With the book’s creators now fully-fledged superstars at Marvel, iFanboy talks to Rick Remender, Tony Moore and Jerome Opena for an Oral History of Fear Agent. Here’s Remender explaining the early appeal of doing the series:

The idea was to just be untethered in imagination and to be able to do something that was grounded in a character that you cared about. The adventures that he would go through would be any amazing, cool, science fiction ideas that we had. We wanted to work in time travel and dimension hopping, doppelgangers, and every kind of wonderful sci-fi trove we could. We understood the important thing had to be Heath and his story and who he was.

The second installment (of three) is due to run today. It’s a great format for a classic series; I hope to see more of this kind of thing for other books soon.

The posters at Millarworld discuss whether they are “fandom” or not (and come up on the “not” side of things), but what’s worthwhile about the thread is really this interesting, and not entirely incorrect, theory of online fandom from Jason Hendriks:

I have noticed something about “fandom” in the past ten years or so. We have all of these places online, and all of these people online, but nobody discusses comic books anymore. I can remember long ago, back when most of the discussion of comic books was done on usenet, that people would actually discuss the comics they were reading. Whenever a new issue of Sandman, Preacher, or The Invisibles came out, that thing would get dissected like a frog in a high school biology class.

Now, not so much. New issues of Saga or Walking Dead or The Boys come out, and there’s nary a peep. Now people will discuss companies and creators, press releases, but not the stories themselves.

I seem to recall, around 2000 or 2001, that there was sort of a migration away from the newsgroups and toward message boards, particularly boards operated by specific creators like Warren Ellis (The WEF) or Brian Bendis (Jinxworld), so that might have something to do with the shift in the culture. It might be seen as rude to go to a creator’s message board and critically discuss his own work or the work of others where it wouldn’t be on a group like rec.arts.comics.dc.vertigo, or it might be seen as improper to discuss the work of other creators on someone’s board. But even on places like comicon.com, which were general discussion sites, the general quality of the discussion was so degraded that it was almost meaningless.

And now, with a move away from message boards ceding users to social networking sites like Facebook (which I find sort of impenetrable and exclusive) and Twitter (which, by its 140 character nature, precludes any discussion more insightful than a bumper sticker) it would seem that critical discussion is a thing of the distant past.

This is something that’s going to stick with me for awhile, I’m sure. He’s not wrong, but the reasoning behind it is what fascinates me. Are there less comics worthy of in-depth discussion now, or has Internet culture sped things up to the point where we’re more interested in what lies ahead than what’s actually there in front of us…?

The new Nick Fury and Agent Phil Coulson — both familiar to the audiences of Marvel Studios films — are at the head of the new volume of Secret Avengers, debuting in February 2013 from the creative team of writer Nick Spencer and artist Luke Ross. It’s the subject of the latest Marvel “Next Big Thing” conference call with the comic book press, and we’re on the line, covering it live — this page will be updated continuously, so keep hitting refresh. And for brand-new interior art from issue #1, head over here.

“In the Marvel Universe, there’s a new S.H.I.E.L.D. that’s been constituted under the watch of Daisy Johnson and Maria Hill,” Spencer says. “They’ve brought in a new field agent in Nick Fury, formerly known as Marcus Johnson, and a new advance man, Phil Coulson.” The new S.H.I.E.L.D. is putting together their own Avengers team, and re-employing the technology used in Secret War — “Which is to say, all of these new Avengers will be given memory implants so they have no knowledge of their involvement on the team,” which is the “work around” for having a team deal with such sensitive classified information.

“We’ve got a new Iron Patriot, obviously the Hulk, the Winter Soldier will be a big part of the book, although not on the team itself, as well as some other fan favorites like Mockingbird, and others I can’t talk about,” Spencer continues.

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People! Sue from DC Women Kicking Ass is doing something lovely this holiday season, and you should go help her out. Don’t worry, you’ll get something out of it, too…:

One of my favorite organizations is Toys for Tots. If you aren’t familiar with them you can check out their history here. It’s a straight forward charity – they give toys to kids who otherwise wouldn’t get any for the holidays. I’ve supported them for years and many years ago some of my extended family benefited from them.

So this year I’m going to support them again and I am going to ask you to support them too. AND to make it even more enticing for you I’m going to enter everyone who donates into a raffle to win some great gifts.

