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Post by Icctrombone on Sept 4, 2020 4:54:22 GMT -5
I wasn't reading most of Marvel, so I skipped Heroes Reborn; but, I was reading Waid and Garney's Captain America, because of Waid and it was good, especially after Gruenwald's very up and down, but lengthy run. Liefeld killed that but I was back when they were and seeing Busiek and Perez on Avengers was like a return to the late 70s Avengers. Damn good storytelling and dynamic art, with a big cast of favorites. Lee and Liefeld doing the books was a done deal before they even thought of Waid doing the Cap book. The contracts were signed and the sales for the Waid book , which din't improve much over the 20K that they were already doing, was not enough to put the kibosh on HR. Remember, like them or hate them, Lee and Liefeld were selling many books and had 2 of the 3 top selling single issues that Marvel ever had with X-men # 1 and X-force #1 respectively. They even got signing bonuses of 350 thousand a piece for doing the series. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Sept 4, 2020 6:10:56 GMT -5
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 4, 2020 6:13:54 GMT -5
Liefeld also said that he was not kicked out of Image, while all the others said he was. He basically delivered a resignation as they were gathered to tell him he was fired; so, it was the same effect.
I have no doubt that his podcast reflects his interpretation of things; but, like with Jim Shooter, I wouldn't want to rely on his version of events, in court, without corroboration.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 4, 2020 6:20:30 GMT -5
"That's hardly the most offensive thing I have ever posted." What a tool! Most companies have a social media policy and something like that is usually grounds for termination. WTF goes through some of these idiot's heads? This i why this is as close as I get to social media. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Sept 4, 2020 6:24:22 GMT -5
The contracts were signed and the sales for the Waid book , which din't improve much over the 20K that they were already doing, was not enough to put the kibosh on HR. I doubt pre-Waid Captain America was selling as few as 20k. According to Comichron, CA #437 sold 17,700 via Capital City alone. Diamond's figures for June 1995, the month before Marvel withdrew to distribute via Heroes World, had CA #442 in 93rd place, with 40.1% of the sales of Batman #521, which was in 22nd place. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Sept 4, 2020 7:44:29 GMT -5
Liefeld also said that he was not kicked out of Image, while all the others said he was. He basically delivered a resignation as they were gathered to tell him he was fired; so, it was the same effect. I have no doubt that his podcast reflects his interpretation of things; but, like with Jim Shooter, I wouldn't want to rely on his version of events, in court, without corroboration. I guess it’s his side of the story but he backs it up with the fact that he solicited the Awesome label In the diamond catalogue. You have to submit those months in advance. Lee also was shopping his studio around at the time. If you get a chance , listen to the podcasts they are very engaging. The Image guys were already mad at him and Lee for going to work for Marvel. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Sept 4, 2020 7:45:33 GMT -5
The contracts were signed and the sales for the Waid book , which din't improve much over the 20K that they were already doing, was not enough to put the kibosh on HR. I doubt pre-Waid Captain America was selling as few as 20k. According to Comichron, CA #437 sold 17,700 via Capital City alone. Diamond's figures for June 1995, the month before Marvel withdrew to distribute via Heroes World, had CA #442 in 93rd place, with 40.1% of the sales of Batman #521, which was in 22nd place. Even if it was selling 40k , it’s still disappointing for the era where books were selling off the racks. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2020 10:09:35 GMT -5
I doubt pre-Waid Captain America was selling as few as 20k. According to Comichron, CA #437 sold 17,700 via Capital City alone. Diamond's figures for June 1995, the month before Marvel withdrew to distribute via Heroes World, had CA #442 in 93rd place, with 40.1% of the sales of Batman #521, which was in 22nd place. Even if it was selling 40k , it’s still disappointing for the era where books were selling off the racks. Those numbers are only direct market numbers and don't reflect newsstand sales. The only way to get newsstand numbers and total sales were the statements of ownership, but those weren't required any more. So the numbers were likely substantially more than Liefeld was trying to spin them at. -M |
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Post by Icctrombone on Sept 4, 2020 10:37:41 GMT -5
No matter what the numbers were , Marvel went to them for help. That says a lot.
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Post by beccabear67 on Sept 4, 2020 20:19:09 GMT -5
I can see the sense of fun and enthusiasm someone mentioned in this one. Maybe sometimes people take him too seriously?  I read the 1998 Captain America by Waid and Garney #1-4 and thought it was fun with Cap reacting to merchandising and a film about him in his absence, maybe that's in reference to the whole 'Reborn' mini-era? Finding himself in Tokyo alone made for a fun situation with people thinking he was an actor promoting a film. He looked muscular without looking body-builder on steroids musclebound... I mean, for the moves Cap performs he'd have to be closer to Bruce Lee than Arnold Schwarzenegger. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2020 22:34:16 GMT -5
I've met and hung at at cons (mostly Origins and Gen Con gaming centered cons not comic cons) with some people who used to work in the (Extreme) studio with Rob (colorists, letters, production guys, etc. not other pencil artists or writers) and they all pretty much said the same thing, Rob spins everything to make Rob look better and if you contradict him or bring in facts and/or evidence to the contrary, Rob's go to response is that people are jealous and out to get him and make things up to make him look bad because they don't like him or want what he has and tries to bury the evidence in a cascade of BS. Most of the guys I knew left comics to work in other artistic areas (video games, rpgs, animation, advertising, etc.) because Rob had soured their experience of working in comics. A few had dipped their toes back in to comics, but were adamant to steer clear of anything Rob was involved with.
