My agent, Frank Balkin, has a saying when it comes to show biz: Most things that probably will happen, don’t. This is sage advice whenever you encounter people who are telling you about a movie that they’ve allllllmost got the financing for, or a deal is allllllmost in place.
Apparently this is also occurring for the creators whose work was supposed to be part of the new “Epic” line, who are basically watching their inventory being burned off in a quarterly publication. Sort of the equivalent of jumping straight past the whole monthly thing and go straight to the trade paperbacks, except they’re collecting the entire line rather than a single title.
In retrospect, I guess it should have been obvious. It is standard operating procedure in Hollywood that when a major development executive gets canned, one of the first things his successor does is dump all the significant projects the exec had in development. Why? No percentage in seeing it through. If the project succeeds, the new exec gets no credit for it because the guy they fired was the one who brought it into the fold. Heck, it even makes people start wondering why the guy was let go in the first place. On the other hand, if the project fails, the new guy gets the blame. “Why did you see that project through? It was being developed by a guy we got RID OF, for crying out loud? What’s wrong with you?”
Same deal with Marvel. Where’s the percentage in continuing Epic, which was a high profile Jemas project? If it takes off, Jemas was a genius. If it tanks, why in the world did they continue with a new line conceived by a guy they marginalized into irrelevancy?
By the way…”Nowhere Man” is a far superior title to “Phantom Jack.” “Nowhere Man” has poetry to it. “Phantom Jack” sounds like something the Phantom uses to fix a flat tire. Why’d they change it, anyway? Legal problems because of the Beatles tune? If so, okay. If not, it was a mistake.
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