§ Jackpot! When we said we wanted more recent comics behind-the-scenes, we didn’t know Tom Brevoort was going to oblige with the initial pitch for Civil War!!!. Now all those ramblings from Mark Millar on Millarworld can finally be interpreted.

This was done immediately after the creator conference at which the initial ideas for CIVIL WAR were thrown around, and you’ll see Mark make reference to some of those conversations herein. Also, the version I’ve chosen to upload has notes incorporated into the body of the text from both Joe Quesada and myself, so you can get a sense as to our innediate eractions to the specifics of what Mark was proposing. And because I can’t seem to do different colors in this blog, the Joe comments are labeled JQ, and my comments are labeled TB.


We find this pullquote especially endearing because Tom is a great editor but he made just as many stupid typos as we do. “Eractions”? That SHOULD be a word. This posting is a frigging Rosetta stone:

Also, as Jeph said, we can’t really have a Civil War without some genuine casualties, so we’d better start thinking about that seriously—and who we’d want to kill off or mutilate in this thing. If Speedball is the best we’ve got, it’s time to pack it in.


§ One blogger painstakingly compares DaVinci’s The Last Supper in Relation to DC’s 2nd Countdown Teaser Image:

Mary Marvel: It seems as though Mary and Eclipso are in reverse positions in comparison to The Last Supper image, as determined by who has his arms around whom. We said the comparison wasn’t perfect. However, similar to The Last Supper, the one character does have his arm around the other. What Eclipso is saying to Mary is anyone’s guess, but it is interesting to note that these two place-switching figures are actually two characters known for swapping, as Mary currently has the powers of Black Adam and Eclipso must inhabit the bodies of others.


Sure, but when will Andrew Lloyd Weber write the musical?

§ Speaking of COUNTDOWN, the blogosphere is atwitter with the news that the guy who was going to blog about it every week has quit:

I have now dropped Countdown. The extent to which there will not even be a pretence of a story in this comic has become painfully clear.


Well that one was made for short haul.

Meanwhile Dick interrupts his 90s revival to bury DC:

Nobody seems to like Countdown. And yet, take a look at DC’s solicitations: tons and tons of miniseries spinning off from Countdown. Presumably these were all commissioned and scheduled before the sales figures started rolling in, but still–DC is flooding the market with a bunch of series nobody wants. If the sales on the core title are slipping fast, what can we expect for the multitude of spinoffs? This is especially dire if one considers the potential effect on sales generated by the poor quality of World War III (though, to be fair, I’ve heard some people say they actually enjoyed WWIII–never underestimate the allure of continuity porn, I guess).

1 COMMENT

  1. It seems to me that many of the arguements I’ve been reading about Countdown are the same arguments I was reading when 52 first started. I just don’t see the same problems that other people are seeing and quite frnakly find it dissapointing that someone who planned to comment on every issue weekly has “given up” for what are, to me at least, reasons that equal nothing but lazy reading and an inability to see the bigger picture. I don’t read countdown weekly, but rather monthly in one swoop, so I plan to analyze the series on my site above for the remainder of the year and try to give some semblance of an idea as to how it’s really no worse than 52. Just a little different.

  2. I love that Tom Breevort says:
    “[TB – We should probably build on the prison we established in the Negative Zone in the FF: FOES limited series. If nothing else, it ties everything back to stuff we already have in place, and makes it all seem like a big overarching plan.]”
    Ha – “makes it all seem like a big overarching plan”

  3. woah even better:
    [TB – Let me say the obvious thing here: The Hulk War doesn’t belong in this story, and it’s only our own greed that keeps trying to force it in. I do think that the Hulk should play a role in this story, but right now this is the point where everything disintegrates into chaos, into two big summer crossover stories smooshed together. It’s not going to be accessable, it’s not even going to make sense, and I don’t think we should do it. Let PLANET HULK be PLANET HULK, and let CIVIL WAR be CIVIL WAR. Let’s not chase the DC dollar on this. It’s a sucker’s bet.]

  4. Leigh:
    Not liking is it fine. Creating a blog to analyze each issue on a weekly basis and then quitting because it’s dropped is lazy, especially for the reasons he claims in the entry. It would seem to me that if he didn’t like it, it would create all that much more to write about in analyzing the book.

    I don’t prescriobe to half of his reasons to stop analyzing the book after 10 weeks. And if he doesn’t like it, beyond the small world scope of saying there’s no story to speak of (which I definitely don’t agree with), the fact that he dropped to title and will no longer be seakign about it strikes me quite frankly as lazy. He should have mde the committment to blog about it on a weekly basis if he was going to, 10 weeks in (let me remind you there are 42 weeks to go), drop the book.

    There’s no more connection between the storylines in this book 10 weeks in than there were in 52. If you don’t like it, then write baout what’s wrong for the next 42 weeks at least.

  5. Erik:
    Firstly, I never made any such commitment. I specifically said in my very first post on that blog “I’m not going to commit to buying 52 comics in advance without any knowledge of the contents.” So who’s the lazy reader?

    Conversely, DC *did* make some commitments in solicitations (saying that Keith Giffen would do all the breakdowns) and in interviews (saying it is a standalone story) that are absolutely untrue. Attend to the beam in DC’s eye before starting to imagine motes in mine.

    The fact is, I can find nothing to say about Countdown beyond “this is terrible”. It’s incoherent drivel, frankly, and not even interestingly bad.
    If you will pay for my copies of the other 42 issues, I will more than happily review them. If not, can you give me one good reason why I should spend another £63 of my own money on something I get no pleasure from?

    Given that you don’t appear to like what I have to say, why would you want me to continue anyway? It’s not ‘lazy’ to stop doing something that is of no benefit to anyone. The correct word is ‘sensible’.

    As for the relative merits of 52 and Countdown, de gustibus non disputandum est and all that. All I can say is that at an equivalent point in 52, there had been many points that had made me laugh, excited me or intrigued me. There have been none in Countdown, as I have explained at a length that has become tedious even to myself on my own blog.

    After punching myself in the face for ten weeks, I have noticed that doing so is painful. In my view, that makes me slow on the uptake. But even so, I have no plan to punch myself for another 42 weeks.

    Finally, I suspect this isn’t really the appropriate forum to discuss my lack of personal morals. If you have a reply to this, please either email me direct or post it in my own blog…

  6. Regarding all the Countdown spin-offs, I wonder how different reader interest would be if they weren’t labeled as such? I mean, forget Countdown, I’m curious about the idea of an insane but heroic version of the Joker, and if Captain Carrot comes back in a fun series, I’m all for it, whether it’s billed as a Countdown tie-in or not.

  7. Kelson, I have to agree – I’m going to check a lot of them out because some of the ideas sound great, but I’m giving them no slack whatever because the Countdown brand means ‘stay away’…