tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post7723997648695168247..comments2024-03-28T10:18:00.370-05:00Comments on Gentlemen of Leisure: X-amining X-Force #50Austin Gortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-74788716026939623812020-06-16T11:42:55.650-05:002020-06-16T11:42:55.650-05:00I think Shaw wants to isolate the genetic quirk th...I think Shaw wants to isolate the genetic quirk that made the X-Force mutants and then "custom build" -- through genetic engineering -- mutants at will.Teemunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-36949021634219341012020-06-16T11:37:44.817-05:002020-06-16T11:37:44.817-05:00New Mutants went from a very average book to being...<b>New Mutants went from a very average book to being one of the hotest titles on the market once Rob took over. It was a Hot book in Wizard, had tons of hype, New Mutants 100 was one of the top selling issues ever and then X-Force 1 became the top selling book up until that time. Something that New Mutants would never have done without him taking over.</b><br /><br />I recognize that Liefeld brought hype to the title, and I'm not disputing that. I am not disputing either that sales increased under Liefeld -- especially at the very end, with the one-two punch of the uber-hyped #100 anniversary final issue and X-Force #1 -- but it's not true that the New Mutants "wasn't selling" or was "very average." Sales stats from the 80s and early-90s are sparse, but the few Statements of Ownership and distributors' lists we have show that book was a hit. It was in the top 20 every month before Liefeld's arrival. That makes it the weakest of the X-line, and also weaker than it was earlier in the Simonson/Blevins era (when it was regularly in the top 10), but a consistent hit nonetheless.<br /><br />I am admittedly not a Liefeld fan, but I don't think it takes anything away from his accomplishments to recognize that the book was already successful when he came on and that he made it <em>more</em> successful.Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03665503542091489778noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-52210665094534850902020-06-16T11:12:03.780-05:002020-06-16T11:12:03.780-05:00There's definitely completists buoying the sal...There's definitely completists buoying the sales of all the X-books here. I mean, I bought all this stuff at the time and read it all. Some of it I liked, some of it I didn't, but I kept buying it. Heck, I bought all of X-Man even though it was only ever "not terrible" at best. <br /><br />The continued existence of X-Man in this era has to be attributed to the perfect storm of circumstances surrounding when it was published. It was an X-book, and in the mid to late 90s that guaranteed it Y amount of sales, regardless of content/quality. At the same time, the industry was so gutted and sales so low, that the value of Y was still higher than a lot of other stuff. And so it soldiered on. Sure, it sucked, but Marvel had no motivation to cancel it when it was still consistently selling above the (seriously lowered) cancellation level. Austin Gortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-56943014057598159402020-06-16T10:39:01.716-05:002020-06-16T10:39:01.716-05:00Was Shaw's motivation just to prove to Holocau...Was Shaw's motivation just to prove to Holocaust that he was strong and he should stick with him. Holocaust came from a world where they would have killed without thinking, so if he's being told not too, I don't imagine that shows Shaw as strong unless he can prove his other motivations are worth keeping them alive and since we aren't really given that motivation, it doesn't really work. <br /><br />As you mentioned, he's a businessman that is looking to grow his power. I guess having these kids under his control is one way to do that but really, there has to be better ways and use of his time. <br /><br />I love the numbers breakdown. It's crazy to see those numbers dropping in all X-Books as the 90's went on and you are right, the X books kept Marvel going at this time. I wonder how many people just bought because they didn't want to break up their run but actually read the books. I actually bought many books for years without reading them because I was a collector and the runs were important to me. Until I snapped out of that, I picked things like this up and didn't even enjoy