NOTE: The individual opinions of each Roundtable contributor is their own, and is not representative of anybody but that contributor.
RUMOR: Mark Millar to write new Thor series (credit: All The Rage)
“Starman” Matt Morrison (Writer of Looking To The Stars): NO!
Paul Sebert (Nexus contributor): Forsooth I doth verily hope Millar dost play this series concept strait, and dost for naught play this for most tasteless jokes on Asgardian prose.
But in all seriousness, the most lackluster sales of Thor Son of Asgard proveth that alas no matter how good yon creative team is on Thor, the efforts are for naught. For alas we citizens of Midgard haf not carred for the character in years. I doubteth placing even the largest of stars on yon noble Thunder god’s book can help.
Manolis Vamvounis (Writer of Leave Your Spandex @ the Door): I’d be interested in an Ultimate Thor more. At this point, the mainstream Thor has lost all his appeal. If they’re looking for a new writer, why not knock on Warren Ellis’s door, since they’re all chummy again? His short run on the title was the best that title has seen in the last decade or so: truly innovative stuff
RUMOR: Mark Millar pushing for Rob Liefeld to receive consultant job at Marvel (credit: All The Rage)
Matt Morrison: NOOO!!
James Hatton (Writer of Diner Talk & Nexus reviewer): Oh why? Consult on what?! What could Robbo possibly offer Marvel other than hackneyed ideas that we thankfully gave up on years ago?!
Iain Burnside (As of next week, your new Roundtable party host!): Why is this such a surprise? If Bendis can get Marvel to hire all his mates then Millar can do the same. Besides, enough people seem to be buying the X-Force mini to keep the money men happy, so he’ll probably get in.
Paul Sebert: Surely he must speak in jest… for if not it appears yon future Thor writer Mark Millar haf fallen upon the mischievous spell of the foul trickster god Loki. Fie on you Loki, fie on your foul villainy in bringing back yon daft hack Liefeld.
Jason Berek-Lewis (Writer of A View From Over The Edge): My feelings about Rob should be well known by now, and besides Image/Extreme his best success has been at the House of Ideas.
I really think that at the end of the day, Rob is an ideas man, but not good
at executing those ideas.
So, I think Mark Millar is going about this the right way. You give Rob a blank canvas, say “Go play” and he comes up with these great ideas and then – BANG! – someone else has to execute them.
It’s a foolproof plan – Rob’s concepts still rock and they still sell (Deadpool/Cable, X-Force) …
THIS WILL ROCK! (If it ever gets off the ground!)
Manolis Vamvounis: What would rob exactly consult on? Would he push for more generic covers on the books? Aim for simplistic and meaningless plots? Increase the heroes’ teeth count and constipation frequency? I don’t get the ‘fun’ness of Rob’s work, but it seems he has an appeal to kids. Fine. Get him a Marvel Age book, I think he’ll actually be better than 90% of the artists currently employed on that line anyway. But making him a creative consultant is just… mind-boggling.
Mystique cancelled with issue #24
Matt Morrison: NOOOOOO!!!
James Hatton: Oh for the love of pete, why can’t McKeever keep a writing job at
Marvel, when they are constantly giving the aforementioned Liefeld the rub. What?! Did I blaspheme God? Okay, so I have”¦but did I do something reaaaallly bad to deserve this?
Ben Morse (On the way out”¦and he writes The Watchtower): Trying getting your columns done less than two weeks late”¦
Hatton: McKeever is one of the great untapped talents right now who keeps writing books that are excellent that just don’t last. Mary Jane trumps Jubilee 3,000 times
over – Mystique trumps X-Force, Rogue, AND Gambit… grrrrrrrrr….
Iain Burnside: Paul Jenkins can’t write anymore issues of Spectacular Spider-Man as of April ’05 (I think? #27?).
Sean McKeever’s big Marvel title will be no more as of February ’05.
Do I really need to spell it out?
Morse: Sorry, Iain, but Jenkins already said in an interview that Spectacular is cancelled after he leaves…
Burnside: I know, but this way they could have kept it going for at least one more arc and given McKeever something more high profile, which he certainly deserves.
Paul Sebert: Interesting observation but… it appears Spectacular’s officially ending with Jenkins run. Although I suppose they might just launch a new title for McKeever to play with.
Dammit… dammit… dammit. McKeever’s a man of constant sorrow. Honestly I can’t think of a guy with so much talent, with so much bad luck getting titles to sell this side of Christopher Priest. McKeever’s run on Mystique was a really fun, really interesting read and it deserved to sell a lot better.
Anyway McKeever says he has another project coming out from Marvel in March so let’s keep our fingers crossed on this one and hope this is the one that takes off.
Alpha Flight cancelled
Iain Burnside: Yeah, yeah, bring back Mystique and Sentinel and we’ll talk…
Paul Sebert: I had a bit of fun at this book’s expense back in my Marvel News & Views column before it launched, but was surprised to find it actually wasn’t half bad. That said, while I admired the attempt Marvel producing an answer to DC’s “Formerly Known As the Justice League” alas this book wasn’t particularly memorable.
Jamie Hatton: I too was someone that shot this book down at first, and gave it
‘soso’ reviews for the first arc. I have changed my tune for the last few issues though. This new arc has potential as one of the best ‘inside joke’ mills in a very long time. The writing has finally started to fit the characters and when it breaks down – it’s turning out to be a fun book.
Sadly, without a BIG HIT AMAZING UBER BEGINNING!!!! or trade sales to back it up (which it doesn’t have a trade to support) I will miss it.
Manolis Vamvounis: I was rooting for this book from Day 1, because I know Lobdell still has the stones to pull comics magic, if he could just focus again. It had a rocky start, but everything since the end of the first arc has been very exciting and the characters have finally come to their peak and are interesting to read. I hope AF manages to pull a Spider-Girl and stay floating!
Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass replaces Darren Aronofsky as
director on Watchmen, still targeted for a summer 2006 release
Iain Burnside: To tell you the truth, I’m much more intrigued to see what the Wachowskis are going to do with V For Vendetta now. The Watchmen is a better comic, in my opinion, but anyone who knows anything about comics will tell you that it simply cannot work as a movie. It would require a feat on par with Peter Jackson’s painstakingly diligent treatment of Lord of the Rings to even hope to reach the bar the source material set. But as long as I’m here I may as well indulge in a bit of fantasy casting, so let’s have Brad Pitt as Ozymandias and Michael Keaton as Rorschach. I also think John Goodman would make a pretty good Comedian if he worked out for a bit, but nobody seems to agree with me so I tend to just shut up and watch the Big Lebowski on loop.
OVER THE LINE!
First look at Julian McMahon in Dr. Doom costume for Fantastic Four movie
Iain Burnside: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, but this will be to The Incredibles what Ultimate Fantastic Four is to the regular title – pointless.
Jamie Hatton: First we have THING looking like GRIG from THE LAST STARFIGHTER, and now we have Doom that looks like a very well done Cosplay outfit. Oh, let’s not forget that Sue & Johnny Storm are different ethnicities.
I would like to thank Marvel for saving me a few dollars and moving this from MUST SEE OPENING NIGHT to MIGHT SEE AT A MATINEE.
Manolis Vamvounis: This is the one casting in the movie that I really applaud. McMahon really fits the Doom bill for me. And the costume looks quite good, keeping to the feel of the comics design. Perhaps a more animatronic approach with a medieval clunky feel would have been more impressive, but I think they wanted to go for ‘sexy’ and ‘menacing’ here…
Marvel releases solicitations for February 2005
Paul Sebert: Hmmm so apparently Marvel’s launching a new imprint entitled “Marvel Next” apparently on Teen Superheroes. Which is a pretty smart plan as well, that’s still a badly under utilized demographic, and giving it such a bland name won’t scare away the manga phobes who killed the Tsunami line. (Oh and you people know who you are. And as the biggest Sentinel fan in the world, I have vowed to hunt you down one by one and hurt you… badly.)
As for the first batch of Marvel Next tittles, well… The jury’s still out on Young Avengers, as well precious little about the series has actually been released. Runaways re-launch is pleasant news and both the cover and the solicitation have me drooling. (Although I’m wondering when did Gert get so skinny?) Oh and Livewires looks like… an Adam Warren title. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing mind you.
I hate to admit it, but next to the Runaways re-launch, the thing I’m most looking forward to is Dan Slott and Ty Templeton’s “Spider-Man/Human Torch” miniseries. I loved what these two did on Batman Adventures, I love Slott’s take on She-Hulk, and this mini-series
seems to be modeled after Spider-Man’s Untold Tales… which I loved.
I love how the covers on Amazing Fantasy/Aran~a: Heart of the Spider manage to look striking without giving casual readers a clue as to what the character’s powers actually are. But issue two’s cover actually does a really neat job of showing why Anya’s waaaaay cooler than Spider-Girl. I mean when was the last time you saw May Parker running on top of a flock of brids. Can May Parker RUN ON TOP OF BIRDS?… I think not.
Frank Cho’s Shana the SHe-Devil mini *finally* launches this month… and as a longtime fan of Liberty Meadows, I’m going to proclaim this as the front runner for BREAST… I mean best miniseries of the new year.
NYX/X-Men Evolution’s X-13 not only has her own mini-series… but she’s also on the cover of Marvel Team-up… and damn does that outfit she has on MTU is the ugliest new costumes I’ve seen in a long time. Some characters should just stay in black leather.
Hey! Agent X is appearing on the cover of Cable/Deadpool… Cool. Hey they’re still publishing Cable/Deadpool… not so cool.
Had it not been for Aran~a (darn that pesky tilde’) Nightcrawler #6 would hands down have the coolest cover of this month’s previews. Really, really tight cover for my new favorite X-Book.
Last issues of Jubilee and Mystique are shipping this month. That makes me sad.
Hmmm wondery why New X-Men: Acadamy X/New Mutants isn’t in the Marvel Next line… because it would make perfect sense.
I thought the new Power Pack book was shipping… I’ll have to wait till next month I guess. *sighs*
Ben Morse: WHAT?!
Cable/Deadpool may be the most underrated title out there right now! It’s funny, it’s smart, it’s got great characters, it’s got great art…what more do you want, man?!?!
Matt Morrison: Neil Gaiman writing Thor instead of (blech) Mark Millar…
Rob Liefeld having nothing published except for the latest attempt to revive Youngblood, through some small independent publisher that nobody cares about…
And world peace, a balanced budget and a small island paradise of which I am supreme ruler”¦no particular order on those.
Sebert: I don’t mean to be too mean and while I’m fond of Niecieza as a writer…
and I consider both Mark Brooks and Patric Zircher to be decent artists well… to be honest after being mildly amused with the first issue I just lost patience with the book around issue 3 or 4 as the overall plot of the first arc struck me as convoluted as heck.
That and well with the cancellation of Weapon X I need a tertiary one-too-many X-book to make fun of. So it kind of fits the bill.
Also I’ve just never really liked Cable outside of the brief Solider X period.
Morse: You need to try the second arc.
Dan Jurgens to draw Captain America & The Falcon arc
Paul Sebert: As long as he’s going to stick to the art chores, but not write. I still
cringe at the memory of Jurgens’ Captain America run. Anyone remember Cache? How about Protocide?
