NEXTWAVE: The News
October 18th, 2006 | Work
Okay. I just this second got the go-ahead from Nick Lowe to talk about this. So here we go:
Sales on the singles are okay, if not great. Sales on the first collection have apparently been terrific.
We were on such a roll with NEXTWAVE that I was actually into the idea of doing a second year, which is highly unusual for me and work-for-hire properties. So Marvel sat down and looked at the numbers, as they wanted to do a second year too.
What they found was that, at our current sales levels, they could afford for me to write it, but not for Stuart to draw it. Stuart, as a Marvel-exclusive artist, commands a fee commensurate with his astonishing talent. I’m WFH-exclusive too, but they just send me whisky and loose women and I’m fine. So, basically, I could continue to write NEXTWAVE, but we’d need to find another artist. This, to me, was just wrong. I mean, Stuart would obviously be given a far better job that had actual readers attached to it, but it still seemed a bit like the numbers were conspiring to fire him for doing his job too well. Everyone at Marvel pitched in to try and make it work, but the numbers were just against us.
So NEXTWAVE #12 will be the final issue of the ongoing series.
(To clear up a common misconception: NEXTWAVE was always pitched as an ongoing series. However, my original intent was to do 12 and then pass it on to someone else. This got garbled, somewhere down the chain of communication, and so the first issue or two got solicited as “part xxx of 12″.)
However. The numbers game changes when you posit things in terms of limited series.
NEXTWAVE #12 will be the last issue of the ongoing series: but there will be more NEXTWAVE to come, presented as a sequence of limited series.
This was all worked out some months ago, so I had plenty of time to work the final NEXTWAVE sequence into a conclusion of sorts. #11 even features a twelve-page spread that you’ll have to buy six copies of the comic to assemble into its full splendour. Everyone wishes I’d thought of that eight or nine months ago.
That was the news. Return to your duties.
– W
(feel free to copy and spread far and wide, thereby saving me the job.)
is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as 
[...] Ha sido el propio Warren Ellis a través de su blog quien ha confirmado una noticia que venÃa sobrevolando desde hace tiempo: Nextwave será cancelada. Concretamente en su número doce, que saldrá a la venta en enero del próximo año. Los motivos de dicha cancelación, como casi siempre ocurre, son las ventas. O la falta de ellas, mejor dicho, dado que los resultados no han sido los esperados teniendo en cuenta el caché de los autores implicados en el proyecto, lo que ha llevado a la editorial un replanteamiento de su continuidad. Le ofrecieron continuar la serie a Ellis con otro dibujante, pero el escritor declinó la oferta al considerar que sin Stuart Immonen no se podÃa seguir con la colección. Asà pues, una de las apuestas más atÃpicas de Marvel llega a su fin después de seducir a la crÃtica y, sobretodo, al público. Aunque dicho público haya sido insuficiente. [...]
[...] Here Ellis explains that he chose to end the book rather than have a new artist come in. Marvel didn’t want to pony up the dough to keep Stuart Immomen on the book, so that’s that. And I agree with it. This book has been such a gorgeous, mind-bendingly hilarious duet between writer and artist I really wouldn’t want to see someone else do it — and, as Ellis said, it’s hardly fair for them to put Immomen on something else while he continues to do it, essentially firing the poor guy because he did his job so well. [...]
[...] Now here’s some comics stuff: One of my favorite comics is being cancelled. Warren Ellis announced that as of issue 12, Nextwave is going away. Nextwave is the only Marvel comic I subscribe to, and one of only two comics (the other being The Goon) that consistently makes me laugh out loud while reading it. It follows a group of misfit superheroes who have been hired by HATE (Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort) only to discover that HATE was funded by the Beyond Corporation, which is in turn funded by a terrorist organization. So the superheroes quit and start trying to wreck Beyond’s plans. The series plays off of Marvel’s continuity, but really couldn’t exist inside it (even though the Nextwave characters have shown up in Civil War.) There’s lots of action, humor, and meta-jokes, and suceeds wonderfully in making a comic that doesn’t take itself seriously. When there’s a good stopping point in the series, I’ll be sure to do a full review. You can read the first issue in full for free at Marvel’s site. Ellis, however, is still keeping busy: he’s going to be the new writer on the post-Civil War Thunderbolts, changing the team to be a Suicide Squad-like unit with big-deal Marvel villians working for the government. While the premise is not new, putting Bullseye, Green Goblin, and Venom on a team together certainly is. Ellis is also writing a direct-to-DVD Castlevania anime-esque feature, which I hope involves a lot of cursing. [...]
[...] Contrairement à ma crainte de départ, le concept ne s’essoufle pas au bout de 2 numéros… Néanmoins, Ellis a confirmé récement que conformément à son idée de départ, il n’écrirait que 12 numéros de cette série. [...]
[...] Warren Ellis announced this back in October, but I didn’t find out about it until this weekend. His original post is here on his blog. [...]