MARVEL'S TROUBLE PRESS CONFERENCE

In addition to releasing six pages from Trouble #1, Marvel Comics staged a press conference on Friday regarding the book.

Following are highlights and comments from Marvel's Bill Jemas and writer Mark Millar.

Said Jemas: "This story has a beginning, middle and end. The story is called Trouble, and the lead characters are May and Mary, two teenage girl, and Ben and Richard, two teenage boys. And everybody who saw the movie knows Uncle Ben and Aunt May. And most comics readers know that Richard and Mary are the names of Peter Parker's parents. This sounds like it's gonna turn into the origin of Peter Parker. Marvel is taking the book very seriously - we have an all-star creative team ... Mark Millar, Terry Dodson, and Axel Alonso are here.

"We also are making this the number one book from new imprint Epic Comiccs, which is very close to our plans for the future - to get an Epic exploding, and this is a wonderful way to start. In the beginning, over a year ago, this project was called Parents. At its inception, this was intended to be the story of Peter Parker's conception. And we get to the middle of the story, the focus goes from being on the baby to be, to four teenagers who are living the lives of four teenegers. Now the story revolves around May and Mary, who make enormous sacrifices in order to do what they need to do. We shifted the name of the book from Parents to Trouble to reflect that.

"This is a very good book. I think it's going to turn out to be a great series. It stands on its own. It still leaves the question, is it the origin of Spider-Man? Right now, we don't know. I don't think the answer to that question ought be up to Joe, or Mark, or Terry, or Axel, or me. We think the final answer ought to come from the comic book community, based on the acceptance of the story.

"That's not to say that we don't want this to be the origin of Spider-Man, speaking for Marvel's editorial group and the creative team, we hope that the happy ending to this story will be that there will be millions of teenagers all over the world who read this book. I hope it does some good for those who face simliar situations like the kids in this book face, and that they have some sense how older more experienced people deal with situations like this. We hope that this brings our wonderful graphic stoytelling artwork to to new readers who'd otherwise never read a Spider-Man book, and we hope that the Marvel community will back us on this and be with us every step of the way, and that's why we're leaving this pretty much open-ended. I hope that Marvel readers will be proud to call Trouble the origin of Spider-Man.

"That's where we are. There have been a lot of half-rumors and misreported stories about if this is really Peter Parker and Ben and Aunt May, but that's not confirmed because frankly, we don't know for sure. We know it's a great book.

"This policy of not deciding about continuity leaves some enormous problems for our business partners. If you're a retailer, you can't really order Trouble like it's the origin of Wolverine, because we're not stamping it the offical origin of Spider-Man, which means that a retailer could get stuck with returnable inventory. But if Trouble does hit like Ultimate Spider-Man #1, and people order it in the low numbers that ordered Ultimate Spider-Man #1, then retailers are not going to have enough books are the shelf to keep customers satisfed. We're going to change our overprint policy for this book.

"We met with retailer at the Marvel suite in Phildelphia convention, and we discussed with our business partners about the no overprint, no reprint policy in general, and the plan for Trouble #1 is that we will go ahead and print the first edition to order. The final order cutoff date is June 12. We will also print an alternative cover version of the book. If Trouble doesn't sell through, I'll probably keep an issue of it in my office for posterity. If it does, we can ship the alternative cover right away to fill the shelves. But we won't do that until we're comfortable that Trouble #1 is selling through.

"I understand that the perception of Marvel in the comic community is that we do a lot of major lip-marketing, and I couldn't tell you with a straight face that's completely false. We have fun and we make money, and the major lip-marketing is a big part of that. I don't want to see that change, but for the purposes of this, I do want to make one thing clear: 'Made you look' to me at least is 'made you read.' We're really not here just for the financial gain. People who work at Marvel at this point in time could go to other places and make more money. We're here because we reallydo think this is a valuable genre. We think that graphic storytelling has things very unique to offer to the world, and that's important to us. We are putting heart and soul behind Trouble because we believe in the creators of this book and what they have to say to the next generation of kids.

