Essential Eight - Marvel

Robin The Boy Wonder · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 8:19 pm Post subject: Essential Eight - Marvel

I found myself perusing Tom Brevoort's recent blogs and found something that may be of some interest here. It's partly a game in one sense although has the potential to spark off some pretty interesting debate, hence my placing it here. Rather than have me waffle on any further, let's turn the proceedings over to Marvel's revered Executive Editor himself:

Back in 1957, Marvel's distribution went belly-up. The company had just signed on with a new distributor, who promptly went out of business. And Marvel almost went with them. In a mad scramble, owner and publisher Martin Goodman cut a deal with the only distributor he could find--Independent News, which was the distribution arm of DC Comics. As part of the deal, Martin, who was notorious for flooding the stands with dozens of imitation products any time he sensed a hot trend, was prohibited from releasing any more than 8 titles a month--that's all Independent News would take. As a result, Marvel wount up cancelling 80-90% of the line, and focusing on only a select few series. It was within this climate of limitation that the Marvel super heroes were created.

Now, what I'd like to try today is duplicating those circumstances. So we need to reduce Marvel's publishing output to only eight titles--the Essential Eight. These can be existing books or new series, however you want to play it. And again, we're doing this by group consensus.

Now, TomB suggests that we nominate two titles apiece. This may work for the Marvel forums but this is Whatever Comics and I think we need to do things slightly differently.

So, shall we nominate four titles apiece...? Four titles that you want to keep and, then... ...and here's the twist... anyone can veto anybody else's nominations - and for whatever reason. I think we should limit each veto to two apiece, just to make it a little bit harder. We'll see if we can whittle Marvel's output to just an 'Essential Eight'.

This looks good on the Marvel website and I'm hoping it'll be a bit of fun here too. If it works, I'll set one up for DC too.

And I'll start:

1. Amazing Spider-Man
2. Uncanny X-Men
3. Avengers
4. Fantastic Four

Oh, are they the obvious ones...? Let the mass debate begin! Twisted Evil

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kingmouse · Fanboy Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 706

Ultimate Cage
Amazing Cage
Uncanny Cage
Cage and the Green Mist of Death

Ok, seriously.

Captain America
Avengers
Guardians of the Galaxy - add Nova to the team and you've basically got Marvel cosmic covered in one book
Marvel Universe - A weekly anthology title covering minor stories from the marvel universe (for example at the moment it would likely include stories like Thunderbolts and Initiative) the book would also house crossover events like Civil War.
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Blog archive 2006

CatFang · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:33 pm Post subject:

This is a really good idea.

I can't really contribute to it as I don't know enough - but I will be reading it for ideas on what to read.

Hope you do others in the future. There are other ways to cut it as well eg "what if only X number of comics were allowed to be retained from the 80, or from the UK etc"
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Robin The Boy Wonder · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:03 pm Post subject:

Don't be shy in presenting your ideas, CatFang. You never know, you just may be onto a winner...

Heh. I like Cage and the Green Mist of Death.

I'm not planning to veto anything so far and I note we have two nominations for Avengers... anybody else have any suggestions...?
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Longshot · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:40 pm Post subject:

I think Marvel Universe sounds like a good idea, like 52 kinda, no team just solo characters tho.

Uncanny Mutants - Covering alll mutuant stories in the Marvel U.

Punisher - Some diversity, probably not the MAX line tho, let that take the helm and be 'Marvel Knights'. Actually just make it Marvel Knights, cover the darker side of the marvel U

Avengers/Initiative - a larger sized Avengers, giving it a nice (bi Monthly) scope of characters.

I guess a bi monthly and a weekly woudl more than cover our 8 limit.
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Xeall · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 5:12 pm Post subject:

Go back to basics. and unlike you wusses i'm gonna give 8 suggestions

1. Avengers
2. Spiderman
3. Xmen
4. Marvel knights (good idea)
5. Captain america/iron man (keep the politcal side together)
6. Underworld (based upon the villains of MU, The hoods gang, what the kingpin is doing, etc)
7. Fantastic 4
8. Marvel universe (much bigger with 2 or more issues worth of content)

I'm sure i'm missing something here
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Ninjarific

The Rascal King · Uber Geek! Joined: 26 Oct 2006 Posts: 2025

1. Ultimate Spiderman
2. Anything they give to the Internet Jesus to write.
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Let There Be Lightning

Reaper · Uber Geek! Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 3624

1) Uncanny X-Men
2) Captain America
3) Thor
4) Punisher

Come on you maggots I dare one of you to nominate Amazing Spider-Man!
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Pro Massacre Boy!

Robin The Boy Wonder · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 8:24 am Post subject:

I'm vetoing Ultimate Spider-Man.

This is more down to the fact that, with only eight titles, there can only be one between Amazing & Ultimate Spider-Man really. And I'm sure the readership would find it bizarre that we have an Ultimate Spider-Man (covering the Ultimate Universe) and no Spider-Man comic covering the 616 universe. And, let's face it, we're not about to pump out more than one Spider-Man title a month, are we...?

The only real difference is that I'd sack the current Amazing creative team, bring back Mary Jane and have... ...oh, I don't know... ...lure Geoff Johns to write it.
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Xeall · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 10:56 am Post subject:

I agree. with the comic base being returned to 8 there would be alot of writters going spare, any of them can do spidey better

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