Jim Lemoine
Mar 16, 2003, 09:52 pm
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/0503/WOLVERINE_1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/0503/WOLVERINE_1t.jpg" align=left alt="Wolverine #1 preview"></a>by Benjamin Ong Pang Kean, X-Fan Correspondent
Inbound Wolverine artist Darick Robertson, who you can find here at X-Fan in his Hey, Bub! (http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=152[/url) discussion forum, has recently been giving fans his take on the upcoming relaunch of one of Marvel's most popular titles. His comments below are from Snikt! (http://www.comixtreme.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=67), Robertson's comiXtreme (http://www.comixtreme.com) discussion forum.
“Wolverine ran uninterrupted since 1987, 190 issues without a restart. The time to do {relaunch this title} was back in 1995 when the new #1's were selling in the millions, and they didn't. This isn't a gimmick, it's an artistic choice so {inbound series writer Greg} Rucka and I can have a fresh start with the storylines. It's a reboot. Like when your computer freezes up or you install new software, you need to restart it. Same thing here.”
”The idea that selling comics is a bad thing is kind of silly, don't you think? It's the opposite of stupid. I've been posting this argument a lot, but I need to remind you that the comics industry is in trouble and if we don't manage to bring in new readers any way that we can, comic books will go the way of Vaudeville shows, Puppet Theater and the Pet Rock and you'll have NO comics from Marvel or DC. Think I'm exaggerating? I'm not. Both of the big two are making bank with licenses, cartoons, merchandise and movies. Comics generally lose money until they're reprinted. Comics sell dramatically less than just a decade ago. The numbers we HOPE Wolverine #1 will sell would have gotten the New Warriors canceled in 1993. Fury was considered a hit, and it sold about the same numbers as my first comic Space Beaver did back in 1987.”
”All it's going to take is a steady loss of profits before the people that own them (DC Is AOL/Time Warner, whose stock is way, way down), the people that don't love or understand comics to say 'We can't afford to lose money on silly comics anymore' and it's goodbye mainstream comics. They'll vault the characters away and license them out. Creators will still create, but it won't be new issues of Spider-Man, Batman or X-Men.”
”So you pick: New #1 and regenerated interest or your own private Idaho where all you have is your sequential numerated back issues and memories.”
”If you walked into a comic book store for the first time after seeing X2 and wanted a Wolverine comic, and saw them on a shelf and could choose between issue #1 and issue #191, which one do you think the average person would choose? Don't kid yourself into thinking this is anything but a business. It costs a lot of money to pay editors, creators, and printers. Sadly there aren't enough 'fans' left anymore to generate enough profit that it's worth catering to them. The last time Marvel tried that approach, it led to bankruptcy. So why bash a company that has been bringing you your favorite characters for over 40 years? Why not trust that they are doing what they have to in order to survive?”
”At the end of the day, it's just a number on a comic to anyone but a hardcore fan. If it really bothers you, just get out a pen and write in the one and the nine on the cover before the one. It will mean the same thing. We aren't picking up the story from any point that connects with Volume 1 anyway.”
”Despite what you believe, there is still more artistic integrity in comics than in most mainstream media entertainment. Marvel has managed to come out of bankruptcy and return to being the #1 company in comics. There's nothing wrong with that at all. The time in comics when both companies were shameful was in the mid 90's and like the money that came in with those gimmicks, and awful, poorly written and drawn comics, those days are gone. Today's Marvel is comprised of practically a whole new editorial staff and a new parent company, headed up by Avi Arad, who (thankfully) loves these characters and is passionate about Marvel Comics while the Revlon people cared only about the bottom line, and were the folks who orchestrated the 'Heroes Reborn' stunt, where Marvel was paying Image huge sums of money to do their comics. Guys like Mark Waid and Ron Garney were taken off a book they were improving because Revlon believed that only the Image guys could do comics that sold. How despicable was that? And the worst part? Sales were huge! The so called fans ate that crap up.”
