Yep, Millar should never have touched the project. Marvel should have
known better after all the Superman crap with him. While he is an
exceptional writer and does bring about creative stories, his main issue
is he doesn't care about the characters themselves. To me that makes you
unable to properly convey the heroes motivations properly.

As for the conspiracy theory. Marvel has had a movie deal for Captain
America for a bit now. The film is set to come out in 2008 or 2009 and
word is it's finally big budget production. The Cap films of the past
have been horrid to say the least. Also, Cap has been a big property in
the past year or so with the release of the 2 Avengers dvd's featuring
him as the main character. If you have not seen them, they are very well
done animations showing the creation of the Avengers with minor
alterations to beginnings for them. It's a very polished project. They
also just released the Iron Man stand-alone movie dvd and have Dr.
Strange in the works. Best American anime released in a long time imo.
Well, besides Avatar, but the difference is Avatar tries to be japanese.
No conspiracy to me, just shitty writing and lack of thought. Also,
Marvel has an MMORPG in the works with Cryptic Studios (Developers of
City of Heroes/City of Villians MMORPG) so they are making a progression
forward with their franchises.

Well, as for money they do make most of their money from licensing.
However, they have recently (past couple years) been doing better on
their paperbacks and some titles are profitable. The issues their was
that they forgot and still have forgotten who made them what they are
and continue to raise cover prices over and over for less of a product.
They worry too much about presentation and not enough about content. Go
back to cheaper paper, less color, and make comic books again, not
wannabe graphic novels. It's my same issue I have with Sony and the
Playstation game console. Give me a $200 video game console anyday over
a $600 multimedia entertainment platform.


--------------------------
Bear "replicant" Powell

"Be resolute, fear no sacrifice and surmount every
difficulty to win victory." - Chairman Mao Tse Tung

*** Currently Playing***
<World of Warcraft - Tichondrius PvP Server> [Bloodlust Battlegroup]
Zaitsev (Lvl 70 Orc Hunter [43mm/18sur])
[Guildmaster of Horde Trauma Team]

-----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Zabaro
In the last several years, Marvel generally seems to have trouble 
executing even the good concepts they come up with (and they seem to 
spend plenty of time coming up with lousy concepts as well). One aspect 
of this is the way they continually blow deadlines - some issues are now

literally years late, for example - and others are the way that some 
creators are horribly misused. This storyline is a perfect example: they

used Mark Millar as the head writer. Now, Millar's cynical approach to 
characters and plots can actually be an interesting new take on them 
(see the Ultimates books for an example of where he's gone with this). 
But evenhandedness, or even subtlety? For whatever reason, he just 
doesn't seem to do things like that.

My little conspiracy theory: Captain America is a hard character to 
write for in an ongoing series that ties into other titles' continuity 
(he's different as a standalone character), mostly because he isn't 
prone to being morally compromised or hated (unlike so many Marvel 
characters since Spider Man). What Marvel's done here is to take Captain

America out of circulation while there isn't a movie deal for him (the 
real moneymaker as far as Marvel's concerned*), which keeps bad 
storylines from devaluing him. He'll be trotted back out when Marvel 
thinks there's a movie deal (or TV deal, or something else where they 
can profit on the character), and at that time they'll flood the market 
with as much Cap stuff as possible in order to maximize profits.

* My understanding is that these days, Marvel's monthly comics are 
basically break-even, slightly unprofitable, or very slightly 
profitable. They basically continue to exist as IP laboratories, 
generating either new character IP for Marvel to license, or new 
storylines to increase the value of existing characters. It's kind of 
sad, but these days Marvel is basically all about licensing its 
intellectual property rather than about telling stories.

Alan Zabaro