Has anyone actually picked up the new New Universe books?

Elijya

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originally I heard Warren Ellis was gonna be handling this and I was interested, but when I didn't see he was working on any of the books, and I didn't recognize any other names, I didn't bother. Did anyone give them a try?
 
Yup. They've renewed my interest in th' line to th' point those comics have jumped up my backissue list.
 
Yeah, I haven't read the Nightmask book yet...but, I've read Starbrand, DP7, and Justice. Starbrand was really well done. It takes an parallel Earth traveling alien who is visiting everyone effected by the Starbrand and seeing how it effected them and the world around them. It's pretty comical, plus insightful. The alien remarks how with all that power, Starbrand basically made very little use of it. Also, makes jabs at Ducky and the hairstyles and such displayed in the old comic.

I also enjoyed the Justice one quite a bit. I noticed with Nightmask, it actually does the job of taking care of a major storyline that was dropped for no reason than to take the book in a different direction around issue #5 of the original series. I thought that was pretty cool.

As for DP7, it was an alright read. Not great, but sure a lot better than Nick Fury's Howling Commandos, if ya know what I mean.

Definitely the worst stuff was the second stories that they had in Amazing Fantasy's last two issues. Not worth even glancing at, really.
 
I have the entire run, I just haven't read them yet.

I got them about the same time I got the entire Ultraverse.

Now if I only owned the rights to the Ultraverse. Le sigh.
 
Ya know, I can't find my Nightmask issue. I know I brought it home, but once I put it away to be read later...poof. And I liked those AF shorts, they were pretty damn good.
 
Thought I'd post it for all to read. Interesting Stuff. Anyone want to venture a guess as to whether the original budget would've made a difference?

MDT: I'm sure this is one you get all time: the New Universe. How did that start and why did it ultimately become a comics casualty?

JS: Well, the way it started, about 2 1/2 years before our 25th anniversary, we had a staff meeting of all the vice presidents to talk about what we were going to do for it. Some ideas were bandied around.

So somebody said, "Look, this is an anniversary of a publishing event." "Well," I said, "there are two possibilities. You could start everything over from number one, like the Marvel universe reborn. Like the anniversary in May or June, all the titles wrap up the month before and start again the next month. Sort of like Marvel, 2nd edition, do it right and really make that spectacular." ... We were selling incredibly well so it wouldn't be a good idea to derail the train.

So I said, "Then let's celebrate the birth of a universe with the birth of another universe."

I walked out of there with a development budget of about $120,000 and I'd create eight titles. It was money to spend on research, sketches, things like that.

...[Tom] DeFalco came to me -- he was sort of my head editor, my assistant you might say -- he said let this be mine. This'll be my chance, he said. He said, I'll be like Archie, I'll have my own group of books. I said, you think you can handle this, here's your budget.

Months go by. Many months go by. I kept telling Tom, I want reports. I want to know what you have. I want to know what it's about. It was like almost a year and he had almost nothing. He'd come up with a couple of fairly lame characters... There was no point of difference. They were Marvel, but worse.

He hadn't spent much of the money, so we still had the money. I got together with him and Eliot Brown and we spent the day [pitching ideas]. I said, you know, the original Marvel Universe -- Stan's conception of it -- instead of doing something Superman or Green Lantern, he was really trying to do science fiction. The Fantastic Four didn't have costumes in the first issue. He was trying to be down to Earth.

The problem is Stan doesn't have any science background and the minute you start working with Kirby, you're going to get Atlantis under the ocean, the Blue Area on the Moon, a repulsor ray. It's like Kirby does fantasy, period. He wasn't a science guy either. I said, so Stan's concept was why don't we do this more realistic? ... [W]hat if we went back to that moment in time where Stan said, let's do this more realistic. We have some science background. Let's do a science fiction comic book universe, where things are based more on real science, try to make it more real. We don't have Atlantis under the ocean and the Blue Area of the Moon.

I wrote a page and presented it to the staff VPs. To Stan. This is hailed as the greatest genius since sliced bread. Stan just marveled at it. Thought it was wonderful.

Right after that, this is about the time the company had been taken private and put on the block to be sold. I'm called up to Galton's office and he says "What's your budget for the New Universe?" I said, "$120,000." He said, "How much of it have you spent?" I said, "Not much, we just got started really." He said, "We have to cut your budget." I said, "What? We have to create these titles out of thin air." He said, "You'll have to do it with $80,000." Son of a *****!

I get a call and he says "We're cutting your budget to $40,000." I said, "What?"

The next day, he calls up and said "How much have you spent?" I said, "About $20,000." He said, "Don't spend any more."

So if you will check, the New Universe books were done volunteer by assistant editors, practically every book in that line was done by me, Archie Goodwin and an assistant editor. For free. Because we didn't have any money.

...One of the things in my business plan is that we were going to guarantee royalties or pay higher rates in order to get the big name artists to do this stuff. What artist is going to leave Iron Man to go do Potato Man unless he knows he's going to make good money to do Potato Man?

