Marvel Teases "Fresh Start" for Superhero Comic Book Line
Marvel Entertainment has released a promotional video teasing “a fresh start” for its superhero comic book line this May, with creative team changes and a return to the classic versions of characters including Iron Man, Thor and Captain America.
“I can say, walking through these halls, I’ve never seen more enthusiasm and excitement for where Marvel comics is going this year,” emphasizes Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski in the promotional short, which teases “New series, new creative teams, new directions [and] new beginnings.” “Not since Marvel Now [the 2012 relaunch of Marvel’s publishing line] have we had such an over-arching, line-wide change of talent on the Marvel comics line,” he adds.
The much-anticipated relaunch has been in the works for some time following the flop of last fall’s similar line-wide relaunch Marvel Legacy, which saw the publisher criticized for renumbering its titles and pushing too heavily in a nostalgic direction. (More important, sales continued to drop across the line, with the relaunch failing to halt the sales decline for longer than branded promotional issues.) The name of the new relaunch, “A Fresh Start,” is as clear a break from the retro-sounding focus of “Legacy” as possible.
The promotional artwork accompanying the release, by Jim Cheung, features characters with high media profiles outside of comics, including Deadpool, Logan, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, the Punisher, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp. Notably, the image also features the original Thor, Captain America and Iron Man, all of whom had been replaced in recent years.
The most recently created characters in the image are Ms. Marvel (who debuted in 2013) and the Robbie Reyes incarnation of Ghost Rider, who first appeared in 2014; unlike past Marvel relaunch images, there is no debut of a mystery character or new redesign for an existing hero.
Marvel Entertainment told The Hollywood Reporter that information about the creators and series that will make up the “A Fresh Start” relaunch will be released in the coming days and weeks. With a May launch date given, it should be noted that the publisher should release its publishing schedule for that month at some point in the next week.
It will be interesting to see whether they really mean it about the "new creative teams," or if they're just going to play musical chairs with their existing talent. If the latter, then the skepticism about the "freshness" part is understandable.
_________________ The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls who, when he found an especially costly one, sold everything he had to buy it.
“I can say, walking through these halls, I’ve never seen more enthusiasm and excitement for where Marvel comics is going this year,” emphasizes Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski.
Yes, not until 2018 has he seen such excitement for where Marvel Comics is going in 2018.
But, here’s the problem: “Legacy” flopped badly in the greater market as far as I can tell. Obviously, the December and January numbers will tell more of the tale, but the anecdotal stories from retailers of every size and shape are pretty uniform: “Legacy” shat the bed. Not only did it not reignite sales, but in many cases I’m hearing from scores of my peers, sales are actually lower than they were before “Legacy” started – they certainly were for me on multiple titles.
It’s the kind of the once-in-a-generation burn that will change the ordering behavior of many retailers forever – I can see many of my peers with so much overstock of both lenticular covers and the “regular” editions that they’re resorting to sell copies at below-wholesale costs just to recoup some cash flow, so they can keep the doors open.
Legacy Looks Like a Complete Misfire – Marvel Sales Distribution Charts for November 2017
That’s a lot lower than the Marvel charts have looked lately, isn’t it? That’s because there are no successful events. Oh, there are Legacy covers galore, but I don’t think anybody can claim with a straight face that those Legacy variant covers were a success. “Live by the sword, die by the sword” and Marvel’s been living on those variants for years… except they seem to have gone to the well too often and what they used to be able to get ordered for those variants is way down. Well, that and the retailers really didn’t appreciate the tactics being used with minimum orders.
[...] The bestselling non-tricked out Marvel Universe issue? Amazing Spider-Man #791 a bit over 50K. Yes, Marvel is treading awfully close here to not having a “normal” ongoing superhero title selling over 50K. There’s very little going on with ongoing non-Star Wars titles until you get into the 30K-39K sales band. Which is to say, it sure doesn’t look like the Legacy promotion is moving the needle.
As usual, for too many issues selling in that 20-29K band to do retailers much good unless it’s a special order/pullbox, but at least Marvel’s been weeding the garden and there’s not as much selling under 20K as there used to be. If it’s still there (and there was a reorder for Thor #700 charting), it’s because it’s selling in a different format.
With the lenticulars getting roundly rejected by Marvel’s old standards for variants, that leaves them without a real top list in November and it makes for an ugly chart.
Yeah, I don't even feel like this is any bigger news than a summer event book at this point. The only thing they can really do is a continuity reboot, but even that doesn't feel so special anymore.
It will be interesting to see whether they really mean it about the "new creative teams," or if they're just going to play musical chairs with their existing talent. If the latter, then the skepticism about the "freshness" part is understandable.
I think you're right.
Ocean Doot wrote:
I think one of the things that made it off-putting is that the word "lenticular" sounds made up.
It just made me think of lentils, which don't appeal to me, so it was an inherently bad thing.
_________________ "They'll bite your finger off given a chance" - Junkie Luv (regarding Zebras)
One good thing about the new EIC is that he's sure to bring fresh ideas to Marvel!
Quote:
Is Marvel's New Relaunch A "Fresh Start" or More of the Same?
The upcoming comic-book-line makeover will be the company's seventh since 2012.
