Notes from the press conference. |
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December was a good month for Marvel. Sales were up from previous December. Marvel will not stop publishing comics, despite fears. Comic books are profitable for Marvel. - Bill Jemas. The major news coming out of Wednesday's Marvel Conference was that a new Spider-Man title would be launched. But instead of a new ongoing title this will be a series of mini-series. The first one is written by the ever popular Garth Ennis and penciled by John McCrea, the team best known for DC's Hitman. Covers will be done by Glenn Fabry of Preacher fame. J. Michael Straczynski will be replacing Howard Mackie with Amazing Spider-Man #30. JR Jr will stay on the title. But he will be taking a break with issue #28, 29. Joe Bennett, Lee Weeks and Charles Adlard will be doing the fill-ins. A cover artist for Amazing has yet to be determined, but Humberto Ramos will be the cover artist for Peter Parker: Spider-Man. Howard Mackie will also be doing the 2001 Amazing Spider-Man annual. Marvel is committed to make the annuals important again. They will also be lowering the price to $2.99 and making them easy for new readers. In most cases they will be written by the series ongoing writer. Ulitmate Spider-Man #1 that's online got "huge number" of hits. How many hits they won't reveal. Marvel attributes the online sales for the increase in sales after issue #1. It's the only title that grows every issue is Ultimate Spider-Man. They say it's like a demo of a video game. Marvel.com hits are up 3-400% from last February. Bendis pitched Marvel-Team Up (aka Ultimate Marvel: Spider-Man and ...), he was thinking of Marvel Fanfare. The variety of art styles interested him. While Ulitmate Spider-Man will be about Peter Parker, Ultimate Marvel will be about the New York and all the other heroes Spider-Man meets and views with awe. Ultimate Marvel will have a variety of artists. So far the line up is as follows:
#2-3 Phil Hester and Ande Parks featuring Hulk #4 Mike Allred and Iron Man. #5 Sam Kieth with Daredevil. Planned future stories are Terry Moore/Black Widow, Bill Sienkiewicz/Punisher, P. Craig Russell/Dr. Strange and John Tottlebon/Man-Thing. Bendis wrote a Spider-Man comic, half a million went out with the Spider-Man game, inside is a subscription page for comics. 4 Classic Spider-Man figures are coming out soon, they all have a collectable comics with them. Within the comic will have a subscription, plus the Diamond 1-800-Comic Book Locator. Most things coming out of Marvel will have that number on it. Quesada will think about adding a creator credit for Jack Kirby and Ditko inside the Spider-Man comics. Marvel would have had 18 different X-men titles in the middle of the 2001 had not Marvel cancelled some titles. Marvel is working to change solicitations so that surprising plot points are not revealed a head of time. They want people to be surprised when they turn the page. They see themselves as being on the Titantic. They see the iceberg and they are steering away from it. Marvel wants to improve the quality of the writing before they impliment a policy of collecting stories into trades. Joe Quesada says "We have no problem admiting that DC kicks our butts in putting out Trades, that is something we want to fix." They also believe that superheroes are back and popular, citing Powerpuff Girls and the movie Unbreakable as examples.
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