CBR: Cup O' Joe - Apr 15, 2011

[CBR News]

Tom Brevoort digs into how which the biggest events and newest series at Marvel get made, from the cliffhanger ending at the heart of "Death of Spider-Man" to new characters in "Vengeance" to the "Captain America" relaunch.


Full article here.

[Sabrewulf]

Im calling bull on the whole .1 issue thing. So if the .1 issues sold less than the regular issues the figures arent to be beleived but the whatever these factors are that change the sales figures don't affect the regular titles?

What also seems to be skipped here is the point of these issues. They were meant to bring in new readers. So if the .1 issues sold more than the regular title and the following issue sold less than the previous surely that s a failure. Outside of it being two issues a month bonus sales thing.

On top of that these things were all over the place. Some like Deadpool were just self contained stories. Some had a page or two pages of things to come in the back. Like Iron Man, Spiderman and Uncanny X-Men.

Few set off new storylines. But then isn't that the point of regular issues. To set up new storylines.

The numbering was also dreadful. X-Force for example. Shouldnt a jumping on issue not be followed by part 3 of an ongoing arc.

Seriously this whole conccept was poorly executed and whoever was behind it needs to be reprimanded for failing to help these books reach their potential.

I expect sales of the next batch will show just exactly what a failure this is.

Wouldnt have this been better marketed as an Annual initiative called Ground Zero with 40 pages of story for $3.99 with various back up tales spotlighting upcoming storylines.

It's just stupid internal politics and now Marvel need to swallow a spider to catch the fly or at least not look incompetent.

This is what annoys me at Marvel they spend more time covering their collective asses than admiting their mistakes and moving forward.

The Vengeance thing was a missed opportunity at publicity too. People are talking about it. So lets throw some wood on the fire.

[rogerio]

Deodato drawing the Black Widow?

[The Spire]

Wow, I guess seeing that Spider-Man page is what I get for browsing CBR before reading my comics. Mental note, no more reading CBR articles...

[Maestro]

hmmm. good stuff by Tom!

[maniacmatt]

Wow! Who drew those Captain America pages with Bucky? They're gorgeous!

[Moose967]

Cool! Both my questions got answered!

[motteditor]

I'm actually looking forward to the Last Cake Standing. I guess I missed the Cebulski super-villains ep, though I remember Brevoort's first appearance, though I think the wrong team won.

Who's the Android with the Thinker? Did he get a new one? I hope Awesome Andy's OK!

[ian33407]

Who's the Android with the Thinker? Did he get a new one? I hope Awesome Andy's OK!

aw...c'mon !!

[Blade X]

The other thing it appears Editorial does is zero in on what issues of a series should be marked for the "Death Bag" treatment, and we've got two coming for "Death of Spider-Man." I assume that the inclusion of these means the "Fantastic Four" bag was something of a success? Are we going to be seeing more of these bags roll out across the year?

Brevoort: I think it’s no secret that the bagged issue of "Fantastic Four" was a huge success for us, and here again is a situation that lends itself to a similar treatment. But that said, I’m hoping that we’re smart enough not to go too crazy with this kind of thing. Used sparingly and selectively, these kinds of enhancements can be a fun thing. So maybe we’ll switch it up in the months ahead. I’m told that rings are popular.

These "Death Bags" AKA "Polly Bags" are nothing more than a short term sales boosting gimmick/stunt that is designed to appeal to speculators. These "Death/Polly Bags" are neither "enhancements" or "fun". They are , however, harmful to the industry (remember what happened in the 90's).

[turtlefood]

Yeah, "death bags" are not what i consider to be a " fun thing". The rings were neat although a bit played out now. Rings are used to get people to buy an issue, death bags are used to get people to buy MANY issues. So yes it's "fun" for Marvel to make extra money but i wouldn't call a death bag "fun" from a reader standpoint.

[jackolover]

The Point ones - These were designed to be self-contained, stand-alone stories that give readers a sense of where the series is right now, and which drop hints or portents for the future

So we are to consider that the point ones happen only in the books time frame, not any one particular moment in time?


[CPeople may forget this, but Ed signed on to "Captain America" to write about Steve Rogers. And he got to do it for a year or two before we shot him, but he hasn't been able to really do it for a while. And Ed's got a lot of Steve Rogers stories to tell. He had a bunch of other stories to tell as well, and he was able to invest Bucky with more depth than we'd anticipated when we started, but the timing of this just makes too much sense. So that decision was made long ago, and everything else parsed from that. We knew we wanted to do the trial and the "Gulag" story we're doing now, and we knew "Cap" #1 was coming after. And just like any other story arcs we're doing, we blocked that out saying "This will be five issues or six issues to get us to where we need to be." The only difference there was that Ed had a very definitive line in the sand being the Cap movie opening in July, so we knew we had to get all this done by July. And that's the same standard kind of story blocking we do in a regular basis. It's not different than when we've got a big summer event coming in July, and we've got to make sure we're in the starting blocks by then for that kind of a story.

So, what for Bucky? My impression of what happened to Buck is that he started off strong, but once Steve came back in Reborn, Buck descended into depression. I don't know if anybody else saw it that way, but Buck changed as soon as Steve showed up, and didn't wasnt to do the Cap thing, and wasn't behaving like Cap. I thought bring back Steve Rogers corroded James Barnes.

And what about Captain America #1? It's set in Fear Itseld. How can Marvel publish Cap #1 and he not be in the Super Soldier duds? If Marvel have to take into consideration what is happening in the MU when their book comes out, then Steve Rogers can't be Cap during Fear Itself.



