MattBrady
05-06-2008, 05:32 PM
<a href="http://i.newsarama.com/ImageComics/WarHeroes/Warheroes_Poster.jpg" target="_parent"><img src="http://i.newsarama.com/ImageComics/WarHeroes/t_Warheroes_Poster.jpg" border="0" align="right"></a>Today’s <b>War Heroes</b> front line news? As he did with <b>Kick-Ass</b> (http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=143268), Mark Millar is once again holding a poster campaign for retailers with <b>War Heroes</b>. That is, if retailers download and print out <b>War Heroes</b> posters, hang them in their stores, send photographic proof of them to Millar, he’ll list the store’s name and address in the first issue of the six issue miniseries.
Millar explained further when we spoke with him.
<b>Newsarama</b>: This is similar to the deal you did for retailers with <b>Kick-Ass</b>, so what do retailers have to do?
<b>Mark Millar</b>: Very simply, they just have to print up one or two of these posters (which will soon be available at Millarworld (http://forums.millarworld.tv/)) and stick them up in their stores. Then they snap a picture of it and send it to my Millarworld website where we'll have a thread dedicated to it as of tonight. Once we see the poster up there in the store they get a free ad in a huge comic book. It's that easy. If they're naughty they can even take it down again immediately. We'll never know and we really are that gullible. I'm foreign, for God's sake.
<b>NRAMA</b>: You seemed to have pretty good success with the <b>Kick-Ass</b> version of this - what did you hear from retailers who participated?
<b>MM</b>: It worked out amazing. Retailers were ecstatic because, let's face it, it's a cheap and easy way of reaching a lot of people. It was great for us too because in a world where Spider-Men are vying with Avengers for wall-space we had our little indie book up there for everyone to see. The results were nuts and the third printing of <b>Kick-Ass</b> issue one, for example, will have us sitting at 76,000 copies for the first issue alone. Issue two's initials were better. Three outdid two and initials on four are the best of the lot (which is unheard of in a mini-series). So the marketing campaign was great for us. That's Spider-Man and X-Men numbers on a character nobody's ever heard of. And what's great for us is great for the retailers. They just can't keep the book on the shelves. Hopefully, we can replicate that and more with <b>War Heroes</b>. This is our <b>Ultimates 3</b>... it's widescreen superhero action in the Gulf with American troops blasting powers at Johnny Foreigner, so we expect big things.
<b>NRAMA</b>: Off that topic, but touching on something you said there and earlier - you've mentioned that your next phase of Millarworld may be at Marvel (via Icon) like <b>Kick-Ass</b> or it may be at various publishers, such as this phase, dependant upon sales. What's your gut telling you in that regard? Are you thinking that <b>War Heroes</b> will see numbers similar to Kick Ass? Higher? Lower? After all, publicity and marketing-wise, you're basically the PR department for both projects...
<a href="http://i.newsarama.com/ImageComics/WarHeroes/Warheroes_Poster_2.jpg" target="_parent"><img src="http://i.newsarama.com/ImageComics/WarHeroes/t_Warheroes_Poster_2.jpg" border="0" align="left"></a><b>MM</b>: <b>Kick-Ass</b> is about to outperform <b>Wanted</b> and <b>Wanted</b> was the biggest creator-owned book this decade. The movie is out just three or four years after the first issue appeared, but <b>Kick-Ass</b> is going to trump that as the movie goes into production later in the month for a 2009 release. It's just insane. But <b>War Heroes</b> looks set to be the biggest of the lot. It's certainly the most commercial premise and, weirdly, a studio has asked us to take it off the table before it even goes to auction. So that's very exciting. Image and Icon both seem like great places to publish a book. We're just gearing up for <b>War Heroes</b> now, but Image has really been behind this and we have some huge announcements to make this week. My gut instinct is that this is going to do more than <b>Kick-Ass</b>. Quite a bit more. I think this is going to be a really big book.
<b>NRAMA</b>: That said, as you've claimed – even here, unsolicited, <b>War Heroes</b> is a reflection of what <b>Ultimates 3</b> was supposed to be. Was that the reason you didn't have this at Marvel, through Icon?
<b>MM</b>: No, it was really just a contractual thing. I wanted to test out Image and Icon and Johnny is Marvel exclusive whereas Tony is freelance. So <b>War Heroes</b> ended up at Image, which is fine. I'm curious to see the difference once we're up and running, but at this stage it's really remarkably similar. Marvel seem cool with the fact that we're endlessly name-dropping <b>Ultimates</b> too, which is nice when Image is technically the competition. It's a shame we couldn't do this under the Ultimate banner, but things get so fu<aaaa>cked so quickly the Ultimate U would have been decimated inside a few issues. We couldn't do a story like this in a shared universe. Plus we get to swear. We can say any words we like and I'm taking full advantage of that. Even at thirty-eight I get a pathetic giggle out of seeing a superhero's c**k
or hearing them cuss.
