Marvel Season One

[Tron Bonne]

Didn't see a thread about this. Seems like it needs some attention:

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2011/07/sdcc-11-marvel-announces-season-one-graphic-novel-line/

To help celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, Marvel will publish a line of graphic novels featuring current creators retelling classic superhero tales. Called Season One, the initiative marks the company’s first entry in recent history into original graphic novels.
“We’re hoping to introduce folks who have never read any of these characters to these characters in this format, and also provide an interesting and illuminating story for people who have read a lot of Fantastic Four and Daredevil,” Tom Brevoort, Marvel’s senior vice president of publishing, tells USA Today. “If you want to dip your toe in the water and find out the essence of what Marvel is all about, here is a nice place for you to start in big, sizable, meaty chunks.”
The first wave will feature: Fantastic Four: Season One, by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and David Marquez, due in February; X-Men: Season One, by Dennis Hopeless and Jamie McKelvie, in March; Daredevil: Season One, by Antony Johnston and Wellinton Alves, in April; and Spider-Man: Season One, by Cullen Bunn and Neil Edwards, in May. A second wave will debut soon afterward.
Season One isn’t a relaunch or an Ultimate Universe-like initiative — “”Everything you know about them, everything that’s existed for the last 50 years still exists and is still there,” Brevoort says — but neither is it a mere retelling of the characters’ origins. “These are individually new stories,” he says, “even though they’ve got bits and pieces of old and formative origin stuff in and around them, as well.”
Visit USA Today to see a preview of Fantastic Four: Season One.

So, basically, this is Marvel's version of DC's All Star imprint, just not necessarily with 'top talent', aka big name chart toppers (I don't even recognize most of them), and going straight to GN without singles. Seems pretty interesting to me. That idea is a lot better and more viable than Ultimate/Earth One. The name is kind of dumb, though. Not entirely sure what season is suppose to imply in this context.

 

[hippie_hunter]

I find this idea to be completely dumb. Personally, I think that Marvel should just convert Ultimate Marvel to a line of OGNs. With the bigger talent and setting up a new universe, I think that Ultimate Marvel and DC: Earth One are far more viable than this.

 

[Tron Bonne]

Eh, nah. EO and Ultimate both fall into the traps that they're set up to originally sidestep. This way, if it's like the All Star imprint like I'm getting, you get to have these relatively continuity free stories that can be told on various different levels shifting from various different teams (in theory). Far more viable than the Ultimate/EO approach, both of which have/will eventually fall into their own continuity after a few years, defeating much of their original point. Not to mention, with this approach, you don't have to worry as much with basing it around 'all new, all cool' that will eventually lose its gloss and, most likely, a degree of the audience you've formed around it.

Really, the only issue is the creative teams aren't as strong as they should be. If Marvel could have gotten some more A-class teams together like DC tried to do with All Star this would be a dream come true on all fronts. Then again, that ended up being All Star's Achilles's Heels, too. So, who knows.

 

[stillanerd]

“…the graphic novel is not the best financial model with which to sell comic books. I don’t know if they’ve announced page counts on these OGNs or not, but let’s say for the sake of argument that the page counts is the equivalent of five comic books. If they were to take Geoff Johns’ five issues of “Batman” and sell them monthly, they would probably end up making a lot more money than putting it out as a hardcover. Personally, we’ve never seen that model work for us financially. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not saying people shouldn’t do OGNs. I’m just saying for us, at Marvel, the math has never worked.”

— Joe Quesada, December 15, 2009

While it's [Original Graphic Novels] a format that other companies seem to like, it simply doesn’t make a whole lot of financial sense to us. Given the cost to produce, say, 100 pages of story material, it’s better off for everybody financially to sell that story serially on a monthly basis first, before eventually collecting it in a single edition. The monetary return is better for everybody most of the time, creators, retailers and Marvel. And I know that does create some limitations when it comes to pacing the story out over so many pages, since you need to build it in such a way as to make it able to break every 22 pages or so. But all things being equal, this is the approach that works best for us, at least at the moment.

--Tom Brevoort, November 19, 2010

Oh, what a difference a couple of years, a New York Times bestseller from the competition, and a new Editor-In-Chief make.

 

[Tron Bonne]

Editorial BSing and backtracking. This is not news

 

[hippie_hunter]

Eh, nah. EO and Ultimate both fall into the traps that they're set up to originally sidestep. This way, if it's like the All Star imprint like I'm getting, you get to have these relatively continuity free stories that can be told on various different levels shifting from various different teams (in theory). Far more viable than the Ultimate/EO approach, both of which have/will eventually fall into their own continuity after a few years, defeating much of their original point. Not to mention, with this approach, you don't have to worry as much with basing it around 'all new, all cool' that will eventually lose its gloss and, most likely, a degree of the audience you've formed around it.

