Supercrooks - Mark Millar & Leinil Francis Yu

[Drz]

Supercrooks will take place in European south coast, not much else is known about the title.

 

[Tron Bonne]

I'm just throwing this out, but maybe they could finish the highly delayed Superior before announcing another joint project. I mean, it's a thought, right?

 

[Drz]

Yeah the deal with Icon books right now is that artists always have Marvel work as priority, hence Leinil is doing Ultimate Avengers instead of Superior and John Romita is doing Avengers, so is Marvel always gonna do this even tho these Icon books also provide good money?

Superior is according to Millar an actual ongoing, with like "i got over 20 issues planned!" Still it is curious how this is going on, Leinil Francis seems to be a powerhouse producing art in a swift pace.

Sadly at Kapow Millar couldn't announce Millar+Dave Gibbons project but he did reveal he and Frank Quitely will do a comic for Image.

 

[Tron Bonne]

Well, since those books are creator-owned and Marvel doesn't see as much from them, they probably will push for those artists to put their series as a priority. It just seems kind of silly seeing all this announcing of projects when Millar and co. are struggling to finish the ones that's actually seen print (Did that War Heroes series for Image even get finished?).

 

[BoredGuy]

Not to mention the "huge exciting" 616 X-men story he said he was working on

 

[Drz]

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=31798

And pint-sized assassin Mindy McCready won't be the only Millarworld title to hit this fall. "There's also a book called 'Super Crooks,'" the writer explained. "I've always loved supervillains, and I had an idea to do a trilogy of supervillain projects. The first one was 'Wanted,' which was all about a guy becoming a bad guy and then becoming a bad ass. The second was 'Nemesis,' which was my evil version of Batman. And I've always wanted to do a heist story with supervillains. So 'Super Crooks' is a thing I'm doing with Leinil Francis Yu at the end of the year.
"The idea behind it is that a bunch of supervillains get together and say, 'You know what, we keep getting beat by the superheroes. We always end up in prison. This is terrible no matter what we try to do. Let's go to a country where they don't have any superheroes, and then we can kick ass.' So they leave America and head over to Europe where there are no superheroes, and it's like 'Ocean's Eleven' meets the 'X-Men' where seven supervillains head to Europe to pull the biggest job of their career where there are no supervillains to stop them. So it's a fun heist story."

 

[fifthfiend]

Oh hey it's a story about a bunch of supervillains who go instead of losing lets

win

and then they winandwinandwin

and rapes

 

[fifthfiend]

Mark Millar

breaking new ground

 

[Watchman]

The project he's working on with Quitely sounds fantastic. Too bad it's going to be years before that is finished.

 

[Drz]

Millar is promising January 2012 which seems logical. Quitely right now is doing the 38 pages for Multiversity, he has 7 months!

 

[Watchman]

Millar is promising January 2012 which seems logical. Quitely right now is doing the 38 pages for Multiversity, he has 7 months!

Like I said it's going to be a few years.

 

[Drz]

http://uk.comics.ign.com/articles/116/1160907p1.html

Next up was Supercrooks, a playfully conceived collaboration with Leilin Yu. It tells the tale of a group of villains who decide they've had enough of the frustrating attentions of America's superheroes and decide to escape to Madrid for their last big score.

"It's like X-Men meets Ocean's 11," says its creator, and a "beloved" Spanish film director already has plans to film it on location in his home country. Millar expects the production of both to happen simultaneously over the coming year.

 

[Dread]

I'm just throwing this out, but maybe they could finish the highly delayed Superior before announcing another joint project. I mean, it's a thought, right?

Why? All these are are movie pitches in comic book form that Millar & [INSERT ARTIST HERE] can be paid for doing, and Marvel can make some profit as selling via Icon. Who cares if they run late or never finish, so long as it attracts studio interest?

It is what Millar is doing, after all. It allows him to still follow his passion for comics, as well as make up for slumming in ULTIMATE comics nobody reads anymore. And it is a boon for Marvel, whose Icon books are often top trade sellers and while they don't see much cash from it, they see more cash than if Millar had released it via Image or Boom! or something, and they know that.

 

[Drz]

Why? All these are are movie pitches in comic book form that Millar & [INSERT ARTIST HERE] can be paid for doing, and Marvel can make some profit as selling via Icon. Who cares if they run late or never finish, so long as it attracts studio interest?

It is what Millar is doing, after all. It allows him to still follow his passion for comics, as well as make up for slumming in ULTIMATE comics nobody reads anymore. And it is a boon for Marvel, whose Icon books are often top trade sellers and while they don't see much cash from it, they see more cash than if Millar had released it via Image or Boom! or something, and they know that.

Ultimate Line is doing much better than plenty of 616 franchises and Joe Quasada has used it to experiment same-day-release ipad/ipod releases on that which is good considering Avengers vs. New Ultimates is another superhero vs. superhero brawl like Civil War, which is the highest selling comic on Ipad/Ipod comic application.

