What’s in Mini Marvels: Secret Invasion?

A lot of folks have been asking exactly what’s getting collected in the MINI MARVELS: SECRET INVASION digest.  It will contain the following:

CONSPICUOUS INVASION (16-page story featuring the Skrulls and the Fantastic Four written by Chris Giarrusso)

CIVIL WARDS (16-page story featuring Spidey and Power Pack, written by Marc Sumerack)

SPIDEY AND HIS AMAZING CO-WORKERS (6-page story featuring Spidey, Iceman & Firestar written by Sean McKeever)

AND LO THERE SHALL COME… A GO-CART (4-page story featuring Hulk and Power Pack written by Paul Tobin)

ARMAGEDDON UNLEASHED (4-page story featuring Hulk and Power Pack written by Paul Tobin)

PRINCIPAL STANLEY (2-page strip featuring Spidey and Principal Stan Lee written by Chris Giarrusso)

HULK ART CLASS, HULK SPLASH, HULK ZOO, HULK WEB, HULK AIRPORT, & HULK ICE (6 single-page strips written by Audrey Loeb

RETURN OF THOR (7-page story written by Chris Giarrusso)

WORLD WAR HULK: FINAL SHOWDOWN (5-page story featuring Hulk and the Illuminators written by Chris Giarrusso)

HAWKEYE AND THE BEANSTALK (16-page story written by Chris Giarrusso)

THE BLACK CAT, THE ITCH, THE COUCH, THE FRENCH BREAD & GIANT GIRL (5 single-page strips written by Chris Giarrusso)

THE SNOWMAN (1-page strip co-written by Sean McKeever and Chris Giarrusso)

BULLPEN BITS (6 pages of the original Mini Marvels comic strips written by Chris Giarrusso)

And that rounds it out!  I bet there’s a lot of stuff in there you never heard of before!

Please remember to tell your comic shop you would like to pre-order MINI MARVELS: SECRET INVASION, or they will not order enough copies and you won’t see it in the store!  This is not a book comic shops will expect people to want, so THEY WILL NOT ORDER IT UNLESS YOU ASK THEM TO!  To help explain to your store what you want, please click here to download the handy Mini Marvels special order form, note what you want, and hand it to your store owner!

Thanks!

ALTERNATE REALITY BULLPEN BITS

If you haven’t heard, the BULLPEN BITS archive has finally been completed here on the site. In my last post, I explained the deal with BULLPEN BITS #52-X. But what’s the deal with that Alternate Reality BULLPEN BITS strip?

Have you ever read a Marvel comic where characters in the story are reading a Marvel comic? No? Well, it happens sometimes. And inevitably, the question is asked, “Why can’t somebody IN the Marvel Universe just read a copy of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN to find out that Spider-Man is Peter Parker?” The answer is, “because the comics that people IN the Marvel Universe read are NOT the same comics that we in the ACTUAL universe read.”

WITHIN the Marvel Universe, the Spider-Man comics just have a bunch of fictional stories — they aren’t “real”, like ours. That is to say, the fake comic creators that exist within the Marvel Universe don’t know nearly as much about their Spider-Man, as WE do. So the stories they write are “wrong”. Back in the year 2000, Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort wondered what THOSE comics, the comics the characters in the Marvel Universe were reading, would actually be like. And Brevoort decided to find out.

Brevoort started a project called MARVEL COMICS IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, which was made up of six single issues of different comic books from the MARVELS COMICS line of comics that existed in the Marvel Universe. The books included in this MARVELS COMICS project were SPIDER-MAN, FANTASTIC FOUR, X-MEN, THOR, DAREDEVIL, and CAPTAIN AMERICA. It was an interesting project, and it was entertaining to see how various Marvel characters were interpreted, or MISinterpreted, in this fashion.

At the time, the BULLPEN BULLETINS page was a regular Marvel promotional page that was featured in all of Marvel’s “real” books. Brevoort decided to put a BULLPEN BULLETINS counterpart into his “fake” books, one that would promote the other “fake” comics in this “fake” line of books. Since the BULLPEN BITS comic strip had been running regularly in the BULLPEN BULLETINS page, Brevoort asked me to create a strip for his “fake” page. The promotional page was called MARVELS MANIA!, and on that page the strip was titled MINI MARVELS. With the strip, I tried to play off the ways the “fake” comics were getting the characters so “wrong”. Spider-Man was thought to be a creepy monster. Daredevil was thought to have some real connection to demonic forces. Having Wolverine flying around was something I just threw in on my own.

