Last week, Mark Millar teased a ten-issue project that would feature “huge superheroes” that he had worked on in the past as something “special.” Featuring a page with art by unnamed artist, Millar played coy with the users of his forum in an effort to drum up a bit of hype for the project — and it certainly worked.
Today, Millar explained what his teases meant: mostly cheeky bollocks. As it turned out, Millar’s clues were fairly misleading (or, perhaps more kindly said, misdirection), and did a great job of throwing fans off the correct path, as we now know that the tease for a new book is for a currently-unnamed “Jupiter’s Legacy” prequel series with art by Wilfredo Torres (which one user of Millar’s forums identified, though Millar denied that this was the correct artist), with covers and character designs by “Jupiter’s Legacy” artist and co-creator Frank Quitely. The book, which features the tagline “Even Your Parents Were Young Once,” will showcase a 1958-era Utopian and Lady Liberty, where the older heroes featured in “Jupiter’s Legacy” will be at their prime. The series will also feature Hutch’s father, who is featured in the teaser page and was, back in the day, one of the world’s greatest heroes before becoming its greatest supervillain, which will presumably be what the series focuses on.
The roll-out plan for the book also ties into the overall endeavor. Apparently “Jupiter’s Legacy,” already a ten-issue series, will take a break after the completion of issue #5, set for a Christmas time release and which Millar is working on now, teasing it as a double-sized finale. Once issue #5 is out, we will switch over to this new series in April as an intermediary between the first and second volumes of “Jupiter’s Legacy.” Millar also notes the second half of the new series will likely run in conjunction with the second half of “Jupiter’s Legacy.”
Fans of Millar’s work can probably ascertain why this book has the schedule that it does, and that’s the heavy delays that have fallen upon not just “Jupiter’s Legacy” but most of the Millarworld oeuvre in general. As Millar notes in the CBR post,
The reason we’re waiting until April to launch the prequel, even though the first issue is almost completely finished, is because all Millarworld series going forward will be completely drawn before the first issue comes out. It’s an expensive thing to do, as our rates for each artist are higher than they get at Marvel or DC, but it’s important to me that they hit a monthly schedule for every series.
And that’s a smart move on Millar’s part. While I would actually debate whether the delays hurt Millar’s work overall (I don’t think they do; he seems like a pretty successful guy, boasting that the first issue of “Jupiter’s Legacy” was “the number three book in the industry when we launched last year”), but a timely schedule is important for books. Diehard Millar fans will stick with him no matter how many years they wait between issues of “War Heroes,” but the casual fan will drop out and just wait for the trade or eventual film — which, to be fair, is still probably just as profitable.
But to see Millar decide to take a stance against this one problematic aspect of his work is promising, and I’d hope it works out for him and all the artists he works with in the future, as he works with quite a lot of really great artists.
Look for “Jupiter’s Legacy” #5, now a double-sized finale, to come out sometime around the holidays, with a follow-up tie-in prequel series to launch in April of next year.