So give, already. Even if the warm glow of having done a good deed isn’t enough for you, it’s not as if you wouldn’t want autographed comics from Scott Snyder, Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction…

Image Comics wants retailers to go bigger on initial orders for books:

We have decided to cease second printings of single issues of titles that are known over-performers in hopes that it will help initial sales find their proper level. That’s marketing-speak for “You know this sells, so you’d better make sure you order enough!”This isn’t meant as a punishment or some weird scheme to drive up prices of single issues on eBay. The weeks of delay in waiting for the second printing cost you sales. Knowing you can count on reprintings has encouraged caution when none is called for, and that hurts you as much as it does us.

I find myself torn on this. On the one hand, framing it, as Image’s email does, in the example of Saga – which is on #7 and a proven hit – makes a lot of sense to me. The demand for this series is proven, and I’m sure orders can be bumped up at least a little to meet demand the first time around. So, you know, sure. But then the announcement suggests three books that retailers should consider bumping their numbers, and they’re all second issues:

CHANGE #2 — Orders presently are 38% lower than orders for the debut issue. If you haven’t read CHANGE #1 yet, please give it a look. Its writer Ales Kot had a breakout hit with WILD CHILDREN this year, and CHANGE taps into the same sensibility.

THE LEGEND OF LUTHER STRODE #2 — Orders are 21% less than orders for #1, which has sold out. This is a known seller by creators whose traction in the industry is growing — Justin Jordan, who also writes Shadowman for Valiant and Tradd Moore, who has drawn a variant Deadpool cover for Marvel and a story in the digital Legends of the Dark Knight for DC.

NON-HUMANS #2 — I know. It’s late, and lateness is a death knell for sales numbers. But! This is the return to Image by Whilce Portacio, and a 33% drop in orders seems a mite steep, considering that NON-HUMANS #1 sold out.

They’re second issues! There isn’t the sales pattern for these books that there is for Saga, and in one case – Change – the first issue hasn’t even been released yet (It’s out today), so retailers don’t have any real idea what sales are like. How do any of these titles meet Image’s own criteria as “known over-performers” with only one issue (or less) of sales to go on? What if that issue was a fluke?

Brian Wood is clearing out his virtual closet, and sharing projects he pitched at DC that didn’t happen:

Gotham: Neighborhood Rebellion aka Catwoman Year 100 – When Bob Schreck was at DC, he asked me to pitch a few things, and I did, and none of them got past the first draft pitch stage.  This was one of them, a far flung future crime story featuring a young girl named Nomi Blume (I’ve since used that name in Ultimate X-Men for the Mach Two character… cuz nothing goes to waste).  The other pitches I can’t locate.

Somewhere, there is a universe where all these comics happened, and I wish I lived there.

It’s also a universe where the proposed DMZ TV show that he wrote a pitch for happened…

Marvel’s attitude seems to be having once been a pioneer when it came to racial diversity in superhero comics they can, with the occasional exception (Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel, Spider-Man: India, the Miles Morales Spider-Man, etc.) rest on their laurels.  Which is why DC made Simon Baz, the new Green Lantern, a Muslim Arab American and Marvel automatically made Sam Alexander, the new Nova, a white guy.  Not black, Hispanic, second generation Indian or recent immigrant from Belarus but just another white guy, like there was some kind of shortage of them in the Marvel Universe.

Steve Bennett brings something up in a piece for ICv2 that I was thinking about myself the other day; Marvel’s very pale cast. When I mentioned the subject on Twitter, someone pointed out that Sam Alexander is apparently Hispanic, something I’d missed entirely in the character’s appearances to date and… well, the name “Sam Alexander,” really. But even so, Nova is the only Marvel NOW! launch to feature a solo non-white lead so far, and takes Marvel’s total of non-white solo leads to… two (Nova and Ultimate Spider-Man).

In a kinda-connected, kinda-not, way, Matt Fraction wrote about the fact that Miss Thing, his new character from FF is white recently, when someone asked if he’d considered making her a person of color:

These characters are powerful, no doubt, and those of us lucky enough to get to carry the baton in the relay race that is their creation get to carry all the baggage that comes with it. My point is — you live in the big house, you mow the big yard. That part of it you don’t get to control. It’s fine.

Could it have worked? Yeah, absolutely, but I suppose that I supposed the ethnic, gender, and biological diversity of the cast was pretty pronounced as it was— even though some of those ethnic and biological classifications are wholly fictional. I could say until blue in the face that our central leading lady’s skin is green but I suspect that poor comfort to, say, the Latina wanting HER heroic image reflected in ranks of the Marvel U’s foremost family.

i was going to ignore this, at first, because it made my ears sting when i read it, and it made me mad, and embarrassed. because you’re right. i should’ve considered it more than I did. even if i came to the same conclusion, i can’t tell you with a clear conscience that i gave it all the thought i should’ve. i’ll do better next time.

