Odds and Ends

Why, what do I spy? Ultimate redesigns. Read about it here.

Just what the hell is going on in Ultimate Spider-Man anyway? Haven't read the book in forever.

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The award for BEST NON-ANSWER OF THE WEEK goes to Marvel Publisher, Dan Buckley!

When asked to explain why Marvel doesn’t act conservatively in terms of soliciting and publishing projects by creators with a history of lateness and scheduling problems, apparently this was supposed to suffice as an answer:

Dan Buckley: "We always try our best to plan things so that they ship on a timely basis, and this approach generally works. However, there are times when we (the publisher) may be to optimistic with deliveries and there are also times when the creative teams may have misjudged what they could do in a specific time period. It would be great if we could market a book only after it has been completed, but this is a business and we need to publish and sell products to keep the doors open, which means that we take calculated risks on determining the release schedules for projects."

Look, Marvel is a huge, multi-million dollar corporation nowadays, ok? They've made enough money from their changes in publishing policy and movie deals during the last five years that it really shouldn't be a problem to bankroll a project for a few months to make sure that the stinking project can ship on a regular basis, if not a monthly basis!

I also understand a company needing to have product on the shelves to sell, but, again, Marvel has more than enough of a bankroll and more than enough other products to keep the shelves full of Marvel titles while stockpiling titles being created by creators that are late.

Here's what I suggest and I'm going to break it down into easy to understand steps:

1. Receive project from writer.
2. Approve project from writer.
3. Edit project from writer.
4. Once completely edited, turn pages of script over to artist.
5. Allow artist to complete substantial portion of project before soliciting project for sale. If it's a four issue series, two issues need to be completed first, with the third issue being at least halfway done by the artist. If it's a six issue series, then four issues need to be completed before solicitation.

It's really not that hard to do and DC has even done this in the past. Bob Shreck did it with Kevin Smith's Green Arrow relaunch. Smith had to turn in six completed, edited scripts before the artist even saw the first script to start drawing it. If DC can do that to insure the successful launch of a series and maintain its momentum with readers, then why the hell can't Marvel do it?

Ponder this, children.