The Four Color Media Monitor

Newsarama did one of their predictably sugary interviews with Tom Brevoort, where he says:

...with the ever-changing landscape and the zeitgeist in the Marvel Universe and the publishing world, this seemed like the right time to do Original Sin. Our previous event, Infinity, was very vast and huge in scope, and Original Sin seemed an ideal next event because it was a lot more personal, inward-looking and character focused. It seemed like a good transition.

He sure goes to a lot of trouble trying to tell everybody this is character-focused, but if they really planned that, they wouldn't have written it all as a crossover, where everyone is tied in, and doesn't allow for free stand-alone development. But personal and inward looking are apt descriptions alright: like so many other mainstream products nowadays, it's so "personal" the writers and editors don't even think about anybody else, and inward can be a synonym for insular.

Nrama: The main story of Original Sin doesn’t begin until next month’s #1 ships, but this week’s Original Sin #0 is a prelude to that. Mark Waid, Jim Cheung and Paco Media have put a face to Uatu, as well as giving it context with Nova. What do you think this zero issue adds to the main Original Sin story Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato Jr. are telling?

Brevoort: The whole purpose of Original Sin #0, much like the zero issue of Avengers vs. X-Men, is to give people information on a main character who they might not be all too familiar with; in this case Uatu the Watcher. For some people, he’s just the dude in a toga who shows up once in a while. Original Sin #0 gives them everything they’d need to know about the character for the main Original Sin story; but on top of that, the real gain was for Mark and Jim to tell an affecting story not just about the Watcher but also Nova, Sam Alexander, and prime the pump in such a way that when Uatu meets his demise in Original Sin #1 there’s a greater chance you’ll feel it. We want it to feel like more than just knocking over an action figure, so to speak.

The Watcher has been around, but it’s been awhile since he had a real spotlight put on him. There may be a whole generation of people who know him, but don’t know his story and his history. This #0 issue gives people all of that essential information so they can go into Original Sin #1 on a nice, equal footing. Hopefully Original Sin #0 is more than just a recounting of past events and an info dump and has some humanity and heart to it. That’s what Mark Waid was striving to achieve; to make you involved and invested in both Sam and Uatu in the course of 30 pages. If that’s the case, hopefully it’ll work well just as a satisfying story unto itself even if you don’t read the main Original Sin series.

This is what I find most laughable about his comments. If people don't know enough about the Watcher, why don't they point them to some of the classic Silver Age tales where the Watcher first debuted? There's plenty of those already available in Marvel Masterworks that are much more engaging to read than this new nonsense. I wouldn't count of this being an "info dump" either; more possible it'll be a retcon dump, where they give you details only superficially based on older material that doesn't recount them logically. Brevoort's doing nothing more than trying to get people to waste their money on something that'll only add up to zero, while failing to promote the wealth of older material that does a much better job than a company wide crossover does.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, dreadful writers, marvel comics