Creating a New Universe

[Ultimate Houde]

Marc SIlvestri and Nick Barrucci talk about creating a new universe on Newsarama

While people may be like, "WOW THIS IS COOL!" and "OMG THIS WILL ROCK!"

I have reservations about it. Before I even read the article, I wanna state the following. My main concern is that this comic will this be affected by delays, and sadly, I think it will. Marc never has a good timing record about him, his own series in Top Cow, Hunter/Killer has had delays for a fashion, and when trying to begin a new series in the comic book world, delays can destroy a project like this. I think they annouced this thing too early, they should have waited till more has been established, and they actually have better detail on what this universe wil be about.

But enough about the marketing aspect of this book.

Still a little ways off. We want to take things slowly, so we've been working on this for over a year, and Marc has handed in four sets of designs for the characters. Right now, we're not looking to launch anytime soon – this isn't something where you're hearing about it now for the first time, and seeing it in the next issue of Previews. Our first book most likely won't happen until the end of the year, and after that, we're looking at releasing one new book per quarter on average – that's the goal. The idea behind that is that we want to get used to working with each other on monthly books with the creators and both sides of editorial, to make a new, different product. By doing that, we really think the fans and retailers will be coming out ahead at the end of the day, because there's going to be all the ideas generated that Dynamite and Top Cow brought in, the ideas that the writers and other creators will bring to the table, and then, the synthesis of all of the ideas coming together for the best comic we can produce. As a result of that approach, none of them will be solicited before they're ready to go.

It seems they are addressing this fact, but I still have my worries about that.

They also mention that they don't want to create a shared universe, yet all the books happen in the same universe. That confused me....

What are your takes on this thing?

EDIT: And what do you think it takes to create a sucessful new universe that people will get behind?

 

[Joe Kalicki]

I almost always get suckered into these new universes. I fell for CrossGen big, I fell for Devil's Due Aftermath. They almost never last. Particularly if the universe has a huge backstory and everything's planned out in advance. Universes need to grow organically. Neither Marvel or DC started out as a shared universe. They grew together over time after each character was able to establish themselves individually. Consequently they're really the only two universes around these days. Maybe there are a few comapnies with one or two books that work together, or smaller scale universes like with Fables, but no pre-planned universes has ever worked out and I really don't think one ever will.