Wednesday, May 16, 2007

More Defenders Thoughts

I'm beginning to fear that I may not have enough moves to implement the necessary set-up for the Defenders.

I'm considering scrapping the four part crossover between FF and She-Hulk plan I'd outlined and replacing it with a four part Road to the Defenders Arc, same books.

This may be a bad plan because it basically requires people to pick up a couple of issues of She-Hulk in order to follow what's arguably the most globally important story going on.

The She-Hulk/California book sequence doesn't matter that much in the scheme of the Defenders so once she's in her own mini I'm not worried about keeping her int he loop, and it might be better character motivation if crossover with the FF shows her that she really wants to be part of the FF again, but not a part of it here in gritty New York.

So maybe Sean we could use second 500 word turns today outlining the crossover. We're currently (between what I do in FF and what Mike may do in his 4 and 5 Uncanny) basically 5 issues away from being able to start the Defenders/Disaster miniseries. I'm worried about waiting too long to get the wheels in motion as well as waiting too many issues to start it up, for fear that we won't reap any sales benefits from the actual event.

Also, Mike made an interesting point on Tom's blog; you may want to take actions to sign several people as exclusives, so we don't have to fight with Bigmoney.

8 comments:

Michael Heide said...

About the exclusives:
We should really try to sign Adrian Alphona (the next Madureira, if you ask me, that's why I put him on the X-Men), Dan Slott (since he's vital to the Fantastic Four franchise), John Romita Jr (Amazing Spider-Man's strongest selling point so far) and Amanda Conner (one of the main draws to She-Hulk/Hollywood).

About Defenders:
Sean, do we go this path now or not? I told Robert Weinberg to write issue four (the first fill-in artist issue) as soon as possible, to give our fill-in artist lead time. If those issues will be the Road to Defenders tie-ins, he should know.

Sean Kleefeld said...

Why don't we roll the FF/SheHulk mini into SheHulk proper, with an aim towards starting that in the end of our sim. Then we have the Defenders thing set up over the course of those several issues as well, leading to a #1 issue in our last week/month with lots of crossover excitement but no dropoff numbers to worry about?

Sean Kleefeld said...

Good thought on the exclusives, too. I'll try to wrap that into my EIC Moves today

Michael Heide said...

So the Road to Defenders issues in Uncanny X-Men 4 and 5 are definitely a go? Because I'll have to tell Bob Weinberg.

Anonymous said...

This may be a bad plan because it basically requires people to pick up a couple of issues of She-Hulk in order to follow what's arguably the most globally important story going on.

On the other hand it would be a potential huge boost to She Hulk giving a strong start point to the revamped title. Also you could plot in a a way that the Magneto set-up happens in X-Men and the FF/She-Hulk actual crossover is done in a way that the Shulkie issues aren't essential. Also, if you guys are worried about the time, the whole road to can happen in one of those months that Uncanny comes twice and make FF/She-Hulk event weekly (possible with a different creative team for the whole thing). I guess Tom can aprove that as the average sales are used for the final count.

Michael Heide said...

Uncanny shipping twice? We need fill-in artists as it is. I don't think it's possible (or wise) to let it ship bi-weekly.

Anonymous said...

For one month? Just let Ramos start it already. He isn't slow. On the other hand it would defeat the point of giving Alphona a good lead in and he is likely to need another fill-in a few months later, so I see your point.

Philip Schaeffer said...

See if you can't get Deodato locked in as well.

I think he's right for The Rise and Fall of the Defenders Event.

Upon looking at the shape of things, Sean, I think I agree. Let's loose the mini-crossover between SheHulk and FF and instead brand both of them as Road To Defenders or what have you.

In fact, we could focus more attention on the FF in She-Hulk and let Doom take center stage in FF. That way we can get right into the crossover.