Close

Login

Close

Register

Close

Lost Password

Independent TTRPGs at DriveThruRPG

After nearly eight years of penning Captain America, Ed Brubaker has revealed that it’s time to move on and his work on the title is already complete. In a very interesting interview over at The Comics Reporter, Brubaker explains his reasons for moving on from Cap (increased issue release schedule, focus on more creator owned properties, and Marvel’s fluctuating sales and title stability) while staying on at the company with Winter Soldier. I highly recommend giving the entire interview a read as it’s good stuff!

From the interview:

“Partly, it’s the beginning a shift from work-for-hire to books I own, instead. I hit a point with the work-for-hire stuff where I was starting to feel burned out on it. Like my tank is nearing empty on superhero comics, basically. It’s been a great job, and I think I found ways to bring my voice to it, but I have a lot of other things I want to do as a writer, too, so I’m going to try that for a while instead.”

**

“When I was at DC… sales weren’t necessarily great, but they were fairly stable. There was a certain amount of stability. Both DC and Marvel had stability, it felt like. But two years ago there started to be what seemed like freefall for a lot of books. My personal theory — This happened to coincide [laughs] with the books suddenly costing $3.99 as opposed to $2.99. I think that was when you started to see some books really fall. On the other side, there’s the argument that the best-selling books for the past ten years have been the $3.99 books.

It’s hard to say who’s right or who’s wrong on some of this stuff. But sales on these books were going down below what DC and Marvel would have found acceptable even a few years ago. So that stability just feels like it’s missing all of a sudden.

I mean, imagine how lucky I was to write the same book for eight years. That doesn’t happen a lot anymore. Brian Bendis has been writing Avengers for like nine years now. He’s written more issues of Avengers than any other person. It’s rarer and rarer to have these long runs on books.”

**

“It was less of a decision and more just following my instincts, trying to make sure I’m only writing things I really want to write. I used to have a lot of ideas for superhero stories, and they scratched a real old-fashioned pulp writer itch for a long time. But the past few years, I’ve wanted more and more to just focus on my own projects, and most of my ideas have been for new things, or things outside comics. I remember just sitting there with my Cap notebook, trying to figure out what to do after the next arc was finished, and suddenly I just was like, “I think I’m done here” and it was this huge relief. I talked to Dan Buckley at Marvel, and told him what I was thinking, and he was really supportive of me, really great about it. I mean, I know I’m still going to be doing the Winter Soldier for a while, potentially a long while, but this feels like a major change, anyway.”

 

Jeff McAleer

    Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published.

    Thanks for submitting your comment!