”Now Marvel is putting out it's best product in years, and content with average numbers because they believe in the long term goal of a quality book selling and gaining readership. Marvel Comics have the best creators doing the best characters and that's awesome. DC is fighting the battle the same way, quality is selling and that's good for everyone in the end.”
”When Marvel was f***ing up entirely I turned down a regular Spider-Man title and went off to do five years on Transmetropolitan, so it's not as if I'm just a blind follower. I wanted to do a higher quality of work and I recognized Warren Ellis' talent long before the mainstream did. I really believe in what's happening at Marvel now and with the recent shake up at DC, I'm really curious to see how the next few years unfold. I think comic fans are in for a real treat.”
”I admit that Marvel used to be a place where all this complaining and skepticism was warranted. I was in the offices a couple of weeks ago and editor John Miesegaes and I were (pardon the pun) marveling over this copy of Peter Parker from 1997 that was so incredibly bad from every standpoint of what defines a good comic. The art was amatuer and stiff, and the ‘story’ made little sense and seemed to be trying desperately to hit all these pre determined points that would supposedly excite a reader instead of forming an exciting story. It was the best scenario of formula over substance just completely failing. So I am not blind that Marvel used to suck, and a new number one launching was transparent with shameless greed.”
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/darickwolv_facecu.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/darickwolv_facecut.jpg" align=right alt="Panel from Wolverine #1 by Darick Robertson"></a>”But there's something everyone seems to overlook and that's the fact that ALL the comic companies went through that period in the 90's. Dark Horse put out Barb Wire and stuff like that and were churning out movie properties like mad following the success of The Mask, and then there was DC doing lenticular covers and foil covers on Robin mini-series, and putting Image style armor on Guy Gardner while Valiant was oversaturating the market. Everyone was guilty except Vertigo comics. The world of super heroes was all about marketing. The idea another Watchmen or Dark Knight would emerge was a distant memory. No one cared about making a good super hero story, they cared about how many numbers they could sell.”
”If you want to blame somebody, then blame the catering fly-by-night retailers and speculator fans buying the lousy comics, not the people making them. Blame the high profile comic mags that were overstating the value of comics and putting mediocre talent on their covers as the next big thing. If the masses were buying Strangers in Paradise and Bone at the same numbers that X-Men and Spawn sold, or higher, do you think things would have gone that way? There was a demand for a certain type of comic and therefore all the companies created supply. As long as that method was making money, you couldn't argue with the success. But now, that windfall is gone, those fans ae gone and personally I'm glad I weathered the storm. I am so grateful that I get Wolverine NOW and not when I would have been told how I was supposed to do the comic.”
”We're entering a really interesting time in comics. If ever there was ever going to be another Watchmen or Dark Knight, or classic run like {Frank} Miller's Daredevil, the next five years are a fertile ground for that kind of work to emerge.”
”Anyone working in comics today is working for two reasons and one of them HAS to be a love of comics. The other would not possibly be for the money. If one wanted to make money, even with art skills, there are plenty of other places to make far more money than what is available to a comic book artist. I make a really good rate since I went exclusive, but in order to earn that income I work 12 to 14 hours a day, often on weekends. Editors are grossly underpaid and the only people really making money in comics are guys like Avi Arad.”
“There was a big shift in comics marketing from the news stand to the direct market, only to watch a great deal of that market dry up. No one misses it more than we who make our living working in comics. The belt is a hell of a lot tighter than it used to be! Along with the emergence of video game systems and cheap and easy videos and DVD's, the kid-dollar that Marvel and DC counted on so much is pretty much gone! It's stretched so thin that most kids don't really collect comics anymore. Most of our core audience now is people your age. So Marvel and DC need to keep you all entertained, and find a way to get another generation buying comics also. Otherwise, the industry dies.”
”Most of the time when I meet people and tell them what I do for a living; I get the same response ‘I used to really be into comics.’ I ask ‘Why'd you stop?’ and I get the same answer: 'They got stupid, all these crossovers and variant covers, and you had to buy 5 titles to follow one story for every one character you liked, and then the story wasn't worth reading.'”
