RICHARD: Marvel are kicking arse! 1602 blew away all expectations of a historical based superhero story. Are there plans to extend 1602 beyond the initial series? Any plans for a number of titles, mirroring what DC have achieved with the Sandman franchise - but selling better and with slightly less elves?
JOE: There are plans to do more, but like many of our franchises, slow growth, slow growth and more slow growth.

RICHARD: Marvel are kicking arse! Brian Bendis is writing so many books and they're all selling tip top! How many more books can you squeeze out of him, and what's this Bendis Event for Summer I hear all the cool kids talking about? And just how much arse will it kick? A Texan size arse (from photos I've seen, they look pretty big...)?
JOE: Well, by now you know he's doing Avengers and Brian has dropped a few projects in order to focus on his new ones so he is very aware of his limit. As for how much arse will it kick? I'm predicting a record market share by years end.

RICHARD: Marvel are kicking arse! And with the X-properties, you're giving readers so much choice. Books they'll like, and books they won't like, but that's okay, because someone else will. And if mutant lore is about anything, it's about tolerance of diversity, and you've been very, very tolerant it seems. How do you expect them all to get along together (especially when they might have to share the Top Twenty with Superman for a few months)?
JOE: Wow, that was such an eloquent and thoughtful question that I'm too stunned to give an answer. You're a very strange man. Look, we're trying to create an X book for everyone and hopefully more than one that appeals to everyone. I do have to say with great glee that the plan is really taking shape and it's looking amazing. As much as people are looking forward to books like Astonishing, I've just seen a batch of Alan Davis pages and I can't tell you how this book will be a huge sleeper hit. Alan and Chris are capturing magic pure and simple.

RICHARD: Marvel are kicking arse! But just how many times can Spider-Man kick Dr Octopus's arse in one month?
JOE: Yeah, I got to agree with you on that one, but hey, we got a movie on the horizon! I think after June and July we'll be retiring Doc Ock for quite a while.

 

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #7 - SIGNED BY ARTIST WADE VON GRAWBADGER

RICHARD: Marvel are kicking arse! And now you've got Warren Ellis too (fair swap for Grant Morrison, yes?). I hear he likes his arses tattooed. Are you prepared to let him only kick body modified arses, or must he be forced to kick everyone's arse when writing Ultimate Fantastic Four and possible other Avenger's related things?
JOE: Warren is arguably one of the top five writers in the industry and in my opinion the top writer in need of greater recognition. We intend to let Warren shine on these books. He and I discussed his previous tenure at Marvel and how at every turn there was someone fingering Warren's stories or telling him that he had to derail and join in on some massive crossover event. My goal is to let Warren write and create the best stuff he can within the context of the characters he's playing with. I believe it's that formula that has gotten us the best work possible out of hacks like Bendis and Millar, so imagine what Warren can do.

RICHARD: Marvel are kicking arse! Will that success help when presenting future publishing plans? Does increased arse-kicking go arse-in-arse with being able to kick arses in whichever way you please?
JOE: You my friend, are a jack arse.

Kicking arse is a delicate art form. One doesn't want to kick arse so mightily that the arse in question is too sore for future arse kickings. You have to know exactly at what point to stop kicking arse or better yet, to tone the arse kicking to a gentle arse thumping so as to not lose the arse entirely. I do prefer the latter method because, as a born arse kicker, it's quite tough for me to stop my foot from moving in the general direction of the arse in question and I don't ever want that arse to take for granted that it is my foot that will be kicking it firmly as long as I'm at the helm of the bottom end of my leg.

To put it simply, we have so many big projects in 2004 that we actually had to slide a significant number of them to 2005.

Joe Quesada kicks arse at Marvel and his own Joe Quesada Forum.

But that's still not all!

Alan Moore's Nightjar from Avatar and out this week is not by Alan Moore. No, it's by my brother-in-surname-only, Antony Johnston and Max and Sebastien Fumara.

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This one has a very tortured history. It's the sequel to an abandoned story meant to be published in Warrior Magazine (where Alan Moore also wrote V For Vendetta, Marvelman and The BoJeffries Saga) and would have been Moore's first horror work in comics, over twenty years ago. Avatar resurrected it, got artist Bryan Talbot to finish the art, and now with Moore's supervision, Antony Johnston is continuing the story, taking Moore's concepts and telling new stories.

And with nostalgia comics in the air, Transformers, Thundercats, GI Joe, He-Man, it's nice to find a creation that seems nostalgic for... well, the kind of comics that make me nostalgic, I guess. Basically early Sandman and Jamie Delano Hellblazer.

Nightjar is set in the early eighties, and it's a tribute to the craft just how post-Moore eighties horror it feels. Since Vertigo was pretty much Moore's legacy at DC, it shouldn't be surprising that this follows a similar path, but it's remarkable how the same set of circumstances twenty years later could replicate the same results.

Even the artwork is the kind that used to be perfectly acceptable, but now may be considered rushed and shoddy in places. Certainly it's inconsistent, spotty and doesn't fulfill its potential, but then the same could be said of those Hellblazers' I loved so much.

With a houseful of British types, each with their own personality quirk (and hopefully all to be offed in a different manner as the comic continues), great plans in the offing and the knowledge that anything remotely Christian is evil, Nightjar plays all the right strings. It just seems a shame Constantine isn't around the corner.

It does play the unfortunate trick of hindsight once, a conspiracy to ensure Reagan will be the new President which smacks a little of those films where the young William Churchill walks past and someone says "that man will be Prime Minister one day, mark my words" - making me want to run into the screen and hit their smug, self-satisfied faces, but you can't have everything I suppose.

I want more of this, though.

Rich Johnston writes Lying In The Gutters and Holed Up.

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The Waiting For Tommy Archive

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