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Marvel says there’s still hope for some of its most famous unfinished comics, like Iron Man director Jon Favreau's Iron Man comic with Adi Granov
Marvel's Tom Brevoort says that in the fullness of time, "everything" sees print, even notoriously unpublished comics
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Will Marvel Comics ever release some of its most well-known and sought after unpublished material that still hasn't seen the light of day? Marvel editor Tom Brevoort says that there's always hope the unfinished work will finally come to fruition, including at least one story that died on the vine under his watch.
"I think most stuff these days kind of gets collected unless it doesn't get printed or finished. So there are a couple random things. There was Daredevil: The Target, and I think one issue of that saw print," Brevoort tells Word Balloon. "The sore spot in my history, the two issues of Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas that will never be finished, that John Favreau did with Adi Granov. So there are a couple of things like that here and there, but even those, given enough time, somebody will find places to put them into collections. So I don't think anything is quite lost in the way it might have been in the past."
Still, the changes Marvel has made to its publishing model in recent years mean that there are less stories being created that go unreleased thanks to the nature of the direct market and how retailers order comic books. Unlike the past, there are fewer 'inventory stories,' standalone issues designed to slot into a given title should there be a delay in finishing the next issue in the ongoing plot.
"We certainly don't have that need to kind of burn off inventory. We don't do a lot of inventory material anymore," Brevoort explains. "The market has just changed so much that the idea of just dropping a random story into your comic that month, with the way books are ordered ahead of time through the direct market on a non-returnable basis, that just doesn't work the same way."
Indeed, in the past, many issues consisted of standalone stories, even the ones that had continuing sub plots, so the idea of a random issue appearing in the middle of a comic's run was less obvious and more in line with the expectations of readers. However, as shown by Brevoort's own examples, there are still stories out there that fans would love to see finally reach print, or to be collected despite being unfinished, an eventuality that Brevoort says is always potentially in the cards.
"You go long enough, everything kinda gets collected, so the hope is always there," he concludes.
Brevoort is currently the editor of Marvel's X-Men line, having taken over for previous editor Jordan D. White after more than two decades editing the Avengers and its related titles.
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