But if you limit the amount of releases, you're not going to get that problem. It's where DC: Earth One really works while Ultimate Marvel has sorta faltered. And it's why I think it should become a line of OGNs instead of continuing as a series of monthly comics.

Really, the only issue is the creative teams aren't as strong as they should be. If Marvel could have gotten some more A-class teams together like DC tried to do with All Star this would be a dream come true on all fronts. Then again, that ended up being All Star's Achilles's Heels, too. So, who knows.

I feel the exact same way. OGNs cost a lot more money and I am not at all willing to gamble my money on writers that I have never even heard of or barely encountered their work. JMS being on Superman: Earth One was the primary reason why I bought it. And Geoff Johns and Gary Frank working on Batman: Earth One is why I will buy that book.

 

[stillanerd]

Editorial BSing and backtracking. This is not news

Oh, I know. I just find it funny that the folks at Marvel decided to change their minds about this, probably in light of how well Superman: Earth One did. And I'm sure they're going to do well and, based on the preview art, be pretty good. Although, from the sounds of it, it looks like they're essentially going to be "extended editions" of origin stories. In other words, Fantastic Four: Season One is the extended Fantastic Four #1, Spider-Man: Season One is the extended Amazing Fantasy #15, etc.

 

[Energist]

I liked Antony Johntson's co-writing with Andy Diggle on Daredevil. I know most weren't too keen on Shadowland as a whole, but I thought the lead-up to and actual Daredevil issues that tied into the event itself were actually pretty good. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Shadowland was a victim of editorial inflation in my estimation. If it had been left to a storyline contained solely within the Daredevil title (which I imagine is how Diggle first envisioned it), as opposed to a full-blown "event" with tie-ins innumerable, I contend that it would have been much better conceived by its writer(s) and received by its audience.

But I digress. Like I said, Johnston did a fine job with Diggle on Daredevil while they worked on the title as a tandem, and while the Cage Match one-shot Johnston wrote solo preceding Shadowland wasn't the greatest comic book I've ever read, he still showed to have a firm grasp of the Matt Murdock character, succinctly establishing what exactly makes him tick. I'll be looking forward to picking up the Daredevil book launching out of this endeavor, at least.

Whether this thing pans out as a whole, however, I've no idea. It sounds intriguing at its face, though.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I loved Marvel's old OGNs. One of my favorite Thor stories comes from Christopher Priest's I, Whom the Gods Would Destroy OGN.

This, however, sounds stupid. I know it's not aimed at me as a longtime reader, and if it helps break new readers into the industry, great. But I have no desire to see some big modern name trying to one-up the creators of old by retelling the characters' origin stories.

 

[Ipodman]

Earth One and Season One are not going to "bring in new readers".... unless you get Lady Gaga to write it or something...

 

[Drz]

Earth One Superman has been a NY top seller for months, so it clearly has a potential audience easily.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Everything gets to be a New York Times bestseller for a while. Overall readership is still down across the board and comics still represent only a tiny fraction of even that.

 

[Sawyer]

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa on F4 sounds good, but who the hell are the rest of these writers and artists?

 

[JewishHobbit]

It's hard to have confidense in the X-Men book when its writer's last name is Hopeless!!!

 

[Themanofbat]

I had the same thoughts...

 

[Dread]

— Joe Quesada, December 15, 2009

--Tom Brevoort, November 19, 2010

Oh, what a difference a couple of years, a New York Times bestseller from the competition, and a new Editor-In-Chief make.

Tell me about it. We've also been seeing a lot of "from the vaults" material since Joe Q officially headed upstairs. Alonso seems to believe that if you find a perfectly produced comic behind a box on a shelf somewhere, it does nobody any good to not sell it, even if it was done 5-11 years ago. On the other hand, Tom Brevoort seems to shovel more baloney now that he's been promoted again than since '09.

As for the "Season One" OGN thing, while it is nice to see Marvel dip a toe into a format that the industry relies on, they won't imitate SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE's success without a big name. They also had poor timing in choosing to do this AFTER BORDERS is officially bankrupt and being liquidated. While some of the creative teams are promising, they don't have the name value that JMS had. Even casual book readers know him for "BABYLON 5" still.