 

[Tron Bonne]

Dread, you broke one of the unspoken rules of the Hype: Don't mention Ultimates comics in a thread Drz is in.

Anyway, what's the book Millar and Quietly are suppose to be working on?

 

[Watchman]

Anyway, what's the book Millar and Quietly are suppose to be working on?

Some giant 12 issue superhero epic. He compared it to Crisis on Infinite Earths in terms of scope. Of course it is Millar and he kind of likes to massage the truth.

 

[Dread]

Ultimate Line is doing much better than plenty of 616 franchises and Joe Quasada has used it to experiment same-day-release ipad/ipod releases on that which is good considering Avengers vs. New Ultimates is another superhero vs. superhero brawl like Civil War, which is the highest selling comic on Ipad/Ipod comic application.

Fine, fine, people read Ultimate. It just doesn't have the buzz it used to have. Bendis can kill USM and nobody really cares.

So...SUPER CROOKS is about super villains who decide to leave the U.S. because it is full of superheroes and go do a heist overseas. But, um...why don't other countries have super heroes? I mean, if Mark Millar even did any...what do you call it...research, he'd know that even in Marvel 616, the U.S. is not the only country with super heroes. There's more of them, sure, but it isn't like there are none overseas.

Unless they want to go rob a 3rd world or Middle Eastern tyrant. If so, good luck to them.

Millar mentions his past projects about villains to show us how this is different, yet even he mentions Ocean's 11 with villains. It's a movie pitch, sold at $2.99 a pop. It is a brilliant scheme, really. He makes money in the short term by selling it as a comic, and then in the long term selling it to the desperate unimaginative hacks in Hollywood who wouldn't know a good idea if they snorted it through their nose. Millar has made his career imitating and even lampooning the simplistic, stupid, knee-jerk and illogical rubbish that is Hollywood's main output to become an A-List comic book talent, and now Hollywood is proving him right by embracing him as a movie ideas man too. That's like if I made fun of shock jocks who can dish it out and can't take it, and then got so popular that I was hired to be one myself. It's crazy how the world can be beyond parody these days. Millar made his career imitating and exaggerating stupid macho man 80's movies, and now he's basically getting paid to MAKE stupid macho man 80's movies.

Dread, you broke one of the unspoken rules of the Hype: Don't mention Ultimates comics in a thread Drz is in.

Anyway, what's the book Millar and Quietly are suppose to be working on?

I imagine Quietly's health woes have effected its release.

 

[kguillou]

I mean, i hear what your saying Dread but i dont necessarily see anything wrong with using comics as a movie pitch because well, ultimately if it does get made into a movie, that gives the comics alot of exposure and let's be honest, comic books NEED exposure in this day and age.

I dont know, i know alot of Millar's recent work hasnt really been that great but i do appreciate what he's doing which is essentially coming up with original ideas and getting Hollywood's attention which in turn gets people's attention. I mean look at 'Kick Ass'. The movie was a success which translated into high trade sales for the book. This ultimately means hollywood is going to start looking into more creator owned, indie projects rather than the mainstream Marvel/DC stuff. I mean i feel like this cant be a bad thing right?

 

[Tron Bonne]

Yeah, but then you aren't really writing for the comic medium; you're writing a storyboard for a film. There's nothing worse you can do to a medium than gut it for another medium. That's not to say that kind of writing can't produce enjoyable results, but really, it's kind of a melancholy mentality that isn't going to do comics themselves any good in the long run. It's pretty much a given that movies of comics aren't pumping actual comic sales outside sales bumps for a month or two of trades.

Oh, and Kick-Ass did okay, but let's not forget it underperformed overall and the sequel has been put on the backburner. It saw a trades bump, but so did a multitude of other properties that were translated to film, even ones that didn't fare nearly as well, such as Scott Pilgrim vs The World (Which, interestingly enough, was one of the bigger duds as far as the box office goes, and the books probably had some of the biggest sales bumps of most of them). I don't see studios really rushing to indie properties over the guaranteed big IPs all that much, honestly.

 

[kguillou]

Well it seems like they kinda are already. I mean recently we've seen adaptations of Watchmen, Wanted, Kickass, The Losers, Red, Scott Pilgrim, Human Target, Walking Dead. They're making Chew into a tv show. They're doing...something with Sandman and Preacher. I think studios are paying more and more attention to indie books.

For the record, i completely understand what your saying. BUT i feel like in this current climate that comic books are in, they could definitely use the exposure and publicity because nothing else is working thats for sure.

