Happy 3rd Annual Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk Day!

§ February 22nd, 2009 § Filed under Uncategorized § 4 Comments

In answer to my question from the second anniversary…well, I guess we are celebrating the third anniversary. Only this time, I’ve got the name right…I keep swapping the positions of “Hulk” and “Wolverine” in the title.

Anyway, here we are, three years after the original release of issue #2 of this six issue mini-series. This time is a little different, as issue #3 (pictured to the right) is allegedly imminent, with a scheduled release date of March 4th. And Marvel has released “All New Printings” of #1 and #2 for those folks who missed it the first time around, or perhaps did read it before, but those memories of yesteryear…faded, near-forgotten recollections, like faded Polaroids…no longer hold any trace of those initial exciting installments.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating the whole “lost to the mists of time” thing a bit, but not much. Because, three years? What the hell, man? That’s just embarrassing. Hope the bragging rights of getting a guy from Lost to write a story about Hulk and Wolverine punching each other was worth the joke this series has become.

Of course, the series will still probably sell, so the answer is “sure, of course it was worth it.” Doesn’t change the fact that extreme lateness on high profile books is a pain in the ass, especially during the first year or so when people kept asking us for the next issue, and would give us the “somehow this is your fault” look when we told them about the delays.

But we’re allegedly that much closer to finally being done with this thing…unless we get more delays between later issues. If I’m still waiting for #6’s release in 2018, I’m going to be a tad steamed. At least Marvel appears to be attempting to finish this series, unlike this other stuntcast-writer series which was just full-on abandoned.

I don’t have any new complaints about this I didn’t cover during the last two anniversaries, so be sure to read those if you have a great need to experience more of my shouting into the wind. Let’s just hope Marvel’s learned a little something from this. Which I’m sure they have…until the next time this happens.

On a somewhat related note, I have this one guy who keeps calling to ask if the fourth Planetary trade paperback is out yet. Someone has apple-pie-in-the-sky hopes. (First, the last issue has to come out. Then we get the hardcover collection. Then we get the softcover. Even if the last issue pops up in the next Previews, we wouldn’t see a trade until a year, year and half down the line, maybe. Assuming we survived the initial shock-induced heart attack caused by the solicitation.)

I hope someday I’ll be able to sell this person a fourth collection. It’s a good series, but sales on the trades stalled a bit when people discovered that the concluding chapters are not in print, and that we’ve long since blown through most of our back issue stock on those later singles. Fortunately the stories are mostly stand-alone-ish, so it’s not that much of a detriment, and we’re able to move some copies of the volumes. However, the set’s long-standing incompleteness still stands as a barrier for some potential customers, despite my salesmanship mojo, and that’s a shame.

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