What was behind the cancellation of Victor Von Doom from Marvel? Rich Johnston over at Bleeding Cool ran a story on Friday afternoon that he later withdrew, citing “two very adamant but contradictory sides” arguing over its validity to the point where he didn’t feel happy keeping the original up, but Kevin Huxford has a screengrabbed copy on his blog. The upshot of the original version of the story? Sources at Marvel said that artist Becky Cloonan didn’t complete a page of the project beyond the solicitation covers for the first two issues. (more…)

Here’s the money quote – no pun intended – from Axel Alonso’s most recent interview with CBR:

It’s no secret “Alpha Flight” has a strong and vocal following, and is a favorite of many here in the Marvel offices. [Writers] Fred [Van Lente] and Greg [Pak] had a really interesting approach for a maxi-series. And the fan response to the “point one” and debut issues was encouraging enough for us to take a chance with making it monthly…until new budgetary mandates forced us to rethink the strategy.

So, Marvel has “new budgetary mandates” impacting profitability of titles from… Well, somewhere between August, when Alpha Flight was upgraded to an ongoing, and October, when the title was canceled. Considering the book was selling a solid 20,000+ throughout its entire run, I wonder if we can take it as read that that’s round about the new cut-off point for whether or not an ongoing title will stay alive at the House of Ideas?

The news that Victor Von Doom has been canceled before the release of the first issue is more than a little surprising, to be honest. When was the last time Marvel canceled a book pre-release at such short notice (The first issue was due to come out at the end of the month)? Has it ever happened before, for that matter? It’s another bad sign for the publisher, following a rash of cancellations a couple of weeks ago, which itself came immediately after a slew of layoffs, and it’s worth noting that VVD was being edited by one of the editors who was let go, Alejandro Arbona (As, for that matter, was Iron Man 2.0, one of the books canceled following the layoffs). (more…)

With the big reveal in this week’s Fear Itself #7.1, I can’t be the only person wondering whether or not the next two FI “epilogues” are going to feature similarly important denouements to events in the main series – and if so, what are they? Speculation and potential spoilers ahead, so be warned. (more…)

Here’s some good news, for a change: The comic industry isn’t completely dying! Just some parts of it are!

At least, that’s the take of industry website ICv2, which is reporting that the comic industry “is poised for a turnaround,” but adding that “the effect probably isn’t going to be the same for all formats.” The industry-wide rise brought on by DC’s New 52 is, unsurprisingly, credited with bringing the individual issue direct market out of a slump, but graphic novel sales are apparently beset by numerous problems including high prices and too much product to make each book profitable. Maybe most interestingly of all is the impact of the growing digital market, and in particular, this line: “Retailers interviewed by ICv2 do not feel they’re losing sales to digital competition on DC’s day and date titles.” I wonder, does this mean that DC could consider lowering day-and-date prices without backlash…?

Joe Keatinge is talking about his new Image series, Hell Yeah, and what it’s about:

Youngblood and X-Statix focused on the celebrity superheroes. Hell Yeah is about the world they made, twenty years after their initial appearances. It’s about their effects on culture, economy and government with a focus on the generation born into their world. Even so, all this is merely a starting point. Where do you go in a world where time travel is possible? What’s the effect on religion when a gigantic being comes to Earth to eat the entire planet? I think a lot of the times when comics explore these themes they take the fun out of it. Watchmen is a great comic, but man, it is a downer. I like Marvels too, but I don’t want to see how Celestials effect an old man. I want to see how they effect hot bands.

The idea of superhuman culture is one that’s been touched upon in only a few books throughout the genre’s life – Astro City, perhaps, Grant Morrison’s NewXMen, Joe Casey’s Wildcats and Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Top 10, Steve Englehart’s completely-forgotten Big Town – but it’s one of those ideas that feels as if it’s been waiting to happen for the longest time. The weirdness about something like the Marvel Universe is that it tries to be both “the world outside your window” and a superheroic world of possibility and invention, and those two things are completely in conflict if taken to their logical conclusions; if you think of how world events affect culture, whether it’s 9/11 or Occupy Wall Street or the Moon landing or whatever, it’s both ridiculous and frustrating to consider that no-one’s ever really managed to put this kind of thing into a comic book entirely successfully yet. It’s a reason to look forward to Hell Yeah, definitely, but also a question to think about for ourselves: What would it actually be like to live in a world with unstable molecules, the existence of time travel and parallel dimensions that we can visit, and an annual threat to your very existence?

