Fred Van Lente tweeted last month that he was going to be on a November debuting Avengers title… yes there’s ANOTHER one coming. Vice President Executive Editor Tom Brevoort recently spoke to CBR about Van Lente’s (premature?) tweets:
Brevoort: Yes, Fred is working on something other than “Power Man & Iron Fist” that you’ll hear about very soon. And yeah, there are occasions where information gets out ahead of time. But all of our creators hopefully know and understand that it’s in everybody’s best interest to release information about what’s coming up in their assorted titles at the time at which we get the best PR bump from it and consequently the best sales bump. Everyone gets excited and wants to talk about the things they’re working on immediately, but talking about things a year ahead of time means that when you actually get to the point when that comic is going on sale, it’s kind of old hat. It’s kind of played.
That having been said, we’re happy to tickle and tease and tantalize the audience – our audience as individuals, as each creator has their own fan club or following, and as a group. It’s fine that Fred tweeted what he did, in that it’s gotten people talking. It’s just a part of that game. But this wasn’t a lone hand activity. The guys that do talk about things without checking first tend to be newcomers who don’t really understand what they’re doing, and they tend to get schooled on the fact that talking out of turn doesn’t get them the best returns when the book actually ships. But by and large, that doesn’t tend to be the kind of creator that works at Marvel. The guys who I think of as our home team – our core contracted creators – have some understanding of how our machine works and how the PR is timed to get the most attention, the most eyeballs, the most intrigue in terms of accomplishing what the actual goal is which is getting people to buy these actual comics.
