Touching the Ultimates with Jeph Loeb (NSFW)

Re: Touching on the Ultimates with Jeph Loeb.

Bass said:
Again, until till we see the contract and the assignment we won't know for sure, and I'm hesitant to point fingers.

It's possible that the reason it's taking long is that Mad isn't happy with the script and is asking for rewrites, and they're not being done due to Loeb's efforts. It's possible the editors haven't signed off on the script for #3 yet.

There's far too many variables and far too little information for the blame to be placed anywhere or on anyone. Again, it seems the lack of professionalism is in the organisation of the projects, not the promises/assurances of certain people within the title.
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Fair enough...but history and a bit of logic points fingers at Mad for us...
 
Re: Touching on the Ultimates with Jeph Loeb.

Remeber when we thought that v2 #13 was going to be released in January?

Good times.
 
Re: Touching on the Ultimates with Jeph Loeb.

Yeah, I think so too. But it is just supposition on our parts.

edit - this is in response to DIrishB's post. Someone (Wade Wilson) is little mister Quickie Post.
 
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Re: Touching on the Ultimates with Jeph Loeb.

Bass said:
Yeah, I think so too. But it is just supposition on our parts.
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Absolutely...but accurate predictions are just suppositions until they're proven right. ;)

But as you said, there's no word or reason given (and probably won't be if Marvel's past stance on such issues continues).

edit - this is in response to DIrishB's post. Someone (Wade Wilson) is little mister Quickie Post.
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So thats why Moonmaster calls him the Minute-man? I thought it was something else entirely...
 
Re: Touching on the Ultimates with Jeph Loeb.

"Pencils by JOE MADUREIRA & CHRISTIAN LICHTNER"

...

Does Mad not even draw all of #2?!?!?!?!?!?!
 
Re: Touching on the Ultimates with Jeph Loeb.

Bass said:
"Pencils by JOE MADUREIRA & CHRISTIAN LICHTNER"

...

Does Mad not even draw all of #2?!?!?!?!?!?!
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That fits a rumor a few months back that after a year of working on it...Mad only finished issue one. I bet he'll do the covers on 3 and 4 and Lichtner will do all the interior art which will be based on Joe Mad's style and designs. Marvel will do this because the Ultimates are always late they will want one on time.
 
Re: Touching on the Ultimates with Jeph Loeb.

I believe Lichtner is Mad's colorist, so it's probably just a mislabelling of credits. They may have meant "Art by Mad and Lichtner," which would make sense, because it looks like color-over-pencils.
 
Re: Touching on the Ultimates with Jeph Loeb.

Maybe that's why they've been acting so out of character lately.
 
Re: Touching on the Ultimates with Jeph Loeb.

Bass said:
Mate, when Bill Jemas got Joe Quesada as editor-in-chief of Marvel, the stuff those guys put out for three years - I remember I felt like I was buying almost every comic Marvel was putting out. I was getting Alias, Amazing Spider-Man, all the Ultimate titles, New X-Men, Black Panther, Punisher - I pretty much gave everything a shot, and a lot of what they were doing was really exciting. Each title was completely self-sufficient (that's what the non-crossover part of what your talking about refers to). I remember, I'd be buying one Spidey title a month and getting all the stuff I need, whereas I dropped Superman when I realised I was buying two Superman titles a month, and getting only half a story. Really, the quality level on the mainstream titles was really quite high.



What was controversial was two fold - firstly, he and Joe Quesada got a lot of good talent into Marvel to do Marvel titles. He basically said to not care too much about what had come before but to just do the best stories they could. They got things like Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely to do New X-Men. This was really quite something. Basically, at the time, the X-Men books were unreadable. No one knew what the hell was going on. They were stories about other stories. It was so bad, that they realised that the X-Men movie came out, was a huge success, but no one was reading the comics. They set out to change that. Grant Morrison was at the top of his game having finished his run on Invisibles and JLA, and Frank Quitely was doing one of the biggest comics at the time, the Mark Millar-penned run of Authority. Quitely left Authority to do New X-Men. This was a big thing. And in three issues, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely revamped the X-Men.

That's not all - they created the Ultimate universe which was a huge deal back then. They got the editor of Axel Alonso to clean up the Spider-Man titles - and he did; he got J Michael Straczynski onto the title and he did a great job on it at the beginning. They revamped the Hulk. All kinds of new titles were coming out, for good or ill: Marville, Alias - there was even the Epic series line. Not all of it was good, but there was just this feeling of new stuff coming out... that there was so much to see. It was a kind of near-reckless overhaul of Marvel that was so controversial. They got rid of the comics code and came up with their own certificates for comics and invented the MAX line to publish adult comics like Cage and Supreme Power.

It was just this incredible influx of creativity, and this total, "No more nonsense. We'll do anything, we'll get the work done, and we'll surprise the hell out of you each month" that was controversial.

But the second controvery sprang from this - Bill Jemas, so eager to just get rid of anything that wasn't working, offended a lot of fans. He would often come out and tell fans to grow up and (famously) get out of their mum's basement. He was very much not interested in pandering to the fanboy community that kept Marvel afloat for 10 years.

