from 22 countries on 6 continents submitted their comic book concepts with the hopes of being selected for a publishing deal and additional television, movie and merchandising development. The top 50 finalists pitched in front of a live panel of judges during the International ComiCon in San Diego, CA in July and subsequently battled it out in a head-to-head challenge that unfolded on the AT&T blue room (http://www.attblueroom.com) in August, where fans were invited to vote for their favorite concept by voting online during two separate rounds of elimination. The second round of voting concluded Aug. 25 with several million votes cast. This year’s winner, Jorge Vega from Brockton, MA, and his storyline “Gunplay” was selected to receive a publishing deal from Platinum Studios. His comic is expected to be launched at Wizard World Los Angeles in March, 2008.

Platinum Studios Comics publishes approximately 40 comic books or graphic novels per year and currently has multiple properties in comic book stores including Hero By Night and KISS 4K, in conjunction with the rock band KISS. Platinum Studios Digital Publishing has DrunkDuck.com which currently houses over 4,000 comics which are updated on a daily or weekly basis by their creators. DrunkDuck.com receives more than 32 million page views per month.

“Going to the public market should give us greater access to larger pools of capital and is expected to enable us to accelerate the growth of our company as we realize our model of full circle commercialization of these properties. We will be aggressively developing and marketing our current properties, while being on the lookout for additional properties that have the attributes for multimedia and franchise character development,” concluded Mr. Altounian.