Marvel Relaunching In May (Again)
 

Isn't this like the 10th time they've done this since 2000?

Ha. This is the comment you see in response to this announcement all over the web.

And it's true. Someone put it pretty well when they said Marvel is like "the boy who cried wolf". This is a much needed relaunch after a terrible year with fans/P.R. in 2017, a new editor in chief on board, a desire for new talent...but they've done the relaunch thing so many times now that it may not resonate as much as it should.

For me personally, they can relaunch or not all they want. It won't matter a damn thing, to me, until they get some artists and writers back that I want to see. I mean no disrepsect to their current staff, and they do deserve a chance to prove themselves, but it's also fair to acknowledge readers like myself are following writers/artists more than we are following characters. Morrison, Hickman, King, Way, Gaiman, Rucka, Brubaker, Remender, Opena, Capullo, Quitely, Craig, etc.
There are so many active creators who's work I love and follow, but none of them are at Marvel.

And hell, I'm probably in the minority when it comes to my reading/purchasing habits, which is fine. But that's what they'd have to do to get my money back. I'll say they did a good job grabbing Donny Cates from Image, and the Venom series they've just announced by him has me intruiged.

They literally just did this with Legacy or Generations or whatever it was, didn't they? They keep seeing diminishing returns with relaunches, but they don't learn a lesson.

Unfortunately for them, a lot of those guys just don't seem to be interested anymore. I don't ever expect to see Morrison there again in any real capacity. Hickman, Rucka, Remender and Quitely already made their names and seem quite content to stick to creator owned for now (though Hickman has hinted at maybe going to DC for a while, but that does Marvel no favors). Quitely's too slow to do anything but miniseries, really. Gaiman's a renowned novelist and public speaker, so dude ain't doing s*** in comics but for rare occasions. Bru's not interested outright, saying he doesn't want to do superheroes anymore, unless his position changed recently. Which leaves King, Way and Capullo, who all have sweet gigs with DC right now.

I think that's the thing that's kind of lost in the shuffle. A lot of the reason Marvel's had to staff themselves with a lot of new faces is because they didn't really have a choice. Jason Aaron aside, a lot of the creators they considered central to building the Marvel Universe all left. Brubaker, Rucka, Fraction, Remender and Hickman all left within three years of each other and they made up a LOT of Marvels brain trust. Even Bendis is gone now. Best they can do is what they did last time and pick up some people from the indies, hoping for some breakout creative voices, but they're probably not getting the sort of gold mine of unique voices all at once they did last time.

Marvel must be seriously hurting their brand with this constant relaunch B.S.

It's time for all comic books to shut down for a few years then come back with some good new material.

Talk about torpedoing what's left of comic stores out there.

Oh yeah, why not? I'm sure DC, IDW, Boom, Dark Horse, etc. would all be so happy to completely shut down production and wipe out the entire industry because Marvel can't stick to a direction or stop relaunching. Creators too, I'm sure it'll be just the easiest to get other work for the time being. Comic shops would be supportive too. All fans of every other publisher or of creator owned stuff would all just be thrilled too and totally understanding.

Sarcasm out of the way, you do that - and no one ever would, but for the sake of argument - the industry is not coming back. If they tried, they have all the same problems they had before, but now the lifers have been cut from the habit, routine and cycle and some may not come back, so they're dealing with an even smaller pool. They'd also have to pin all their hopes on digital growing exponentially as well, because the rest of the comic shops would all die in the meantime and, as crap as they are, Diamond probably goes under in this scenario too, so there's no one to distribute.

I just pick and choose the best stories tbh. And art.

Marvel should just hire some of the people from twitter. That stuff is an entertaining read and very creative. They also all have foolproof ideas for running a business. I think the best thing someone can do is just stick with IDW.

This is a great breakdown, but one could argue that these creators not being at Marvel is the fault of the company. Maybe they aren't so favorable to work for because of editorial reasons.

Why on earth don't they have an Ultimate line anymore? It seems like a no-brainer to attract renowned creators to give their uncompromised take on their stable of characters, without disturbing the 616/Prime universe.

This is me %100 :lol:

I would like to see some new characters and have a few characters retired.
Thats what I love about manga is that there is so much variety and so many stories to tell.

I feel like the comic industry kind of limits its characters by trying to have so many characters in a universe

Does this mean they are going to play havoc with Amazing Spider-Man's numbering again?:roll:

We just got Venom back and by that I mean Eddie Brock. Leave him out this. Bring on the Parker/Watson marriage. It is in need for a new beginning! That is all.

Marvel and DC comics business is only kept to not let others have the market and also to make face so they don't see criticism. Both their parent companies don't care for the business and are happy just owning the IP since it gives them tons of profit through other media. Eventually one day they'll cancel all the comics once they don't see any reason to keep it because it's more trouble than it's worth so yeah if anything fans should be happy they're getting these at all. Huge multinationals like WB and Disney will cancel far more successful business ventures for far less reasons. It sucks that they still don't give fans what they want and continue to try to cater to a mass audience but what can you do.

