Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Possible Concern

I'm really pleased that Tom's noted how a bunch of other editors are trying to get in on BoPow. But it suddenly occurred to me how much MORE coordination this will take. Part of the problem (as we noted earlier) with Civil War was that one delay caused a nasty cascade effect throughout several lines -- something which I'd desperately like to avoid.

Would it make sense to bring the coordination up to the EIC level? Not the editting of actual books, obviously, but someone just saying "Here are the major beats, and when they're going to ship?"

Mike, I know you've put a lot of work into that end of things already, but I don't want you to feel swamped with that and/or lose focus on your own books. Thoughts?

16 comments:

Michael Heide said...

No problem. If you don't mind the extra work, Balance of Power can only benefit from this.

Philip Schaeffer said...

I think you should take the coordination aspects off Mike's hands cause he's been really busy and can never come out after work anymore.

Maybe he's just avoiding me.

Here's why I don't think other books tying in is a problem:

1) JMS/Finch are no Millar/McNiven, and they've been given plenty of lead time.

2) Unlike Civil War which was full of twists, turns and huge plot points in a battle between two groups of superheroes, will Balance contains its share of twists and turns, they will have more to do with the politics between Magneto, T'Challa, Namor and Doom (and Sue and Reed). So while FF and Black Panther will need to be pretty keyed in to major events, the other books' tie-ins will presumably deal with the fall-out of the disaster and are not quite as reliant on coming out after the main title.

3) The sales boost you'll receive across the board for tie-ins outweighs the possible deficits of late shipping (unless things get as out of hand as they did on CW; this is clearly a smaller project).

4) As I've already ranted like a paranoid scuba diver, I don't think the competition lasts long enough for us to even put out Rise of the Defenders books, let alone Balance of Power stuff. If it did, I have little doubt we'd reach our target sales, but as it stands now we're just setting things up for the simulated future. This is an important thing to do, and demonstrates to Tom that we're really looking at the big picture, and it's good that we take all possible steps to make sure everything's set to run smoothly, but it's probably not the biggest thing to worry about at this point.

Sean Kleefeld said...

Let me throw this out there...

Big disaster/s happen/s at a global level in BoPow #1, yes? Since we're actually talking (last time I checked, anyway -- please correct me if things have changed) about MANY more-or-less simultaneous disasters and Phil's focus is going to be on the Doom/Magneto/Namor/Panther side of things, everyone else essentially has an open playing field, right? Provided they don't have Doom come in and personally airlift people off Ellis Island or something. They could show whatever disaster they wanted and, with a few exceptions, not only not trip over the main storyline in BoPow, but also not cause any shipping hold-ups since each title would still remain mostly independent.

Does that make sense and, more importantly, am I really understanding the full nature of the scope here? Do we really have this wide a latitude -- with the obvious exception of those few key characters already under Phil's editorial house?

Michael Heide said...

That's how I understood it, yeah.

Philip Schaeffer said...

That's all I'm saying.

One massive shift in the Earth's tectonic plates makes everything go crazy. People can do with it whatever they want. It's probably best that they run everything past whoever, to make sure we don't portray Boston as both underwater and on fire in two separate books, but yeah. Relatively high creative freedom.

I'm sure JMS would like to hear what people are thinking (et vice versa) so the disasters can match up, but yeah.

Patrick Cook said...

Why pick on Massachusetts? Why not someplace in Ohio, or Texas or something?

Sean Kleefeld said...

Do you have any particular disasters/events "locked" yet? I'm thinking specifically WRT Latveria, but also NYC, Atlantis and Wakanda.

Michael Heide said...

I think we agreed on a massive Earthquake in NYC, with Stark Tower and the Baxter Building the only things left standing.

Philip Schaeffer said...

Having spent three years of my life going to college in your precious Massachusetts, I feel completely justified razing it in a simulated work of fiction (for the record, I graduated early because I found the whole region so dismally unpleasant).

I'm kidding of course. It was mighty cold for a Texas boy like me, but it's a cool part of the country.

Which is why it's going to get leveled by a huge earthquake, starting at the fault line that runs through Chestnut Hill and Newton, and Boston Common's gonna get tore up and Fanueil Hall and Quincy Market will be rubble piles and the Big Dig will look relatively unchanged, since it's already a rubble pile.

Outside of the big NYC quake Mike already mentioned, I was thinking there'd be some serious Gulf Coast flooding, that Miami will be wiped off the map by a tsunami and that tornado alley (including my Lone Star state) will be ravaged by an unprecedented series of tornadoes.

I'd also think that such seismic activity would lead to, in addition to earthquakes, disrupted weather patterns, making the west and Pacific regions of the country incredible dry and prone to a huge forest fire that, at its height, stretches across seven states.

Otherwise, around the world, lots of potential flooding and wind damage staved off by the efforts of the Defenders!

Anonymous said...

Having grown up in Newton, I'm simultaneously delighted and horrified to find it ground zero in this event.

-Ben

Patrick Cook said...

Looks to me like with this kind of projected damage, it's going to take some seriously, seriously Big Money to make things all nice again.

Philip Schaeffer said...

Ground zero, and it's actually based in fact!

Have you ever been on the Boston College main campus? Did you notice that it's split into upper and lower campuses? If you stand at the football stadium or basketball/hockey arena and look up at the upper campus, you'll see basically a huge rock face.

Yeah, that's the fault line. Extends out across Comm. Ave and snakes around all over the Western Suburbs of Boston. It would f@#$ s%$@ up if it ever got a-shaking.

Anonymous said...

I know you guys are putting a lot of thought into this, but isn't this whole disaster thing just a redux of things we've already seen, both over at the Distinguished Competition and in recent Marvel books? Wouldn't a THREAT be better than a disaster?

I thought super heroes were supposed to PREVENT disasters...

Philip Schaeffer said...

You're thinking of Gold/Silver/Bronze Age superheroes. They're supposed to prevent disasters.

Now superheroes are supposed to be really flawed and petty and drunk all the time and never do anything right but never cop to their mistakes, and nobody's supposed to look up to them anymore; instead they're supposed to fear them and hate them.

It's an easy mistake to make. I forget all the time myself.

Anonymous said...

Oh. Thanks for the clarification. Too bad nobody could do anything to change that...

...like say, and EDITOR or someone...

;)

Tim

Philip Schaeffer said...

Why would you want to change that? Comics are relevant now! Hot art girls with thick black glasses think it's cool you work in comics. Why would we change a thing?