CBR: JMS Confirms "Thor" Exit

[Somebody]

http://www.bleedingcool.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=1052

I suppose the writing was on the wall back when JMS dragged his unhappiness with an upcoming Thor-based megacrossover, Siege of Asgard, into a DC promo interview at Newsarama with absolutely no prompting from the interviewer - without a mention of SoA by Marvel themselves, even now.

Even before you consider the delays being attributed to him.

[Will.S]

Gat damn it!

[Sighphi]

Some one link the Newsarama article.

Dude probably pissed at the Red Hulk stuff.

[Somebody]

Some one link the Newsarama article.

Here's what I just posted in the JoeQ question thread:

Two months ago, JMS said in an interview on his DC work, without any mention of Thor by the interviewer, that:

For me, fundamentally, that was what made Thor as much of a success as it was. You didn't have to read ten thousand other books to follow what was going on in Thor. It was self-contained, self-sufficient and self-directing. And people responded to that in a big way, judging from the sales and the emails and the blogs. I mean, if you look at Thor objectively, the book had very little action, and in some issues the title character wasn't even there. But it worked, and it worked gangbusters.

Of course, now that the Siege of Asgard Big Crossover Event is looming before me, I have to do some serious and hard thinking about the future.

One month ago, Tom Brevoort said on his Marvel.com blog that:

The reason that the current run on THOR is one of your favorites right now is because of the work being done by JMS and Olivier and Marko. [...] So, sure, it would be wonderful if we could suddenly have twelve issues of THOR by these guys every year, but it'd also be wonderful if I woke up this morning with the power to fly (and only slightly less likely.) And just throwing bodies at the book is going to turn off as many if not more readers than the delays in shipping

Today, Rich Johnson reported on his website that JMS will be leaving Thor.

Care to comment on what JMS' "hard thinking" and it's relation to this news?

[Sighphi]

HAHAH! i have to put this quote here because it's awesome.

JMS: When I announced that I was no longer exclusive to Marvel, there were a lot of folks suddenly coming around and offering work. What I didn't want was to get into a situation where I'd have to be fighting continuity or Big Event Books. That, for me, was a lot of the problem I'd run into previously. You'd be working on a book, it would start to find its direction, then suddenly it's pulled off into this Big Event, and now the book you're writing isn't the book you're writing anymore. It's a subset of the Big Event. And sometimes that requires doing things to characters that may be counter-intuitive.

See, it's my view that a Big Event should be in service to the individual titles, not the other way around. In other words, the BE serves as something of a sampler platter for characters who you might not otherwise read. You read the BE, find Character X interesting, then go and check out his or her book. Now it seems like the tide flows the other way, with the titles bent in service to the Big Event in ways that may actually reduce accessibility to or interest in that character for new readers.

[Moose967]

Son of a....

[Brother Justin Crowe]

Thor Forever, anyone?

[Karthak]

Unless they replace him with someone mind-bogglingly good, I'm quitting this series when JMS leaves.

[Iron Maiden]

Disappointing but not unexpected. JMS doesn't need Marvel. He did a film that was Oscar-nominated and directed by Clint Eastwood. It don't get much better than that.

I liked his Thor for the same reason he mentions in his about the Big Event. I always thought that Civil War was the event that really started to grate on him since it took Reed and the team in a direction he probably didn't plan on.

[Wolf-Man]

This is why they need to totally re-think how comic books are written.

Continuity and monthly (or so) issues makes for bland story telling. It limits writers and their ability to do really broad, character changing events because 'so and so did that in such and such'.

They need to hire a writer to do a story arc. That story arc should be self-contained and use only what it wants from previous stories. It should be completed before release of the first issue so that delays don't occur like the mess that was Ultimate Hulk VS Wolverine. When the next writer comes on, the story starts fresh from where the writer wants it to start.

It creates a lot of jumping on points for new readers, people get their books on time and still allows freedom to create great stories.

[Elayis]

All signs point to Millar and McNiven's new secret project for Marvel on a big name character being...








...Thor!! Yep!!

Now sound off (I know at least a few of you'll hate this). :rolleyes:

[striderhirryu2]

All signs point to Millar and McNiven's new secret project for Marvel on a big name character being...








...Thor!! Yep!!

Now sound off (I know at least a few of you'll hate this). :rolleyes:

That's a horrid idea and I love Mark Millar. If the creative team does change I would love to get Thor on a monthly basis and it wouldn't happen with that team.

[Richard Bishop]

Disappointed but not surprised. JMS was telling a grand story that was, for the most part, free of the trappings of the overall MU, but the PTB decided that another mega-event crossover was needed, even though they just spoke of "event fatigue" at HeroesCon, IIRC.

I'll see who the new team is and give them a shot, but if it's Millar, he's on a very short leash.

[Flâneur]

*sigh*

If only the next man up could be Gaiman.

[TuPeT]

Damn it to Niffleheim. How can Thor be that behind schedule and now JMS is going away?
Who can be up to the challenge on this book? If it keeps up like this there will be only two more Thor this year.