Originally posted by It's False

---

I'm unspeakably bummed that Phil Jimenez has become a Marvel exclusive. Infinite Crisis and 52 couldn't have been what they were without his amazing artwork. And I guess we won't get to see what Guggenheim can do for an encore after killing off Bart Allen.

IDW has quietly become a great independent publisher. They've managed to do some great stuff with the Angel, Star Trek, and Transformers licenses and I would expect the same kind of love to go into a Dr. Who comic. Between this and Joss Whedon's Angel: Season 6 set to go into print, 2008 will be a great year for IDW.

If Thunderbolts is any indication, Warren Ellis going to Astonishing X-Men is FANTASTIC news!

(edited by It's False on 27.7.07 1618)

---

Originally posted by Tenken347

---

I'm kinda with odessasteps. Although I've more or less come to enjoy Ellis' take on the post-Civil War Thunderbolts, I just can't see him as the right voice for an X-Men book. It just seems like a bad fit. I am interested to see what kind of team he selects, though.

---

---


xAce42 (8:09:57 PM): let me toss you some quotes
xAce42 (8:10:15 PM): Warren Ellis: Well, Chris, I'm closing in on 40 now, so I'm pretty much washed up and preparing for the time where I'll have to sell what operating internal organs I have left for bill money, and I'm looking around to see what's left in commercial comics that I haven't done. And one of the things I haven't yet done is work on a big franchise, just to see what it's like. I worked in the X-Office back in the 90s, but they never let me near their big toys in case I broke them or put them in my mouth or something. So when this came up, and when the degree of creative freedom that comes with it became clear, I thought, why the hell not? I mean, you never get to make your "stamp" on these things, because the franchise needs to keep running and everything gets dug over and re-invented in the end. But I like the technical challenge in these commercial gigs: to bring the property into the era of its production, as it were, and to write stories I'd like to read.
xAce42 (8:10:38 PM): Then a bunch of crud about his stories being about mutants in Nigeria that are off the map for the 198.
xAce42 (8:11:28 PM): And, you know, there's almost a case to be made that Grant dragged the franchise to the end of the 20th Century, not least by fast-forwarding through the recent history of the superhero comic. The first page of his run is Logan and Scott stabbing and obliterating giant death robots, but within the space of pages, he's reestablished the X-Men as a pacifist team. In fact, they actually fail every time they attempt to default to physical violence to resolve situations, which inverts the whole thing (Joe Casey tried something similar in his Superman run). And then, by the end, he inverts it again with the ultimate act of violence -- loving violence, mind, indulgent violence -- by essentially burning out an entire future. Resetting the X-Men as a team run by sex and violence -- Emma and Scott. And the first thing Joss does is to put them back in the fetish gear, send them out to beat up everyone they see in the name of Acceptance Into The Society -- pacifists in municipal worker's gear didn't cut it, but a crew of gimp suits smacking people around brings them the love of the culture!
xAce42 (8:12:16 PM): Well, original creator-owned work is always a completely different animal. And, frankly, I don't know that anyone had any expectations for my Thunderbolts run (which, like Nextwave, I write mostly for my own amusement). I dunno. I don't think about that sort of thing much anymore. I just write what I want, and people will either buy it or they won't. Having a mainstream novel released in hardback from a major publisher -- that's nerve-wracking. Writing comics? Piece of piss, mate.



---