 

[Tron Bonne]

Well, of those, Kick-Ass, The Losers, Watchmen and Scott Pilgrim vs The World either underperformed or flopped. I'm not sure on Preacher, but I think the Sandman TV series is basically dead. Red was a modest hit, I think. Wanted and Walking Dead were successes. No idea about Human Target, but I remember reading it was in cancellation. So, I don't think they'll be looking at indie's more than they already were, because for all of those there's been the attempts (of success and not-so-successful variety) of the bigger IPs from Marvel and DC. As soon as the comic movie boom they've been digging anywhere for them. If there's anything you can argue made them look that way it was the out-of-nowhere success of Wanted or 300 before that, but they've yet to emulate those to any significant degree.

And, yeah, there's truth in comics needing more exposure, but the movie thing isn't working anymore than anything else. The superhero/comic book movie boom has been going pretty strong for at least a decade now, when even some of the more mediocre films were pulling down some good, solid numbers. And, in all that time, we haven't seen any kind of real results for comic sales. We'll get a bump for a little while for trades, but that's it. If movies were the answer, we would have seen the results by now (I know some think the direct market is the sole culprit, but I still think comics are accessible enough to where if there was real interest, they could be sought relatively easily). The truth is that movies provide a momentary interest that, much like the film itself, is over fairly quickly.

 

[Drz]

Fine, fine, people read Ultimate. It just doesn't have the buzz it used to have. Bendis can kill USM and nobody really cares.

But since February the Ult Spidey has had a increase in sales, one can wonder how much it increased in March with Mark Bagley came to it, have the full March sales been released yet? Also let's take a look at Jeph Loeb's Ultimate X and how it fares with other various Mutant titles, #4 got released in April while #3 came about nearly over half a year or so? Anyhow let's take a comparison:
Generation Hope
New Mutants
X-Factor
It outsold EVERY Wolverine title.
It sold only 400 less copies than the Astonishing miniseries.
It outsold the Hellbound mini that was a tie-in with Second Coming.
It FAR outsold Claremont's Forever books.

Should Marvel just reboot the X-Men comics since noone is reading them outside of the Astonishing Mini series by Warren Ellis?

Let's take a further look at Ultimate Comics in February, you know to prove "noone reads" them.

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2011/2011-02.html

Avengers vs. New Ultimates by Mark Millar outsold:
- Captain America by Ed Brubaker
- Thor
- Invicible Iron Man
- Wolverine
- Astonishing X-Men
- Justice League of America
- Detective Comics
- Action Comics
- Wonder Woman
- Superman
- Walking Dead

Ultimate Spider-Man also outsold:
- Captain America by Ed Brubaker
- Thor
- Invicible Iron Man
- Detective Comics
- Action Comics
- Wonder Woman
- Superman
- Walking Dead

So...SUPER CROOKS is about super villains who decide to leave the U.S. because it is full of superheroes and go do a heist overseas. But, um...why don't other countries have super heroes? I mean, if Mark Millar even did any...what do you call it...research, he'd know that even in Marvel 616, the U.S. is not the only country with super heroes. There's more of them, sure, but it isn't like there are none overseas.

He knows there are world wide heroes considering he's a fan of Moore's Captain Britain and Superman does alot of international crime fightning, it's just his pitch for the general audience/movie audience and it works out really. It's such a Stupidly simple idea that it works, tho i just hope we won't be seeing... Ah hell yeah we will see rape, all Millar's villain books got rape going on. :*(

Unless they want to go rob a 3rd world or Middle Eastern tyrant. If so, good luck to them.

Millar mentions his past projects about villains to show us how this is different, yet even he mentions Ocean's 11 with villains. It's a movie pitch, sold at $2.99 a pop. It is a brilliant scheme, really. He makes money in the short term by selling it as a comic, and then in the long term selling it to the desperate unimaginative hacks in Hollywood who wouldn't know a good idea if they snorted it through their nose. Millar has made his career imitating and even lampooning the simplistic, stupid, knee-jerk and illogical rubbish that is Hollywood's main output to become an A-List comic book talent, and now Hollywood is proving him right by embracing him as a movie ideas man too. That's like if I made fun of shock jocks who can dish it out and can't take it, and then got so popular that I was hired to be one myself. It's crazy how the world can be beyond parody these days. Millar made his career imitating and exaggerating stupid macho man 80's movies, and now he's basically getting paid to MAKE stupid macho man 80's movies.

And the general audience also likes this stuff, i can't help myself but i really do enjoy seeing Hitgirl kick-ass, not to mention his Superior is his current Superman stuff, yeah he inserted swearing to it because of his argument how all-age books don't sell at all, and Leinil Yu always draws women with C/D cups so yeah. >_> Really on Free Comic Boook Day check out Superior! =)

 

[Roughneck]

well......

I lost all interst in Ultimate Marvel right before Ultimatum.......havent even looked at one since

 

[Drz]

Bleeding cool: Nacho Vigalondo to direct the movie!

 

[Roose Bolton]

Well Millar hasnt been ****ing himself "too" much with this one, so it may be worth my time.