Highway 62

Just kidding. Except for that rejection part. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, really. I mean, realistically, what are the chances of a nobody author submitting a script to Marvel and actually having it read, liked by everyone in the chain of command, and finally accepted?

Somewhere between very little and so small as to not even be worth discussing. Though it appears that at least one creator got in the door that way. “What about Mike Sangiacomo?” you ask. I remind you that he was an established writer for Newsarama and other real-world outlets before Phantom Jack got accepted.

But my chances? Not good really. Most of that had to do with the fact that my grasp of some of the basics of writing comics scripts (as opposed to screenplays and the like) wasn’t as strong as it could have been. Ah well, time fixes that.

And if an established writer like, say, Micah Wright (who writes Stormwatch: Team Achilles, one of the better books out in the mainstream today) has his pitch shot down (and what a pitch it was!) then, really, what interest is Marvel going to have in my Paladin relaunch?

Bupkis.

You write. It sometimes gets rejected. You go on. Big deal. That’s what my first column for Broken Frontier was all about. Rejection happens. Learn what you can and move on.

But even so, I was drawn in by the promise of Epic and what it could have been. I actually took their press releases at face value. I even bought a copy of Marville #7 (a stain that will never be cleansed from my soul) in an effort to find out what they wanted to see in their submissions. I’ve already done a detailed dissection of that particular tract, though if you ask nicely, I might be persuaded to repost it in my forum or something.

I thought Epic could have been worthwhile for a variety of reasons. New voices, new stories, the chance at creator-owned materials at Marvel (which might have pushed for more interesting content as well), a break from the usual superhero fare. All of which are worthwhile.

After talking with Teresa Focarile (an editor over at Epic who’s now since moved back to Marvel proper), I was filled with visions of story-driven Epic comics by fresh voices, coming out seemingly every other week. It was gonna be great. Stephanie Moore (Epic’s chief editor) was posting regularly on the X-Fan forums, answering questions, giving feedback, clarifying the process.

And then things started to not go right. Promised books started not to manifest themselves. Creator-owned titles, and the possibility of creator-ownership at Marvel quietly disappeared. Posts from Stephanie Moore became more and more infrequent. Trouble, the first official Epic comic came and went after an initial ripple of publicity (even with the benefit of a high-powered author/artist combination and multiple cover variants). Submission guidelines for artists never appeared, even though they were long promised. And finally, submissions were closed entirely.

Sure, there’s Epic comics coming out now, but their numbers aren’t so hot (it’s true, there isn’t a heck of a lot of demand for a Crimson Dynamo book starring a 14-year old. Hey, I said I wanted new ideas; I didn’t expect them all to be great.) There’s a couple more coming down the line, to be sure, but that’s not until February.

And realistically, where’s Epic going to be by February? Marvel is undergoing the process of DeJemasification, and everything that he worked on, short of the Ultimate Line (‘cause that is actually, y’know, working) looks like it’s being dismantled. Submissions for Epic are closed. People are getting rejection letters wholesale (and these aren’t the well-done, more-than-should-have-been-expected rejection letters that some of the early recipients got). I’ve seen reports of some folks getting four identical “Dear Marvel Fan” rejection letters in the same day. It’s certainly possible that all those submissions were read with great care and all the rejections sent out on the same day.

It’s also quite possible that all of the submissions are being cleared out wholesale since the whole thing is being closed down (even though Marvel has only stated that Epic is closed to new submissions).

So, what happened? Most of what follows is, much like In Search Of, based on theory and conjecture. But here’s my best guesses.

The folks getting Epic off the ground were overwhelmed with submissions. Overwhelmed. As in thousands of submissions (most of which, to be charitable, aren’t good enough to be considered.) I’m guessing that they didn’t have any idea how many people would be submitting work (or how many Moon Knight and Dr. Strange submissions they’d have to read through.) It takes a lot of time and energy to deal with these, and I think the amount of interest took people unawares.

Originally, Epic was conceived as having little or no editorial oversight once things got rolling. I believe that’s a nice idea, but not particularly realistic. Particularly when you’re dealing with folks who haven’t written comics before (and it’s not as easy as the good ones make it seem). I’m pretty sure that this ideal went out the window in short order (at least it seems as if it did, judging from Mike Sangiacomo’s trials and travails in getting Phantom Jack to completion.) Minimal editing sounds attractive and keeps the costs down, but I don’t think it was ever going to happen.

What else happened? I’m guessing that a major lack of interest on Marvel’s readership happened. Even the above-mentioned Trouble, which looked good on paper, didn’t do very well (and it had a ready audience for the author/artists as well as possible tie-in to the Ultimate universe.) For the most part, Epic’s offerings aren’t tied to the main Marvel Universe, or aren’t using characters that have a huge fan-base. Marvel’s readership doesn’t work like that. They, so far as I can tell, like familiar characters (or reinventions of those characters) and the traditional Marvel Universe.

This is not to say that there’s such a thing as a ‘typical’ Marvel fan (because there really isn’t.) But Marvel as a publishing company hasn’t really been encouraging anything new for some time. Variations on a theme play really well, but nothing startlingly original seems to go over really well. Sure, New X-Men sells big numbers, and is a good, thoughtful book, but with those characters, you could do pretty much anything and still sell at least 75K a month. (This is not a knock against Grant Morrison, so please don’t take it as such.)

End digression.

I think, ultimately, Epic couldn’t work as it was conceived. Which is a pity. A low-overhead outlet for new creators and a place to tell off-beat stories with less risk to Marvel is something that is sorely needed. Whether Epic is being killed off because it was too ambitious, or unworkable, or for internal political reasons, who knows. It’s likely a combination of all three. A cynic would say that Epic was started up just so that Marvel could appear to be friendly to all the people who desperately want to get into the business (though I’m not that cynical, believe it or not.) Frankly, it’s too expensive to buy goodwill like that. And Marvel doesn’t need goodwill, really. They’ve got an audience that is happy with them already.

Epic could have been something special. Instead we’re left with something that makes a smaller mark in comics than Marvel’s New Universe books, which really is a pity.

After reading this postmortem, I suggest that folks read my “What to do when your Epic rejection letter arrives” column at the following URL:

http://www.brokenfrontier.com/columns/grimtidings/archive/gtjune08.htm

mostly because it’s more uplifting than this one. But mostly because I think it’s good advice for anyone who’s serious about doing comics. So, we all got rejection letters from Epic.

What are we going to do about it?

See you next week. Play nice until then. Me? I’ve got a script to finish and it’s past my bedtime.