The Four Color Media Monitor

Here's an item from Newsarama in which they report about how sales of Spider-Man are doing among various retailers now that One More Brand New Day has taken place. And there are some who've lost some business because of it. I hope that tells that there will be some lost, but it could just as easily be that there'll still be some people who'll keep on blindly buying, regardless of Peter's deal with even a de facto devil.

And while we're on the subject, here's a special link from CBR that mentioned what Ed Brubaker's stand is on this, and I can't say I'm happy:

...imagine my shock when I read from a link on the Spider Forums that Brubaker liked the One More Day story. Please tell me Brubaker is just sucking up to the boss. To not hurt his feelings or ya know.... the job prospects

Okay, I've heard enough. As someone who doesn't agree with what Brubaker and company have done with Captain America, mainly because of its stemming from a crossover as awful as Civil War happens to be and how Steve Rogers went down in defeat, I can safely say that this doesn't encourage me to check out Brubaker's current work anytime soon. Maybe he is being polite to the big boss in order to keep his job, but if I were him, I would've been out the door long ago, rather than make myself look like a pawn who's willing to do a job for them on the pretense that my status as a popular writer would make people overlook the damage more easily. I think it's wrong, and no matter how talented Brubaker is, that alone does not counteract the bad taste left behind.

Also, if memory serves, wasn't Brubaker one of the engineers behind the whole Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive crossover storyline in Batman at DC almost 6 years ago? Even Chuck Dixon, who may have written the hub miniseries of the Joker's Last Laugh x-over, once said on his board that he wasn't in favor of it; he probably took a good amount of flak for writing JLL in the first place, so he was rightly embarrassed about taking part in another one. I looked over a bit of that Bat-crossover back then, and the dialect there, to be quite honest, looked forced and certainly grating, like when the suspects were being interrogated by police. Worst: the abuse of Sasha Bordeaux, who was all but left to rot in jail while Batman initially considered not proving his innocence and going exclusive as Batman, which was just an extension of the bad control-freak characterization that plagued his personality during 1990s. Anyone who really thinks that Brubaker is that good would do well to remember just how wretched a crossover he contributed to 6 years ago, and even if he was working under editorial mandate, that still doesn't mean he didn't do anything wrong then.

Update: here's a column by a retailer on ICV2 giving more thoughts on the OMD fallout, as well as this one.

Labels: crossoverloading, marvel comics, sales, Spider-Man