Basically, Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada realised that most comics were being sold to people who already bought comics and weren't selling anything to anyone else, so they decided to get people who weren't into comics into comics and that meant changing a lot. And if you didn't like/want the change, Jemas was candid about his feelings on the subject and went off and changed things more.

At the time, DC was completely at a standstill. Nothing was happening and Marvel was just pwning the market.

However, Bill Jemas' reckless pursuit for good comics did alter the franchises. This was what made it so exciting. But for Avi Arad, who was selling Marvel's licenses to Hollywood at the time, found it difficult to do so because the franchises would get altered and changed. He told Jemas to stop changing stuff. Jemas refused - I would hope because he understood that the Marvel universe was stagnant and milking the universe for franchises is poor long-term strategy. Avi Arad had him fired.

And ever since then, Marvel has declined into a quagmire. The Ultimate line is appaling, once great titles haven't changed but are now bland - Amazing Spider-Man for example. The most enjoyable Spidey title for me at the moment is Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. Where once, we didn't get crossovers but solid titles week in, week out, we know have enormous crossovers that tie-in everywhere that aren't worth following half the time. The same writers pour out the same stories all over the place.

I think Bill Jemas, on his own, would be a reckless force of chaos, destroying titles left and right. I think Joe Quesada, on his own, is incapable of getting the best work out of people who work for him. But together, those two brought out the best Marvel comics era in my life time, I think.

I think that the guys doing the jobs now are trying to do the best comics that they can, I really do. But I also think that no one is pushing them to do the best, and as a result, they aren't.

Helluva shame.
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I think this argument is relevant today. Huge crossovers that have little story, and the same thing over and over again.

Thoughts?
 
I feel that Marvel has pulled up its socks quite a bit since 2007 when everything was kind of ridiculous.

They still do huge cross-overs, but people buy them, so what do we expect? But, at least in the few titles that I currently read (ASM, USM, Ultimates) things have been really good (although, there's another big cross-over coming in the ultimate universe...). And from what I'm hearing FF, F4, DD and probably others have been self contained, quality stories.
 
I agree with Bass - I got back into comics at the tail-end of the Jemas/Joe Q era and he's right - there were so many exciting things going on, some of which I wouldn't get into for a couple years or so after they were already done (i.e. Alias). Mark Waid's Fantastic Four was absolutely EPIC. That and Ultimates brought me back in; I quit maybe 10 years or so before that because everything was such crap.

The recklessness he mentioned is what was so appealing. There was so much stuff going on that we weren't expecting and couldn't have dreamed of. And note in his examples what that recklessness WASN'T - killing off characters and big crossovers. It was imagination. It was making comics fun to read.

It's too bad that now, having been bought by Disney and being turned into a movie development company, Marvel will never again have that sense of urgency that allowed them to do something like that again. It will all be safe, unimaginative pap that won't mean anything and won't change anything.

As for Jemas's comments about fanboys getting out of their parents' basements...he's right, of course. The kind of pandering and maintaining the status quo is what made comics crap in the 90s, and it will continue to be that way.

The hilarious thing is that with the movies coming out and digital comics so accessible that they really can be doing things like Jemas envisioned to bring in and hook new readers. Sad.
 
Ultimate Houde said:
I think this argument is relevant today. Huge crossovers that have little story, and the same thing over and over again.

Thoughts?
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Thanks, bud. :)

E said:
And note in his examples what that recklessness WASN'T - killing off characters and big crossovers. It was imagination. It was making comics fun to read.
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That is such a brilliant point. There were zero crossovers and zero deaths and it felt like anything could happen.

E said:
It's too bad that now, having been bought by Disney and being turned into a movie development company, Marvel will never again have that sense of urgency that allowed them to do something like that again. It will all be safe, unimaginative pap that won't mean anything and won't change anything.
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I don't know why people think Disney is responsible for the lackluster output of Marvel. Disney isn't to blame; Arad and Fiege are because they were (as you brilliantly point out) turning Marvel comics into a movie development company long before Disney bought them.

E said:
The hilarious thing is that with the movies coming out and digital comics so accessible that they really can be doing things like Jemas envisioned to bring in and hook new readers. Sad.
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Very true. What's more sad is that a fanboy on a random comic site wrote something years ago and nothing has changed. There was a time when I really wanted to write for Marvel and DC. I honestly do not think that will ever, ever happen.
 
Bass said:
I don't know why people think Disney is responsible for the lackluster output of Marvel. Disney isn't to blame; Arad and Fiege are because they were (as you brilliantly point out) turning Marvel comics into a movie development company long before Disney bought them.
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Just to be clear - I personally don't think that. I just meant that Disney is their safety net, so to speak. They aren't going to hit rock bottom under Disney like they did in the 90s, and therefore won't take the risks needed to get themselves out of this creative void.

And, of course, I'm sure they don't believe they are operating in a creative void. That's the biggest problem.
 
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