Wizard World Buzz

Mind you, between Avengers and New Avengers and Young Avengers In Love and the Legion of Avengers and Thunderbolt Avengers and Birdman's Pal Venger, I am a little worried about the X-ification of the franchise.

Fuck Avenger - where's the Peanut series!?!!

Also - Wildsiderz? Seriously?

It's a J. Scott Campbell project, he's been drawing that logo since 1996!

I guess I can understand why Mr. Bendis took this route, but really it makes him come off as a hubris-filled yutz. The project died. Move on. Yeah, there's a million great projects that could have been (some of them basically done, just unpublished), now there's a million and one. Talking it up just makes you seem to be a larger scale (but still quite full of yourself) fanboy.

That said, I'd like to see Ed Brubaker's take on those characters. But I'm interested in just about any of his takes on characters.

The vast majority of the Wildstorm stuff fails to impress (but for the ABC line). Unsure on the IPC books. Don't know the characters and don't know who's actually involved with it. Until I see more, I reserve the right to be cautious.

All the Avengers stuff is pretty yawn-inducing on my end.

Yes, I'm notoriously difficult to please...

Word on the street is: it's not Black Knight, it's Sentry.

Sentry! Well that's ... something.

As far as the Bendis announcement ... I don't know how to characterize it. I'm never really sure where to set the bar for professionalism in the comics industry, and Quesada -- in both good ways and bad -- has certainly lowered it in the past. (By "professionalism" here, I think I really mean "professional public conduct," since that's all I can really gauge.)

But Quesada wasn't the target here, Levitz was; it'd be one thing to call Quesada out on something, because I don't think he'd take it too badly and he wouldn't be stepping out of his public persona to respond in kind. cf "U-Decide" etc. -- he's definitely the Oscar of this pair. If the tables had been switched here, and Bendis was talking about Quesada nixing a book because of not liking Levitz, I don't think there'd be an issue.

I think you do have to see this as different from a run of the mill project cancellation, though, when both sides apparently agree that it was done because of a personal dislike for someone who wouldn't have any hands on it. That's an issue that goes way beyond one project -- if that's really Levitz's (and Wayne's) position, it affects any future DC-Marvel projects, too.

Also, I think Bendis outing this sort of thing isn't an issue of BMB unwilling to let it go, but BMB outing this thing because of the state of the industry. Marvel & DC are #1 and 2 in the industry (obviously), but the industry isn't doing well. A book like Batman / Daredevil (featuring 2 characters that starred in their own rather successful movies, written & drawn by fan-fave creators) would do pretty well in both the direct market & in the Waldenbooks / Borders market, possibly better than Avengers / JLA (if only because of a possibly cheaper cover price).

The fact that the book was killed simply because of one guy's distaste of another exemplifies the sort of short-sighted thinking that's neutered the industry in recent years, and while it's a bit Barnumy for Bendis (& Wayne) to release this story in such a showy manner, it's an efficient way to garner buzz & get some discussion started. If it stopped Quesada (& Bendis) (& Millar) (& whomever) from taking pot shots @ DC & exacerbating the dipshitty Marvel Zombie / DC Stiff divide, super bonus.

Also, in response to Matt calling Bendis a large-scale fanboy - when in Rome, it don't do any good to speak French.

Point taken, David. But that doesn't make what he did any more professional.

Though Tep might be right in that what's taken as professional in comics ain't the same as what's taken as professional in say, real estate. Which is what attracts a lot of folks to the comics biz in the first place.

And if we're taking this to a discussion as to the condition of the industry and the big two within it, we're gonna need a bigger thread (as Roy Scheider once sagely stated...)

Newsaram features a link in their WW coverage titled PHOENIX IS BACK, which is actually a link to an article from ComicBookResources.com, but it looks like CBR.com is down for the count. GEE COULD THERE BE A CONNECTION?

There have been a couple links from Newsarama to CBR lately, is there a formal connection between them? (And if so, why?) I don't remember that happening before, but maybe I wasn't reading enough articles.

(Mostly I skim the headlines: "Steranko Still Mad," "Michael Turner Protege Delays New Issue," or "Straczynski Protege Once Again Female And Half His Age" is usually news I can handle unelaborated.)

That reminds me, I need to buy a bunch of Steranko SHIELD stuff and do a thread about it. That prestige-format thing -- Nick Fury vs SHIELD? what the hell was it called? -- ruled my world when it came out. I don't even remember if he did more than the covers, but I would have happily bought a poster of every cover.

I think that Newsarama and CBR had some kind of partnership to share coverage of Chicago this year, explaining the cross-linkage.

CBR's probably slammed with people trying to get the secret dirt on Chicago from Rich Johnston.