It's funny because it's sad.
Когда-нибудь я снова начну делать линкспамы.
Интересное не только для фанатов Людей Икс: Тим О'Нил о Веке Апокалипсиса, его значении для Марвела и кроссоверах 90-х вообще
Halftime Show, Part 1
ВыдержкиAnd so, after X-Cutioner's Song the X-Books settled into a predictable pattern of jumping from crossover to crossover. Readers got used to the fact that nothing important usually happened in non-crossover books, and the creators actually got to be pretty good at playing to these expectations. Both Uncanny and the adjectiveless X-Men book developed a pretty clever rhythm, where a big event was followed by a handful of issues devoted to smaller melodramatic character studies and less consequential plot points, all the while laying the groundwork by foreshadowing whatever the next crossover would be - X-Cutioner's Song into Fatal Attractions into Bloodties (a crossover with the main Avengers books designed to celebrate the 30th anniversaries of both franchises) into the Phalanx Covenant, with a brief stopover along the way for the wedding of Cyclops and Jean Grey. It was not, perhaps, the most graceful or subtle method of publishing comics, but it worked, and this business plan to a large degree dictates the way superhero comics are sold and published to this day.
...
I don't think it's possible to exaggerate just how important the Age of Apocalypse was to mid-90s Marvel. At a time when the industry was beginning to look very pallid indeed, the story represented a serious and sustained shot in the arm. But, even if we didn't know it at the time, the story would also be the era's high water mark. Not only would the success of the Age of Apocalypse lead directly to the subsequent overexpansion and commercial implosion of the X-Men franchise, but the attempt to capitalize on the success of the storyline would soon metastasize across the entire Marvel line. The Age of Apocalypse was Marvel's biggest hit in years, and the company soon sought to replicate that success across every other franchise. The results would be disastrous.
Halftime Show, Part 2
ВыдержкиThis worked well for as long as it did. But as the salad days of the early 90s faded into the rear-view mirror of the mid-90s, as the bubble began to burst and retailers started to (slowly at first, and then frighteningly fast) disappear from the landscape, crossovers lost some of their luster. This was problematic. As much as variant covers, retailer incentives, holograms, die-cuts, trading cards, and foil-stamping all did their part to sell (and oversell) comics in the early 90s, crossovers were still the most dependable method available for selling comic books, as they had been for decades previous and as they have remained in the decades since. There were no more dependable money-making devices throughout the rocky 90s than X-Men crossovers, and there was no bigger X-Men crossover than the Age of Apocalypse. Comics readers of a certain age will still remember the "shocking" news story in Wizard magazine in late 1994 that Marvel was canceling the X-Men books - a patently absurd assertion that nevertheless sent a ripple of alarm through a gullible fandom. The following month, Wizard announced the real reason the X-Men books were being "canceled" - the books were being shuffled over to an alternate universe for four months, the duration of the new crossover. Back in the day Wizard covered Marvel news with the same selfless attention to rigorous objectivity that Fox News uses to cover the Republican party, and the slow roll-out of info regarding the crossover did a fantastic job of building anticipation.
...
Not only was the AoA one of the most popular X-Men storylines of all time, but for many readers it was also their last major X-Men storyline, at least until 2001. After Onslaught the books began a long downward slide, as the attempt to capitalize on the goodwill garnered by the AoA was squandered on rapidly diminishing returns.
...
After the AoA, every Marvel line was remade in the image of the AoA in an attempt to keep revenue from flagging. Spider-Man's then-popular Clone Saga was elongated to absurd proportions - not only was there a superfluous crossover with chromium-covered "Alpha" and "Omega" bookend issues (Maximum Clonage, I shit you not), but they even "canceled" all the Spider-Man titles to replace them for two months with Scarlet Spider books. Marvel staffers have said that the success of the AoA was one of the main reasons why the Clone Saga lasted as long as it did. It's easy to forget - very easy to forget - that the Clone Saga was initially very popular. (To give you an idea: the Clone Saga began a full half-year before the AoA and ended two months after Onslaught.)
...
The X-Men titles never recovered from the success of the Age of Apocalypse. Who remembers Operation: Zero Tolerance, the crossover that followed Onslaught and is infamous for featuring, as its climax, Iceman talking the villain out of wanting to kill mutants? Or how about when Joe Kelly and Steven T. Seagle were brought in as a team to revitalize the franchise? The Hunt for Xavier? The Twelve? Claremont's first, disastrous return? In 2000 the X-Men starred in their first feature film, the movie that (following Blade) jump-started the still-going-strong superhero movie trend and eventually led to the revitalization and eventual purchase of Marvel by Disney in 2008.
