Demise of Nextwave series

[The Night Phantom]

Comic Book Resources recently ran an article claiming that Nextwave would end with #12 and return with various mini-series, citing Nextwave writer Warren Ellis. The end of the current series is confirmed by Marvel’s January solicitations; but in this past week’s New Joe Fridays, Joe Quesada is more tentative about Nextwave’s return, saying, “[N]othing is discounting that we can’t come back sometime in the future with a Nextwave Season II.” According to both articles, the reason for the current series’ end is a complex combination of low sales numbers and the creative team’s decision to move on.

The same New Joe Fridays gives Quesada’s postmortem on the current series (well, a premortem, since #12 comes out in January). A few comments:

Could we have done more? Was there a marketing angle that we didn’t uncover or think of? If there’s one thing that keeps me up at night, it’s coming up with new and interesting ideas for hyping our titles.

When a book like Nextwave comes along that doesn’t have any top tier characters in it, I can see how there would be a lot of confusion and hesitation to order big on it.

What’s also interesting is that it’s also not always about characters. If Nextwave had been launch as a Civil War tie-in or a post-Civil War, its numbers would have been significantly larger while having the same content. Sometimes timing has a lot to do with it as well.

Nextwave wouldn’t have survived very long four years ago. The reason it did as well as it did is because of the improved market.

I find it somewhat interesting that all of Quesada’s analysis of Nextwave’s fortunes (or misfortunes) in the market is on marketing itself. He says nothing positive, negative, or otherwise about story craft.

[thew40]

nightphantom said:

I find it somewhat interesting that all of Quesada’s analysis of Nextwave’s fortunes (or misfortunes) in the market is on marketing itself. He says nothing positive, negative, or otherwise about story craft.

That's not very unusual. Warren Ellis is a fairly big name in comics and the last thing any Editor in Chief is ever going to say is "Man, this comic sucked," esspecially when there is hope to have the comic return in a mini-series of some sort. More often than not, you won't read much negative critism from Joe Q, with only an occassional one here and there (including the New Old Thunderbolts).

I'm disappointed by this. I know people had some problems with this comic, but Nextwave was a lot of fun for me. It was one of the few comics to make me laugh so hard I actually cried.

Between Dirk Anger and the Captain, this comic was silly gold.

~W~

[The Night Phantom]

thew40 said:

nightphantom said:

I find it somewhat interesting that all of Quesada’s analysis of Nextwave’s fortunes (or misfortunes) in the market is on marketing itself. He says nothing positive, negative, or otherwise about story craft.

That's not very unusual. Warren Ellis is a fairly big name in comics and the last thing any Editor in Chief is ever going to say is "Man, this comic sucked," esspecially when there is hope to have the comic return in a mini-series of some sort. More often than not, you won't read much negative critism from Joe Q, with only an occassional one here and there (including the New Old Thunderbolts).

I’m not expecting Quesada to trash comics produced under his watch—especially ones which haven’t gone on sale yet (as in the case of Nextwave’s final issues)—but it would be possible to discuss a series’ failure in terms of story craft without denigrating the craftsmanship. For example, he could say that a comic was an excellent example of genre G, unfortunately published at a time when genre G was not popular. But in this case he instead goes on and on about marketing as though no other contributing factor could exist. He talks about being kept up at night thinking about how to hype. Doesn’t Marvel have a marketing head for that sort of thing? I thought the Editor in Chief was supposed to be a kind of head creative officer. He should be up at night thinking about great stories. Yeah, the EiC can’t ignore market forces—just as the marketing head should take creative issues into account—but it seems that each of these persons should be concentrating chiefly (no pun intended) on his own area. And while we should guard against reading too much into a single interview, Quesada’s comments could be emblematic of a Marvel where craft is not overseen much, save as an arm of the marketing department.


Modified: added a missing parenthesis.

[Shiryu]

I'm not that surprised, it's sadly quite obvious that in these days at Marvel sales count more than quality (New Avengers anyone ? ;D).
But after all he is the one who brought marvel away from the controlled administration thing, and if the whole things goes into bankruptcy, there would not be good or bad marvel comics anymore, so maybe he has a point sometimes.

[ozbot]

Come on, guys. Marvel IS a business, you know. So, yeah, they're going to care about sales. And yeah, the head of the company isn't going to badmouth a product or a creator. The demise of Nextwave (which I lament as well, being a fan of its quirky outlandishness) sounds pretty straightforward to me in the current market of the comics business, where creators drive sales, not necessarily just marketing, stories, or characters.

[The Night Phantom]

ozbot said:

Come on, guys. Marvel IS a business, you know. So, yeah, they're going to care about sales. And yeah, the head of the company isn't going to badmouth a product or a creator.

I’ll just save myself some time:

nightphantom said:

I’m not expecting Quesada to trash comics produced under his watch—especially ones which haven’t gone on sale yet (as in the case of Nextwave’s final issues)—but it would be possible to discuss a series’ failure in terms of story craft without denigrating the craftsmanship. For example, he could say that a comic was an excellent example of genre G, unfortunately published at a time when genre G was not popular. But in this case he instead goes on and on about marketing as though no other contributing factor could exist. He talks about being kept up at night thinking about how to hype. Doesn’t Marvel have a marketing head for that sort of thing? I thought the Editor in Chief was supposed to be a kind of head creative officer. He should be up at night thinking about great stories. Yeah, the EiC can’t ignore market forces—just as the marketing head should take creative issues into account—but it seems that each of these persons should be concentrating chiefly (no pun intended) on his own area. And while we should guard against reading too much into a single interview, Quesada’s comments could be emblematic of a Marvel where craft is not overseen much, save as an arm of the marketing department.

ozbot said:

The demise of Nextwave (which I lament as well, being a fan of its quirky outlandishness) sounds pretty straightforward to me in the current market of the comics business, where creators drive sales, not necessarily just marketing, stories, or characters.

Theoretically, creators engage in craftsmanship, which drives a fan’s fandom for the creators. One of the traditional duties of editorial is guide the creators. It is possible to do so in a way that creates both profit and good stories. My concern is that Marvel editorial is losing sight of its function.

[The Night Phantom]

shiryu said:

I'm not that surprised, it's sadly quite obvious that in these days at Marvel sales count more than quality (New Avengers anyone ? ;D).
But after all he is the one who brought marvel away from the controlled administration thing, and if the whole things goes into bankruptcy, there would not be good or bad marvel comics anymore, so maybe he has a point sometimes.

But if there were only bad Marvel comics, you wouldn’t want to read them, and so that would be no better than there being no Marvel at all. Profit makes comics possible, but it doesn’t make them desirable. I’d prefer to see a better balance.

[Shiryu]

Agree on that.
Problem is defining a good comic, and, sadly, at the end of the day for a publisher a good comic is one that sells well, and viceversa. I've never read Nextwave, but if it didn't sell well, most readers didn't consider it a good comic (or one worth the price at least), so Marvel closed it. It's sad, because there are probably some comics that are not top sellers and yet have very good quality, but I'm afraid that's the way it is.