All that stuff got scrubbed. I was told, you can pay people their page rate, that's it. ... So basically, if you check the New Universe, the artists you'll find were people who couldn't get any other work. There were exceptions. Some of these guys who grew up to be contenders, like Mark Texeira and Whilce Portacio. But they were brand new. They didn't know what they doing. These kids came along and needed work.

The two people who were contenders [at the time] were John Romita, Jr. and Al Williamson, both of whom worked with me on Star Brand. They volunteered. They came to me and said, we want to work with you.

Other than that, it was me, Archie, assistant editors and anyone who couldn't get work. So, that stuff was awful. It was horrible. They didn't spend any money on promotion. I don't blame them. There was nothing to promote. The stuff was ****. Ask Stan. "Oh, I always thought it was a bad idea." He loved it, raved about it. But when the wheels came off, it was all Jim Shooter's fault.

And it probably was. If I was smarter, I probably wouldn't have gotten myself into that mess. In any case, it was a disaster, but I had help. A couple of the ideas were pretty good. A couple of the issues of Star Brand were pretty good. It was kind of a shame. It could have worked. In essence, we did the same thing with the Valiant universe. I took that same idea and did it there.
 
Any idea that has real visible potential but bombed, you know somewhere somehow a boss was involved.
 
we're mixing up the New Universe, and the NEW New Universe books that came out just this month
 
Elijya said:
originally I heard Warren Ellis was gonna be handling this and I was interested, but when I didn't see he was working on any of the books, and I didn't recognize any other names, I didn't bother. Did anyone give them a try?

Warren Ellis is going to be doing the revamp of the New Universe called "newuniversal" that starts later in the year.

I picked up all the new stuff. I have the complete run of New Universe stuff so I decided to get the new ones as well. They're so-so. Nothing special.
 
Nope. I dont even pick up the old universe books
 
Just thought I'd put this out there for anyone who picked these up: In the Star Brand one, where a comic store named "Phantom of the Attic" is talked about: that's where I get my comics (you can bet the store is advertising that fact!) :D
 
No way...I hated the last new Universe issues I picked up, of which I have all the old ones.
 
I didn't like New Universe the first time around, I wasn't going to try it this time.
 
Justice and Star Brand were the good ones. The others were pretty bland. PADs original run on Justice was pure brillance though. :up:
 
masteryoda said:
Justice and Star Brand were the good ones. The others were pretty bland. PADs original run on Justice was pure brillance though. :up:


Damn...Apparently I don't have to post my thoughts here, because you just took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say the exact same.

Those are the two I enjoyed during the original run. Particularly PAD's Justice. Those were some great stories. Every few years I pull them out and look at them and say.."wow, PAD was in his his prime back then". Star Brand was good under Jim Shooter. Once John Byrne took it over, it couldn't pull out of that nosedive. I honestly do get the feeling that Byrne knew it was to be cancelled soon and just decided to see how bad he could screw with it.

I'll be checking out the new volumes once they hit TPB.
 
Why did Marvel think this was a good idea? Didn't people HATE the New Universe the first time around?
 
I'm liking the stuff I'm reading now.

Okay, maybe not the justice stuff, but I really liked Starbrand and Nightmask.
 
Different era, different audience. Dunno why th' line bombed, but these titles all had potential. If I was readin' comics in th' 80s I definitely would've been pickin' these up.
 
That is true, but from a business standpoint, it doesn't really make sense.

"Let's take these books that people absolutely HATED before and relaunch them! Such a great idea!"

I think it just proves that Marvel knows that we're so desperate that we'll take whatever they feed us, regardless of the quality or whether or not it failed on the first go around.
 
Or maybe they realize th' mistakes they made th' first go-around, and it took new management to say "Hey, we ****ed up, let's try this again!"

Look, I'm not exactly thrilled with th' people behind Marvel these days, but I can and always will appreciate a good idea. If the New Universe redux is done RIGHT, then I hope people who stay only with th' big names of Marvel's books (ya know, the guys not readin' quality books like MTU, Thing or Spider-Girl) actually pick it up so it can be given a second chance to succeed.
 
I thought the Starbrand one was pretty good. I haven't read any of the others, though. The art in most of them doesn't really catch my fancy. I was surprised by Javier Pulido's art in Starbrand, but in a good way. His style was almost like Marcos Martin's.
 
Cyclops said:
That is true, but from a business standpoint, it doesn't really make sense.

"Let's take these books that people absolutely HATED before and relaunch them! Such a great idea!"

I think it just proves that Marvel knows that we're so desperate that we'll take whatever they feed us, regardless of the quality or whether or not it failed on the first go around.
Just like MoonKnight, Blade and Luke Cage right? The concept behind the New U. is a solid one it just needs the right people behind it which it didn't have in the beginning.
 
Well, yeah. Th' Blade comic was a bomb so they didn't bother makin' a movie about it. Simple as that.
 

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