Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Day 6 Questions

With JMS and Finch locked into Balance, and things going smoothly on She-Hulk and FF since Dwayne and Dan are happy and coordinating, I’d like to offer my editorial services on Balance of Power: Front Lines, mainly because with so many additional books throwing into the Balance of Power arena, I feel like Mike’s going to have his hands full coordinating everything (not to mention Spidey duties, particularly whether or not you might try to swing Spidey into Balance stuff a little more).

The only real concern I have is Brubaker’s productivity on Wolverine; this is the one thing on my plate that really needs to be addressed. Mike, you reference a Civil War style delay; I wasn’t following the title circa CW and therefore have no idea what you’re talking about. Did they just cease publication of Wolverine during Civil War? Cause that sounds like a bad idea. Or did they hold off on a slow-to-fruition storyline in favor of Civil War tie-ins? That sounds irritating, but would theorhetically maintain decent sales.

Do you have any suggestions as to Brubaker’s possible writing partner? If Rucka weren’t DC exclusive I’d think he’d be perfect, having worked with Brubaker in a not-too-removed-from-noir vibe on Gotham Central. We could also in theory investigate bringing aboard a noir/mystery writer, though I don’t know who’s into comics (well, I know Michael Chabon is desperately into both noir and comics, but I doubt we could get any kind of a commitment out of him). What if we had Claremont write with Brubaker; basically Claremont frames everything along the Patch-era lines that inspired this take in the first place, and then Brubaker brings the edge and grit?

4 comments:

Sean Kleefeld said...

See my comments to your previous post RE options/suggestions on Wolverine.

WRT the Civil War thing, Civil War #4 and/or 5 was delayed because McNiven got backed up. Because it tied in with all sorts of other issues, it caused delays across the board. Even though FF, for example, was done and ready to go, it shipped something like 2 months late because they were waiting on Civil War.

I don't think we have that issue with Wolverine fortunately, since his ties are fairly minimal and wouldn't impact anything significant to the overall story arc of Rise/BoPow.

Philip Schaeffer said...

So Mike was just advocating delaying the issues?

In theory that's okay, but we've got sales goals to reach.

Anonymous said...

Phil, your first paragraph concerns me. I'd be cautious in taking on more responsibility. Just because your books are running well now, it doesn't mean there won't be problems that crop up. And I wouldn't put it past Tom to throw in a monkey wrench.

Philip Schaeffer said...

I don't want more responsibility. I just fear that Mike having to take on two new books as opposed to the one new book I have to deal with combined with Mike having to coordinate all the tie-ins while I just let JMS and Finch run wild on the mini means that he's going to get snowed under, while I'm drinking orange soda in the interns' cubicles.