On Twitter, Ed Brubaker has been explaining the thinking behind the reveal at the end of yesterday’s Fear Itself #7.1. Spoilers for those who haven’t picked up the issue yet, obviously. (more…)

Considering both the critical praise for Nick Spencer and Emma Rios’ Cloak and Dagger mini and Marvel’s expansive tendencies, you might be wondering whether or not another series – Maybe even an ongoing! – is a possibility. So why not ask the editors? Why, here’s Amazing Spider-Man assistant editor Ellie Pyle answering the question over at CBR:

It was great to get the chance to include these characters in “Spider-Island” and we know fans would love to see more of them in the future. I can’t confirm any plans that may or may not be in the works for separate series for these characters at the moment, but even in the Marvel U, New York is a small enough place that people have a way of running into each other sooner or later.

Hey, that sounds promising! Let’s see what Tom Brevoort has to say on his Formspring:

It doesn’t look that way, sorry. For all that it got good notices, the recent CLOAK & DAGGER limited series really didn’t sell well enough to warrant more.

The moral of the story? Apparently, if you want a straight answer, just ask Tom Brevoort.

There’s a great post about race and superheroes by David Brothers over at 4thLetter today:

[Marvel's] new tactic is stripping a character of his own identity and hitching his cart to another character. Iron Man 2.0‘s entire outward appearance is meant to emulate Iron Man and confuse consumers into thinking it stars a white dude or something, I dunno. Rhodey has been around for decades. He has a fanbase. But it isn’t enough. So Marvel is pretending like Rhodey is a subset of Iron Man rather than letting him stand on his own two.

And that sucks. Readers (hopefully) aren’t that stupid, and it’s so limiting in scope. Rhodey spent the ’90s (and several other brief periods of time) attempting to escape Tony Stark’s shadow. I’m far from a superfan, or even an average fan, and I know that. To pull him back under that shadow in the name of goosing sales and then to make him a sideliner in his own comic… I dunno. Maybe there just shouldn’t be War Machine comics.

The cheap snarky response is “Judging by the sales, I think everyone else agrees that there shouldn’t be War Machine comics no matter what the title is,” but it’s a good point; while I suspect that the Iron Man 2.0 name was based more on “Let’s strengthen the Iron Man brand” than “Let’s weaken the War Machine brand,” it definitely made the character seem much more of a knock-off than he’d already been, and history should have demonstrated on numerous occasions that doing that really just makes every character in the franchise lesser, ultimately.

Thinking about Kieron Gillen leaving Generation Hope with #13 yesterday made me realize something: X-Men: Regenesis is coming just about a year after the end of Second Coming, which itself was just about a year after Utopia, which was just about a year after Manifest Destiny, which was the offshoot of events in Messiah Complex, and I realized: The X-Men franchise resets itself every twelve months or so. Sometimes it’s not a massive reset – Messiah Complex through Second Coming is pretty much a straight line – but over the last few years, there seems to be a status quo-defining event in the books every twelve-to-eighteen months, which seems… exhausting, really. (more…)

Have today’s comic writers forgotten how to do cliffhangers? Jim Shooter thinks so, and he also thinks that decompression isn’t helping matters:

I’ve seen this too many times: The writer takes us through twenty-one pages of set-up, what he or she thinks of as “human interest,” like hanging around the mansion drinking coffee, and maybe an action scene that’s trumped up so there will be an action scene. The hero stops a bank robbery or something. Something ultimately irrelevant to the overarching story. Then, on page twenty-two, Doctor Doom or some villain appears. Doesn’t do anything, just appears, looking menacing. We get it. We know who Doctor Doom is. We know that this means trouble. And we probably didn’t mind spending a quiet day with the hero. But the guy on the fence, or the new reader isn’t nearly as impressed, even if they know, or have an idea who Doctor Doom is, or intuit from his looks that he’s trouble. What it means to them is that they sat down to read a story, this issue—but, apparently the cool stuff starts next issue. It’s not a cliffhanger. It’s a tease. And if what a new reader has paid four bucks for is twenty-one pages leading up only to a tease, there’s a fair chance they won’t have enjoyed the experience. Not nearly as much as we do, anyway.

It’s a charge that’s hard to argue with, when looking at it from that angle. But it does make me wonder if this attitude is underselling the new theoretical new reader. What if they like the twenty-one pages of set-up just as much as we old hands? Why shouldn’t they enjoy stories that set the scene as much as readers who’ve seen it all before – after all, shouldn’t we be the more jaded, cynical ones?