it but continued to buy it hoping it would return to what it was. It wasn't until around the road trip in X-Force where I completely dropped it, yet they were hyping it like crazy at that time. <br /><br />Excalibur as the lowest selling X Book does not surprise me, it needed the X instead of Ex to make it a higher selling book. I didn't start picking it up until around issue 70 because it started connecting more with the regular X Books and I stayed on until Warren's run and stopped somewhere in there, I didn't care for his writing at the time or the terrible art. <br /><br />Crazy to see X-Man beat X-Force, that book is just so bad. Scott Churchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16795112175606617848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-66277404581069752222020-06-16T10:28:16.149-05:002020-06-16T10:28:16.149-05:00How could Shatterstar have a rib injury that has t...<i>How could Shatterstar have a rib injury that has taken that long to heal when he has stuck his own swords through his stomach to hit the person behind him and he healed very quickly?</i><br /><br />I wasn't terribly clear in my write-up; it's less that he's still injured as Cable is just specifically targeting that spot since it was recently injured. <br /><br /><i>Between not wanting to kill Cable or Shatterstar, what's the point of actually being a villain then?</i><br /><br />I don't think villains need to kill to be villains (in fact, the insistence on having villains generate an increasingly large body count is one of my problems with comics today, for varied reasons that aren't worth getting into here). They fundamentally can't; it'd break the conventions of the genre, in which the hero has to live to fight another day (and sell another issue). Think back to Magneto putting the X-Men in baby chairs instead of just killing them outright. Logically, he should just eliminate the X-Men once they are at his mercy, but that's not how comics work, and we accept that, just like we accept that radioactive spiders bestow superpowers and not cancer. <br /><br />The problem with Shaw's actions in this arc isn't that he won't just kill X-Force for whatever convoluted reason (the Gamesmaster, wanting to own them "mind body and soul"), it's that it never establishes *why* Shaw is even bothering with X-Force at all. The closest motivation we get is "to stick it to Xavier", but it's not like Shaw has tons of personal history with Professor X, or that X-Force is closer to Xavier than any of the X-Men (or any other spinoff team). Shaw's an industrialist who wants money/power, none of this has anything to do with that. If he wants revenge on Shinobi for "killing" him, sure, fine, but again, Cable & X-Force have nothing to do with that. <br /><br />Not every villain needs a personal motivation to fight a hero, but when the villain's entire plan is to attack/control a hero, there needs to be a reason for it (vs. X-Force just fighting Shaw to stop him building Sentinels or whatever). Austin Gortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-25853662338924170612020-06-16T10:18:08.336-05:002020-06-16T10:18:08.336-05:00Good catch! Good catch! Austin Gortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-26525881132018656732020-06-16T10:17:47.791-05:002020-06-16T10:17:47.791-05:00All in all, I'm really surprised at X-Force...All in all, I'm really surprised at X-Force's consistency: always in the middle of the pack, always selling right around ~40% less on average than the top X-book (be it Uncanny or Adjectiveless). Certainly, there's a drop off from the heady pre-Image, pre-speculator bubble burst days of 1992, but there's also WAY more books (X and otherwise) in '94-96, so while the overall sales in terms of numbers went down, the market share is roughly the same (from an eye ball test, at least). And while X-Force certainly shed some sales in the time from the start of Loeb's run at #44 and #60 (a time in which the entire industry was imploding & Marvel was on the verge of bankruptcy while dicking around with distributors), it wasn't hemorrhaging readers, staying roughly consistent in relation to the other X-books and maintaining its percentage of the #1 X-Book's sales.