TL;DR Every comic you from those two companies are literally the bones their parent companies throw to fans and care nothing for them.

Please no.

Morrison, sure. They basically took a dump on what he did with the X-Men the second he left and he hasn't seemed keen on doing anything with them since. So there's seemingly hard feelings there.

A lot of the rest - Fraction, Hickman and Remender, for example - seem like, from comments, they just felt it was time to move on after six to eight years with Marvel and they wanted to get back to the creator owned stuff they'd found or were finding success with. Bru just seemed burned out on superheroes, basically said he had nothing left to say with them and seems like he mostly wants to work on noir stories now. Maybe they could have convinced some of the others, minus Bru, but they mainly seemed ready to just go do their own stuff with Image.

The others are mainly just busy dudes who don't do many comics to start with or are guys DC snapped up, because they seem to have learned a lesson from the days when Marvel pulled guys out from under their noses.

Kind of? It feels like they'll publish anything over there, sure - not always for the better - but manga's got its own problems, partly in how samey a lot of the work can get. Especially if some hot new concept hits it big and about a dozen imitators start up in its wake, which happens every year.

Regardless, if you want more variety in American comics, check out Image, Boom, Dark Horse, Oni Press, maybe even Dynamite (I don't even know what they're doing these days). Publishing original work from creators across comics is pretty much Images entire business model these days, aside from Spawn and Savage Dragon I guess. I'd say IDW too, but I'm pretty sure everyone on this forum is well aware of them already and they're more licensed comics than creator owned anyway.

I think it’s fair to point out the reasonable explanations that may have caused these writers and artists to find work elsewhere, but I think the pattern tells the story - the fan favorite creators just aren’t at Marvel. There’s a root problem there.

I know the marriage (at least to MJ) ain't your cup of tea, but the majority love it and it's time they brought it back. Part of Spider-Man's ongoing problems is it's absence. The only reason it's gone is because of the upper brass' maddeningly stubborn insistence Peter remain "youthful". It's not even a line-wide commitment considering we've never went a year without the marriage in publication elsewhere (Renew Your Vows, Newspaper Strip), so what IS the point of keeping it out of the mainstream stuff? All of Peter's alternative love interests have proven to be duds and fail to measure up to MJ.

Just damn well fix what was never broken.

I guess we just don't agree, at heart, on what whether it was broken or not. You don't think it was, I do. Which is fine. I just honestly don't want it back (partly because I don't like it in the comics, partly because of the effect it has on the outside media). But hey, we had a good discussion about that before, so no big reason to repeat it.

Oh, absolutely, it's reasonable to say that, whatever the reasons, most of the big favorites of the prior decade are gone and that's an issue for them. I think this is just the natural downturn that was always bound to happen due to them relying so heavily on superstar creators - and tricks like events and relaunches - coming back to haunt them. Now they have to fill the void with talented newcomers who don't have the immediate star power and it's leaving the line without some luster.

At least some of them will return over time though, I'm sure, if only to occasionally get their name out there again with the superhero audience and thus try to entice them to the outside work.

Dear Comic Companies:

It's okay to have more than one universe for your books.
Please stop rebooting the whole thing in an effort to make just one that everyone will like.

It won't work.

Legacy numbering and new number 1s, trying to have you cake and eat it I see, Marvel editorial.

Alternate Universe titles are a hard sell...as Renew Your Vows and Spider-Gwen are currently experiencing with ever decreasing sales. Marvel's best stab at one (Ultimate Universe) steadily went downhill with only Miles Morales holding it up.

no wonder when the Ultimates was a bunch of unlikable assholes and the X-Men was a bunch of unlikable assholes and the FF was a bunch of unlikable assholes. Only Spider-Man was any decent, and that one Hulk comic where he wanted pancakes and that one Gambit story.

Oh god yeah. The Ultimate Universe, Ultimate Spider-Man aside, was schlock where everyone was a grim, unlikable asshole that it's impossible to read. It's amazing to me that The Ultimates was a popular thing at one point. I mean, yeah, big shock since Mark Millar launched and established most of those books, but still. None of those characters were worth following or investing in. The Ultimate Captain America might have been the worst version of the character to actually stick around for a while.

I wasn't sad when it ended. The line was garbage from near the start, buoyed mainly by the fact that Ultimate Spider-Man was good near the whole way through.

I always thought the Ultimate Line was created in an effort to court the Dark and Gritty DC Cinematic Universe folks over across the Marvel line.

I found them entertaining for what they were.
It was like...allowing the Marvel Universe to be populated by Indy Publisher Heroes from the 90s.

Didn't the Ultimates line come out about a decade before that existed, though?

I was more referring to the More Dark and Serious crowd, and...misspeaking wildly in the process.