”At the same time, that kind of vicious marketing was leaving comic store owners with books they couldn't sell, back issue bins full of quarter books they paid double for and a progressively frustrated fan base. The older readers were completely alienated and said ‘There's nothing for me here now’. The new readers realized they had been duped and went onto Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering. Stores that didn't catch up went out of business. Entire distribution houses folded after being acquisitioned and people are STILL angry. They still feel cheated and alienated.”
”The problem remains that we need to do something to bring the market back, and for a lot of folks mildly interested in comics, mostly because they liked the hit movies, a new issue number one might be that thing. It comes out with the film, perhaps gets some press or outside attention and maybe brings in some new readers. So now we're all scratching our heads wondering why people will turn out in the hundreds of thousands to see a movie of a character they won't read a comic about. How do we sell a comic to every one of those movie ticket buyers?”
”Marvel's a very different company post Revlon and the bankruptcy. Like it or not, they are turning around a bad situation. Many firings later, the staff there is almost all different from the list of people you'd read about in the Bullpen Bulletins in 1992. No one's resting on any laurels and everybody's working hard and motivated. Everyone I know at Marvel is excited about making really good comics, and KNOW what went wrong in the mid nineties. I'm hoping that the mistakes of the past aren't repeated just like you probably are. So this new number one thing might seem like echoes of an ugly past. Time will tell, but I can say with all honesty, that isn't happening now.”
”The strategy with this relaunch is to create a book that old fans of the series will love, because we're getting back to the roots of the character, and doing stories that will remind fans about what they love about Logan and Wolverine, because we the creators are doing stories about what we love about Wolverine. At the same time, we can bring in a potential new audience that perhaps has never read a Wolverine comic before and won't be lost in the story and turned off by being confused. If they get in on the ground floor of something, they're more likely to keep buying it. I've already seen a number of posts saying ‘I never would have bought Wolverine before, but now with this new team, I want to!’"
”If there were enough fans buying the old series to keep it going, this wouldn't even be an issue. While it was selling well compared to other comics, no comics are selling well enough to not take some chances on improving the marketplace.”
”Truthfully, not many people find it fun to have to go searching around for a piece of the story when there's so much ready entertainment elsewhere. It's inconvenient and right now, convenience sells. That's why trade paperbacks are selling better than monthly comics. People want the package, and they want to read. The comics from the last decade are generally worthless now, beyond their sentimental value or their quality. I just bought the first year, {issues} #1 through 12, of Romita Jr's and Chuck Dixon's Punisher War Zone in good to mint condition on eBay, all twelve issues plus a bonus comic that the seller just threw in, for ONE DOLLAR. And they're some of the best stuff from that year!”
”Sadly, also, comics still carry a stigma. Where they used to be considered trash reading, now they're considered geek entertainment for 40 year old virgins with power fantasies. It's hard to make comics 'real world' cool.”
”Most people think that everyone who's into comics and Sci-Fi are like the 'Comic Book Guy' from the Simpsons. Folks outside fandom don't want to be labeled a geek for liking comics, and don't want to have to deal with people like the 'Comic Book Guy' to get their books. They want a good read with good art, and they don't want any nonsense. If they can get a collection, pick it up from Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com and carry it around, reading it more like a book than a comic, it's less embarrassing and overall, a better value for their dollar, THAT'S what they'll choose.”
“The times they are a changing.”
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/darickwolv_grinface.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/darickwolv_grinfacet.jpg" align=right alt="Panel from Wolverine #1 by Darick Robertson"></a>”So again, I wish to emphasize that unless the entire run of Wolverine that ran before the new volume Greg and I are commencing on was so classic that it needs desperately to continue on as is, you're gaining far more than you're losing by having two creators taking over from a new number one who love and enjoy working on this character as much as Greg Rucka and myself do.”
