Over at CBR’s message boards, new Avengers (and New Avengers) writer Jonathan Hickman tackled a boatload of fan questions about what’s upcoming in his run on Earth’s Mightiest Heroes: The scale of the new team, the gender/race breakdown of the Avengers moving forward, and this weird response to the suggestion that he left Ultimate Comics Ultimates to prepare for Avengers:
My leaving was a bit more complicated than that. Yes, when it became obvious that I was getting Avengers, I needed to leave, but a bunch of that was also the Ultimates relaunch being swallowed alive by DC’s New 52. There’s more, but that’s all inside baseball.
So Hickman left Ultimates because the New 52 was outselling it…? That’s an unexpected answer. Also unexpected: With Hyperion appearing in Avengers #1 and the New Universe character rumored to show up soon, might we expect to see the Malibu Ultraverse characters soon…?
Nope.
I’ve asked.
Dammit. Go read the whole thread; there’s a lot of stuff in there.
December 6th, 2012 at 10:52 am
Ultraverse? Malibu Comics?
December 7th, 2012 at 10:43 am
Somebody — somewhere — should dig out the reason why the Ultraverse characters can’t be used any more. I’m sure it’s all hush-hush legal mumbo jumbo, but if they can’t be used in a book that generates cash hand-over-fist like the Avengers franchise appears to be to pay off some creators, then there must be more to it.
December 11th, 2012 at 5:02 am
Most people are aware why Marvel won’t touch Ultraverse, but Marvel doesn’t like to bring attention to it.
The guys who created all the Ultraverse characters have it in their contracts when they signed up with Malibu that they get to split the profits of the characters 50/50 with who is publishing the books.
Still a valid contract when Marvel bought the company. And you know Marvel isn’t going to share ANYTHING with anyone for any reason.
So after they bought Malibu for their computer coloring system, they locked up Prime, Mantra, Exiles, Hardcase, Firearm, and the rest and swore never to let them out again.
Except for the short lived Night Man TV show.
March 14th, 2013 at 8:34 am
Haha, NightMan was from Malibu! That has a hilariously bad, yet thoroughly entertaining show!