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Post by defiantdude on Dec 24, 2004 1:54:48 GMT -5
wow...i am totally stoked about this page as i have just discoverd it..usually i am on valaintcomics.com as valiantdude but here I am now!!!
first off at the time defiant was being produced i obssevily collected everything with a defiant logo on i just spent hours reading through every thread , seeing all this amazing stuff, that was unreleased, and its great. In 1993 i aborted all Valiant titles,(thank god because i got all those crappy issues for pennies later in life) for all things defiant. I truly loved jims work, now i would like to put in some of my accumulated defiant knowledge, because there really was no outlet for it on VC.com.
first i think your print runs are vastly overstated, i specifically remember jim saying in an interview or defiant editorial that the print run for WOP#1 was 120,000 copies, i might be 10,0000 - but there is no way if they sold over 600,000 copies, those numbers that you stated would have gave defiant the capitol to exisit past one year.
two..the binders..now in an interview, which i remember specfically,jim stated that the binders were completely out of his control and were started by one of his partners who wanted to capitalize on the comic card market,which created a rift between them instantly and jim was against it, but he wasnt the money man, in protest he had the comic published in previews. true story. I met jim at a con in 94 in florida, i was 15 i had a defiant hat pins t-shirt, i must have looked like a total dork. Anyways, iasked jim about the origin of chasm comic that i had sent away for when i bought the dark dominion binder,(later i got some wop promo cards from the river group instead,when i called the river group about my cashed check,and where my comic was they said to call back which i never did) he said he wasnt in control of the production of that book, the river group was. later at that con i attended the"jim shooter how to create comics seminar" which was way cool ,he went through the construction of comics, made several mentions of how casablanca was the greatest script ever written, gave out diplomas at the end which had the defiant logo, and had a slide show, with some of his favourite pieces of storytelling, includin some pages from defiant, the strange thing was he used the defiant pages to show errors in lighting, colouring, etc.. He made some comments about the claremont/byrne xmen issues and how sometimes conflict created quality(implying chris/john had issues at the time) later i asked John Byrne who was at the con also and he stated "jim's definition of conflict isnt exactly everyone else's" or something to that effect.
from my understanding jim was not happy with DD#0 at all. At the very end they were going to release a 0 issuse tpb which had completely new artwork for dd#o.
things continuity wise were very tight at the beggining and then pretty much after wop#4 things really slipped off, The HFTH GN was awful it didnt go with the incredible 0-4, even the peoples identity and height varied in that book from the previous five issues, all in all it was a bad idea. the only two books i dont have is Great grimmax#0 and DoW #5.
seeing some artwork from schism was very special to me, ive waited 11 years for that. i kinda thought it was cheesy to include Mile high comics in good guys#1. especially after learning about the shooter/wonziak connection.
the flucuating prices were kind of a problen too ithink, some of the comics that would come out in a regular series like charlemagne, would all of a sudden be 48 pages and cost an extra buck, and then the next month go back to standard length. Also when WOP#13 came out and it had what seemed like the conclusion to the schism storyline before any of the schism issues actually came out, i knew it was over for defiant, and i stopped collecting comics for six years. iwas heartbroken. i was hooked on DD and WOP. I loved this universe and it made me lose my faith in all comics.
Another oddity..Jim talked a lot about his discovery of GREY the artist and art holcomb who was a newspaper writer and had never written comics before Defiant. Later after Defiant folded,Grey ended pencilling some beautiful Magnus robot fighter issues and Art Holcomb wrote an Eternal Warrior special, then later went on to write Eternal Warriors for acclaim after valiant was bought out. i just think that is incredibly ironic. And on that note does anyone know what happened to Grey?
luckily i kept all my defiant comics..but tossed some incredibly rare promo stuff..when i was 18 and comics werent cool anymore. oh well.
