Marvel seems to be going through a lot of changes of lately. Whether it is because of Disney wanting to have a bigger hand in the company or their recent falling to become the #2 comic book company for 2 months in a row with the success of DC Comic's Relaunch (more on that later), Marvel is starting to look alike revolving door. One of the most significant cancellations is the axe being brought down on the 4 issue miniseries Victor Von Doom, which was supposed to be written by scribe Nick Spencer (of Morning Glories) and Demo artist Becky Cloonan. The 4 issue mini was to tell of a teenage doom and his trip to Hell to reclaim his mother's soul and was to be released in two weeks. Yet, Marvel had cancelled the project.
Nick Spencer's tweet on it Friday Morning:
Trust me, no one is more bummed about this than I am.
And Victor Von Doom are not the only casualties. All Winners Squad and IronMan 2.0 (which is also written by Nick Spencer) are also getting cancelled. Yet, the other big surprise was our recent story on Alpha Flight's status. Originally, it had go from a miniseries into an ongoing series a few months ago. Yet, due to sales on the book dropping significantly, Alpha Flight is returning to its miniseries status, ending in issue #8 as it originally intended.
And just announced Monday morning by Alpha Flight co-writer Fred Van Lente on his Twitter, his upcoming 5 issue miniseries, Destroyers, has been cancelled by Marvel as well. Destroyers was to feature a story with She-Hulk, Beast, A-Bomb, Devil Dinosaur and more with art by Kyle Holtz.
Van Lente replied on his Twitter to one of his followers with this:
There was no announcement. The book hadn’t been solicited yet, and just wouldn’t have. … The biggest bummer about Destroyers was Kyle Hotz had #1-2 pencilled, and it looked grrrrreat. Ah, well. That’s showbiz for you.
All these in top of a recent lay off of 15 people being stated as a cost-cutting, not performance measure.
CBC will be keeping an eye on any other developments with the changes with Marvel.
DC TOPS SALES FOR 2ND MONTH IN A ROW
by Frankie Rodriguez
When DC first broke news of the relaunch, there were many fans who immediately jumped at the company. And creators from other company's were either curious or down right criticized DC on the decision to relaunch the books. It is now November. According to Comichron, orders for October were up by 2.67% on DC books from September. Yes. You read that correctly. Orders went UP for books from September to October. And while early reports that sales have gone down for DC, overall comics unit sales were positive this year, unlike the last several years where decline was more than evident. In September, DC Comics had 19 out of the Top 25 Selling titles. DC once again continues that feat but it's a bit different.
In September, Batman #1 lead DC as the champion of Sales that month. Yet, last month, Justice League #2 had sales, according to Diamond Distribution.
September 2011 DC's 19 top books: 1- Batman #1 2 - Action Comics #1 3- Green Lantern #1 4 - Flash # 1 5 - Superman #1 6- Detective Comics #1 7- Batman:The Dark Knight #1 10-Batman & Robin #1 11 - Green Lantern: New Guardian #1 12 -Batgirl # 1 13 - Wonder Woman #1 14- Green Lantern Corps # 1 15- Teen Titans # 1 16 - Aquaman # 1 17 - Batwoman # 1 19- Red Lanterns # 1 20 - Justice League Dark # 1 21 - Nightwing # 1 24 - Justice League International # 1
October 2011 DC's 19 Top Books:
1 - Justice League # 2 2 - Batman # 2 3 - Action Comics # 2 4 - Green Lantern # 2 5 - Flash # 2 6 - Detective Comics # 2 10- Superman # 2 11 - Batman The Dark Knight # 2 12 - Batman & Robin # 2 13 - Wonder Woman # 2 14 - Batgirl # 2 15 - Batwoman # 2 16 - Teen Titans # 2 17 - Green Lanterns: New Guardians # 2 18 - Aquaman # 2 19 - Green Lantern Corps # 2 20 - Red Lanterns # 2 21- Nightwing # 2 23 - Justice League International # 2
Notice that while there has been shuffling, Justice League Dark was the only book to drop down; only to be replaced by the flagship title Justice League with its second issue. And Don't worry too much about Justice League Dark as it dropped to 30. If you expanded this to the Top 50 books of each month, DC still dominates with more titles in the Top 50 than Marvel.
With the increased visibility of comics, better access to them with digital same day capability, it seems that DC has succeed in their relaunch and working hard to keep their sales up. Let's see how Marvel, Image and other companies respond to this while DC continues their climb upward.
CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD:THE LAST BATTLE 2ND COLLECTION HITS SLEEVES
Writer Garth Ennis returns to the chronicles of Danny Wormwood, a shifty yet sympathetic television executive who also happens to be the Antichrist. Having averted his devilish father’s plans for an all-out apocalypse by eliminating God and the Devil, Danny has started to get his life back together – reuniting with his girlfriend Maggie and drinking beers with humbled messiah Jay and Jimmy the Talking Rabbit. But having rid Hell of its rightful lord, he now must face an even worse successor – the fallen, corrupt Pope Jacko! Ennis, the critically acclaimed creator of PREACHER and CROSSED, drags the whole world into the gutter with his trademark razor-sharp dialogue and biting wit, alongside the stunning artwork by collaborator Oscar Jimenez. Available in softcover and hardcover formats, with illustrated covers by Oscar Jimenez. Both will be released on November 08, 2011 from Avatar Press.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK Little known fact. Kamen Rider was created by the same man who did the Skull Man manga decades ago. And this video of Kamen Rider Skull is the closest tribute to a live action skull man that we will get . .. for now.
And that's it for this week. More news next week! Ja ne!
J1's own Jason Richardson, founder, owner & president of said company will have art featured in Archie Comics Megaman # 5. Richardson, who is an avid gamer and long time fan of the Megaman Franchise, recently garnered attention with his art work with his depiction of the iconic video game hero in the upcoming September 7th release of Megaman.
Richardson also recently placed second in Capcom's recent Street Fighter III Strike online edition poster contest where he was the runner up. So don't be shy. Go picking up Megaman #5 next Wednesday, September 7th, 2011 from Archie Comics. And after reading the story, take a look at Richardson's art work in the back. Congratulations Jason!
JUSTICE SOCIETY RIDES AGAIN IN 2012
This past weekend in Fan Expo, DC Comics announced that fan favorite series Justice Society WILL return coming 2012. This time, the Justice Society will be brought back by writer James Robinson and artist Nicola Scott. Didio, Robinson and others in DC's editorial revealed that the fan favorite book would return but in Earth-2, allowing for more characters in Justice Society. Didio explained that they wanted to be sure that if they brought back the Justice Society, they would do it right. The setting of Earth -2 will allow for more of the characters that were long dead for Robinson to use to create a new rich trapestry. More on Robinson's & Scott's JSA book as it becomes available.
ALPHA FLIGHT UPGRADES TO ONGOING
Often times these days in the comic book industry, we have seen many an ongoing series become a miniseries due to low sales; Marvel's Thor: The Mighty Avenger being one of the most recent examples of this. With impressive sales since it's 0.1 issue came out, the latest version of Alpha Flight is doing what has not been done in years . . . going from a mini series to a full fledged ongoing series. So yes, instead of 4 of 8 . . . it will be just issue #4 and so on and so forth for as long as the titles sales do as well as they have been doing. And now that Alpha Flight is now an ongoing series, writers Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak will be showing us how the once proud team of super heroes have to deal with things as fugitives in their own country and more. Fred Van Lente describes a little more about the plans with Alpha Flight now that it is an ongoing series:
It's very different to go from a book that has two main characters, to a book that has, I think at last count, about 17,000 major characters. All with their own distinct storyline. So it's very cool that everybody's now going to get the room they need to have their stories property laid out. We have this storyline of Jeanne-Marie taking over Aurora's body, and Walt Langowski seemingly can't turn into Sasquatch anymore. And how did Puck get out of Hell? And what really is going on with Heather Hudson? Because there's clearly something very wrong with her, but we don't quite know what it is yet. That is to say, you don't. Greg and I know. It's very cool, because it lets us tell even more of the story we were going to tell anyway. And there was inklings of this happening even really before the first issue came out, so fortunately Greg and I were able to have this in the back of our minds.
Pak adds:
We're good at working towards different eventualities. If the book had ended as scheduled with issue #8, we were perfectly fine with that. It would have been a great eight-issue maxiseries. But we always have that "B" plan in the back pocket, and it's very fun to be able to shift that into the "A" plan category. There's a way in which what's happening in Canada, as the story progresses, the rest of the Marvel Universe is going to become aware of exactly what's going on and will take an interest. We're going to be able to explore much more deeply how what's happening in Canada affects the Marvel Universe, and how the rest of the Marvel Universe is going to affect our characters. That is an opportunity to really open up the canvas a lot, and having the book turn into an ongoing absolutely with help with that.
The two writers confirmed that they will explore the characters, including how Puck got back from Hell and more on the Unity storyline. Artist Dale Eaglesham, a Canadian himself, has been enjoying the book and will stay on as regular penciler to the newly elongated series. Pak and Lente also promised guest stars from all over the Marvel Universe, including the Commonwealth of Heroes, Captain Britain & MI:13 and, of course, Wolverine. Alpha Flight is written by Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente with art by Dale Eaglesham in available from Marvel Comics.