-M
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Post by Icctrombone on Sept 5, 2020 2:50:53 GMT -5
Rob said in his podcast that the Captain America , IronMan and Avengers titles were selling veery poorly. Around 20 thousand each and they reached out to the image guys to save those properties. It did succeed as Avengers # 1 was the highest selling Avengers titles of all time. A record that stands to this day. Those podcasts were addictive as it details how the Marvel staff tried to undermine the Heroes reborn launch. Rob said that Ralph Macchio put together the team of Mark Waid and Ron Garney to prove that they didn't need Liefeld to make Cap a sales success. Well, although the run was a hit storywise, it barely made a sales bump from the 20K that it already was selling. The Captain America # 1 by Liefeld was a huge hit that made Marvel 1 million dollars. I probably shouldn't have said "trying to be Image" as I don't really know what that was/is, the only Image comics I have are the six '1963' comics Alan Moore wrote. As those 'Image guys' were all at Marvel before there was an Image so maybe Image was trying to be Marvel? As for sales, starting in the early '80s there were multiple companies pushing investment cases of 100-1000 copies of certain comics, Capital, Westfield... the first time I noticed cases of 100 available to non-retailers was circa X-Men #143 and Daredevil #169, those were two hot titles and no-brainers. So anything with a popular artist or an #1 on it was what you saw promoted this way. Where you can definitely say a 1940s Captain Marvel or Donald Duck had actual millions of readers, comics from the modern era that may have sold a million may have had as few as 5% that as actual readers of the comic because of these 'investor' types. Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee and Erik Larsen were seen as 'hot' artists and combine those names with any #1 or name property and you would have the speculators filling storage units. So, I honestly don't know this, I'm least familiar with Liefeld... are his comics still in genuine demand and sell for a high premium, and that aren't say signed or limited editions with certificates and all that stuff? I have run across New Mutants #100 and X-Force #1 listed at a premium, although they do seem to be among those items labelled 'rare' while there are like a hundred plus copies available to choose from at any time. Are Rob Liefeld comics actually selling to collectors/fans in a way Neal Adams or Dave Stevens have for decades? It's fine with me if they are. I'm sure there are people who want Amazing Spider-Man #300 in the way I wanted #200 enough to buy it twice, or who want all five editions of X-Men vol.2 #1 like I wanted #101 enough to buy it twice. If Liefeld took over a favorite character of mine and did a good job I'd be happy to support it, but people sticking away cases and cases of them unopened in pristine condition aren't going to have anyone to sell any of them to if there aren't actual readers and fans, and I think those cases being mistaken as actual readers/collectors is something that does happen a lot with some of the artists from that wholesale caselot time period. I actually had a moment to read the post all the way through and here are my thoughts: I agree that there were stores/ people buying multiple copies for speculative purposes. That was the era of the 90's and we can judge the books of that time against the other books and artists of that time. I highly respect Liefeld for what he has accomplished in the industry both for his drive and the fact that he is not the artists with the best talent. It's not as easy as it sounds to sell a million books of any comic in any era and he is one of a select group of artists to do it. Off the top of my head I can think of only X-men # 1, X-force # 1 , Spider-man # 1 and Superman # 75 and some of the Image # 1's like Youngblood, Spawn that sold over a million copies. To downplay that accomplishment is to be disingenuous. The best artists of all time never did that and even the best artists of those years never did that. Miller, Byrne , Perez, Neal Adams, John Buscema never did that and they were of that time period. Liefeld's art is not my cup of tea, but did anyone regarded so low in artistic talent as he is, ever achieve what he has? He had and has the drive to do what much better talents will not attempt. He and the Image guys decided that they wanted to keep the money from the sales and merchandizing of their creations, so Instead of having sad stories of how Kirby created the entire MU that has made billions of dollars and he and his estate received nothing for it, you have these guys that will reap the rewards of their hard work. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Sept 5, 2020 8:04:36 GMT -5
The Captain America # 1 by Liefeld was a huge hit that made Marvel 1 million dollars. How many copies would Liefeld's Captain America #1 have needed to sell to make Marvel a million dollar profit? |
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Post by tarkintino on Sept 5, 2020 9:31:05 GMT -5
That Topps manager...what a soulless wretch. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Sept 5, 2020 9:52:42 GMT -5
The Captain America # 1 by Liefeld was a huge hit that made Marvel 1 million dollars. How many copies would Liefeld's Captain America #1 have needed to sell to make Marvel a million dollar profit? Don’t know but it was a double sized book that probably cost 4 bucks. |
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