Oh, i also submitted a script to defiant and still had my refusal letter on Defiant stationary, and a cool defiant envelope. which i later tossed, dumb i know. also,on a humourus note, defiant ripped off the savage dragon, believe it or not, when the released an issue if DD which had the logo spread out on the whole cover with a tiny bit of art, which Erik Larsen had done a month or two before with savage dragon.
can anyone theorize where wop13 was nestled in the schism storyline, was it going to be schism 1-4 with all the titles crossing into it like unity or was wop13 the conclusion of the story. i loved defiant, the concepts were very spiritual in nature, about defining what reality is. great stuff.
one thing i didnt like though is that the logos were kinda cheesy like they were produced on some bad computer program. Prudence and caution made absolutley no sense and having two WoP charactes in essentially solo titiles didnt make any sense either. it seemed like everything was unfolding out of order.
one last thing before my fingers fall off is that i thought it was very funny to have charlemagne take on someone i cant remember who, in a wwf style wrestling match in an issue, it made me think about jim writing those valiant wwf comics. Ha!
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Post by Defiant1 on Dec 24, 2004 4:54:48 GMT -5
I wrote a book in response to this, but crappy internet explorer lost it. I'll let someone else reply before I go back and respond fully again.
I will say that the published order numbers for Capital City's order of WOP#1 was 134,000 copies. That blows your number out of the air. Capital City usually ordered 1/5th of what Diamond ordered.
So 120,000 seems very unlikely.
Defiant paid for a lot more that the publishing of comics and that is probably where most of the money went. The 1000 copies of Birth of The Defiant Universe cost a lot. That was one of the most expensive comic format publications ever printed.
WELCOME!
Knightt likes to see big welcomes.
Defiant1
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Post by Defiant1 on Dec 24, 2004 5:09:36 GMT -5
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Post by CORVETTEJIM1968 on Dec 24, 2004 11:26:31 GMT -5
if you need copies of Great grimmax#0 and DoW #5 i have extras i can help you out.
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Post by GuestDefiantDude on Dec 24, 2004 12:39:14 GMT -5
im definitley sure about wop#1's print run, if that comic sold that many copies back then, it would all over the comic press.
in ht einterview in which he refers to the print run in was in relation to artists bonuses, jim stated that bonuses were recived on comics that sold over 100,000 copies. Which wop was over on the first issue. Maybe he said he sold 120,000 through capital and that would make sense where my numbers came from, but also during that time companies were going exclusive with distibutors, so is it possible that Defiant was exclusive with Capital?
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Post by Defiant1 on Dec 24, 2004 13:12:18 GMT -5
im definitley sure about wop#1's print run, if that comic sold that many copies back then, it would all over the comic press. in ht einterview in which he refers to the print run in was in relation to artists bonuses, jim stated that bonuses were recived on comics that sold over 100,000 copies. Which wop was over on the first issue. Maybe he said he sold 120,000 through capital and that would make sense where my numbers came from, but also during that time companies were going exclusive with distibutors, so is it possible that Defiant was exclusive with Capital? Absolutely not. Previews featured the #0 issue. Steve Geppi the owner of Diamond was behind this venture fully. Capital City an Diamond were both selling copies of WoP#1. This comic was so common that I bought ten copies at 55% off cover price the week it came out. It's possible that some of the signature/incentive deals were all purchased through Capital City, but even if that were so Diamond still would have ordered more. No matter how you look at it, WoP#1 is a dime a dozen. It will NEVER be worth more than cover price unless dealers start destroying their surplus in mass. I can't really know the context of what Jim was saying. Defiant wasn't out there tellng people how many existed in the press reports. There's no reason for Jim to want anyone to know that a comic was massively overpublished. He could have been saying 120,000 went to your locality. Without actually hearing him say what he said, I can only offer the published numbers released by Capital City... the smaller of the big two distributors. There is NO shortage of the early Wop issues in Atlanta and the numbers I mathematically determined are also a good snapshot of the proportions I've seen cycle through the local comic shops. Another thing I haven't looked at is that Mile High ordered a lot of Defant product. I can't see Jim making his friend go through Diamond on that. It's quite possble that Mile High was a 3rd distributor ordering directly. Comics sales were idiotic back then. I helped one retailer pick up their 6000 copies of Turok #1 from the distributor once. Your estimate seems very low no matter how much I try to agree. The most horrific thought would be if Defant didn't want to pay the bonuses. Last month, my employer had our shipping department quit shipping product just so they wouldn't have to pay out a huge bonus based on quarterly sales. The employeees questioned what they did and eventually they gave us half of what we were promised. The buisness of this world has no respect for the employees. Again, without any context to question your info, I can only offer where I got my facts. A lot of conflicting informaton goes around. An inker for a project made a statement online that some unpublished artwork was lost. The artist said it wasn't. No matter how sure some info seems it can still be subject to dispute. Defiant1 |
