I'm sure that's part of it, but I still think the high cover price is the bigger reason. They haven't quite got to the reprints of the more rare issues (mostly Gaiman's issues, but the last couple of Moore's as well) but I would venture to guess most readers DON'T have the original Eclipse issues. even the more common ones aren't that easy to find. I find very, very few brick and mortar stores have them. But it's more than that - I don't even think the pirated scans are that popular. I still think price has at least something to do with that. A high cover price can have a tendency to zap enthusiasm for something. I mentioned this before I think, but I think Marvel's hands are tied with the pricing. I don't think it's greed as much as it is with other high priced books (things like Amazing Spider-Man 700 for example), but we know now that they paid about $1 million just for the rights to the character. At that point Joe Q., much to his credit, did his diligence and tracked down original art and presumably had to make agreements with all of the original creators who still held the rights to their work. The wording made it sound like that stuff was not part of the $1 million they paid. I think they've got a LOT of money tied up in this. And they've said in the past, multiple times, that they do not believe the pricing model of price low to attract a larger audience works. Honestly I'm a little worried that they are going to pull the plug on this. It really seems to be a MASSIVE failure.
That's my worry as well. Still, even with the higher pricing, I don't think it's prohibitively so. And given the price of those later original issues, as you said, I'd hope those reprints might attract some interest.
Now, that being said,
some really interesting (and GREAT) news came out today: This is awesome - Grant Morrison is my favorite writer and I always thought it was a shame that he never got to write this story. And not only do I (mostly) love Joe Q.'s art (except when he draws Mary Jane :sick: ), but I love how complete he is being with the restoration of this book and character. Now he's even going back and securing stories that were (sort of) planned but never happened. This is great! The downside to this is that, while I never thought about it this precisely, I never, ever wanted a writer like Peter Milligan writing this character. They are opening the floodgates for mediocre and bad writers to start writing this character, and they might even be doing it sooner than they planned in order to make up for the financial failure of the main title. This is not great. If it ever comes out that Bendis is writing anything having to do with this character it might cause me to close this site and burn all my comics.
This is really interesting. I never even knew Morrison had written a Miracleman story. This should be interesting.
However, you bring up a good point in terms of mediocre writers tackling Miracleman. It's worrying. Miracleman is such an amazing title overall due to the brilliance and depth of the writing. While crappy stories by less talented writers won't ruin the amazing originals, it WILL cheapen the mystique and reliably fantastic story aspect that's associated with Miracleman.
And the thing is, it was bound to happen. Marvel bought the rights to wring every dollar they can from the property, and I'm sure they always had plans for stories beyond the reprints and Gaiman finishing his run.
I'd just prefer they are extremely careful with who they allow to write those stories, and keep an extremely high level of quality on what they print in the Miracleman mythos.
It'd be great if Morrison perhaps did more work in the MM universe. He's one of the few writers who has the chops for it.
In terms of today's stable of writers, who do you think could pull off a good Miracleman series, mini-series, one-shot, or even short story in an anthology type issue like the Annual?
I have no problem with them making a profit, I just want them to do it right, instead of a cheap and horrible cash-in on the Miracleman name (like the horrible Total Eclipse mini-series that Eclipse did back in the 80's...which I ignore).
Also, wyo beat you by 6 minutes.
After looking at it, Quesada's artwork looks fantastic in those couple pages.
Dis gunna b gude!
Also, while I'm apprehensive about the Milligan-penned tale, I'll remain cautiously optimistic until it's release.
Also, will you actually burn all your comics this time? I feel like this could be a comic nerd version of the ice bucket challenge, but with slightly less narcissism and absolutely no benefit to charities.