It's a little different if you're working with someone who's a new writer to the field or who's experienced in other media than comics because there's a steeper learning curve when you translate what they do their to what we do, which is printed words and images on a page. There's a difference in writing dialogue, for example, for film or television because guys have to make the downshift to realize that in comics dialogue is not time but it's space. That is to say, dialogue on a television show is the amount of time it takes an actor to say a phrase. Whereas, in comic books, dialogue is the amount of space the words take up in the panel. It's a slightly different thing. A monologue that would work just fine when performed on stage or in film would have to be broken up in some different ways to work in comics. Comics is all still images, and there can be a translation problem. So there may be a little more oversight with someone like that in trying to translate the values those people have into our medium in the same way you have to work with younger writers starting out who are more likely to make mistakes the guys before them also made – cramming too many words on a page, story logic that doesn't make sense, not understanding that Captain America doesn't go around shooting people or any number of crazy examples I can come up with. Really it's a matter of how experienced someone is in our idiom. Guys who have been doing this for awhile don't typically need a lot of help telling a good comic story.

I was happy these things are spelled out as a property of the comics writing medium; that everything has to be pared down in comics, and that you can't have long speeches in the books. Too bad nobody told JMS, in "Road to CW ASM", where the arc was all about monologues, but I liked it, so maybe TV and comics does work.

About the new "Vengence" book to come out in 3 months during FI.

For all that everything you've seen seems to be all-new characters, there are a lot of existing characters involved, and it's set in the contemporary Marvel Universe or at least the Marvel Universe of three months from now. So Joe had to be brought up to speed on some things. "You can't have the Red Skull do this because he's dead" or something. Issues of that sort come up all the time. "What are the parameters you're functioning in? What's going on that month in the books? Where is Thor that month or Cap or Iron Man?" Or even if we're not looking at what's going on that month, then we have to know what's happening in that general timeframe. You can't have Iron Man needing his armor to keep his injured heart beating if that's no longer the status quo. Not to say that's what Joe's doing – I'm just using it as a broad example so I don't spoil what Joe's doing ahead of time.

This is where we are told that comics have to be placed in a setting that it's characters are going to make sense of the situation they are in. In this case, Vengence is set in Fear Itself, so all the appearances of established characters have to reflect their current status quo in FI, or the book doesn't make sense. So what happened with Childrens Crusade? Did Marvel already know Cap #1 was coming out before it started, and that's why Cap is in uniform? And is this during FI or are we going to learn this was all set after FI?

[videofarmer]

Im calling bull on the whole .1 issue thing. So if the .1 issues sold less than the regular issues the figures arent to be beleived but the whatever these factors are that change the sales figures don't affect the regular titles?

What also seems to be skipped here is the point of these issues. They were meant to bring in new readers. So if the .1 issues sold more than the regular title and the following issue sold less than the previous surely that s a failure. Outside of it being two issues a month bonus sales thing.

On top of that these things were all over the place. Some like Deadpool were just self contained stories. Some had a page or two pages of things to come in the back. Like Iron Man, Spiderman and Uncanny X-Men.

Few set off new storylines. But then isn't that the point of regular issues. To set up new storylines.

The numbering was also dreadful. X-Force for example. Shouldnt a jumping on issue not be followed by part 3 of an ongoing arc.

Seriously this whole conccept was poorly executed and whoever was behind it needs to be reprimanded for failing to help these books reach their potential.

I expect sales of the next batch will show just exactly what a failure this is.

Wouldnt have this been better marketed as an Annual initiative called Ground Zero with 40 pages of story for $3.99 with various back up tales spotlighting upcoming storylines.

It's just stupid internal politics and now Marvel need to swallow a spider to catch the fly or at least not look incompetent.

This is what annoys me at Marvel they spend more time covering their collective asses than admiting their mistakes and moving forward.

The Vengeance thing was a missed opportunity at publicity too. People are talking about it. So lets throw some wood on the fire.

Whoever was behind it won't be reprimanded, they'll get a raise. They're not .1 issues, they're one-shots. They sold incredibly well for one-shots. All the stuff you read about selling them because they are jumping-on points for the regular series wasn't the real goal for Marvel. If it was, the Thor .1 issue wouldn't have come between the next-to-the-last and last issues of the title. The real goal was to package a bunch of one-shots in a way that increased sales from regular one-shot numbers. Look at how they are being collected. All the different one-shots are all together in one trade, not collected seperately in trades with the other issues in the series they are supposed to be part of. The person that came up with this marketing angle is currently Marvel's hero.

[Rollo Tomassi]

The 'one shot' theory is true, but it only works(worked) until people figure out they're just one-shots with a fancy initiative attached to them, instead of what Marvel initially solicited them as. Now that people are onto them, I forsee dops in sales.

I actually like Sabre's 'Annual' idea. An integral story that both sums up the year, and sets up the next. Perhaps a mini'Saga' that sums up the previous dozen or so issues, and a teaser page for the next storyarc or two (like what Amazing Spidey's .1 issue did)n maybe a couple Handbook bios of key players. Basically, if you don't collect that particular series, be it Spidey, or Hulk, or Avengers or whatever, and are only going to buy ONE issue, it should be this one. You can keep abreast of that series in one issue, and if you like it, then by all means buy some more.

And if we're doing 90s gimmicks, I'd prefer the holofoil covers to polybags. ;)

[Alex6166]

Wow, I guess seeing that Spider-Man page is what I get for browsing CBR before reading my comics. Mental note, no more reading CBR articles...

Yeah, no kidding.