Posted by jay on 3/18/2008, 6:32 pm, in reply to "Supreme Power News (spoilers)"
64.18.102.72
If JMS isn't continuing, Howard is a GREAT choice to take over, but that interview, as such interviews will sometimes tend to do, gives me pause. I find that my reaction is one of disappointment, and a serious concern that Marvel completely misses the point of the book.
Right out of the gate, the book desperately needs to be a MAX title when it begins again. The rationale for taking it out of the "adults only" category was to try to increase sales, and that failed miserably. Sales actually dropped slightly as the non-MAX version continued, and, very quickly, JMS and Frank were basically ignoring the content restrictions placed upon it, and writing it as a MAX book again. It makes absolutely no sense to get Howard, of all people, to write the book, then not move it back to MAX.
Next, the reason Howard seems like such a perfect fit is because he seems the perfect guy to continue the "superheroes in the real world" theme (as Howard himself calls it). The skunk in the garden-party, here, is ULTIMATE POWER, which was nothing more than Marvel's slapdash attempt to cannibalize their two most popular franchises at a time when they were both on the ropes. Ill-conceived and very badly executed, it was a wretched piece of work in every possible way, and seems to have been recognized as such by pretty much everyone who read it. In my view, it should be ignored in both SQUADRON SUPREME and ULTIMATES. They've decided to work it into the continuity of SUPREME POWER, instead of taking up where JMS left off. The problem, here, is that you can't do "superheroes in the real world" when that world has gone through what we saw in ULTIMATE POWER--huge portions of the population being completely wiped out, while much of the planet is layed to waste. That kind of experience would so fundamentally change a world that you simply can't write stories in that vein anymore--the vein that fed the beating heart of the book. By the time you get to that point, you're in utter fantasy-land. It's too far removed from reality. Unfortunately, Chaykin is not only picking it up from there--he's picking it up a few years AFTER that has happened. That is, in effect, throwing what we'd so far seen in the series out the window, instead of building on it. And that story being thrown out the window is the one that would have played to Howard's stengths (This assessment is backed up even by what Howard says in the interview).
It seems as though somewhere after the HYPERION/NIGHTHAWK mini (which was excellent, and perfectly in line with the main book) and before ULTIMATE POWER (a slapped-together effort to get one more payoff from the franchises because SS was in limbo and Millar and Hitch were leaving ULTIMATES), Marvel lost sight of what made this little franchise work. Howard is a great choice to take over, but making him work ULTIMATE POWER into it is going to leave it a shadow of its former self, no matter what he's able to do. I'll still read it, if it's good (and, being Chaykin, it will probably be great), but my overwhelming impression is that it's an opportunity lost, and will never be able to measure up to what it once was.
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