Fire everybody -- almost -- and hire the indie kids at Project: Rooftop. Just DO IT, you cowards.

http://www.tencentticker.com/projectroo ... ais-x-men/

http://www.tencentticker.com/projectroo ... n-lantern/

http://www.tencentticker.com/projectroo ... et-spider/

http://www.tencentticker.com/projectroo ... an-trippe/

http://www.tencentticker.com/projectroo ... -dimayuga/

I like some of the Dean Trippe stuff a lot!

X-Men: This looks pretty cool.

GL: Well drawn but no thanks.

Scarlet Spider: Woof, I think is pretty ugly.

Dean Trippe: I met this guy at Baltimore and he was super-nice; however, that's entirely irrelevant as his art is completely awesome. This guy's art could sell comics to those Scott Pilgrim lovin' kids.

Spider-Man: I don't love the design but do like this guy's art.

Good God, that is all KINDS of cute.

I almost* don't care about the details -- it's the energy and passion and fresh perspective that matters most. There's a reason Liefeld was a superstar despite being a shitty artist.



*I said almost.

DC and Marvel do put out a one-off or a mini by indie creators now and then. I'm guessing that if they sold like gangbusters, they'd do it more often. But the indie reading community can be very supportive with their keyboards and can be less supportive with their wallets. I'm not saying that a Super-Scott-Pilgrim couldn't happen, but none of the trial balloons released so far have taken off.

i would buy the crap out of a project rooftop line of comics. much as i love a lot of what dc is doing right now,i think they could definitely use some new artists overall.

If you like that stuff, some books you might want to pick up...

Marvel's Strange Tales and Stange Tales II series (Tony Millionaire, Alex Robinson, Jeffrey Brown and other indie creators)
DC's Bizzaro anthologies
Evan Dorkin and Dean Haspiel's Night Falls on Yancey Street
James Sturm's Unstable Molecules
...and there are a few more mini's and one-shots that I can't think of right now.

That cancelled Thor: The Mighty Avengers series was sort of like a "Rooftop" style of book.

Yep, and a perfect example of making a comic for the broader potential audience but pinning its publishing success on the direct market. Fail.

I see it in bookstores and stuff.

I mean, they have to recoup costs somewhere -- if neither the bookstore market pays for it in trades nor the Direct Sales market pays for it in floppies, what can they do?

???

I've seen the trades in bookstores.

If not enough people are buying the trades in those bookstores, then it's up to the DSM monthly to recoup up the cost.

If the combined "civilian" bookstore market and the "nerd" DSM market can't pay for the book... well, what do you expect?

If the bookstore editions were flying off the shelves, I think Marvel would have kept it going (or if it was cancelled by the time the bookstore market discovered it, they would have brought back the book).

I blame the hipsters.

They're not allowed to support anything mainstream, even if they were supporting it the previous week when it was still obscure.

I dare anyone who isn't already a direct-market customer to successfully navigate the Marvel section in B&N and figure out where to start with any character.

Tossing one alternative-take title into a sea of their main product line is never going to work. By definition, it becomes the one that doesn't matter.

They should let the current continuity trickle to an uneventful and unmemorable stop, streamline the backlist program so that every single extant trade gets relabeled as "Marvel Classics" or whatever, and relaunch all new titles, with radically fresh young-vibing artists, in digital and trade formats so that there's no question about what to buy.

No worries, though, they won't do it.

I once suggested they do a series of "year one" style origin minis (which I know they're releasing now but hear me out...) that tied in to their backstock on material that might appeal to a modern audience and number it... even doing original material to connect stuff so that they can skip weaker runs on the books.

For example, with Thor, they could do an origin mini-series that continues directly into Walt Simonson's run on Thor. Let's say they wanted the next run featured to be Jurgens / Romita Junior but wanted to skip all the Onslaught crap; they could do an issue's worth of new content bridging the gap between Simonson's run and Jurgen's.

That's a great idea.

Yeah, that's the kind of thinking that would help.

It seems like it'd be a waste to not use the decades of material they already have but they definitely need to figure out how to streamline it so that all of that continuity and nonsense is more... palatable... to a casual mainstream audience.

I think that their biggest missed opportunity has been Free Comic Book Day. Marvel had some big misses, sticking introductory issues of some of their continuity heavy lines in there. DC seemed to do a lot more of the kid friendly titles, which are easier to jump into.

Great X-Men designs at Project Rooftop:





More: http://www.tencentticker.com/projectroo ... rdes-x-men

Woof, I think those are ugly as sin.