Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Image, Marvel Comics | Tagged: image comics, Mark Millar, marvel, vampires

Marvel Vs Mark Millar Over Vampire Superheroes – Yet Again

Published Fri, 16 Sep 2022 14:58:17 -0500

Marvel has just promoted a new series called Unforgiven. With Unforgiven: Spider-Man is the first of a new trilogy by Tim Seeley and Sid Kotian for 2023, in an attempt to make Vampires happen at Marvel Comics. The Forgiven, the team of unlikely vampiric super heroes that debuted in 2011's Fear Itself: Hulk Vs Dracula, will star in a series of one-shots next year, X-Men, Spider-Man, and Captain America/The Avengers and a collection already listed in Amazon for July 2023.

Who can resist the call of the blood? A group of vigilante vampires have decided to fight crime — while at the same time, wage a desperate war within themselves to reject their own bloodthirsty natures! The Forgiven's new saga will kick off in SPIDER-MAN: UNFORGIVEN #1, where the team will confront a new foe with a desire to transform vampires into their most powerful and violent selves.

While also in December from Mark Millar is his new series Night Club with Juanan Ramírez which he has been promoting for almost one whole year, from Netflix and Image Comics.

Bestselling writer Mark Millar (The Magic Order, Kingsman: The Secret Service) and fan-favorite artist Juanan Ramírez offer up a new series for readers to sink their teeth into with the launch of Night Club. This upcoming series will take flight in December from Image Comics and will join Millar's growing line of popular comics owned by Netflix. Each issue of the series will boast an incredibly low price point of only $1.99. "It's funny. I haven't launched a new superhero comic out there in about ten years, despite superhero comics being what I'm best known for with things like Civil War, Red Son, Old Man Logan, etc," said Millar. "But I wanted to wait until I had a genuinely fresh take because I love these things and it had to be something really different and I wanted an artist who's work just jumped off the page. We're also trying an experiment to see if a full size 24 page comic-book can work at $1.99 every month. We think readers are going to LOVE this package." In Night Club, a group of unsuspecting 17-year-olds is bitten by a vampire and suddenly imbued with superheroic powers. The story unfolds as it asks: Now what? Do you live in the shadows and drink human blood? Or do you use your newfound abilities to become the costumed vigilante you've always dreamed of instead? You're bulletproof, you can crawl up walls, and you can turn to mist, bats, or even a wolf. Why not have a little fun?

Well, at $1.99, it will certainly outsell Marvel's Unforgiven. But haven't we been here before? We have, thirteen years ago. Because once upon a time, back in 2010. courtesy of Marvel's SVP David Gabriel desire to get some Twilight overspill, Marvel launched an X-Men series that had them fighting vampires, which amongst other things gave us Blade and a vampire Jubilee. But simultaneously, Mark Millar had been teasing an Ultimate Avengers storyline that also had Blade and vampires vs mutants. Millar posted on his Millarworld message boards under the title "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS X-MEN/ BLADE THING HAVE THEY JUST SWIPED MY UPCOMING 'VAMPIRE X' ARC?"

I'm just starting Ultimate Avengers 3, issue 5, and it's the arc I'm maybe most proud of. As trailered forever, this is vampires in the Ultimate Universe attacking mutants and Blade brought in to help the Avengers as heroes go down one by one. Now someone's sent me a link to an X-Men event out two months previous that's exactly the same idea. Seriously. What do I do? This is what JRJR and I were going to do 5 years ago before Enemy of the State and I've been talking about it in interviews (and on here) since Ultimate Avengers launched. Blade's even on the cover to issue 1 as I've been excited about this since I had Blade painted on an ice cream truck in 1978. I don't want to pull the issues as they're part of a complex plot that runs through my entire four arc run, but I'm almost finished now. I'm writing issue five of six and they're really, really good. How the Hell did this happen? It wouldn't have been as big a deal if I hadn't started the series yet, but it's almost done and just going to look foolish following an X-Men event. Am honestly just so disgusted with this as I've talked about it many times. Thoughts on what I should do next?

I'm hoping this is some horrible misunderstanding. I've only seen what you've seen online with Blade and the X-Men and a vampire Jubilee (again, very close to stuff I'm doing). Fingers crossed this bullshit gets fixed, but am getting closer and closer to just doing my own stuff every day.

The difference [between this situation and examples like Blackest Night/Necrosha and Deep Impact/Armageddon] is that was competing companies with different characters. This is something I created for a company that's being used within the same company and using the same characters, now two months earlier.

I'm going to speak to the guys and then take a night to think about this. But really, really pissed off about this as have put a lot of work into this and it's really, really good. We'll see what happens. This storyline was planned 5 years ago, like I said, and was known at the company. But it's been public knowledge since I started hyping Vampire X prior to Ultimate Avengers issue 1 coming out. The mods here read the original proposal I sent to all the Marvel bigwigs in 2005. I'm hoping this is all bullshit and the teasers are misleading.

I'm not changing anything. I did this first and it's too tightly plotted with the other arcs to pull and replace with something new. I guess they could kill the series with the second arc and bring someone else to take in a new direction. I dunno. Hopefully it won't come to that. We'll see what they say when I speak to them tonight, but I couldn't believe it when I saw this online. How the Hell did this happen when they have weekly meetings about what's coming up across the line? I discussed this arc at the Marvel retreat in Summer 2008, weighing up with the guys whether to have Leinil do this arc or the Punisher/ Ghost Rider one.

The Millarworld thread was then deleted after Millar posted,

am now in boozer but just off the phone with dan b [Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley, presumably] and were all talking tomorow to sort this out. Have never had problem in ten years at company so expect this can be fixed fast. Dan assures me this was a misundrstanding and he's a good bloke so have no reason to doubt. I don't think this is as bad as it looked a litle earlier. Will keep you posted. Ps to mods. Please remove other threads in meantime.

Plus ca change… and history repeats itself.

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