Another post from my Marvel.com blog of years gone by, this one once again answering questions asked by the readers.
September 1, 2009 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General
A day of sickness put me behind on this by 24 otherwise-uneventful hours, but here I am, back and ready to dive into your Reader Questions.
To start off with, I need to state something that’s pretty obvious, but still needs to be said: I cannot say anything about any facet of the Disney deal at this time. As an operative of Marvel, it would be potentially illegal for me to do so. So any and all Disney-related questions have been taken off the list–and will eventually and inevitably be answered down the line by people who probably know far more about what’s going to be happening that I do right this second.
Now, on to your questions:
>With the upcoming slate of marvel movies on the way my question is who and why would you cast in the iconic roles of the avengers? The movie star doesnt have to be contemporary, just whomever you feel would fit the part. (I think a young Steve McQueen would be a perfect Cap)
Posted by denisclohessy on 2009-08-24 19:54:46>
I’ll be honest, I’m terrible at these sorts of things, so I’m afraid I have little to offer. I’ve never spent a lot of time thinking about which actors most resembled which super heroes. (There was one point many years ago when I would have said that John Cusack would have made a hell of a good Peter Parker, but that’s about it.) So, not the greatest question to start out with.
>How do you think twitter has affected the product from Marvel? >
I don’t know that it has especially. It’s another way for us to get our message out, and to connect with the Marvel fans on a virtually one-on-one basis, so it’s great on that level. But I can’t think of any ways in which it’s affected the books-unless some guys have started keeping their captions down to 140 characters and I haven’t noticed.
>What is the largest challenge of editing MARVELS PROJECT?
It seems like playing around with “how the Golden Age really happened” would a sticky project. Really digging the book, guys.
Posted by kyle-latino on 2009-08-24 20:39:20>
Glad you’re enjoying it. And it’s not incredibly challenging, in that not only am I familiar with a lot of the vintage material, but we’ve managed to get a big chunk of it back into print for the first time since the ’40s as part of our MASTERWORKS program. So it’s easier to seek out than ever. On Ed’s part, he’s got Jess Nevins, who’s a fiend for this stuff, providing him with background on all of the lesser-seen characters of Marvel’s early publishing days as Timely-but from there it’s all about what we can make of these guys going forwards, more than it is about maintaining every last detail in a strip that ran for two seven-page installments almost 70 years ago. So we tweak where we need to, but really not all that much to make everything work and make sense for a modern audience.
>What are the odds of some Clone Saga collections?
Posted by CylverSaber on 2009-08-24 21:31:36>
Pretty good, I believe-I was under the impression that we’d announced these already. Stay tuned-they’re coming.
>Can you give us any more hints or clues to alan heinburg and jim cheung’s 2010 avengers project? >
What, like the story or something? Not, not really, not at this point. But if all goes as planned, you’ll see it around the middle of next year.
> Do you think there is any chance for a future collaboration between Marvel and your Distinguished Competition?
Posted by EricSellers on 2009-08-24 22:58:20>
There’s always a possibility, but I’m not sure that anybody in a position to make a difference on either side of the fence is particularly jazzed about the notion of doing more of these. We’ve already covered a wide gamut in terms of crossovers we’ve already produced, some good and some bad, to the point where the whole thing has lost a lot of its uniqueness. It may just be that I’m spoiled because I got to work on AVENGERS/JLA, the last one, but I don’t feel any tremendous pull to do another one. Then again, there are cool creators who haven’t had a chance in the pool, so you never know.
>I’d like to know if the late acquisition of Marvel Man’ properties could end on relaunching a new Epic label. >
I’m not sure what one has to do with the other, potatoe. Marvelman isn’t a creator-owned property anymore, so I’m not sure why we’d place it into an Epic line. We might put it into its own continuity or universe, but that likely wouldn’t be under the Epic label.
> I’d like to know if we could expect new titles focused onto B-List characters, like the up-coming ‘Shang-Chi ‘ one-shot . I’m thinking to such characters like Dazzler, Sleepwalker, Machine Man, Black Cat, Wonder Man, maybe a new ‘Heroes for hire’ title..
Posted by notapotatoe on 2009-08-25 02:22:44>
There’s not a big push on to do titles for these characters. It all depends on whether somebody turns up with an excellent take on one or more of them. But the fact that they may have headlined books of their own for a short time in the past doesn’t guarantee that they can make a go of it in the fiercely-competitive world of the 21st century. They’re all good characters, and they all play a role within our Universe, but the only reason to try any of these guys in their own books again is because we think we’ve got an idea that really works. (And on a couple of these, we’ve had scant success a couple of times at bat already.)
More tomorrow, with any luck.
Tom B
(That image is from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #5, from a feature entitled “What if Spider-Man was done by other people.”)
The Tom Brevoort Experience 