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Post by Brother J on Dec 24, 2004 16:12:53 GMT -5
Another thing I haven't looked at is that Mile High ordered a lot of Defant product. I can't see Jim making his friend go through Diamond on that. It's quite possble that Mile High was a 3rd distributor ordering directly. Would Mile High at the time have gotten their books through their own distributor, ie Alternate Realites, the distributor that was run by Chuck's wife Nanette? I don't know when they went out of business. Considering how many early WOP issues are found still today in bargain bins everywhere, I definitely think the numbers for these books have to be very high. |
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Post by Defiant1 on Dec 24, 2004 16:48:45 GMT -5
Would Mile High at the time have gotten their books through their own distributor, ie Alternate Realites, the distributor that was run by Chuck's wife Nanette? I don't know when they went out of business. I don't know about that, but I think he ordered a lot and I think he would have ordered direct if that option was available. Defiant |
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Post by defiantdude on Dec 24, 2004 18:36:37 GMT -5
hey, wheres the book you promised  Does anyone have any info on the remake of DD#0 Or any personal reflections about attending the seminar? I too liked this universe better than pre-unity valiant perhaps because all the old jim valiant issues were too expensive, and this universe was less superhero and more intelligent, and i was there every step of the way. It would be really cool if somehow people got turned on to Defiant again just because of peoples opinins about the quality of the stories. The collectible issues of valiant are mostly int the first year, and then after that jim left, and there are about the same amount if not more defiant comics, than pre-unity valiant comics, it'd be funny. Also i remeber when plasm #o came out a lot of people including in wizard were bitching becausebasically "you couldnt understand what the hell they were talking about" you know with the crazy linguistics(is that a real word) and all. truthfully when i first read it parts were hard for a 14 year old to grasp but by the end of the issue i understood the language, and then went back and read the book again, and never had a problem. I guess if you consider the dumbed-down cliche writing that was going on in mainstream comics at the time, any kind of book that required a little effort to read instead of splash pages and sound effects, were considered "too hard" |
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Post by Defiant1 on Dec 24, 2004 19:39:58 GMT -5
hey, wheres the book you promised Sorry, I've lost three or four messages today because IE6 is crap. I've been meaning to download the current Mozilla browser, but last time I tried the server was overloaded with others doing the same. Does anyone have any info on the remake of DD#0 Joe James was supposed to draw it. It was going to be included as part of a Dark Dominion TPB. It was solicited if I recall correctly, but it never came out. Or any personal reflections about attending the seminar? I never attended the seminar. I've never met Jim Shooter. I know a multitude of people who have met Jim Shooter, but my name is not on that list. I do own a packet from the seminar, but I haven't located it yet. Some retailer friends picked it up for me when they attended. Evidently the packets were on chairs and they picked up an extra packet from a chair that was not being occupied. I believe it has a Defiant logo pencil and pad inside, but I don't remember fully what it contained. It would be really cool if somehow people got turned on to Defiant again just because of peoples opinins about the quality of the stories. The collectible issues of valiant are mostly int the first year, and then after that jim left, and there are about the same amount if not more defiant comics, than pre-unity valiant comics, it'd be funny. I have reason to believe that outside commercial interests are looking at the properties. I do not feel it is my place to say anything more than that in a public forum. All my "evidence" is circumstantial and could just be an aligned coincidence. Also i remeber when plasm #o came out a lot of people including in wizard were bitching because basically "you couldnt understand what the hell they were talking about" you know with the crazy linguistics(is that a real word) and all. truthfully when i first read it parts were hard for a 14 year old to grasp but by the end of the issue i understood the language, and then went back and read the book again, and never had a problem. It didn't bother me to read as a monthly installment, but looking back and knowing I want to reread all 14 issue straight through... that is a bit intimidating to me now. I'm not rushing to do that by any means. I guess if you consider the dumbed-down cliche writing that was going on in mainstream comics at the time, any kind of book that required a little effort to read instead of splash pages and sound effects, were considered "too hard" It's not that. Most people never took the opportunity to read the comic. They relied upon negative press to base their conclusion. Defiant1 |