It was what it was because 9/11 literally happened the previous year, so it's basically a sort of reaction to that, plus a reflection of the Bush era. Which explains jingoistic ass Ultimate Cap, among other things. It was trash, but the kind people wanted to read at the time, after that real life event.

All the funnier, given it was written by a Scot.

I even question why was MJ built up (mentioned in ASK#15 and teased repeatedly from ASM#25 to #ASM#42) only to go on one date interrupted by The Rhino? Gwen Stacy herself only seemed to be an extended block to the inevitable. Perhaps this is a separate thread.

Stan Lee's talked about it before and she was just one of several women orbiting Peters life, because he thought it interesting to have different women Peter might think he was in love with. That's it. I think he's even said he intended Gwen to be the one, though I could be mis-remembering the mans words on that one. It was more Gerry Conway who liked MJ and looked to make her more of a thing, so he killed Gwen off for that purpose and tweaked MJ. MJ became more of a fixture from there, along with the other women that came and went from Peter Parkers life.

Gwen was killed off cause fans at the time hated her. I think MJ and Peter works best together, and now that we have Miles, Peter should be able to be an adult and happily married because wow bachelor Peter sucks.

Gerry Conway has admitted outright in forewords and the like that he killed off Gwen Stacy entirely because he liked MJ better.

I don't know what fans at the time thought - maybe they did hate her, I wasn't alive then and have never looked into it - but I'm going with what the people involved said as far as the why.

People were just as livid when Gwen died. Slott has often said that if the internet were around in the 70s, the backlash would have been astronomical, much like how the marriage controversy stands with fans today.

Gwen's gained mythical status as the "idealized" love in Peter's life, even despite the attempts at deconstructing that with the Sins Past storyline.

Really? I didn't know that. It's a bit harder to know what fans at times like that might have thought, aside from what creators might have said. I remember it was said for a while that Jason Todd was killed because fans abhorred him, but it's since come out that the voting was actually super close, for example.

Stan Lee was never happy about it, I know that much, but I never knew if fans shared his sentiment or not.

Oh, yeah, absolutely there was some idealization going on there. She's been portrayed as near a saint since. Which, I mean, is sort of fair in how Peter remembers her. We all kind of sand the rough edges away when someone we love dies, so it tracks for him. Out-of-universe it makes sense that people who liked the character would act the same way too.

Was Sins Past the one with Norman? That was just pretty yuck. Though the idea of deconstructing it a bit is not a terrible one.

Marvel (and DC) have no choice. If you want to still have Spider-Man and Batman existing in 2018, while somehow acknowledging their past adventures from the 60s WHILE SOMEHOW KEEPING THEM THE SAME AGE, they have no choice but to do resets, relaunches, rebirths and crises.

Not every year or so, they don't.

Yeah, and it only came out the way it did because the original suggestion was to make Peter the father. JMS had some strange ideas.

Yeah, he did. At least half of them pretty bad.

Some were pretty good, though. I don't remember if I mentioned it before, but I did always like the idea of Peter ending up a school teacher. That always seemed like a career that fit the character. Though it is a bit hard to make work.

I like most of JMS's ideas for Spider-Man. Even the darker, yucky ones.

I mean, we all go through ugly things in life. It pains me to say, but I think Peter needs true tragedy in his life. The stomach-churning kind you can't just wave away. It's how he deals with that tragedy that inspires us.

Sometimes I think writers/creators hold back too much when it comes to Peter Parker. That's what I loved about James Cameron's unused Spider-Man movie script - It makes Peter into a total outcast. The script opens up with him popping his pimples in front of a mirror, and later has him spying on Mary Jane while she changes. It's not that I think it's admirable behavior, but you need the contrast.

Peter's life is sad, demented, offputting, and lonely. That's what makes it so special when free's himself by hopping into the "red & blue's", soaring above the city and finally letting his mouth run wild.

Solicits are out and it seems like everyone jumped the gun and it's not a full relaunch again. Just some books are. Captain America is going past issue #700 with the numbering intact, Hulk is keeping its numbering, a lot are, actually, while Spider-Man and Iron Man just hit their milestone issues. The only books that seem to be relaunching right now are Avengers, Black Panther and Venom. So they are keeping with the Legacy stuff, except starting fresh with the books that either already released a movie this year or have one in the pipeline.

Still, that we all immediately assumed "relaunch" says a lot about how much they've abused that.

It's not the darkness that bothers me so much as the fact that a lot of the ideas were really just silly or head shakers. Sins Past was bad, but that's one storyline. The entire run basically revolved around/led up to the Spider Totem nonsense, which is probably the bigger eye roller. At least they've seemed mostly content to pretend Sins Past didn't happen, but I don't think we're ever completely escaping the totem.

That was my favorite career Peter was in. However, I would love for him to be a Chemistry/Biology professor at Empire State University.

Gwen seemed bland more than idealistic. That was my takeaway reading through her ASM#31-#121 run. MJ seems to challenge yet compliment Peter.