WAITING
FOR TOMMY: NEW YORK SPIN CITY: MARVEL & DC
By
Richard Johnston
There
also seems to be a little conflict between DC's left and right
hands. On Mark Millar's forum,
he seems to back up the rumour about he and Hitch being approached
to take a Superman book, saying;
"I
never like to duck a straight question, but Hitchy and I just
can't comment on this right now. Yes, we've been made an outrageous
offer by a major comic book company, yes, this offer has Hitchy
and I on one title and myself and another famous artist on
a second dream-title for me and yes, the conditions sound
like they meet some of our requirements. However, this is
not a done deal. Our Marvel contracts extend to September,
but we already have our second year (har har!) on Ultimates
planned and we love this book so f**king much."
"Regardless,
ignore all rumours that Hitchy will be doing Superman or whatever
with anyone else. We've spoken daily about this since the
move was made for us and will only do EITHER of these two
projects if we can do them as a team."
The second
dream title, being JLA with Carlos Pacheco. DC sources insist
that Millar's bridges are still burnt, Millar hasn't been
made an offer, they only want Bryan Hitch. But Hitch isn't
moving.
Now it
might be that someone's telling porkies. But who, and to whom,
isn't clear.
Then
of course there's Wizard. DC's relationship with Wizard seems
to have been turned up a notch of two, with news stories being
given exclusively to the magazine - something that hadn't
been the case for the last few years. Which means they're
often in the situation where policy has been decided but can't
be released, as Wizard has a six week lead time to publication
- the magazine has to be finished six weeks before it's on
the comic book racks. So DC have to deny/prevaricate when
it comes to comment on a story. This has been usual practice
for Marvel of late, it's just harder for them to keep things
under wraps.
The amusing
situation gets quite farcical when the subscription copies
of Wizard arrive a week earlier than the comic shop copies.
Suddenly all the newshounds have copies of the stories, printed,
but the companies still can't comment because the magazine
hasn't been distributed to comic stores yet.
This
week's announcement of Jim Lee and Brian Azzarello on Superman
on WizardUniverse.com was precipitated not only by the weekend's
rumours, but also that subscription copies of Wizard Zero
hit the doormats, featuring the story.
It indicates
that the deals have been in place for a short while, rather
than the façade of very recent decisions, or even decisions
that have yet to be finalised.
Then
there's good old Marvel. Matt Hawes of Comics Unlimited let
it be known that he was the retailer, mentioned in LITG, who
wrote to Ike Perlmutter, got a call back, in which they discussed
Bill Jemas. Matt tells me"
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