GATES OPENS KIRBY'S UNIVERSE WITH CAPTAIN VICTORY
Dynamite Entertainment recently released a new book featuring a whole new universe that was created by comic book legend, Jack Kirby. Now Dynamite is preparing to release a second series as writer Sterling Gates takes on one of Kirby's oldest, non Big 2 works in the form of Captain Victory. Captain Victory features adventures of the Galactic Rangers, a police force that preserve peace and maintain order throughout the cosmos, lead by the title character, Captain Victory. Yet, Gates recently stated in an interview that these Galactic Rangers are NOT like the Green Lanterns or the Nova Corps.
They have a sense of honor, yes, but they’re far more soldier-like than the Green Lanterns. They’re not going to detain you if you try to shoot them, they’re going to fire right back, and they’re going to shoot to kill. Know what I mean? They’re soldiers doing their best to protect the galaxy from harm, and Captain Victory in particular will go to great lengths to make sure evil doesn’t spread out and overtake everything. As you see in the first issue, he’s willing to go to greater lengths than even his fellow Rangers would like...
Gates added that he plans to really give readers a look into Captain Victory and the characters themselves while exploring this new, vast universe that has been untouched for decades. And while the writing style is different, Gates promises to keep the enthusiasm of the original work:
Every panel of his Captain Victory series seems to be shouting at you with this lyrical excitement. The style played big back then, but I think comics have changed pretty drastically. The way we write and read comics has changed. Readers don’t seem to respond as well to the crazed narration style that Kirby used. If anything, people read that kind of thing as “retro-pastiche,” and I didn’t want to write the book that way. I wanted to tell these big, space operatic stories using a modern comic style, so that it appeals to any modern reader.
Captain Victory is written by Sterling Gates with art by Wagner Reis from Dynamite Entertainment.
STORMWATCH PREVIEW TRAILER
A look at Stormwatch #1, which follows events of Superman # 1. Stormwatch #1 is written by Paul Cornell and written by Miguel Sepulveda on September 7, 2011 from DC Comics.
COMIC BOOK CLASH DC'S RELAUNCH BLOG PROJECT
Yes. You are reading right. CBC is doing a special project in honor of the massive relaunch of books from DC Comics this September. This is historic. And we want to know how you feel about the books. Yeah you! Not the person to the left. No, no the midget who stole your girlfriend. Not your parents. YOU! DC is releasing 52 new number 1s as you know . . . and we want to hear for you what you think.
We will go by a Week by Week Breakdown of the new titles. And we need your input. It can be a few sentences. It can be a video of your opinion that we can upload and/or link. But we are looking for as much input from fans about the books after you have read them.
Comments and/or videos from books on a certain week will come out the week after they have been released . .. For example, Justice League opinions will be hit our page September 7th. Then every week after till the final week of new number #1s, which will be seen in the first week of October.
We want your input. And we will take your input on more than just 1 book but at least 1. We want to have something for all 52 books so do hesitate to pick up a new #1 and tell us what you think. And don't worry, CBC and many of the J1 staff themselves will be weighing in their own opinions come September.
So if you are interested in take 1 book or more, reading it and giving us an honest opinion other than just "It's sucks!" or "It's awesome!", please feel free to email us at francisco.k.rodriguez@gmail.com and state which book or books you will give opinions on. Deadline for opinion of the book is the Monday before the next CBC so for Week 1, you have until 11:59pm Monday September 5th to tell us what you think of Justice League #1 and next Monday till 11:59pm for all the books of Week Two. J1 Studios and CBC will reserve the right NOT to post certain comments if they are too . . .offensive. So don't be shy. Tell us what you think. See and talk with you all soon.
Marvel seems to be going through a lot of changes of lately. Whether it is because of Disney wanting to have a bigger hand in the company or their recent falling to become the #2 comic book company for 2 months in a row with the success of DC Comic's Relaunch (more on that later), Marvel is starting to look alike revolving door. One of the most significant cancellations is the axe being brought down on the 4 issue miniseries Victor Von Doom, which was supposed to be written by scribe Nick Spencer (of Morning Glories) and Demo artist Becky Cloonan. The 4 issue mini was to tell of a teenage doom and his trip to Hell to reclaim his mother's soul and was to be released in two weeks. Yet, Marvel had cancelled the project.
And Victor Von Doom are not the only casualties. All Winners Squad and Iron Man 2.0 (which is also written by Nick Spencer) are also getting cancelled. Yet, the other big surprise was our recent story on Alpha Flight's status. Originally, it had go from a miniseries into an ongoing series a few months ago. Yet, due to sales on the book dropping significantly, Alpha Flight is returning to its miniseries status, ending in issue #8 as it originally intended.
24 - Justice League International # 1 