<br /><br />Was Loeb's X-Force a sales juggernaut? No. But it wasn't a flop, and consistently outsold the more critically-acclaimed (and well-regarded today) Warren Ellis run of Excalibur. Was it selling less than it sold when Liefeld was on the book? Of course. But it was doing that long before Jeph Loeb came aboard. Liefeld (and Lee) sold in huge numbers; the entire history of X-Force can be viewed as one long, slow, descent from the highs of the pre-Image days to something more down-to-earth. And while, alternately, X-Men and Uncanny managed to retain some of their Lee-driven highs in the decade, they did so on the backs of artists like Kubert & Madureira. If Madureira had been put on X-Force in 1996, it would probably would've become the top X-book regardless of who was writing it. <br /><br />Really, it just underscores how much the X-books were a life preserver for Marvel at a time when the entire industry was collapsing in on itself: regardless of creative team/relative quality, the X-books stayed at or near the top of the sales charts. Certainly, there's some variance within the line, and the two "main" books were consistently at the top, but at the same time, even the lowliest X-Book was still pretty much a guaranteed top 20 finisher, at least, in this era.Austin Gortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-2140288387744420162020-06-16T09:43:56.132-05:002020-06-16T09:43:56.132-05:00Ok, this sounds like fun (I love crunching these k...Ok, this sounds like fun (I love crunching these kinds of numbers and trends). Couple caveats: numbers are taken from Comichron.com, ranks are based on units sold (not dollars), and I'm generally rounding down to the closest thousand. <br /><br />Feb '92 (The month Youngblood #1/Image debuts) <br />#1 X-Book X-Men #7: 215K<br />#3 X-Book X-Force #9: 180K (16% less)<br /><br />X-Force is 3rd of 6 X-books. The top 3 books overall are X-Men, Uncanny and X-Force. Wolverine (#53) and X-Factor (#77) make it in the top 10 as well (Excalibur #49 is all the way down at #28). Hilarious, Cage #1 (at #4) beats Youngblood #1 (at #6). <br /><br />Jan-94 (one year before Age of Apocalypse) <br />#1 X-Book X-Men #30: 285K<br />#5 X-Book X-Force #32: 131K (54% less)<br /><br />X-Force is #5 of 7 regular X-books. X-Men #30 is the #1 overall comic. X-Force #32 #15 overall. Uncanny, X-Factor (issue #100) and Wolverine also beat X-Force (as well as X-Men Unlimited #4, Gambit #4 and X-Men 2099 #6)<br /><br />Dec-94 (Month before "Age of Apocalypse") <br />#1 X-Book X-Men #41: 233k<br />#5 X-book X-Force #43: 125K (46% less)<br /><br />#2 book overall is X-Men #41 (X-Men Alpha is #1 w/260k). X-Force #43 is 11 overall. Uncanny, Generation X, Wolverine and Rogue #2 outsell it. <br /><br />Feb '94 (Second Month of AoA) <br />#1 X-Book Amazing X-Men #2: 152K<br />#5 X-Book Gambit & the X-Ternals #2: 118K (22% less)<br /><br />Amazing X-Men is #1 overall. Gambit & the X-Ternals is #6 overall, beaten by the same regular X-Books (Astonishing, Weapon X, Generation X) as well as Spawn #29. Spawn and Amazing Spider-Man #400 are the only non X-books in the top 10. <br /><br />May '94 (First Month back from AoA) <br />#1 X-Book X-Men #42: 235k<br />#5 X-Book X-Force #44: 145K (38% less)<br /><br />X-Force is 5th of now nine X-books. X-Men #42 is #2 overall, beaten by Spawn #32. X-Force #44 is 9th overall, beaten by the Uncanny/Wolverine/Gen X trio and X-Men: Prime, as well as Gen 13 #2 and Sovereign Seven #1). <br /><br />Sep-96 (Next month w/combined sales numbers thanks to the Heroes World debacle) <br />#1 X-Book Uncanny #338: 203k<br />#6 X-Book X-Force #60: 126K (38% less)<br /><br />Uncanny is now the #1 X-book (likely thanks to Joe Mad), but this month, it's #5 overall, beaten by the four "Heroes Reborn" #1 issues. X-Force falls to #18 overall, and gets beaten by X-Man #21 (by about 5K) to become the sixth X-book (the two main X-books, Gen X and Wolverine still top it). There's also XSE #1, Magneto #1 and X-Men '96 in the top 18 (plus Hulk #447, Spawn #54 and Curse of the Spawn #1). Excalibur #102 is the lowest selling regular X-book with 102K. <br />Austin Gortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-89128273623365826992020-06-16T00:16:13.554-05:002020-06-16T00:16:13.554-05:00New Mutants went from a very average book to being...New Mutants went from a very average book to being one of the hotest titles on the market once Rob took over. It was a Hot book in Wizard, had tons of hype, New Mutants 100 was one of the top selling issues ever and then X-Force 