Dani Moonstar, Misty Knight And Valkyrie Join An All-New All-Female Superhero Team From Marvel - The Fearless Defenders

[Blade X]

Well, I kinda thought they did that with the last Defenders series: Doc Strange, Silver Surfer, Namor, Red She-Hulk (instead of Hulk)... pretty cool. And Iron Fist - okay, that one makes no sense, especially considering he's also currently an Avenger. But I nearly bought the series because I thought it was a really strong - and sellable - team.

But it still didn't sell (cancelled at #12).

And now they want to try an even less marketable version that's all-female and full of c-list characters?

To be fair, DEFENDERS has always been a hard sell. IMO, the best possible way that MIGHT make the DEFENDERS sell (at the very least) decently is to give the team a mission statement, which is to deal specifically with mystical/paranormal and extradimensional threats. I think that team should be headed up by Dr. Strange, and feature a team of on call members (or agents) who he selects for the missions best suited for their abilities. This would also give the book the classic non team feel since the whole team would not regularly meet up for meetings but only select members (or maybe even one member) will be called upon to for a mission. The book could be called THE STRANGE DEFENDERS and would feature the following characters.

Dr. Strange
Doc Samson
Valkyrie
Namor
Cloak & Dagger
Jinx
Blade
Johny Blaze (with the powers that he had in the short lived BLAZE series from the 90's)
Werewolf By Night
Midnight Sun

[Blade X]

Fair enough. I don't necessarily agree, since this is a team book and not a solo. If she had her own title and she was up in a shuttle fighting Space Phantoms I'd agree with you. But team books usually have "street level" characters on them along with the more powerful characters. Batman in the JLA, Cap or Hawkeye on Avengers...

True, but I feel that characters like Misty,Colleen Wing,Iron Fist,and Cage work best on a team dealing more with street level superhuman threats that conventional law enforcement and private security can't deal with.

[Peter J Poole]

When DC announced Vibe and Katana, someone there (I think it was Johns) said any character could be A-list, and I believe it, even for Marvel. It may not happen often, and it might take a couple tries, but look at Deadpool. It took him almost 20 years to get up there, but he did.

This.

It's a crap shoot every time, every title, every issue, every creative team, however much publishers try to stack the odds in their favour.

Which adds up to a lot of crap to wade through to find the good sh!t...

Taking a dump on this, or on the deVertigoed Constantine, before you personally have read the book is daft on at least some levels.

If we didn't each have at least some small lurking hope that the next comic we read will be the Best. Comic. Ever. how many of us would still be throwing money at this hobby?

Cheers

[paulski]

Agree with most of what you guys have all said.

The only point I'll reiterate is that Marvel seems to be going back repeatedly to try to sell a book/franchise that history has shown simply will not be successful. I appreciate that they keep trying - it's not a bad thing to try and fail - but they're apparently doing it without putting a great deal of effort or their bigger names on the books a lot of the time. Cullen Bunn and an artist I've never heard of on a book filled with c-list characters most of us (and I stress 'most' - I'm sure there's some Misty Knight fans out there... somewhere) couldn't give a flying fig about?

That just seems destined to fail to me, and I don't understand why they wouldn't try some other idea or concept and see if that one works any better.

[paulski]

To be fair, DEFENDERS has always been a hard sell...

Which was pretty much my original point - if a book with Dr Strange, Namor, Red She-Hulk, Surfer and Iron Fist, written by a 'popular' writer in Fraction and drawn by a quality artist like Dodson, can't succeed... well, time to give that concept a rest, I would have thought.

[Peter J Poole]

That just seems destined to fail to me, and I don't understand why they wouldn't try some other idea or concept and see if that one works any better.

They are and they will. It's not like this is the only new book they'll put out in 2013...

Cheers

[Joe Kalicki]

They are and they will. It's not like this is the only new book they'll put out in 2013...

Cheers

I never understood it when someone said "why aren't they doing this instead of that?" They publish a lot of books, they're probably doing both.

[e_galston]

The problem is, you don't go out on the court like you're gonna play ping-pong against a Wimbledon champion.

This book doesn't sound very thought-thru. Like most of Marvel NOW, it sounds ad-hoc. Something to throw at the market, in hopes that it will stick.

As people have said, why wouldn't you stick a single A-lister female character on the team? Red She-Hulk was just on the Defenders roster, so why isn't she there? Why not Ms/Captain Marvel? Spider Woman? Why stick Elektra on the Thunderbolts, a team full of villains, when she would have gone nicely here??

I'm not saying don't put any C-Listers there, but a team full of C-Listers? If the goal is to give Marvel characters more exposure to one day feed their movie engine, this isn't the way to do it.

they've announced THREE characters not the entire roster. how do you know none of these characters you mentioned won't be on the team.

and as far as thunderbolts being a "villain team" the Marvel Now version has ANTI-HEROES which Elektra clearly is. Red Hulk- NO longer a villain. Agent Venom- has never been a villain the entire time that iteration of the character has existed. Punisher and Deadpool have always been anti-heroes.

[DarthEwok]

Here's the sales chart for every comic book in history.

Issue 1 sells. Issue 2 sells less. Issue 3 sells less. Eventually it levels out to a steady number or declines to cancellation.

Releasing new series that may or may not fail at #12 is bad for Marvel? No, it's great for them. They have staff on hand already, they don't need to pay more.

The first few issues are where they make their money. If sales are strong, great. If not, start over with a new #1 and mix & match the creative. Why do you think it happens so often?

I've lost count of how many Hulk #1's there's been. Isn't there another one coming out in a month or two

[Peter J Poole]

I never understood it when someone said "why aren't they doing this instead of that?" They publish a lot of books, they're probably doing both.

There's also a management concept - thought up by a Scandinavian airline - called 'permission to fail'.

If someone in the company comes up with an idea they feel passionately about, you let them run with it to see if it does actually work out...

We don't know how much of a book is marketing/editorial saying 'this should sell, who do we stitch up with running it?' and how much is creative bods saying 'we have this idea we'd really like to run with..'

Cheers