A post from my old Marvel blog concerning why CAPTAIN AMERICA: REBORN expanded from 5 to 6 issues and why consequently other stories that took place after its conclusion were going to be coming out first.
January 5, 2010 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General
There still seems to be a lot of ire over the shipping schedule of REBORN, and the fact that Steve Rogers has begun to turn up in other titles, such as CAPTAIN AMERICA: WHO WILL WIELD THE SHIELD, INVINCIBLE IRON MAN and NEW AVENGERS. Most of the chatter, I suspect, comes from people who don’t understand why this all happened, which is understandable.
I posted the following over at the Comics Should Be Good blog at CBR on 12/23 in answer to their post “HOW, EXACTLY, DOES THIS HAPPEN?” in regards to the release of CAP:WWWTS–but I figure that it could use wider dissemenation. So here it is again:
I’ve touched on this in a couple of other places, but just to go through it all once again:
We misestimated. When Ed and I first spoke about REBORN, we thought we’d be able to do it in five issues. So that’s how many we budgeted for, and thereafter we timed everything that was to follow, including SIEGE, from that point.
But by the time we got to issue #5, it became apparent that we needed more space. We needed an extra issue. Ed’s first draft of #5, which was to have been the conclusion, was rushed and cramped and unsatisfying. It didn’t work–we needed more space, and more pages than Hitch would have been able to produce for one issue on this timeframe.
So after looking at all of our options, and trying to take the long-term view of things as we did with CIVIL WAR earlier, we decided that it was better all around for the conclusion of REBORN to be good and take an extra issue, rather than trying to jam it all into the space we had. But that meant that REBORN #6 was going to ship later than a bunch of the stuff that was supposed to come after it–the cost of doing business.
I know this is going to irritate a lot of people, but I hope not as many and not for as lasting an amount of time as a crappy conclusion would have. All I can really say to you is, “Sorry, folks.” (which was on the recap page to WIELD not as a jab of some sort, but as an honest admission that yes, we know this isn’t a great situation, we’re not blind or stupid, but we’re making what we think is the best choice. Sincerely, sorry for the inconvenience, best we could do.)
Also, anybody who thinks that we’ve spoiled everything about REBORN #6 is clearly underestimating this creative team. There’ll still be some things to hopefully shock, thrill, intrigue and tantalize you and your fellow readers–and to create some comic shop chatter when the issue ships. At least that’s the plan–we’ll see how this all winds up playing out, both in the short and long term. And it’ll still look just as lovely, and make for a beautiful collection when all is said and done.
One last point I feel obliged to make. REBORN isn’t spot-on on time, but it’s really close, especially when you stop and consider that every issue so far has been at bare minimum 28 pages of story and art, rather than our standard 22 (and for no increase in price.) We’ve put out five issues in six months–not a perfect monthly, but not the horrifying abomination of scheduling that people want to imagine this is. We’re not even as far off course as CIVIL WAR was. But because this is Hitch, and people still want to punish him for the lateness of ULTIMATES, the actual extent of the ship-drift is blown way out of proportion. And over those five issues, with the additional pages he drew, that’s like an additional issue’s worth of material he generated.
Look, the situation stinks. I’m no happier about it than anybody else. And I understand your frustrations with this, and fully expect this chatter not to die down, especially as we move into the early stages of SIEGE proper. We made a call. Time will tell if it was the right one.
More later.
Tom B
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