Something like this needs to be documented: Comic book writer Robert Kirkman, reaping the benefits of his creation The Walking Dead rolling in its second high-rated season on AMC, appeared Monday on The View‘s “Zombie Reality Halloween Spectacular.” It’s a bit of an odd fit, sure — as a friend of mine put it, “It must look like when you had a friend over at the same time your mom’s bridge group was there and they wanted to talk to your friend for a few minutes” — but Kirkman represented himself well. The clip is here:

That’s cued up to the beginning, but the whole episode might be worth a look, if only for the promise of “Zombie Kate Gosselin” and seeing how truly miserable Joy Behar seems in her unwieldy costume. Such an odd piece of TV history should be archived for posterity, but that Hulu video will expire in a few days, so get on it.

Over on his “workblog,” Kieron Gillen looks back at Generation Hope as he leaves the title:

I always suspected I’d leave Generation Hope at the end of the first year, and so planned it as a coherent statement that would establish the book. I saw it as my job to properly delineate the lights and define Hope’s post-Cable existence as a somewhat desperate Messiah. Like all work, I’ve got some things I regret and some things I’m enormously pleased with. I think to start with I was a note too overconfident and obtuse , and immediately following that went too far the other way into being a little nervous and crass before swiftly (and thankfully) finding its balance. Taken as a whole, I can only view it as a success. I’d taken six kids, shown how each one ticks, and took them from meeting, to bonding, to an initial success, to heartbreak and then near destruction, and both showed who they were and how the experience changed them, while setting the stage for whatever comes next.

He goes through each of the central characters, one-by-one, to explain what he liked about each, and it’s a particularly illuminating commentary; it’d be too much to hope that a version of this appears in some future collection of Gillen’s run, but as it is, consider this a pretty essential coda to everything he’s done on the book so far (And also, something that’ll make you wish he was writing Green Lantern; you’ll recognize that when you see it).

Over at iFanboy, Jim Mroczkowski argues that Marvel doesn’t need to copy DC’s New 52 relaunch, because they’ve been quietly doing the same thing for months now:

The Incredible Hulk, Wolverine and the X-Men, and Uncanny X-Men will all be new from top to bottom with #1 issues and (one assumes/hopes) wide open storylines this month.

Moon Knight, Punisher, and Daredevil all started from scratch roughly simultaneously a few months ago, fairly gloriously. To one degree or another, thank goodness, all are unrecognizable from their previous incarnations. A year ago, Daredevil was like a cancer patient getting hit by a car at Jim Henson’s funeral; suddenly, it’s Six Flags with a buzz on, and not only is the transition not jarring, it’s amazing. The Punisher has turned into the shark from Jaws, and Moon Knight has turned into a character I want to read.

He also points to relaunches for Venom, Uncanny X-Force, The Mighty Thor and Captain America as signs that Marvel has been secretly rebooting itself for some time. Is he correct…? Well, kinda sorta, insofar as, yes, books have been relaunched with new jumping-on points (Although I’d argue with his idea that Uncanny X-Force or FF are in any way, shape or form more new-reader-friendly than DC’s Wonder Woman, but that’s just me), but without the media-friendly novelty of the line-wide renumbering, the gigantic promotional push (that seems to have worked) or theoretical dumping of all previous continuity so that all readers are in the same, occasionally confused beyond belief, place, I’m not sure that it’d have anything close to the same meaning for newcomers, nor impact on any practical level. But what do you think?

Somehow, I entirely missed this at the end of last week, but Mark Millar has formed his own television and movie production company, and as is usual with everyone’s favorite analog creator (As in, one who creates analogs, not one who doesn’t work digitally), he’s aiming high:

It would be easy for me to take off and just set up base in Los Angeles. But I feel passionately about doing [in Scotland] what the director Peter Jackson achieved in New Zealand. He’s as far away from Hollywood as we are but proved geography was no barrier by creating one of the biggest movie franchises of all time with Lord Of The Rings. The scenery is stunning but we can more than match that. Over the next five years in Scotland I want to do the same here.

The first project the company is working on is American Jesus, AKA Chosen, but he also promises some brand new ideas for television down the line:

I just want to make TV shows that I actually want to watch. I can’t stand all the low-end reality shows. I know a lot of the guys making those programmes and they hate them as much as I do. I just want to do real quality here and that can be high-end documentaries or brand new formats as much as quality dramas like The Sopranos or Mad Men. I know the stations’ hands are tied because there isn’t a lot of money around and so in the long-term I’d like to arrange co-productions with American companies and try to get things rolling again. The studios trust me as long as my movies make money and as long as I don’t drop the ball they’re happy to invest.

No mention in the story about Miracle Park, surprisingly; you’d think that with its Scottish setting and Millar’s writing and directing the project it would’ve at least rated some kind of comment. Whatever happened to that movie? Did I miss some announcement or something?