1 became the top selling book up until that time. Something that New Mutants would never have done without him taking over. Hey brought so much excitement to the book that it got a lot of non-New Mutant readers into it. I remember picking up books pre-Rob's run thinking it would be just as action packed and I see Blevins art as a 14 year old and I'm like, WTF is this, I have such a hard time picking up those NM issues to this day. <br /><br />I'd be curious to know what the numbers looked like for X-Force pre-AOA and post-AOA and compare it to the changes in the other X-Books and to the general market at that time. Was it a top 100 selling books and then did it continue to increase in the standings or drop as Loeb's run went on. I can't imagine that it was climbing the charts during this run. Scott Churchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16795112175606617848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-61071310215069534612020-06-15T17:03:02.486-05:002020-06-15T17:03:02.486-05:00Rob wanted to distance himself from New Mutants be...<b>Rob wanted to distance himself from New Mutants because it wasn't selling. He wanted action, fun, strike first, etc. He showed it actually sold. By going back to the old NM style of book, the sales declined and never really pick back up again. Welcome to mediocrity, enjoy your ride.</b><br /><br />Where are you getting the idea that New Mutants wasn't selling before Rob Liefeld came on board?<br /><br />The last Statement of Ownership published during the Blevins era (#64) reported that the book was averaging 347,712 copies a month, with the single issue nearest the filing date listed at 392,116. That is down from the 477,295 average listed #43, but higher than the statement listed during Liefeld's run.<br /><br />The Statement of Ownership published in New Mutants #99, a year into Liefeld's tenure, listed average sales at 289,387 with the issue nearest the filing date listed as 318,102.Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03665503542091489778noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-43175508863938818442020-06-14T23:23:41.709-05:002020-06-14T23:23:41.709-05:00How could Shatterstar have a rib injury that has t...How could Shatterstar have a rib injury that has taken that long to heal when he has stuck his own swords through his stomach to hit the person behind him and he healed very quickly? Poor writing all around. <br /><br />Between not wanting to kill Cable or Shatterstar, what's the point of actually being a villain then? When you make everyone play safe, there is no actual risk or drama involved, you know how it will end. This Shaw was not in the Gamemasters overall game so why would he care if Shatterstar was killed? Wouldn't he want Cable killed? I get that he thinks the kids will be his but when has that ever worked out. He has a chance to end his enemy and doesn't. This is beyond crazy. Winning by the power of good memories is......ugh.<br /><br />Between the terrible art, lack of an actual threat and terrible writing, this series is beyond bad. This feels like it's trying to fight X-Man for worse X book right now. <br /><br />People want to slam Rob Liefeld but his art and stories actually felt important, something was going to happen, people actually lost limbs, hero's actually got mortally wounded, there was suspence, etc. This felt like something you see today in comics where there is not actual threat and the payoff is everyone is okay, no lasting problems. <br /><br />Rob wanted to distance himself from New Mutants because it wasn't selling. He wanted action, fun, strike first, etc. He showed it actually sold. By going back to the old NM style of book, the sales declined and never really pick back up again. Welcome to mediocrity, enjoy your ride. Scott Churchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16795112175606617848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-48480229150929037282020-06-14T22:38:05.532-05:002020-06-14T22:38:05.532-05:00"Shaw, in explaining to Holocaust why he does..."Shaw, in explaining to Holocaust why he doesn't want Holocaust to just kill Cable, says that once X-Force kills its mentor, they will belong to Shaw."<br /><br />Shaw speaks a Claremontianism: "Mind. Body. And soul.".Cesar R. Pontualhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06375109987794647615noreply@blogger.com