Your 2021 Predictions, Part Five: The Triangle.
Welcome to part five of about a thousand of my look back at your 2021 comic industry predictions! (Here are parts one, two, three and four). Also, I did drop in an edit to part four in regard to new information regarding a prediction I didn’t have an answer for!
And now…behold:
Michael Grabowski grips me with the following
“1. Riverdale of the Apes”
Look, Michael, how dare you throw this idea out there and have us proceed to deal with the fact it didn’t happen. Apehead! Archie Andrangutan! Reggie Mandrill!
“2. IDW hires Roger Langridge & Chris Samnee to finish their Thor: The Mighty Avenger series.”
That would have been interesting as part of the Marvel Action line, but alas, with that going away, I guess that’s that.
“3. DC hires Michel Fiffe to create a Grand Design-style limited series for the Legion of Superheroes.”
Another great idea which unfortunately didn’t happen (next “Grand Design” book will feature the Hulk). But honestly, DC could do worse. To paraphrase a thing I’ve said plenty of times: what’s DC afraid of, a Legion series that won’t sell?
Patrick Joseph sayeth
“1. Milestone’s relaunch gets pushed back another year/canceled.”
They actually did come out, and are still being released even now!
“2. Marvel acquires the license to the Hasbro books, and starts reprints of Micronauts and ROM”
Coincidentally, I was processing a certain issue of Incredible Hulk and brought up on the Twitters that Marvel couldn’t reprint this issue due to not having the license to ROM anymore. (As it turned out, Marvel has reprinted the issue, but with pages featuring ROM excised and replaced by a text explanation of what happened on them.)
Anyway, the one thing I wish the rights holders to ROM and Micronauts would realize is that the comics interest in these characters is centered around their connection to the Marvel Universe. Trying to feature the characters outside that context is…not really anything my customers ever wanted, that’s for sure. …So no, those two properties are still divided from the House of Licensed Ideas.
“3. DC goes all digital with periodicals, with collections and OGNs becoming their primary physical product.”
DCs still hanging in there, printin’ their funnybooks on dead trees, just like our primitive ancestors did!
Thom H shays
“1. Marvel will announce the wrap-up to Hickman’s big X-Men storyline by the end of the year.
Does anything really get wrapped up in the X-Men books? Hickman’s wrapping up his X-Men stint with that Inferno mini, which just ended. But I think the situation he set up is still going on even under the new creative team. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the X-books, so if Hickman had some big plot he was working on that did get wrapped up, I’m not sure. But like I said, the post-Hickman books appear to be of a piece with the work he did.
“2. I guess I can stop predicting the return of Injection at Image. The comic series and the show will both likely be announced as officially canceled.”
Yeaaaah, I wouldn’t look for any Ellis-related projects for the near future.
“3. One new issue of Miracleman is published in 2021.”
As discussed in a previous installment of these prediction posts…only if you count Timeless!
bret sector divides these up
“1. Brian Michael Bendis will leave comics to pursue hollywood full time…and then return to Marvel in 3 years to a triumphant (in the Kirby sense of the word) return.”
I don’t know about his showbiz pursuits (though a commentor here mentioned he was working on a Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon). He does seem to be in the process of leaving DC…but not back to Marvel just yet.
“2. Dark Nights: Metal and Dark Nights: Death Metal will surprisingly be followed-up this year by Dark Night: Bluegrass…not so surprisingly, Dark Swamp-Thing plays a major role in the storyline.”
It did surprise me that DC didn’t market any new series playing off the “Metal” theme (aside from releasing some variant covers for the series packaged with flexidiscs). But I guess Infinite Frontier was the official follow-up, though they missed the bet by calling it Infinite Metal.
Also, Dark Night: Bluegrass sounds okay, but I’d be mnore into Dark Night: New Wave. At last, dayglo colors on comic book covers again!
“3. Dark Nights: Ambush Bug will debut in 2020 and actually get me to read my first Dark Nights”
I presume you meant “2021,” if only because I think you should get a half-point for Ambush Bug returning in a regular comic. This time it’s Suicide Squad, but who knows where he’ll end up next!
Roel Torres rolls in with
“My prediction: I will be part of a creative team on a bunch of indy comics that will be published with Diamond Catalog distribution in 2021 and Mike will reference me in an ‘End of Civilization’ post.”
And there he is! Now I have to start doing my End of Civilization posts again to make fun of it. “Frankenrock? More like…uh, Franken-dumber! Amirite?”
Cassandra Miller crosses the following
“DC’s distributor will continue to alternate between semi-professional and amateurish at best, with no rhyme or reason, driving shop owners nuts. Instead of rethinking things, DC will double down on the ‘going it alone without Diamond’ thing. (They won’t actually *do* anything about the situation until 2022 though.)”
I have to say, I’ve had very few problems with Lunar Distribution. Always great packing, excellent fill rates, almost never have to report a damage. I think since I’ve started using them, I’ve maybe been shorted all copies of a single title twice at most, as compared to that happening nearly every week with a certain other distributor I could name.
Not to say that I haven’t seen complaints from other retailers about them, so maybe I’ve just been exceptionally lucky. As such, I don’t know if they’re “doing” anything about these problems or not, at least not directly. Really, the only problem I tend to have with Lunar is timeliness of shipments, but that seems to be more a FedEx issue. Even then, that’s not been too much of a hassle.
Okay pals, I’ve reached the end of my blogging time for the evening…will be back Friday with yet more prediction shenanigans! (And also contribute to the 2022 predictions right here!) Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time.
You know, I like to think that I’m not overly affected by the insanity happening in the world right now, but my predictions for 2021 were kind of bummers. I hope my 2022 predictions are more cheery, even though I can’t remember them. :)
I just figured out the theme for the titles of these posts, which everyone will get with the next one. Thanks, Mike, that was sweet.
Wow! I forgot about making predictions for 2021. I am so glad to be wrong about #1. I added 11 Milestone comics to my complete collection in 2021, with the first of 2022’s coming my way this weekend. Woo-hoo!
I still feel like #2 has a chance based on the Micronauts Artist Edition. Maybe after MiracleMan wraps up they can shift focus to comics based on toys.
For #3, I am not anti-periodical, but wasn’t sure how pro-periodical ATT was going to be and what form that disinterest would take. I guess this year we find out how friendly Discovery is to the format.
It’s a dream to come true to have comics distributed by Diamond in the Previews catalog! Hopefully I will be able to get the book in as many hands as possible!