Off Panel: Marvel Editor Sarah Brunstad, who edits Knights of X among other books, joins Off Panel for a discussion about the wider world of editing comics.
Do you think of a comic book run length before going in or you hope for more because five issues might be it? Do you have to orient around for just those five issues?
Brunstad: It’s a big challenge because from the get go you want to go in and fight for more [issues] and the sad truth is that the fate of a lot of books is decided by the time issue #2 comes out if the sales have already dipped. I think both readers and retailers are impatient. My gut instinct is usually when I know it might end at #5 is just to [approach the author] and say we should just plan that it’s probably going to end in #5. I’d rather let somebody tell a really satisfying story in five issues than to get them excited to build up and try to put in a B-plot that we’re not going to be able to pay off. A lot of the things that fans complain about are the direct result of not being able to get an extended series. We want more soap opera, more romance, more B-plot kind of structures but you can’t do that in just five issues. When you get an extension, you have another five issues, but you’re going to build another five-issue unit. You can’t build it like a ten-issue [unit] at that point.
“For so long, my life has been out of control. Chaos and serendipity, wrapped in insanity. I have suffered, I have lost. Not just my life, but my very soul, my self. But no more. Now I know who I am.” – Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Braddock, daughter of Otherworld, mutant, telepath, telekinetic, defender of the realm and, above all, X-Man.
7 comments:
No more tini... 5 was enough...
So essentially people on twitter continued to strong arm Marvel to make Ray Betsy a thing so they gave tini another series to do it but it was reduced to 5 issues to low sales lmao
I can't wait until her new book is cancelled at five issues again and Betsy is free!!
Hopefully! I'm not going to buy her new Betsy book. Reading the summary here and the comments is enough.
"I can't wait until her new book is cancelled at five issues again and Betsy is free!!"
Unless she gets ANOTHER book after that. It could happen.
Anyway, I understand what this editor means. Excalibur ended with at least two B-plots (Morgan's coven and Pete Wisdom's STRIKE) that didn't have any resolution, did they?
I'd rather have Betsy in limbo than being written by TH at this point.
The spiral down reaches peak. The physical copies and digital purchases are decreased. A spike in readers being informed by sites, podcasts and YouTubers covering the alleged comic books. The comic industry tries to stay afloat. I'm not the expert to say who and what is responsible. Each of us can figure it out for themselves. On condition that the situation stays the same, we not only going to lose familiar to us heroes, also the publications will have to close shop and rely on series, movies and merchandise. It will be the commemorations to the comics funeral.
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