So there you have it. That’s the deal with the BULLPEN BITS alternate reality strip.

-Fake Chris G

BULLPEN BITS archive finally complete.

For today’s update, we finally got around to completing the BULLPEN BITS archive. For whatever reason, the last handful of strips has been missing forever. Until now. Tell your friends.

The specific NEW old strips that were just added are numbers 58 to 62, as well as the strangely labeled and often questioned 52-X and the Alternate Reality (AR) strip.

So what’s the deal with 52-X? People often see the strip as a metaphor for my own situation as the BULLPEN BITS cartoonist. This is true. However, the focus of my anger is usually misinterpreted. I DON’T have a problem with Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada. But before Joe came along, the strip was living on borrowed time.

My editor for the BULLPEN BITS strip was Matt Hicks. Matt’s boss and editor-in-chief at the time (NOT Joe Q.) often would express to Matt his displeasure with the strip’s publication in the BULLPEN BULLETINS page. He also began telling Matt that the “higher ups” and the “people upstairs” were complaining about the strip, and the strip needed to be removed. I believe this was a complete fabrication. I don’t believe the “higher ups” or the “people upstairs” were aware that the strip even existed. I actually think the strip lasted as long as it did in the first place because the editor-in-chief himself didn’t notice it.

As time went on, Matt’s boss and editor-in-chief at the time kept telling Matt to remove BULLPEN BITS from the BULLPEN BULLETINS page. Matt would tell him “okay”, and then tell me he was going to ignore his boss and keep the strip in as long as possible — but inevitably, the strip was going to end at some point.

I drew the strip that is now labeled as 52-X in anticipation of the end. I figured we’d know ahead of time when our last week would be, and that strip would be my final send-off. However, the news came too suddenly, and I never got the chance to use that strip. Matt was relieved of his duties as editor of the BULLPEN BULLETINS page and replaced with someone who would remove the BULLPEN BITS strip like the boss wanted. I appreciate Matt’s attitude and willingness to fight the power on my behalf, even when he knew it put him at risk.

So the BULLPEN BITS strip was cancelled, and the final strip was #52.

Not long after that, the Marvel editor-in-chief was fired. The new editor-in-chief was Joe Quesada. Joe always thought that the BULLPEN BITS strip was a suitable feature for the BULLPEN BULLETINS page, so BULLPEN BITS became UNcancelled. This turn of events motivated me to pitch a full length Mini Marvels story, something that never would have been approved previously. Joe liked it, and GIANT SIZE MINI MARVELS was eventually published.

But BULLPEN BITS was doomed once more. This time, it was decided to cancel the entire BULLPEN BULLETINS page, the page that BULLPEN BITS appeared in, for financial reasons. BULLPEN BULLETINS was a Marvel promotional page that brought no income to the company, whereas the sale of an extra full-page advertisement would bring Marvel some extra revenue.

It COULD be argued that promoting Marvel product within a Marvel product could help increase future Marvel product sales and therefore revenue in the long run. However, in the face of this new information age where most fans are aware of all of Marvel’s upcoming procucts through several comic news internet websites, the BULLPEN BULLETINS page was considered redundant as a promotional tool and no longer valid in that capacity, especially when weighed against the opportunity cost of another ad sale.

So BULLPEN BITS was RE-cancelled.

The final strip was #62. BIT #52-X saw print for the first and only time in the BULLPEN BITS collection found in GIANT SIZE MINI MARVELS. I placed it between strips 41 and 42 in that particular collection, because it was around then that I actually created 52-X. Now, however, I think that placing it at the end of the first run, right after #52 (the FIRST last strip) is more appropriate. And so that’s why I’m calling it 52-X.

To conclude, let me reiterate that BULLPEN BITS #52-X is NOT directed at Joe Quesada. Q rocks da house, yo.

Man, this whole explanation was a lot longer than I thought it would be. Tune in next time and I’ll try to explain what the deal is with the Alternate Reality BULLPEN BITS strip.

-Chris G