”What you're going to get is two guys that will give you a solid 12 issues a year of consistent quality (Marvel's publishing 18 annually and for now, I can't do 18 issues AND things like Punisher: {The War Where I Was} Born). Greg is starting on #6 right now, I have a script for #5 and I'm over halfway through #4 and #1 isn't even published yet”.
”Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas made this team happen and Axel Alonso put it all together. You don't get anymore Marvel than that. And yeah, they hope this book sells. We all do! That's our jobs! If we wanted to draw comics that don't sell, we could just Xerox our work and leave them in bus stations.”
Answering a question on the length of his and Rucka’s tenures on the book, Robertson said, “At least a year, probably longer. Greg's attitude is that when he feels he runs out of decent stories it's time to move on. I'll stay longer if his replacement is somebody I'd enjoy working with, and I'm diggin' the work.”
Robertson assured fans that “Logan is still Logan, 100%. It's not as if there's this bald character with fish gills and forks coming out of his hand in his place, or a werewolf with a lazer gun, it's still Wolverine, and potentially more like the Wolverine you really want to read than you've gotten in a long time And in the end a good read is a good read.”
”I'm standing by my 'reboot' metaphor. We're rebooting Wolverine.”
Commenting on the timeliness of future Wolverine issues, Robertson posted, “Five years, 60 consistently monthly issues of Transmetropolitan, always shipped on time, as well as a couple of Vertigo Winter's Edge specials, and in that same time 48 pages of Batgirl/Catwoman, six issues of Fury, 44 pages of Spider-Man: Sweet Charity, three issues of the Punisher. {As mentioned earlier, I’m} currently drawing #4 of Wolverine and #2 of Punisher: The War Where I Was Born and neither have even been published yet... What do you think?”
<center><hr width=50%></center>
That’s it for this week. As usual, check out our over two dozen creator forums (http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=22) right here at X-Fan!
Pre-order Wolverine #1 signed by writer Greg Rucka online now from X-World Comics and help support X-Fan! (http://x-worldcomics.com/yourvirtualstore/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=346&cat=X%2DCLUSIVE+CREATOR+EDITIONS#3779)
Inbound Wolverine artist Darick Robertson, who you can find here at X-Fan in his Hey, Bub! (http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=152[/url) discussion forum, has recently been giving fans his take on the upcoming relaunch of one of Marvel's most popular titles. His comments below are from Snikt! (http://www.comixtreme.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=67), Robertson's comiXtreme (http://www.comixtreme.com) discussion forum.
“Wolverine ran uninterrupted since 1987, 190 issues without a restart. The time to do {relaunch this title} was back in 1995 when the new #1's were selling in the millions, and they didn't. This isn't a gimmick, it's an artistic choice so {inbound series writer Greg} Rucka and I can have a fresh start with the storylines. It's a reboot. Like when your computer freezes up or you install new software, you need to restart it. Same thing here.”
”The idea that selling comics is a bad thing is kind of silly, don't you think? It's the opposite of stupid. I've been posting this argument a lot, but I need to remind you that the comics industry is in trouble and if we don't manage to bring in new readers any way that we can, comic books will go the way of Vaudeville shows, Puppet Theater and the Pet Rock and you'll have NO comics from Marvel or DC. Think I'm exaggerating? I'm not. Both of the big two are making bank with licenses, cartoons, merchandise and movies. Comics generally lose money until they're reprinted. Comics sell dramatically less than just a decade ago. The numbers we HOPE Wolverine #1 will sell would have gotten the New Warriors canceled in 1993. Fury was considered a hit, and it sold about the same numbers as my first comic Space Beaver did back in 1987.”
”All it's going to take is a steady loss of profits before the people that own them (DC Is AOL/Time Warner, whose stock is way, way down), the people that don't love or understand comics to say 'We can't afford to lose money on silly comics anymore' and it's goodbye mainstream comics. They'll vault the characters away and license them out. Creators will still create, but it won't be new issues of Spider-Man, Batman or X-Men.”
