About Heroes

Newsarama updated this story this morning with comments from Mark Millar. Millar specifically calls it an art delay. He also says that Steve had no lead-in time for Civil War. Piss Poor planning on Marvel's part.

From Newsarama.com: 'When contacted for comment by Newsarama, writer Mark Millar said: "All I can say is that I'm as surprised by all this as you are. In fact, I only found out about it when I got up this morning and read my email. But you know what? This is a very cool thing for Marvel do to because it would have been so much easier to just go for a cheap fill-in artist instead of pushing back the books. Steve had virtually no lead-time on Civil War and a title with a million characters has proven much tougher than he expected. He and I both assumed a fill-in would be on the cards at some point, but Marvel credit Steve with a huge amount of our book's success and, as a creator, I'm genuinely stunned they spread the project out by another seven weeks to make it work for him. Marvel really took a bullet here. This pushes a lot of cash into the next financial quarter for them and they've really put product over profit here. I absolutely never expected them to work their entire publishing schedule around an art delay, but it's cool that they did and I totally take my hat off to them. Sure, it's horrible when a book we want is a little late, but I can live with a few weeks if it means getting Steve McNiven every issue. Apologies to readers and thanks to many people who were worried this meant I'd got sick again (I'm doing absolutely fine, thanks). This has been the biggest book of the millennium so far and it's clear people are passionate about waiting. But, honestly, it'll be worth it for seven issues of pure McNiven."'

You know what the real issue is here? It's right in the comment above:

"Steve had virtually no lead-time on Civil War..."

How many times have I said that when you're putting all your eggs in one basket, as Marvel is with Civil War, it is essential to get at least a few issues in the can before even announcing the piece? Would Marvel's books really have been screwed up by waiting three months to start The Road to Civil War? No! In fact, we might have gotten some wonderful three month stories in that gap, without Marvel's editorial team shoving content down writers' throats.

Biggest book of the millenia? Civil War? Wow, that's a pretty big statement. I mean let me count the books: Infinite Crisis, The Thing, Fell, Nextwave, Punisher, etc, etc. As far as these delays go I despise them but, short of stopping buying comics altogether what can I do. I do think it was ill-advised to start a "comic event" without seemingly any pre-planning. I don't know I have always gotten this feeling of Marvel that they just do stuff on the fly, and whereas it works on just individual titles sometimes, it ends up sucking hard whenever they try to do a story that occurs all through the Marvel Universe. This has been said before and I believe it, Marvel has always had good character development in it's line of things but, when it comes to the actual storytelling DC always excels at it better. I mean compare IC with CW and you see it clearly. Infinite Crisis-Story driven, preplanned, some but not a lot of character development, Civil War- Character driven, not preplanned well, lacking in it's overall story. Marvel's impulsiveness sometimes pays off but as evident with these delays they cannot do a "comics event" like Infinite Crisis, it's just not how they are geared. I am not saying IC didn't have a delay or two but, those were maybe a week at best. It's times like these that make me want DC & Marvel to merge so we can have good character development paired with good overall storytelling. In short, delays sucks but with CW I almost expected it. Sorry for the long comment.

I am a Marvel guy at heart, but this is ridiculous. I love Civil War, but I don't want to wait two months for not just Civil War 5, but the other books. I will wait to get it in trade. More money for Ultimate Spidey.

This is just the kind of comic company behaviour that will get me to drop comics....again....

To quote Darth Vader from Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith---

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

This is very sad and disappointing news.