Friday, May 18, 2007

Four - Day, not Fantastic

So Tom's up with his marching orders. A quick perusal and some quick overall thoughts:

Sean, not sure if Byrne shut the door completely, can't quite read that, but we need to move forward with Pelletier. (From the feedback, it sounds like Byrne doesn't care for the way you treated him. I think that's fixable, but you've got a ton on your plate, so I understand if this gets bumped.)
On exclusives: I have no problem letting Fraction continuing his ALREADY-ESTABLISHED creator owned projects that are out there. It's the new workload above and beyond current capacity that is my concern on him getting Amazing out on time. The Vaughn feedback is a concern.
On the comic book pack-ins with the FF movie: since this is a decision made by FOX, I think it's worth the discussion to have, with an understanding of the bottom line on both parts. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility, but if it looks like it would be too cumbersome on our end and would end up losing us $$$, obviously, it's a no go.
I'd walk softly on the TPB subscriptions. We don't want to alienate our bookstore partners on this.
Watch that red flag on the back-to-back crossovers. I think we need to pay some heed to the VP on that one.
Philip, run with the Black Panther inclusion!
Sean, while we're getting the thumbs down for inclusion in DVD packages for the Spider-Man film release, here's a wild thought - what about a spinner rack of our mainstream, all ages titles, in partnership with Best Buy? Think X-Men, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, Runaways in a small rack alongside a specially created DVD display that could show the gamut of Marvel flicks!
Here comes Big Money. We knew that was on the way.
In my case, I've articulated above on keeping Fraction plugged in. Fan reax has been positive, and I think he's going to ignite some momentum on Amazing.

6 comments:

Philip Schaeffer said...

Yeah, Tom's response to the Byrne situation seems a little weird; something got lost in the posting there, methinks.

The Defenders/Balance (see that Mike, I'm calling it Balance instead of BoP cause I'm nice) situation with the VP Ops is troubling but to be expected. I view it as one single crossover. I wish I weren't completely responsible for it. Hell, I'd give some coordination up to Alex Alonso, or suggest doing that, since he's pretty involved. Mike or Patrick, are you guys interested in taking on some element of the duties are you just dealing with your own stuff?

Philip Schaeffer said...

Cause clearly what I'm inclined to say is that I can handle it but I doubt that's enough for the simOps office.

Patrick Cook said...

Philip, interested in lending a hand, yes, but not until I get the issues with my creators hashed out. That, plus Amazing got bumped, so I'm looking for a double ship next month to help us catch up.
But if you can figure on carving out a small portion of some piece of the coordination, I'd be glad to help

Philip Schaeffer said...

What if we called the miniseries Balance of Power: The Defenders so it was clear that the Rise crossover was leading directly up to it and not its own event?

Sean Kleefeld said...

I'm not overly concerned about Byrne.He's sung that song many times before.

I'll see what I can do about tweaking Fraction's exclusive, but I get the impression that we won't get Vaughan on an exclusive even with multiple ex exception clauses.

To your bestbuy idea, I'll make some inquiries.

As for a new Balance of Power acronym, I think I'm going to use BoPo. :)

Seriously, though, I'm inclined NOT to subtitle BoPo with "Defenders" because, frankly, the name isn't that big a sales draw IMO. We do need to connect the two ideas more closely, though, so what if our marketing for the crossover talks to "Changing the Balance of Power Through The Rise of the Defenders" or something like that? Tie them together more through the marketing than the actual title itself? My thinking is that "Balance of Power" is a cool title by itself -- lots of connotations people can read into, plus we'll probably get an additional bump in sales from people who simply don't know what to expect and want to try it. If you tag "Defenders" to the title, though, I think people will say, "But that trick NEVER works" and pass on it from the get-go.

I'm going to go back to Buckley and present it in more of a "Road to Civil War"/"Civil War" light.

Philip Schaeffer said...

Sean, sometimes your decisions just make me so very happy (beaming emoticon smiley face covered in rainbows, hearts and monster trucks).