Tuesday's announcement that Marvel Entertainment’s comic book line is getting a “Fresh Start” in May, with a linewide relaunch scheduled to roll out that month, might sound familiar to anyone who remembers the similar Marvel Legacy relaunch last year. For those who have been paying attention to Marvel’s comic book output over the past few years, this is just the latest incarnation of a now annual promise of a new status quo.
Marvel has, in fact, been undergoing yearly relaunches since 2012, when the conclusion of its successful Avengers vs. X-Men series led directly into Marvel NOW! — yes, the all-upper case “NOW” and exclamation point were intentional — which was described at the time by then-editor-in-chief Axel Alonso as “a new beginning” for the publisher. Rolling out across a number of months, Marvel NOW! saw almost every series in the line relaunched with a new creative team and new mission statement for the immediate future, whether it was Avengers being transformed into a massive international army of superheroes or Peter Parker replaced as Spider-Man, albeit temporarily, by Doctor Octopus.
Marvel NOW! was prompted by two separate events. Firstly, it simply seemed like the right time for such a shift across the entire line, which had a number of creators wrapping up their runs on titles simultaneously or coming to natural break points that could lead to relaunches and/or changes in direction. Secondly, and — although those at Marvel would reject this publicly — more pointedly, it was a reaction to DC Entertainment’s The New 52 reboot, which had happened the previous year and saw the company briefly eclipse Marvel in terms of attention and, more importantly, sales. With DC scoring attention and praise for the makeover, it was no surprise to see Marvel wanting to do something similar.
It worked, leading to a second wave of new releases in early 2013, and then a third wave later that year, under the title All-New Marvel NOW!. All-New Marvel NOW! was less far-reaching than its predecessor, offering fewer new series and creative team switches while the majority of comics simply got new brand logos and a brief nod on covers. Nonetheless, the resultant sales bump was enough for Marvel to go back to the well one more time, and late 2014 saw the announcement of Avengers NOW!, technically a fourth wave of Marvel NOW!, with a small number of new titles that centered on makeovers for Captain America, Iron Man and Thor, alongside a small number of additional launches.
If each of these relaunches saw a declining amount of attention and increased sales, 2015 offered Marvel a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: Its Secret Wars storyline, an outgrowth of the Avengers series that launched with the original Marvel NOW! promotion, was being sold as ending the Marvel Comic Book Universe, not to mention more than 30 series as a result. Whatever followed would be the ultimate chance to start over, and catch the attention of new and lapsed readers.
The name of the subsequent relaunch, at least, promised much: Announced in summer 2015, All-New, All-Different Marvel — named after the 1970s relaunch of the X-Men franchise that turned it into a sales juggernaut — restarted every single series from No. 1, and added titles to the line, including Old Man Logan, The Vision and A-Force. In terms of creative scope, however, the line was limited: Many writers and artists stayed with the series they had been working on before Secret Wars, and despite the fictional conceit of the universe ending and restarting, storylines continued from previous runs essentially unaffected.
Although the prospect of four relaunches in four years — including two linewide relaunches during that period — didn't appear to have exhausted Marvel, it certainly started to have an effect on readers; initial high sales of the All-New, All-Different Marvel launches quickly gave way to perilous drops across the line. The publisher responded in the only way it knew how: announcing Marvel NOW! 2.0 in summer 2016, for a launch in the fall of that year. Similar to All-New Marvel NOW! in 2013, it added branding linewide, but didn’t see every series relaunched and renumbered; it also notably didn’t improve Marvel’s sales, which led to last year’s Marvel Legacy, a relaunch that saw more than 50 titles continue, with numbering artficially increased to suggest continuous publication since initial launch.
Marvel Legacy debuted with a one-off special issue of the same name in September; just two months later, Marvel announced a new editor-in-chief, and two months after that, a new publisher, as well. Now, the company is promising a “Fresh Start”, albeit with little information outside of a promotional video and image that seem very similar to those advertising the last six relaunches. It’s the latest sign that the company wants to put a very bad 2017 behind it, but without actually demonstrating that it’s done much to change just yet. (Despite the promise of “new talent,” the first two announced relaunches from “Fresh Start” feature existing Marvel creators.)
Could this, finally, be the relaunch that sticks? It’s unclear, and likely to stay that way for some time. Perhaps it’d be better to ask again this time next year, around the time that Marvel teases the arrival of Marvel NOW! 3D.
So far the two creative teams announced are entirely existing talent.
I think that's fine if they're proven sellers like Mark Waid or Jason Aaron. But there's probably a lot of mid-tier talent that could be replaced by new creators to Marvel.
The only Marvel books I've bought over the last several years have been drawn by Mike Allred and Frank Cho -- I think they should really try to vary the style and tone of their books. There's this "house style" to the entire line that not everyone finds appealing. And while I can understand if they want to keep with that style in their core line of books like Avengers and Spidey, they have a lot of other properties that could be boosted with a more individual take on the series -- it seemed to work well for Miller on DD, Simonson on Thor, Claremont on X-Men, Allred on X-Force, etc.
Like how about Tom Scioli on Machine Man or the Eternals? Steve Rude on Agents of Atlas or Iron Fist? Go with some out of the box guys on a few of the fringe books, try to diversify the approaches so you have a book that appeals to someone in the audience.
Seven relaunches in six years? Or maybe just four, depending on how you count them? When you put it that way, it makes them look kind of desperate. And kind of clueless.
_________________ The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls who, when he found an especially costly one, sold everything he had to buy it.
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