”So you pick: New #1 and regenerated interest or your own private Idaho where all you have is your sequential numerated back issues and memories.”
”If you walked into a comic book store for the first time after seeing X2 and wanted a Wolverine comic, and saw them on a shelf and could choose between issue #1 and issue #191, which one do you think the average person would choose? Don't kid yourself into thinking this is anything but a business. It costs a lot of money to pay editors, creators, and printers. Sadly there aren't enough 'fans' left anymore to generate enough profit that it's worth catering to them. The last time Marvel tried that approach, it led to bankruptcy. So why bash a company that has been bringing you your favorite characters for over 40 years? Why not trust that they are doing what they have to in order to survive?”
”At the end of the day, it's just a number on a comic to anyone but a hardcore fan. If it really bothers you, just get out a pen and write in the one and the nine on the cover before the one. It will mean the same thing. We aren't picking up the story from any point that connects with Volume 1 anyway.”
”Despite what you believe, there is still more artistic integrity in comics than in most mainstream media entertainment. Marvel has managed to come out of bankruptcy and return to being the #1 company in comics. There's nothing wrong with that at all. The time in comics when both companies were shameful was in the mid 90's and like the money that came in with those gimmicks, and awful, poorly written and drawn comics, those days are gone. Today's Marvel is comprised of practically a whole new editorial staff and a new parent company, headed up by Avi Arad, who (thankfully) loves these characters and is passionate about Marvel Comics while the Revlon people cared only about the bottom line, and were the folks who orchestrated the 'Heroes Reborn' stunt, where Marvel was paying Image huge sums of money to do their comics. Guys like Mark Waid and Ron Garney were taken off a book they were improving because Revlon believed that only the Image guys could do comics that sold. How despicable was that? And the worst part? Sales were huge! The so called fans ate that crap up.”
”Now Marvel is putting out it's best product in years, and content with average numbers because they believe in the long term goal of a quality book selling and gaining readership. Marvel Comics have the best creators doing the best characters and that's awesome. DC is fighting the battle the same way, quality is selling and that's good for everyone in the end.”
”When Marvel was f***ing up entirely I turned down a regular Spider-Man title and went off to do five years on Transmetropolitan, so it's not as if I'm just a blind follower. I wanted to do a higher quality of work and I recognized Warren Ellis' talent long before the mainstream did. I really believe in what's happening at Marvel now and with the recent shake up at DC, I'm really curious to see how the next few years unfold. I think comic fans are in for a real treat.”
”I admit that Marvel used to be a place where all this complaining and skepticism was warranted. I was in the offices a couple of weeks ago and editor John Miesegaes and I were (pardon the pun) marveling over this copy of Peter Parker from 1997 that was so incredibly bad from every standpoint of what defines a good comic. The art was amatuer and stiff, and the ‘story’ made little sense and seemed to be trying desperately to hit all these pre determined points that would supposedly excite a reader instead of forming an exciting story. It was the best scenario of formula over substance just completely failing. So I am not blind that Marvel used to suck, and a new number one launching was transparent with shameless greed.”
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/darickwolv_facecu.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/darickwolv_facecut.jpg" align=right alt="Panel from Wolverine #1 by Darick Robertson"></a>”But there's something everyone seems to overlook and that's the fact that ALL the comic companies went through that period in the 90's. Dark Horse put out Barb Wire and stuff like that and were churning out movie properties like mad following the success of The Mask, and then there was DC doing lenticular covers and foil covers on Robin mini-series, and putting Image style armor on Guy Gardner while Valiant was oversaturating the market. Everyone was guilty except Vertigo comics. The world of super heroes was all about marketing. The idea another Watchmen or Dark Knight would emerge was a distant memory. No one cared about making a good super hero story, they cared about how many numbers they could sell.”