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Post by Defiant1 on Dec 24, 2004 20:32:01 GMT -5
In 1993 i aborted all Valiant titles,(thank god because i got all those crappy issues for pennies later in life) for all things defiant. I truly loved jims work, now i would like to put in some of my accumulated defiant knowledge, because there really was no outlet for it on VC.com. Bah! You're just sucking up because you know I can't stand that site ;D two..the binders..now in an interview, which i remember specfically,jim stated that the binders were completely out of his control and were started by one of his partners who wanted to capitalize on the comic card market,which created a rift between them instantly and jim was against it, but he wasnt the money man, in protest he had the comic published in previews. true story. Jim has always stated that teh river Group did their own thing and the binders were out of his control. My understanding is that he released the Previews copy because he knew some consumers would be upset if forced to buy the cards. I've never heard of this being done as retribution or payback of any kind. Anyways, iasked jim about the origin of chasm comic that i had sent away for when i bought the dark dominion binder,(later i got some wop promo cards from the river group instead,when i called the river group about my cashed check,and where my comic was they said to call back which i never did) he said he wasnt in control of the production of that book, the river group was. You are talking shades of gray. The River roup was in charge of releasing the comic, but the comic was being compiled by the comic book people. Art Holcomb says he has the unpublished script, but he has made no effort to make it available to the public. For some creators this stuff is on an old computer or hard drive that is not in use anymore. It takes a concious effort for them to dig it out and not everyone is willing to donate their time towards that. Some creators might want to see if interest grows on these properties before they give away what they have. Whatever the motivation people have to keep or let go of this stuff, I am indifferent at this stage. I'd love to see the stuff, but I want no strings attached at all. I feel the unpublished material is owed to the fans because we were withheld the storyline we were promised. The creators got paid for their unfinished work, but the fans were neglected the opposrtunity to see it. I spent my hard earned money for almost a year hoping for the conclusion to a larger story. It didn't happen. When Defiant shut down, a lot of people were disappointed. I've wanted to see the unpublished material from the first time I saw an unreleased page being sold by Andrew Pepoy (inker). I'd have bought his unpublished page then, but there were too many other good art deals that day and I spent my limited funds elsewhere. He made some comments about the claremont/byrne xmen issues and how sometimes conflict created quality(implying chris/john had issues at the time) later i asked John Byrne who was at the con also and he stated "jim's definition of conflict isnt exactly everyone else's" or something to that effect. If you dig on my messageboard you will see a link to a messageboard where John Byrne is being chastised by Neal Adams. It is a classic debate and in my mind, John Byrne evaded the points of issue that Neal was raising. From my very limited exposure to John Byrne, I'd say that comment fits the type of thing I would expect him to say. ...continued.... |
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Post by Defiant1 on Dec 24, 2004 20:33:39 GMT -5
from my understanding jim was not happy with DD#0 at all. At the very end they were going to release a 0 issuse tpb which had completely new artwork for dd#o. Actually, the press reports say that Steve Ditko was not happy with the project. I don't think Steve Ditko would have wanted his work reprinted. things continuity wise were very tight at the beggining and then pretty much after wop#4 things really slipped off, The HFTH GN was awful it didnt go with the incredible 0-4, even the peoples identity and height varied in that book from the previous five issues, all in all it was a bad idea. The turmoil that screwed everything up coincided with all the overpriced issues. The production value dropped on all of those issues at all levels. Art, editing... you name it. I kinda feel as though the Marvel lawsuit set some things in motion that directly affected the the quality of the books for a couple of month. seeing some artwork from schism was very special to me, ive waited 11 years for that. I feel the same way. Thank colorist Janet Jackson for that donation. Pressumably that is Lapham rough layouts. Pencils by Dave Taylor. Inks ~possibly~ by Dick Giordano... but I'm not sure entirely. The only credits I'm reasonably sure about are the Dave Taylor pencils. i kinda thought it was cheesy to include Mile high comics in good guys#1. especially after learning about the shooter/wonziak connection. I thought that was fun. The name is Chuck Rozanski, so I know your memory is a little off on some of this. It's been awhile, so that's understandable. Also when WOP#13 came out and it had what