There’s some hand-waveyness going on there – “you live in the big house, you mow the big yard” reads, to me, like “Hey, that’s a decision above my pay grade!” – but I think Fraction ultimately answers with honesty and humility. Does it really come down to creators not thinking outside of their own experience and privilege enough? Does Marvel editorial have to take a stronger hand in this area, perhaps…? (Thinking here directly of Gail Simone’s “I have spoken with Bob Harras and Dan DiDio both and they take this seriously and want to fix it” in relation to the subject at DC.)

Uncanny X-Men may have ended — twice — in recent memory, but the original flagship X-book is returning in February 2013, with All-New X-Men writer Brian Michael Bendis and veteran X-artist Chris Bachalo at the helm.

So far, readers know that it stars Cyclops, Emma Frost, Magik, Magneto and some of their new recruits, and Marvel is set to reveal more via their latest “Next Big Thing” conference call. Things are scheduled to start around 4 p.m. eastern time, and we’ll be covering the press conference live, so this page will be continuously updated — keep hitting refresh for the latest.

On the line: Bendis, plus Marvel senior editor Nick Lowe. “Thanks to the daily shipping of All-New X-Men, we’ve been able to lay out exactly what the X-universe is going to look like, at least the foundation of it,” Bendis opens, joking a bit about the rapid initial shipping schedule of All-New X-Men. Bendis explains the team’s motive as “reaching across the world” to find and train new mutants.

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Steve Ditko responds to a fan request about memories of the design for Spider-Man’s costume:

My work on Spider-Man was done in the early 1960s. That’s a long time ago to remember details especially, it was just another comic book art job. I’ve seen later reprint material that I did that I don’t remember doing. How far back can you accurately remember doing something if asked to remember.

You can see the letter for yourself here. That Steve Ditko has some nice handwriting, as well as some refreshing honesty.

Thought you’d have to wait until the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey this Friday to see the first full Man of Steel trailer? Well, this is the Internet in 2012, where everything happens a little early, and the trailer is now online — completely above board, too, as it’s been posted by Warner Bros. Pictures themselves. But really, this is ultimately just a bunch of stalling, so watch the trailer here:

So, what did you think? Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder and starring Henry Cavill as Clark Kent/Superman, is scheduled for release on June 14, 2013.

For those wondering what’s up with Emma Frost’s dialogue in All-New X-Men #3, writer Brian Michael Bendis has a response (Well, kind of):

i have my handle on the character and like those who came before me its going to take her somewhere new. new look, new look on life, new realizations… the woman has been through some gigantic traumatic things. some have happened to her and some she did to herself. she did some awful things last year. all of this will be examined.

As it happens, Tom Brevoort – who isn’t editing the book – has a far funnier reasoning behind it:

Emma? Do you have something to say to Mr. Bendis yourself?

DC might be picking up Alex Maleev come March, but Marvel has quietly nabbed one of the best, most underrated artists on DC’s New 52 by putting Mahmud Asrar on Ultimate X-Men:

The past year I’ve been rendering my work with markers and inking my own art. That meant I had a huge amount of control on the final look of my work. For this story, I’ll only be pencilling my work which is, in a way, liberating. It lets me focus on different things about my art and helps me solve some drawing problems with different approaches. I like the switch up — it helps me grow as an artist.

When solely pencilling, I automatically and subconsciously do different things. Visually, I don’t think this story will be a complete departure from what I’ve been doing recently, except for the change in tone and setting. It’s interesting how much diversity this alteration can bring to the look of my work.

I think Asrar’s work on Supergirl has been beautiful stuff, dynamic yet sensitive and full of character. DC are nuts to let him go, and I hope he’ll thrive over at Marvel.

(UPDATE: DC, it turns out, isn’t letting him go; the UXM work will be done in addition to his Supergirl work. Everyone wins!)

The latest Marvel NOW! Next Big Thing call is on the future of Uncanny Avengers, and is starting right about — now. This post will be updated continuously, so keep hitting refresh; art from March’s Uncanny Avengers #6 is here.

Writer Rick Remender and series editor Tom Brevoort are both on the line, with Remender describing the upcoming story arc “Ragnarok Now,” starting with Uncanny Avengers #6, as something of a sequel to the “Dark Angel Saga” in Uncanny X-Force, though if you haven’t read that story, it’ll stand on its own. Issue #6, out in March, is also the debut on the book of new series artist Daniel Acuña.