I'd argue a stronger "Season One" philosophy would be for Marvel to take those mini-series or offbeat ongoing series about 4th tier characters that any assistant editor worth his salt should KNOW will sell poorly and sell it as a trade. That'd mean less ad revenue (unless the ads were in the back), but it may help save costs, and if it proves to be a hit, no extra cash has to be spend on the trade, since it already is one. MYSTERY MEN by David Liss and Patrick Zircher, is a perfectly lovely mini series so far but it selling like po-dunk as anyone could have predicted. It would have been perfect to try releasing that way.

The philosophy that fans won't or wouldn't flock to a series that only shipped once or twice a year via trade if they liked it enough is rubbish. DC profits handsomely from "evergreen" Vertigo and Wildstorm titles every month. THE WALKING DEAD dominates the trade shelves. And while the movie was a bust, SCOTT PILGRIM as a comic that came out once a year via trade sold GANGBUSTERS. Hell, I'd argue more copies of KICK-ASS have moved than a damn lot of other Marvel trades. Younger audiences that Marvel seemingly want to appeal to undergo such routine for manga without a hiccup.

Imagine if, say, RUNAWAYS came back with a promising creative team but only as a trade 1-2 times a year. It would be interesting to see how it'd do compared to single issues.

Marvel won't do this, because they feel a poor selling mini and a poor selling trade collection of it is more worthwhile. For a company that can hype the end of a marriage like it's the ****ing SUPERBOWL, they have no clue how to promote anything truly daring.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Yeah, this just flat out screams of Marvel attempting to emulate the success of DC's Earth One book, yet just like their $2.99 announcement, it feels more like them saying "Hey, we're doing it too!" while completely failing at it.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Everything gets to be a New York Times bestseller for a while. Overall readership is still down across the board and comics still represent only a tiny fraction of even that.

I think that those who tried out Superman: Earth One are a bit beyond the typical comic readership.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

A bit. A lot of people beyond just comic fans watch the movies, too. Has there been any improvement in comic readership because of it? That's the desired endgame for all of these initiatives, isn't it?

 

[Dread]

Yeah, this just flat out screams of Marvel attempting to emulate the success of DC's Earth One book, yet just like their $2.99 announcement, it feels more like them saying "Hey, we're doing it too!" while completely failing at it.

For the record, in late 2010, after Marvel needed weeks to even try to get their story straight about their own pricing policy, they claimed they would no longer sell #1 issues at $3.99 for ongoing series. Then it became, "we won't do that past about April". Let the record show DAREDEVIL #1 at the end of July was still $3.99.

In fairness, some of their mini series have been priced at $2.99 an issue rather than a default $3.99 for all mini's thing that had existed from 2008-2010. But that's really about where their pricing strategy ends.

Unlike DC, they also weren't up front about $2.99 books only having 20 pages as an increasingly general rule since about February or March. Tom Brevoort had to be asked about it on CBR and his reply was, in so many words, "things happen, whatchagonnado?" Let the record also show that the last issue of FF, which was #5 or #6 with Black Bolt, only had 19 pages. His answer is that page counts for Marvel comics vary and he groused, "Nobody notices when we have extra pages in a comic", even though the ratio of that happening is about 1:100 at best. And often when it does happen, it is a $3.99 comic. Quite a few issues of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, for instance, have been over 30 pages.

The fact that Marvel is #1 over DC in a shrinking market likely means they don't have to imitate DC exactly. Why follow a #2 too closely?

 

[runawayboulder]

DD is dropping a buck for issue 2 onwards from what I hear.

 

[Dread]

DD is dropping a buck for issue 2 onwards from what I hear.

Many of Marvel's ongoing titles do. The fact remains that making the #1 issue $3.99 is a cynical, short term goal. The logic is that the #1 issue is the only issue anyone is going to buy, so gouge them while you can. In real life, it also discourages people from trying the book, which doesn't help 2nd or 3rd tier franchises stick around.

 

[Lord]

Any news about the project?
I'm interested in seeing how they handle the original fantastic four adventures in modern times

 

[stillanerd]

Any news about the project?
I'm interested in seeing how they handle the original fantastic four adventures in modern times

Previews of all the Season One graphic novels are up.

Here's the one for Fantastic Four.

There's also two unletted but colorized previews for X-Men and Daredevil.

And here are pencil sketches of the first 8 or so pages of Spider-Man. (Just press "next image" to scroll through)

And here's some discussion about Marvel Season One from the Fan Expo in Toronto.

 

[CConn]

Isn't this like the 8th attempt Marvel has made in the past 2 years to capture new readers.

It's an utter waste. Just make your current comics more new-reader friendly and be done with it, Marvel.