Though the assembled fans on stage all seemed to be legitimately blown away by what they saw, one in particular seemed to gently be displeased by the concept of re-numbering.
A+ effort. Did it have to be renumbered again? the fan asked, sparking applause before he shed some light on his personal history with Iron Man.
My first issue of 'Iron Man' as a child was like #75, and I didnt feel confused, and I didnt feel thrown off, and I didnt feel like, 'Oh, if only I could have entered with issue #1. I jumped in with 75 right through to 500 something. Why cant books get big numbers, and thats just okay? Why cant a book go to 800, and thats okay?
To their credit, both Brevoort and Waid addressed these concerns head on.
Sadly, in this marketplace, books with big numbers don't get big numbers unfortunately," Waid said. "That the... I agree with you. I think everybody up at this panel probably started Marvel comics somewhere in the middle of the run, maybe even most people in this room. The problem that -- again Im not trying to speak for you [referring to Brevoort] -- the problem that we keep running into is that the retailers and the new fans, theyve been trained by years of such bad continuity and comics, comics which you can jump into. They have been trained to believe that its impossible to jump into the middle of a run. Thats the mindset now, and you kinda have to plant a flag and make it clear. Look, Marvel NOW! This is a good jumping on point.'"
Brevoort said, Even beyond the folks that are right here -- I think anybody thats here in this room has been around comics for a while -- feels like you jump onto a book in the middle at issue 500 or issue 79 or whatever. But especially when you go out into the world, and you kinda lose sight of this when youre kinda in our culture. But I hear all the time from people who come and say I saw 'The Avengers' and I loved it. I want to read 'Avengers,' where do I start? Im confused, I dont know. Just the very barrier like that is so off-putting to a civilian audience. Guys that want to get in, that want to be a part of what we do, and the real answer is you could start anywhere, but its one thing to tell them that and its another thing to get people to actually act on that."
He said with Marvel NOW, they're putting a "big flag in the sand" and changing everything up.
"It seemed like it just made more sense to just go whole hog in and lead with the message: this is the place where if youve been enjoying the characters in film, in animation, anywhere out in the world," Brevoort said. "If you went away and you read them a couple of years ago and now you want to come back, here is a starting point, a clear, clean starting point. And the thing that communicates that the best is the No. 1's. I dont like restarting the books from No. 1 all the time, I think we do try to do it too much. In this case, I kind of agree with the tactic.
In response, the fan broached one small follow-up to Brevoort, asking what Marvel will do next year and the year after in response to new readers.
We will deal with each one of those situations as they come up each year as we go along. Are we ever going to re-launch stuff again? Its not unlikely, to be perfectly honest," said Brevoort.
