CBR: Axel-In-Charge - Sep 30, 2011

[CBR News]

In a special edition of AXEL-IN-CHARGE, Marvel's E-i-C looks back at his early triumphs with the House of Ideas from "Amazing Spider-Man" to "X-Statix" to "Truth," sharing how that work has impacted modern Marvel.


Full article here.

[Vivica Kang]

2011 is Elektra's Year!!!

[DownInAHole]

Uhm. There's a question in there somewhere. Maybe it's, why do you publish so many X-Men books? Well, the market decides how many X-Men books more than we do, havok1977. When readers don't support an X-Book, we usually cancel it. What we try to do is give each X-Men book a clear identity and mission statement and make it as best we can.

And swiftly replace it with a new x-book.

Tom Brevoort sometimes talks about how important it is not to overexpand the Avengers line and I often wish that the same policy was applied to the X-Men line. I don't get it. Clearly the Avengers are the franchise book but Marvel are still drowning readers in x-books. If too many Avengers books is a bad thing why do we have so many X-Men books?

Perceived inaccessibility has got to be scaring away potential readers. Regenesis would have been a great opportunity to really prune the books down to the essentials and attempt to reach a much wider audience. Books like X-Men and Astonishing X-Men are completely superfluous and only serve to bloat the line.

[CMBMOOL]

They should seriously at least try to tie up Chamber's connections to Apocalyspe at least in a way that would make the character seem useful to the current modern-day X-men.

Still, I would love to see some more Elektra in the future of Marvel.

[AXL]

And swiftly replace it with a new x-book.

Tom Brevoort sometimes talks about how important it is not to overexpand the Avengers line and I often wish that the same policy was applied to the X-Men line. I don't get it. Clearly the Avengers are the franchise book but Marvel are still drowning readers in x-books. If too many Avengers books is a bad thing why do we have so many X-Men books?

Perceived inaccessibility has got to be scaring away potential readers. Regenesis would have been a great opportunity to really prune the books down to the essentials and attempt to reach a much wider audience. Books like X-Men and Astonishing X-Men are completely superfluous and only serve to bloat the line.

But if you look at it, and this is what I'm hopping for, many of those books are secondary, meaning that after Regenesis they won't feature the same four characters every time. Uncanny and Wolverine & the X-men are getting some strong directions, which I always love to see, same with X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, Generation Hope, and X-Men Legacy. They all either had or are going to have new and solid directions from here on out, which I admire and had hoped for.

Someone else on the boards asked me about Regenesis and I said that it'll probably be very easy to get into the flagship books like WATXM or UXM.

[AXL]

I love, love, love that he's focusing on the leser known properties. Elektra getting some love? Nice (and I knew Avenging Spider-Man was going to be a new Marvel Team-Up! Why can't they name it that? Don't answer that).

So far we have Nova, Defenders, Iron Fist, Ant-Man, Destroyers, Six Guns, Fantastic Four/FF, Legion of Monsters, and so many others. It's cool to see these popping up. The more the merrier.

[mugiwara]

Yeah, let' s have overexploited characters pop up in every comics, that will sure let room for the underexploited ones.

[DownInAHole]

But if you look at it, and this is what I'm hopping for, many of those books are secondary, meaning that after Regenesis they won't feature the same four characters every time. Uncanny and Wolverine & the X-men are getting some strong directions, which I always love to see, same with X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, Generation Hope, and X-Men Legacy. They all either had or are going to have new and solid directions from here on out, which I admire and had hoped for.

Someone else on the boards asked me about Regenesis and I said that it'll probably be very easy to get into the flagship books like WATXM or UXM.

I think you are correct, to a degree. Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine and the X-Men and, hopefully, X-Men Legacy will probably feature three different and distinct casts. If every x-book was like that I wouldn't care how many of them there were. But what about X-Men and Astonishing X-Men? The stated aim of X-Men is to be the book where they interact with the Marvel Universe. Well, if readers want that shouldn't it be happening in Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine and the X-Men? If you want to have the X-Men interact with the Marvel universe then just make it happen, there's no need to create a book to do that. Astonishing X-Men? Hopefully the new creative team will be better but over the last six months or so the quality of this book has been very poor, especially at $3.99.