The story picks up on Archangel impregnating Pestilence, and also draws in Kang the Conqueror. Remender also discloses that the story will tie into Jason Aaron’s Thor: God of Thunder series, particularly the axe that young Thor uses in that book.

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File under “Zombies really are unstoppable, after all,” as ICv2 measures the success of The Walking Dead in bookstores last month:

Not content to hold the top two slots on the November according to the ranking of “Top 20 Graphic Novels” sold in the book channel provided exclusively to ICv2 by Nielsen BookScan, Robert Kirkman’s zombie drama also shows up in positions 6, 8, 11, 13, 15, and 19 for a whopping eight titles in the top 20.

The rest of the top 5 bookstore releases are Building Stories (the new Chris Ware release), Superman Earth One Volume Two and, in a surprise appearance, a Marvel book: Avengers Vs. X-Men. Wonder if this bodes well for the Marvel NOW! future for Marvel’s bookstore fortunes…?

It is, in many ways, hard to consider the many ways in which Gail Simone being fired off Batgirl via email last week seems like a mistake, isn’t it?

For one thing, there’s the way it looks, from a PR standpoint; coming less than a week after Karen Berger stepped down as Executive Editor and SVP at DC, it revives memories (and discussion) of DC’s perceived sexism both in terms of those working at the publisher (Berger and Simone were not only the most high-profile women within the company, for awhile Simone was the only female creator working on an ongoing title at the company, remember) and the output of the publisher (Last week also saw the debut of this cover, reminding people of just how naked Starfire is these days).

For another, there’s the simple idea of Who could replace Gail on the book? Anyone who follows Gail can tell that she adored working on Batgirl and Barbara Gordon as a character; there was an excitement and passion that was evident and, I think, it was reflected in the sales figures for the book; that Batgirl was such a consistently good performer for DC had less to do with fandom’s hunger for Batgirl, I believe, and far more to do with the readership’s response to the work Simone was putting in not just in writing the series, but promoting it (and the New 52 as a whole). I have no idea who new editor Brian Cunningham has in mind to replace her, but I’ll be very surprised if there’s not a drop in excitement around the book no matter what as a result of this move.

This means that Simone doesn’t have an ongoing DC title for the first time since mid-2003, which feels pretty massive in and of itself; in the last nine years, she has been one of the most vocal DC creators and one of the few DC creators to consistently discuss (and defend) DC’s occasionally-confusing/confounding decisions. It’s hard not to read Cunningham’s decision as an abandonment by the publisher of the creator, and that again seems like a terrible move, publicity-wise, no matter what you think of Simone as a writer. It also – almost by proxy – adds Simone to the long list of once-loyal creators DC has lost in the last few years, from Greg Rucka through Grant Morrison, and draws attention to the fact that DC’s bench of high-profile writing talent is beginning to look a little bare these days.

Presuming, of course, that Simone stays off Batgirl longterm – Surely I’m not the only person who gets a “Mark Waid fired off Fantastic Four” vibe from all this? – the best thing DC could do now would be to publicly embrace Simone and try and repair the relationship by whatever means necessary. Otherwise… Well, Marvel should really be reaching out about now and seeing if Paul Cornell could be just the first New 52 writer they could pull over for a Marvel NOW! book…

This is just… amazing. And in the bad sense. Steve Bissette shares this from Starstuck co-creator Elaine Lee:

Look, I’ll say it now. [Mike] Kaluta and I, just week before last, received a letter from a Marvel/Disney attorney, challenging our rights to Starstruck, a project that was briefly with Marvel/Epic, supposedly their creator-owned imprint, almost three decades ago. Since then, we’ve been published by Dark Horse and IDW. This has sent us rummaging through 30-year-old documents, looking for proof that we own what we own. We’ve found several letters that back up our claim that the rights were returned to us, and things seem to have quieted down, but we are still looking for more “just in case.” You don’t screw around with The Mouse.

Starstruck was first published (as a creator-owned title) by Marvel’s Epic imprint in the 1980s, but re-appeared in 2009 as an IDW reprint.

I wonder if any other creators who published through Epic in the ’80s have been contacted? I mean, the Pinis are still doing Elfquest, Sergio and Mark are still doing Groo, but both of those were published elsewhere before Epic… Are there other books that debuted through Epic and have made re-appearances in recent years? Aside from DC’s upcoming Marshall Law reprint, of course… When did Starlin last put out a Dreadstar book…?

