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.