Millar explained further when we spoke with him.
<b>Newsarama</b>: This is similar to the deal you did for retailers with <b>Kick-Ass</b>, so what do retailers have to do?
<b>Mark Millar</b>: Very simply, they just have to print up one or two of these posters (which will soon be available at Millarworld (http://forums.millarworld.tv/)) and stick them up in their stores. Then they snap a picture of it and send it to my Millarworld website where we'll have a thread dedicated to it as of tonight. Once we see the poster up there in the store they get a free ad in a huge comic book. It's that easy. If they're naughty they can even take it down again immediately. We'll never know and we really are that gullible. I'm foreign, for God's sake.
<b>NRAMA</b>: You seemed to have pretty good success with the <b>Kick-Ass</b> version of this - what did you hear from retailers who participated?
<b>MM</b>: It worked out amazing. Retailers were ecstatic because, let's face it, it's a cheap and easy way of reaching a lot of people. It was great for us too because in a world where Spider-Men are vying with Avengers for wall-space we had our little indie book up there for everyone to see. The results were nuts and the third printing of <b>Kick-Ass</b> issue one, for example, will have us sitting at 76,000 copies for the first issue alone. Issue two's initials were better. Three outdid two and initials on four are the best of the lot (which is unheard of in a mini-series). So the marketing campaign was great for us. That's Spider-Man and X-Men numbers on a character nobody's ever heard of. And what's great for us is great for the retailers. They just can't keep the book on the shelves. Hopefully, we can replicate that and more with <b>War Heroes</b>. This is our <b>Ultimates 3</b>... it's widescreen superhero action in the Gulf with American troops blasting powers at Johnny Foreigner, so we expect big things.
<b>NRAMA</b>: Off that topic, but touching on something you said there and earlier - you've mentioned that your next phase of Millarworld may be at Marvel (via Icon) like <b>Kick-Ass</b> or it may be at various publishers, such as this phase, dependant upon sales. What's your gut telling you in that regard? Are you thinking that <b>War Heroes</b> will see numbers similar to Kick Ass? Higher? Lower? After all, publicity and marketing-wise, you're basically the PR department for both projects...
<a href="http://i.newsarama.com/ImageComics/WarHeroes/Warheroes_Poster_2.jpg" target="_parent"><img src="http://i.newsarama.com/ImageComics/WarHeroes/t_Warheroes_Poster_2.jpg" border="0" align="left"></a><b>MM</b>: <b>Kick-Ass</b> is about to outperform <b>Wanted</b> and <b>Wanted</b> was the biggest creator-owned book this decade. The movie is out just three or four years after the first issue appeared, but <b>Kick-Ass</b> is going to trump that as the movie goes into production later in the month for a 2009 release. It's just insane. But <b>War Heroes</b> looks set to be the biggest of the lot. It's certainly the most commercial premise and, weirdly, a studio has asked us to take it off the table before it even goes to auction. So that's very exciting. Image and Icon both seem like great places to publish a book. We're just gearing up for <b>War Heroes</b> now, but Image has really been behind this and we have some huge announcements to make this week. My gut instinct is that this is going to do more than <b>Kick-Ass</b>. Quite a bit more. I think this is going to be a really big book.
<b>NRAMA</b>: That said, as you've claimed – even here, unsolicited, <b>War Heroes</b> is a reflection of what <b>Ultimates 3</b> was supposed to be. Was that the reason you didn't have this at Marvel, through Icon?
<b>MM</b>: No, it was really just a contractual thing. I wanted to test out Image and Icon and Johnny is Marvel exclusive whereas Tony is freelance. So <b>War Heroes</b> ended up at Image, which is fine. I'm curious to see the difference once we're up and running, but at this stage it's really remarkably similar. Marvel seem cool with the fact that we're endlessly name-dropping <b>Ultimates</b> too, which is nice when Image is technically the competition. It's a shame we couldn't do this under the Ultimate banner, but things get so fu<aaaa>cked so quickly the Ultimate U would have been decimated inside a few issues. We couldn't do a story like this in a shared universe. Plus we get to swear. We can say any words we like and I'm taking full advantage of that. Even at thirty-eight I get a pathetic giggle out of seeing a superhero's c**k
or hearing them cuss.