Интересное не только для фанатов Людей Икс: Тим О'Нил о Веке Апокалипсиса, его значении для Марвела и кроссоверах 90-х вообще
Halftime Show, Part 1
ВыдержкиAnd so, after X-Cutioner's Song the X-Books settled into a predictable pattern of jumping from crossover to crossover. Readers got used to the fact that nothing important usually happened in non-crossover books, and the creators actually got to be pretty good at playing to these expectations. Both Uncanny and the adjectiveless X-Men book developed a pretty clever rhythm, where a big event was followed by a handful of issues devoted to smaller melodramatic character studies and less consequential plot points, all the while laying the groundwork by foreshadowing whatever the next crossover would be - X-Cutioner's Song into Fatal Attractions into Bloodties (a crossover with the main Avengers books designed to celebrate the 30th anniversaries of both franchises) into the Phalanx Covenant, with a brief stopover along the way for the wedding of Cyclops and Jean Grey. It was not, perhaps, the most graceful or subtle method of publishing comics, but it worked, and this business plan to a large degree dictates the way superhero comics are sold and published to this day.
...
I don't think it's possible to exaggerate just how important the Age of Apocalypse was to mid-90s Marvel. At a time when the industry was beginning to look very pallid indeed, the story represented a serious and sustained shot in the arm. But, even if we didn't know it at the time, the story would also be the era's high water mark. Not only would the success of the Age of Apocalypse lead directly to the subsequent overexpansion and commercial implosion of the X-Men franchise, but the attempt to capitalize on the success of the storyline would soon metastasize across the entire Marvel line. The Age of Apocalypse was Marvel's biggest hit in years, and the company soon sought to replicate that success across every other franchise. The results would be disastrous.
Halftime Show, Part 2
ВыдержкиThis worked well for as long as it did. But as the salad days of the early 90s faded into the rear-view mirror of the mid-90s, as the bubble began to burst and retailers started to (slowly at first, and then frighteningly fast) disappear from the landscape, crossovers lost some of their luster. This was problematic. As much as variant covers, retailer incentives, holograms, die-cuts, trading cards, and foil-stamping all did their part to sell (and oversell) comics in the early 90s, crossovers were still the most dependable method available for selling comic books, as they had been for decades previous and as they have remained in the decades since. There were no more dependable money-making devices throughout the rocky 90s than X-Men crossovers, and there was no bigger X-Men crossover than the Age of Apocalypse. Comics readers of a certain age will still remember the "shocking" news story in Wizard magazine in late 1994 that Marvel was canceling the X-Men books - a patently absurd assertion that nevertheless sent a ripple of alarm through a gullible fandom. The following month, Wizard announced the real reason the X-Men books were being "canceled" - the books were being shuffled over to an alternate universe for four months, the duration of the new crossover. Back in the day Wizard covered Marvel news with the same selfless attention to rigorous objectivity that Fox News uses to cover the Republican party, and the slow roll-out of info regarding the crossover did a fantastic job of building anticipation.
...
Not only was the AoA one of the most popular X-Men storylines of all time, but for many readers it was also their last major X-Men storyline, at least until 2001. After Onslaught the books began a long downward slide, as the attempt to capitalize on the goodwill garnered by the AoA was squandered on rapidly diminishing returns.
...
After the AoA, every Marvel line was remade in the image of the AoA in an attempt to keep revenue from flagging. Spider-Man's then-popular Clone Saga was elongated to absurd proportions - not only was there a superfluous crossover with chromium-covered "Alpha" and "Omega" bookend issues (Maximum Clonage, I shit you not), but they even "canceled" all the Spider-Man titles to replace them for two months with Scarlet Spider books. Marvel staffers have said that the success of the AoA was one of the main reasons why the Clone Saga lasted as long as it did. It's easy to forget - very easy to forget - that the Clone Saga was initially very popular. (To give you an idea: the Clone Saga began a full half-year before the AoA and ended two months after Onslaught.)
...
The X-Men titles never recovered from the success of the Age of Apocalypse. Who remembers Operation: Zero Tolerance, the crossover that followed Onslaught and is infamous for featuring, as its climax, Iceman talking the villain out of wanting to kill mutants? Or how about when Joe Kelly and Steven T. Seagle were brought in as a team to revitalize the franchise? The Hunt for Xavier? The Twelve? Claremont's first, disastrous return? In 2000 the X-Men starred in their first feature film, the movie that (following Blade) jump-started the still-going-strong superhero movie trend and eventually led to the revitalization and eventual purchase of Marvel by Disney in 2008.