seemed like the conclusion to the schism storyline before any of the schism issues actually came out, i knew it was over for defiant, and i stopped collecting comics for six years. iwas heartbroken. i was hooked on DD and WOP. I loved this universe and it made me lose my faith in all comics. I was disappointed, but I didn't expect Jim to stay gone long. Oh, i also submitted a script to defiant and still had my refusal letter on Defiant stationary, and a cool defiant envelope. which i later tossed, dumb i know. That would have beeb cool. also,on a humourus note, defiant ripped off the savage dragon, believe it or not, when the released an issue if DD which had the logo spread out on the whole cover with a tiny bit of art, which Erik Larsen had done a month or two before with savage dragon. They all copy each other whether intentionally or subconciously can anyone theorize where wop13 was nestled in the schism storyline, was it going to be schism 1-4 with all the titles crossing into it like unity or was wop13 the conclusion of the story. I believe it was a lead in. one thing i didnt like though is that the logos were kinda cheesy like they were produced on some bad computer program. Don't criticize the logos!!!!  Janet probably made them. That is her specialty and she's a member here. She's donated a lot of content. I like the logos just fine. You can say whatever you want. Janet's an adult. She's got enough fans of her work willing to talk much louder with dollars in hand (... and ready to buy any art she offers up). Prudence and caution made absolutley no sense and having two WoP charactes in essentially solo titiles didnt make any sense either. My guess is that Prudence was an early incarnation of Fatale, but I have no real evidence to support it. The only evidence remotely supporting my theory is the fact that artist Jim Fern's name was on an early script for Broadway Comics. An inker stated online that P&C production was stalled because they weren't sure which direction to go with it. I think they were looking at P&C's sales numbers closely and trying to find a way to keep paying Chris Claremont his comparable rates. I'm sure he was an expensive inclusion to the DEFIANT universe and they had lot riding on that title's success... which wasn't happening. it seemed like everything was unfolding out of order. I agree, but you need to debate that with Todd Luck. He set me straight on some stuff, so i consider him the authority on DEFIANT continuity. one last thing before my fingers fall off is that i thought it was very funny to have charlemagne take on someone i cant remember who, in a wwf style wrestling match in an issue, it made me think about jim writing those valiant wwf comics. Ha! Wise from a marketing standpoint, but tough to execute. I'm sure the wrestling angle was a brainstorm from Alan Weiss. Defiant took a lot of concepts... wrestling, small children, funky talking aliens.... and made me like them. Would I have picked those topics? Nah. That's not the important part. The important part is overall delivery. At no time was I doubting they could take bizarre concepts and make them completely entertaining for me. The ultimate plans behind Good Guys crossing over with Dogs of War was enough of a plot device to make all the issues leading up worthwhile even if I had to struggle through an issue here and there. Defiant1 |
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Post by DefiantDood on Dec 28, 2004 17:20:06 GMT -5
NO,NO, NO, NO! ;D Please dont get me wrong i LOVED janet jacksons's coloring talent she was great at valiant and Defiant ! But honestly the logos do look like they were made with a computer program from 1993 The logos at valiant were hand made and made the early issues stand out, you have to remeber at that time the comic computer coloring was a new growing technology, so a lot of those computer colored books look dated. I remember that defiant made a point of saying they werent going to use computer coloring, but then changed their minds with P&C using digital colouring, but i might have the facts confused on that a little. But Janet if you are reading this I thought you're coloring was beautiful!! |
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Post by Defiant1 on Dec 28, 2004 17:43:53 GMT -5
NO,NO, NO, NO! ;D Please dont get me wrong i LOVED janet jacksons's coloring talent she was great at valiant and Defiant ! But honestly the logos do look like they were made with a computer program from 1993 The logos at valiant were hand made and made the early issues stand out, you have to remeber at that time the comic computer coloring was a new growing technology, so a lot of those computer colored books look dated. I remember that defiant made a point of saying they werent going to use computer coloring, but then changed their minds with P&C using digital colouring, but i might have the facts confused on that a little. But Janet if you are reading this I thought you're coloring was beautiful!! The biggest gripe the creators had as the fial product as it appeared. They tried using the Valiant style of coloring but at Defiant, the process had problems and the covers ended up blurry. Compare your Dogs of War #1 to the original color art... fire.prohosting.com/defiantc/Defiant/Dogs_of_War_art_cvr_color.htmlDefiant1 |
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Janet probably made them. That is her specialty and she's a member here. She's donated a lot of content. I like the logos just fine.