How to acquire licensing rights for merchandising? (Posters)

[djsupes]

I've been having difficulty acquiring licensing rights for a project I've been wanting to start. I wanted to make some 24x36" silkscreen prints of certain DC characters (the first being Batman & Bane) alongside some nice typography. They would available for purchase online in a run of about 200. My intent is not so much to make profit, but to try and cover cover my costs as it's very expensive to commission the illustration and have the work printed (4-5K.)

I found a PDF on DC's website and have faxed them a licensing request quite some time ago. Additionally, I have called their licensing department numerous times (never an answer) and left a message but have had no luck. I am from the understanding that a licensing fee or royalties per print may allow me to use DC's characters if an agreement with them is met.

Does anyone have any advice as to how to proceed with this? How to better my chances of acquiring a license from DC? I was also planning on doing Marvel & TMNT (owned by Nickelodeon), however I heard Marvel isn't very lenient on this sort of thing.

Any help would be much appreciated. And to show that these won't be typical fan-art posters, below is an example of the illustrator's work.

 

[djsupes]

Bump...

 

[sandwraith]

I think you should check DC's official site and get information via their Customer Service. Merchandising falls under DC Direct so an E-mail in their direction should hopefully get a response.