Comic Book Resources

Wow, Mark Millar writes like a ten-year old blogger. I thought his actual writing was bad...

That was a good read. Interesting how frequently Breevort (or even Quesada) pointed out a problem that absolutely did not get fixed at all. Or got un-fixed (made even worse).

Very interesting read. I had always thought that Civil War was a great IDEA for a story, and Millar wrote his proposal so well that you can't help but become enthusiastic about it, but at the same time even Brevoort misses some of the problems that needed to be addressed for the series to work.

Essentially, what killed Civil War was that the story was a direct attempt to remove some of the "comic-booky" conventions in the Marvel Universe, such as police allowing vigilantes with secret identities to roam unchecked, but the entire story hinges on the convention of having heroes use their fists first and brains later.

Captain America has surrendered to the government and co-operated before, when the need arose, and the only way they could force him out on the lam was to have Shield agents shoot at him. This was as grossly irresponsible as anything the New Warriors did (and led directly to ALL of the damage in the rest of the book), and yet it is supposed to be acceptable that one group is held accountable and the other isn't.

It's unfortunate that Brevoort didn't pursue that issue more fervently at the beginning. You can see him touching on it, and you can see that character issues were doomed to be subordinated in the story to slam-bang action. That's a shame, because the character interaction is what was needed to make the story work.

Interesting look at the creative process, but I think it makes Millar and Quesada look like mooks, a bit. No offense meant or anything.

What the hell happened? I just skimmed through the first part, and man, it's way more coherent than the final product.

Another case of too many cooks spoil the broth?

I also like how they blatantly mention that Capt. America will be coming back in time for the movie. Not that we didn't know that already, but you think they'd at least try to maintain some kayfabe.

Wow, this is like watching someone eat a bucket of spaghetti in preparation for an 'art' film where they crap on someone's face. Marvel's just crap since those two excreted Civil War on their readership.

I preferred the outline to the real thing...up until "Hulk Babies." Then, as Brevoort noted, the focus was lost.

Curious to find out why so many details were ultimately changed for the printed page.

I'd suspected that these 'events' were more about selling countless tie-ins and spin-offs than telling a coherent story, but now I know it.

I found it interesting that Millar tried to cram in like, 3 different endings.

The end fight between Pro and Anti, the Hulk Invasion, the Power Sapping device.

I know he reaches for over the top spectacle, but geez...c'mon.

"I also like how they blatantly mention that Capt. America will be coming back in time for the movie. Not that we didn’t know that already, but you think they’d at least try to maintain some kayfabe."

Actually, it occurred to me that since Brevoort removed one or two other spoilers in the document, it's possible they discarded that entire idea.

Mighty uncharacteristic of them to do that, or maybe it's so obvious that it doesn't count as a spoiler.

Yeah, I'm really glad that they ended up not going with the Planet Hulk conclusion in Civil War. It would have just crowded everything and made the (proposed) ending more convoluted than it actually is.

Some interesting things, though - as another poster noted, the proposal pretty much confirms that Steve Rogers'll be alive and kickin' by the time a movie comes out.

Secondly, plans may have changed since then, but if the original idea was for World War Hulk to conclude Civil War, I wonder how much of the ending (IE heroes reuniting for a common purpose, Watchmen style) will remain intact for WWH.

-M

"[TB - Let me say the obvious thing here: The Hulk War doesn’t belong in this story, and it’s only our own greed that keeps trying to force it in. I do think that the Hulk should play a role in this story, but right now this is the point where everything disintegrates into chaos, into two big summer crossover stories smooshed together. It’s not going to be accessable, it’s not even going to make sense, and I don’t think we should do it. Let PLANET HULK be PLANET HULK, and let CIVIL WAR be CIVIL WAR. Let’s not chase the DC dollar on this. It’s a sucker’s bet.]"

Oh, okay. So Brevoort saved Marvel?

Very interesting. I think that Quesada comes off as a complete bozo; I don't know why he thinks that having the child killed in the beginning being Happy Hogan's is such a stroke of genius. It's pretty weak, actually. And people would just scream that they ripped off Identity Crisis (ie the death of a civilian tied to a hero being the kickoff to the series).

Obviously, they decided that killing off one kid wasn't enough of an impetus for the whole thing, so they decided to kill LOTS of kids. Nice.

Meh. Some of the suggestions in the proposal sound better than what they apparently ended up doing, but it also sounds like they improved on the proposal in some areas by the time the books came out. So it's all good.

I'm not sure Quesada's a 'bozo', he's just doing what editors do: laying the praise on thick for the parts of the proposal that he does like, so that when he's critical of the parts he doesn't like, the writer won't get his nose too far out of joint.

Just read the first part and the only thing I really like from the orginal pitch (annd the only thing I liked in Civil War) was the Cap/Punisher bit.

The thought that Cap/Punisher could be like the Supes/Bats relationship is pretty neat and when Steve comes back I'd buy a book starring the two old soldiers touring America and exploring their different ideals and experiences. OK so that's a bit more GL/GA that Supes/Bats but whatever.