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Friday, March 25, 2005
Your Bitter and Cynical Thought For The Day
I was reminded of this at work today: Quesada said Marvel is launching a significant number of new characters as compared to a few years ago. The E-I-C said that since the speculator bust its been hard to launch any new characters, explaining why icons like Spider-Man and Wolverine appeared so frequently in other books. According to Quesada it was the only way for new books to survive.
But Quesada said new Marvel launches are starting to work again, because there has been a market shift and/or theyre getting good at it again, and either way it's a good thing that new launches are seeing more success.
My first thought was: So...Marvel pushing new characters on comics buyers has nothing to do with them having already sold the film, television, toy and video game rights to every existing character they own? My second thought was: how are female versions of Spider-Man and Wolverine, and teen versions of the Avengers "new" characters?
Of Marvel's recent "new" character launches, Livewires is selling respectably, but it's selling to Adam Warren fans. After two days I don't think we've sold a single copy of Spellbinders. In fact, the only "new" character title to launch from Marvel in recent years to sell well has been Runaways, which is being picked up largely by people who started out reading some other title written by Brian Vaughn.
Yes, there was no post this morning because I still wasn't feeling well, and was still feeling grumpy. My mood was not improved by having to deal with many people at work today who needed to be introduced to the concept of soap. Or by having to deal with "mint-hounds" (you know, people who pore over every single book looking for even the slightest flaw or imperfections) badgering me for "bronze age" back issues. And now I have to look forward to people looking for "copper age" and soon, I'm sure, "brass age" comics.