Source: www.comicbookresources.com
Cup O’ Joe Panel
The first Marvel panel of Saturday was the Cup O’ Joe panel, where Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada pretty much answers anything and everything. Joining Quesada on stage was Marvel talent manager C.B. Cebulski, editors Mark Paniccia and Axel Alonso and writers Jeph Loeb, Matt Fraction and Brian Michael Bendis.
News tidbits:
-Jeph Loeb announced he’ll be wrapping his “Hulk” run with Ed McGuinness after August’s issue #24. “This is the wrap up of what we call ‘The Red Hulk Saga’… Ed and I will be moving on, but Mark has some news,” he explained before kicking it to Paniccia who announced the much speculated news of the “Atlas” team, Jeff Parker and Gabriel Hardman.
-The team’s first “Hulk” story hits from issues #25 to 30 and will be called “Scorched Earth” and according to Paniccia follows up on the biological and technological disasters that are set to explode across the Marvel Universe as set up by the Intelligencia who have not been able to enter their fail safe codes and stop them from going off. It will be “a redemptive” arc for the Red Hulk character.
-“It really felt like the guy who had earned his place at the table was Jeff Parker,” Loeb added, promising that he would not be done with comics any time soon. “It felt like the best way for me to keep my fingers in the Marvel pie [would be to work in more self-contained projects.] I will be staying on with Arthur Adams on ‘Ultimate X’ and there’s something cooking with Frank Cho after we complete our arc on ‘New Ultimates’ and there’s something that’s very special and contained and uniquely Ed McGuinness.”
-After being prompted by Quesada, Loeb announced that said McGuinness project will be called “Avengers 3” and will feature Captain America, Thor and Iron Man, and “it doesn’t take place just in the present.”
– Quesada announced Marvel will also be serializing a Disney publishing graphic novel called “Tron: The Betrayal” with exclusive cover work by Salvador Larocca.
-The Editor-in-Chief then showed an animated logo teaser showing the original CrossGen Comics “Sigil” logo being burnt up and transformed into a new version of the sigil with “2011” being placed in the corner of the image. Some in the crowd seemed not to take the meaning of the teaser, but Quesada didn’t add any other commentary to say for sure whether it meant the classic CrossGen characters would come back to comics. (Crossgen was a comic company that existed from 2001-2004 of mainly magic based characters and then went under; its assets were bought by Disney years ago.)
-The relationship between Marvel and their new corporate owners Disney was a frequent question, coming up in terms of whether Disney would affect Marvel books or films. Quesada stressed that nothing would change for them saying “the reason the marriage is so strong is that we do something that they don’t do well” especially in terms of making entertainment that appeals to boys and young men. He added that working with Disney’s distribution channels so far has been like “walking through doors we never thought would be open with us is eye-opening.” Quesada cited Loeb’s new job and Marvel having its own TV unit as something that never could have happened before the Disney buyout. He believes the next creative revitalization within Marvel will be in animation, promising huge animation news coming in the next week or so with Bendis and Loeb adding that they’d have animation news of their own at this show. “They are making me make the Wizard of Waverly Place the Sorcerer Supreme,” Bendis joked. “In many ways they’re empowering us,” Loeb said later, adding that working with Disney TV has meant that the company comes to Marvel creative talent working in outside media and essentially said “whatever you need to get this done your way, we’ll give it to you.”
– not news but a funny moment – Two fans dressed as AIM agents asked an “in character” question about why Captain America wouldn’t want to share the technology of the cosmic cube with the world like they would. The panel was a bit flabbergasted with Fraction responding, “Can my new title be ‘Matt Fraction: WTF?'” Although in the end, they agreed the two men may be armed, so they gave them Cup O’ Joe coffee mugs.
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