Robin The Boy Wonder
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Essential Eight - MarvelI 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! 
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kingmouse
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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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CatFang
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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
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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
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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
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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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The Rascal King
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1. Ultimate Spiderman
2. Anything they give to the Internet Jesus to write.
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Reaper
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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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Robin The Boy Wonder
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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
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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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Robin The Boy Wonder
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OK, let's have a look and see what we've got so far:
1. Amazing Spider-Man
2. Uncanny X-Men
3. Avengers
4. Fantastic Four
5. Captain America
6. Guardians of the Galaxy
7. Marvel Universe (Anthology)
8. Uncanny Mutants
9. The Punisher
10. Marvel Knights (I know this was included with The Punisher but seems a good idea to me)
11. Avengers: Initiative (albeit a different format to the current)
12. Captain America / Iron Man (otherwise known as Tales to Astonish)
13. Underworld (another good idea)
14. Thor
And, in answer to Reaper, I've already nominated Amazing Spider-Man...
So, we have 14 titles here (so far). More nominations are welcome although we're six over the limit already.
And I'm going to add one more:
15. Daredevil
Any more...?
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Reaper
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Not Amazing Spider-Man because it's shit?
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Robin The Boy Wonder
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Yeah, but with only eight titles, imagine who you could have writing Amazing Spider-Man.
Obviously, Dan Slott, Marc Guggenheim, Bob Gale (maybe), & Zeb Wells (definiftely) all need not apply.
Okay, perhaps not Joe Quesada either. Let's face it, as Editor-in-Chief, he'd have to be sacked because he'd be responsible for this heinous situation anyway! 
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The Rascal King
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Marc Guggenhim can fall down a well and die, for all I care.
Bastard.
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Reaper
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Why do you hate him so?
Add Jeph Leob to the dole list if he hasn't already
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Robin The Boy Wonder
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Guggenheim killed another Flash (Bart Allen).
...
...
I guess those Flash's do die easily...
In fact, they could probably kill The Flash every year, bring him back, and then kill him off all over again...
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Xeall
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I nominate that idea!
i like the break down of comics here, but we are up to 15. can we get that down to 8?
As i said before, before boy wonder repeated what i said spider-man is definatly nominated.
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Longshot
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I think the 'broader picture' idea works best so I would like to Veto Punisher in aid of marvel knights.
Also probably get rid of one of the uncannys.
Daredevil could go into Knights as well, but im never that fussed about him anyway.
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Batmanuel
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Hope I'm not to late to put my two pennies Worth in. tough one this only four allowed and they must be core essentials.
well Spider-man must come in at number one, and Fantastic four at number two, so without further delay he we go.
1. Amazing Spider-Man
2. Fantastic Four
3. X-Men
4. Avengers
i have picked X-Men as number three because they sell a lot of books
and the Avengers as a non mutant team book where you can showcase new characters and keep track of old characters that are no longer being published
if i were to pick a further four, which I'm not 
it would be
5. Daredevil
6. Captain America
7. Hulk
8. Iron-Man
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Robin The Boy Wonder
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The Punisher's officially vetoed... and I'm going to go one step further and veto Captain America.
OMG! I vetoed Captain America!!!
Why?
Simple. Tales to Astonish - Captain America/Iron Man. Have Ed Brubaker write both (he handles Stark very well indeed).
So, here's the updated list:
1. Amazing Spider-Man
2. Uncanny X-Men
3. Avengers
4. Fantastic Four
5. Guardians of the Galaxy
6. Marvel Universe (Anthology)
7. Uncanny Mutants
8. Marvel Knights (I know this was included with The Punisher but seems a good idea to me)
9. Avengers: Initiative (albeit a different format to the current)
10. Tales to Astonish (Captain America / Iron Man)
11. Underworld (another good idea)
12. Thor
13. Daredevil
I think we're at the point where we need to veto. I've had my two (Ultimate Spider-Man & Captain America)... so, any suggestions...?
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Xeall
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uncanny mutants, they can go in x-men. We have to remember we gotta cut some characters out. I actually suggest avengers initative aswell and possibly Guardians of the galaxy as i know how much i enjoyed Annialation but it was full of characters i did not give a monkeys about.
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Reaper
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Thor could go with Cap and IM
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Robin The Boy Wonder
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So are these official vetos...?
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Batmanuel
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You just cant ignore the Green Skinned Goliath, can you. I mean, its not as if there's been a Movie about The Guardians of the Galaxy. is their?
PS.
OMG I voted for Iron-Man.... In the second half which i wasn't voting for so it doesnt count. 
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