I could be wrong but I believe that if Marvel significantly trimmed the line they would make up any lost sales by increasing how many people would read the books. So many people avoid the X-Men because of the sheer number of books.

[Sabrewulf]

Alonso's imapact on Marvel has been pretty much how you can hate superheroes, be a dreadful X-editor and end up as EIC.

X-Statix. The one thing he did that worked. So theres nobody out there more worthy of running Marvel?

[AXL]

Yeah, let' s have overexploited characters pop up in every comics, that will sure let room for the underexploited ones.

The characters I listed aren't even close to overexposed. Did you read my post? I said I'm glad they're focusing on the lesser ones.

[AXL]

Alonso's imapact on Marvel has been pretty much how you can hate superheroes, be a dreadful X-editor and end up as EIC.

X-Statix. The one thing he did that worked. So theres nobody out there more worthy of running Marvel?

Well...Stan Lee could.

[ian33407]

Yeah, let' s have overexploited characters pop up in every comics, that will sure let room for the underexploited ones.

Absolutely.

I'm pretty sure DEFENDERS will housing a lot of B-Listers, and I loved the part of the interview about mavericks projects like TRUTH, RAWHIDE KID and X-STATIX. I think we're coming back to this with projects like VENGEANCE, SIX GUNS, LEGION OF MONSTERS as it had been pointed, or the up-coming mini about Doom' youth..Stories that are happening in the margins of the Marvel Big History, elder versions of iconic characters, I like that a lot.

Hope to see more of TRUE BELIEVERS, which has a very nice concept, or a new sci-fi title like say, THE FUTURIANS

[AXL]

I think you are correct, to a degree. Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine and the X-Men and, hopefully, X-Men Legacy will probably feature three different and distinct casts. If every x-book was like that I wouldn't care how many of them there were. But what about X-Men and Astonishing X-Men? The stated aim of X-Men is to be the book where they interact with the Marvel Universe. Well, if readers want that shouldn't it be happening in Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine and the X-Men? If you want to have the X-Men interact with the Marvel universe then just make it happen, there's no need to create a book to do that. Astonishing X-Men? Hopefully the new creative team will be better but over the last six months or so the quality of this book has been very poor, especially at $3.99.

I could be wrong but I believe that if Marvel significantly trimmed the line they would make up any lost sales by increasing how many people would read the books. So many people avoid the X-Men because of the sheer number of books.

I agree at the low quality and also agree that they could easily trim lots of books, X-Men or otherwise. If I were running the place, I would cancel Astonishing at issue #50, cancel X-Men and integrate it into some kind of mass Marvel team up book, and reevaluate all of the solo Wolverine & family titles.

As for the Regenesis titles, other than X-Men, there aren't any in there that aren't unique or diverse.

[AXL]

Absolutely.

I'm pretty sure DEFENDERS will housing a lot of B-Listers, and I loved the part of the interview about mavericks projects like TRUTH, RAWHIDE KID and X-STATIX. I think we're coming back to this with projects like VENGEANCE, SIX GUNS, LEGION OF MONSTERS as it had been pointed, or the up-coming mini about Doom' youth..Stories that are happening in the margins of the Marvel Big History, elder versions of iconic characters, I like that a lot.

Hope to see more of TRUE BELIEVERS, which has a very nice concept, or a new sci-fi title like say, THE FUTURIANS

I wouldn't hope for True Believers, but it could be cool.
And yes, we are diversifying and expanding the line from Avengers, X-Men, or Spider-Man.
(I'm looking foward to Six Guns too )

[Home made ectoplasm]

Alonso's imapact on Marvel has been pretty much how you can hate superheroes, be a dreadful X-editor and end up as EIC.

X-Statix. The one thing he did that worked. So theres nobody out there more worthy of running Marvel?

You should do it! Send in your CV.