”If you want to blame somebody, then blame the catering fly-by-night retailers and speculator fans buying the lousy comics, not the people making them. Blame the high profile comic mags that were overstating the value of comics and putting mediocre talent on their covers as the next big thing. If the masses were buying Strangers in Paradise and Bone at the same numbers that X-Men and Spawn sold, or higher, do you think things would have gone that way? There was a demand for a certain type of comic and therefore all the companies created supply. As long as that method was making money, you couldn't argue with the success. But now, that windfall is gone, those fans ae gone and personally I'm glad I weathered the storm. I am so grateful that I get Wolverine NOW and not when I would have been told how I was supposed to do the comic.”
”We're entering a really interesting time in comics. If ever there was ever going to be another Watchmen or Dark Knight, or classic run like {Frank} Miller's Daredevil, the next five years are a fertile ground for that kind of work to emerge.”
”Anyone working in comics today is working for two reasons and one of them HAS to be a love of comics. The other would not possibly be for the money. If one wanted to make money, even with art skills, there are plenty of other places to make far more money than what is available to a comic book artist. I make a really good rate since I went exclusive, but in order to earn that income I work 12 to 14 hours a day, often on weekends. Editors are grossly underpaid and the only people really making money in comics are guys like Avi Arad.”
“There was a big shift in comics marketing from the news stand to the direct market, only to watch a great deal of that market dry up. No one misses it more than we who make our living working in comics. The belt is a hell of a lot tighter than it used to be! Along with the emergence of video game systems and cheap and easy videos and DVD's, the kid-dollar that Marvel and DC counted on so much is pretty much gone! It's stretched so thin that most kids don't really collect comics anymore. Most of our core audience now is people your age. So Marvel and DC need to keep you all entertained, and find a way to get another generation buying comics also. Otherwise, the industry dies.”
”Most of the time when I meet people and tell them what I do for a living; I get the same response ‘I used to really be into comics.’ I ask ‘Why'd you stop?’ and I get the same answer: 'They got stupid, all these crossovers and variant covers, and you had to buy 5 titles to follow one story for every one character you liked, and then the story wasn't worth reading.'”
”At the same time, that kind of vicious marketing was leaving comic store owners with books they couldn't sell, back issue bins full of quarter books they paid double for and a progressively frustrated fan base. The older readers were completely alienated and said ‘There's nothing for me here now’. The new readers realized they had been duped and went onto Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering. Stores that didn't catch up went out of business. Entire distribution houses folded after being acquisitioned and people are STILL angry. They still feel cheated and alienated.”
”The problem remains that we need to do something to bring the market back, and for a lot of folks mildly interested in comics, mostly because they liked the hit movies, a new issue number one might be that thing. It comes out with the film, perhaps gets some press or outside attention and maybe brings in some new readers. So now we're all scratching our heads wondering why people will turn out in the hundreds of thousands to see a movie of a character they won't read a comic about. How do we sell a comic to every one of those movie ticket buyers?”
”Marvel's a very different company post Revlon and the bankruptcy. Like it or not, they are turning around a bad situation. Many firings later, the staff there is almost all different from the list of people you'd read about in the Bullpen Bulletins in 1992. No one's resting on any laurels and everybody's working hard and motivated. Everyone I know at Marvel is excited about making really good comics, and KNOW what went wrong in the mid nineties. I'm hoping that the mistakes of the past aren't repeated just like you probably are. So this new number one thing might seem like echoes of an ugly past. Time will tell, but I can say with all honesty, that isn't happening now.”
”The strategy with this relaunch is to create a book that old fans of the series will love, because we're getting back to the roots of the character, and doing stories that will remind fans about what they love about Logan and Wolverine, because we the creators are doing stories about what we love about Wolverine. At the same time, we can bring in a potential new audience that perhaps has never read a Wolverine comic before and won't be lost in the story and turned off by being confused. If they get in on the ground floor of something, they're more likely to keep buying it. I've already seen a number of posts saying ‘I never would have bought Wolverine before, but now with this new team, I want to!’"
