On Monday, we shared an interview with Mark Millar claiming Marvel would not let him call his Ultimates book The Avengers because the company the franchise was dead. Here’s a bit of that quote again:
“They won’t even let me call it the ‘Avengers’ because they thought Avengers was such a dead franchise that I had to call it ‘Ultimates‘ instead. It’s crazy to think now that Avengers was such a diminished name in the industry, and Marvel had no faith in at all.”
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Since then, Kurt Busiek, who was writing the actual Avengers book in main continuity at the time, actually leaving the series as a result of the Ultimates existence, took to twitter to set the record straight:
Lovely to see my AVENGERS run still getting crapped on at this late date. It was one of Marvel’s top books at the time, so Mark is, perhaps, misinformed.https://t.co/dNTrdAqMlA
— Kurt Busiek (@KurtBusiek) April 9, 2018
So may be my request had some weight and they just told Millar a story, or it may have been complete coincidence — it’s true that the Jemas-era PTB weren’t fond of our approach, but we were still one of the top books at the company and outselling “cool” titles like DAREDEVIL.
— Kurt Busiek (@KurtBusiek) April 9, 2018
With ULTIMATE X-MEN, they launched it, it was promoted as the cool thing, then afterward Grant took over the mainline X-MEN and it got to be “new and fresh.” On Spider-Man, I think it was similar.
— Kurt Busiek (@KurtBusiek) April 9, 2018
But my end of the story is that they didn’t call the book ULTIMATE AVENGERS because I asked them not to, not because AVENGERS was a dead franchise. Marvel back then wished most of their books were selling as well as we were.
— Kurt Busiek (@KurtBusiek) April 9, 2018
Wow, so that’s quite the tweet storm, but it does make sense. Honestly, I hadn’t heard of The Avengers until the Marvel Cinematic Universe became a thing, because the movies got me into the books. Meanwhile, Justice League has always been a household name that held a certain sense of wonder. But, one would doubt Marvel would consider it a “dead franchise,” even if Captain America and Iron Man weren’t big screen hits until the movies came along.
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Who do you think is telling the truth? Or do you think both sides actually believe they are telling the truth? Speculate with us in the comment section below.
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SOURCE: Kurt Busiek (via Bleeding Cool)
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