ICv2 raises a simple question: Did Marvel Comics treat Spider-Man’s 30th birthday as a bigger deal than it did the character’s 50th?

Plans for the year were summarized in the December 1991 issue of Internal Correspondence, the precursor to ICv2, based on presentations at Marvel’s sales meeting for distributors.  A Spidey event was planned for every month of 1992, including a traveling Spider-Man museum display, Spider-Man character appearances around the country, a nationwide Spidey-party in retail stores for which special kits were sent out.  Editorial material included a special edition of Amazing Fantasy #15, the first Marvel Masterworks for Amazing Spider-Man, special editions, and bookshelf releases.

There was also an article in that issue of Internal Correspondence about a James Cameron Spider-Man movie planned for 1993, so not all the plans came to pass, but there was a lot of promotional activity and a substantial publishing program supporting the anniversary.

I could be wrong, but I feel as if the same has been true of all of the big Marvel birthday dates in recent memory; the 50th anniversaries of not only Spidey, but the Hulk, Thor and the Fantastic Four have all passed relatively without much hoopla from Marvel itself (Sure, there have been variant covers, but when aren’t there variant covers these days?). At least Amazing Spider-Man got an oversized birthday issue. Could it be that reminding fans and readers that these characters have been around for five decades isn’t something that’s seems particularly attractive these days…?

Next year, of course, sees the 50th anniversary of Marvel’s big cash cows: Iron Man, the Avengers, and the X-Men. It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, happens to mark those birthdays…

One of the fun things about the release of Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story is the fact that it’s brought up things like this, from Tony Isabella:

Sol and John asked me what I would do if I were Marvel’s editor-in-chief.  Which stunned me.  I thought of myself as “the new kid” and didn’t think I was qualified for the job.  Maybe I could handle the creative end of things okay, but I was way out of my league when it came to the business and production aspects of the job.

I told them I didn’t think the editor-in-chief should be competing with the other writers.  I would want to do some writing – it was,
after all, my first love – but I thought the top titles had to be earned and not seized by virtue of rank. Stan and Roy had surely
earned the right to write whatever they wanted.  Their successors, not so much.

Howe’s book explains the weird 1970s period where Marvel apparently couldn’t keep an Editor-in-Chief for any appreciable length of time, and this fits right in the middle of that time… and demonstrates, perhaps, how uncertain and directionless the company appeared to be at the time.

Retailer Brian Hibbs on the realization that today’s DC Entertainment is a very, very different beast from the DC Comics of yore:

So, when DC Entertainment suddenly broke that promise right before Thanksgiving, I was fairly appalled. Not only because they didn’t have the common decency to tell us to our faces, not only because it directly no-fooling broke a promise they made to our faces just a year before, but mostly because it doesn’t make a tremendous amount of business sense to give a weaker segment a clear market advantage over your primary economic engine. It just doesn’t make sense if there’s not momentum in that direction, and the publishers are telling us that there isn’t.

Ultimately it shows the retail community that, all of their pretty words to the contrary, DC Entertainment really doesn’t care about any of our businesses. DC Comics, under Paul Levitz, always and unflinchingly had our backs, but that left us 38 months ago when Paul was removed from the company.

In that time, DCE has abandoned most of the policies that made it a great publisher in the first place — walking away from creators (like Alan Moore’s wishes on “Before Watchmen”), from imprints (the slow Warner’s strangulation of Vertigo appears to have finally chased out Karen Berger), and now from the Direct Market.

The second Marvel NOW! “Next Big Thing” press conference this week is all about the new Young Avengers, from the Phonogram creative team of writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie. Things are scheduled to start around 3 p.m. eastern — this page will be updated continuously, so keep hitting refresh. New art from January’s first issue is here.

First question, from Marvel marketing’s James Viscardi — what are fans in for when they pick up the first issue? Gillen says it’s one of his “full-on rush of ideas books,” and that he’s not looking to replicate the prior Young Avengers series. “It’s a book about optimism, and how optimism tends to get crushed, and how it’s worth persisting,” the writer continues.

Talk turns to the cast, with Kid Loki up first. “Last time we saw the Young Avengers, they were actually in the ironic situation of being accepted by the Avengers. And at that moment, none of them wanted to do it anymore, which is one of my favorite things about the end of Children’s Crusade,” Gillen says. Kid Loki is the catalyst of getting them together. Exactly why he’s putting the team together is a mystery, initially.

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