”If there were enough fans buying the old series to keep it going, this wouldn't even be an issue. While it was selling well compared to other comics, no comics are selling well enough to not take some chances on improving the marketplace.”
”Truthfully, not many people find it fun to have to go searching around for a piece of the story when there's so much ready entertainment elsewhere. It's inconvenient and right now, convenience sells. That's why trade paperbacks are selling better than monthly comics. People want the package, and they want to read. The comics from the last decade are generally worthless now, beyond their sentimental value or their quality. I just bought the first year, {issues} #1 through 12, of Romita Jr's and Chuck Dixon's Punisher War Zone in good to mint condition on eBay, all twelve issues plus a bonus comic that the seller just threw in, for ONE DOLLAR. And they're some of the best stuff from that year!”
”Sadly, also, comics still carry a stigma. Where they used to be considered trash reading, now they're considered geek entertainment for 40 year old virgins with power fantasies. It's hard to make comics 'real world' cool.”
”Most people think that everyone who's into comics and Sci-Fi are like the 'Comic Book Guy' from the Simpsons. Folks outside fandom don't want to be labeled a geek for liking comics, and don't want to have to deal with people like the 'Comic Book Guy' to get their books. They want a good read with good art, and they don't want any nonsense. If they can get a collection, pick it up from Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com and carry it around, reading it more like a book than a comic, it's less embarrassing and overall, a better value for their dollar, THAT'S what they'll choose.”
“The times they are a changing.”
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/darickwolv_grinface.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/darickwolv_grinfacet.jpg" align=right alt="Panel from Wolverine #1 by Darick Robertson"></a>”So again, I wish to emphasize that unless the entire run of Wolverine that ran before the new volume Greg and I are commencing on was so classic that it needs desperately to continue on as is, you're gaining far more than you're losing by having two creators taking over from a new number one who love and enjoy working on this character as much as Greg Rucka and myself do.”
”What you're going to get is two guys that will give you a solid 12 issues a year of consistent quality (Marvel's publishing 18 annually and for now, I can't do 18 issues AND things like Punisher: {The War Where I Was} Born). Greg is starting on #6 right now, I have a script for #5 and I'm over halfway through #4 and #1 isn't even published yet”.
”Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas made this team happen and Axel Alonso put it all together. You don't get anymore Marvel than that. And yeah, they hope this book sells. We all do! That's our jobs! If we wanted to draw comics that don't sell, we could just Xerox our work and leave them in bus stations.”
Answering a question on the length of his and Rucka’s tenures on the book, Robertson said, “At least a year, probably longer. Greg's attitude is that when he feels he runs out of decent stories it's time to move on. I'll stay longer if his replacement is somebody I'd enjoy working with, and I'm diggin' the work.”
Robertson assured fans that “Logan is still Logan, 100%. It's not as if there's this bald character with fish gills and forks coming out of his hand in his place, or a werewolf with a lazer gun, it's still Wolverine, and potentially more like the Wolverine you really want to read than you've gotten in a long time And in the end a good read is a good read.”
”I'm standing by my 'reboot' metaphor. We're rebooting Wolverine.”
Commenting on the timeliness of future Wolverine issues, Robertson posted, “Five years, 60 consistently monthly issues of Transmetropolitan, always shipped on time, as well as a couple of Vertigo Winter's Edge specials, and in that same time 48 pages of Batgirl/Catwoman, six issues of Fury, 44 pages of Spider-Man: Sweet Charity, three issues of the Punisher. {As mentioned earlier, I’m} currently drawing #4 of Wolverine and #2 of Punisher: The War Where I Was Born and neither have even been published yet... What do you think?”
<center><hr width=50%></center>
That’s it for this week. As usual, check out our over two dozen creator forums (http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=22) right here at X-Fan!
Pre-order Wolverine #1 signed by writer Greg Rucka online now from X-World Comics and help support X-Fan! (http://x-worldcomics.com/yourvirtualstore/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=346&cat=X%2DCLUSIVE+CREATOR+EDITIONS#3779)