Here’s a random thought: Why weren’t Captain Marvel and Hawkeye launched as Marvel NOW! titles?
I ask after seeing Paul O’Brien go over the July order numbers for Marvel and note that Captain Marvel‘s “launch at 42K puts the book in similar territory to 2011’s launches of PUNISHER (45K), and GHOST RIDER (41K),” which… isn’t great news, considering that the latter didn’t last a full year, and the cancellation of the former was similarly announced within a year of its launch (albeit by the creator in an interview to promote its final arc as a separate wrap-up mini-series). Considering that Cap takes place post-AvX, and is an all-new title, it’s hard to work out why its launch wasn’t held back for Marvel NOW!, which – presumably – would’ve allowed it to benefit from some of the promotional heat for the reboot-that-isn’t-a-reboot. Maybe there was some concern that it would be lost amongst the higher-profile launches…?
It’ll be interesting to see where Hawkeye charts next month; it seemed somewhat low-profile considering the Avengers vs. X-Men sturm-und-drang and Marvel NOW! announcement, but was so critically-acclaimed that I’m curious to see what the order numbers are like.
(O’Brien also notes that neither Red She-Hulk or the Sif-relaunch of Journey Into Mystery get #1s, even though both arguably deserve them more than, say, the third Captain America or Thor relaunch in the past decade; I suspect there’s an unspoken rule that Marvel NOW! #1s have to be “iconic” titles with big name creators, but even so – both Hulk and JiM are perilously close to the cancellation point in terms of orders; not giving the characters/creative teams the boost of a relaunch seems somewhat foolhardy in today’s market, considering.)