"So yes, this is a little bit of 'made you look,' and people will always say why this can't just be about two kids, and why do we have to have Spider-Man. The chance of this book getting read by millions of people increase a thousand fold if this book ahs a relationship to Peter Parker."

* Millar then answered questions.

"I think what we're trying to do is something completely new and unique is to not catergorize it, and do something that appeals to everyone instead of just superhero fans or just romance fans. You know that within comics themselves, with an established market, there might not be a gigantic market for something exclusively romantic, but combined with other successful elements, that's what excited me about possibilty. It's the first comic I've written that my wife read from page one to page 22 and read it and quite enjoyed it," Millar said.

* Asked about market research in teen romance fiction, Millar said:

"I actually did have a good look at these. When I first saw the covers, I wasn't sure of what to make of them, until I walked into a bookstore and saw that's what these covers look like. It was interesting seeing the comic-book reaction, because people were saying it looked like pornography, but it's not pornography - it's exactly what 12-year-old girls read, and what their eyes fixate on when they walk into a bookshop. What kind of excited me was that this was somehting that could be stacked alongside those as well as stacked alongside Origin and Kingdom Come and Marvels, something that has a place in Marvel history.

"But even as good as those books are, not everyone has interest in them or wants to pick them up. So this unique because it's a catalyst between the two genres. I did read a lot of those novels, most of them are absolute rubbish, but this difference is that this is quite good."

* As to how the story came about: "It was a very organic process. We sat in a bar and for the first hour or so it made perfect sense, but as the night went on I can't remember what happened, but at the end we had a concept that had all four of us, Axel, too, really excited. It started as a nutshell idea that Bill and Joe had, and they asked if I was interested in developing.

"They had a vision of the kind fo book they were interested in. Geenrally, I'm not really interested if smeoone comes to me with an idea, becasue quite often it's quite difficult to articulate it as well as the guy that came up with the idea. But this time, the idea is such an interesting one, and it just felt like we were placing a marker down in comics history by doing something like this. It's such a radical idea and a unique format that I found challenging."

* Asked about time frnme and continuity, Millar said: "I think the idea at the moment is that we believe this is what going on, and if people like the story, they can think that too. Marvel's quite interesting in that people were saying 'Aunt May grew up in the twenties!' But I think that Marvel has been quite celverly vague about that for 40 years. Peter Parker doesn't become Spider-Man in the early '60s, he became Spider-Man 10 or 12 years ago. In 50 years' time, he'll just have become Spider-Man ten or twelve years ago. So in that sense, this story is set nine months before Peter Parker enters the world."

* Asked why Trouble is an Epic book, Millar said: "It doesn't feel like a Marvel superhero book, so it doesn't fit in the Marvel universe, and it has no adult content or violence or language, so we wanted something that would appeal to people in the same way that Spider-Man appeals to people in that you can read it when your 9 or when you're an adult. Because Epic is experimental, it seems like the perfect place for it."

* Asked if Trouble was really appropriate for a 9-year-old, Millar said: "I remember one of my earliest comics was the Stan Lee drug issues of Spider-Man. At the time, I remember saying to my Dad, 'Why are Harry Osborn's eyes funny?' And he had to explain it to me. I think comics are fantastic in that sense and are a safe introduction to the real world. Illegitimacy happens. I'm illegitimate, as are two or three people within my family. Something like 30 percent or 40 percent of kids born last year are as well. There's no stigma as such as there was in the 1960s, or at the time this story is set, but I think you find your 9-year-old kids know other kids in their calss who may be in this kind of situation that the kids find themselves in. It's not done distastefully, it's just done realistically, so there's nothing people would have to worry about their child reading it. "

* Asked if there were other references to the Marvel Universe, Millar said: "The inner fanboy in me wanted Reed Richards to drive by and things like that. Then I pulled myself back. The only reference I have to the Marvel Universe is an old fortune teller called Mrs. Grey. I've really tried to focus and make this a story that stands on its own, so there's less in-jokes and more things that a general audience will appreciate. It works different muscles for you as a writer - writing the Ultimate books is very differnt from writing a Marvel Universe or DC book, because you can't rely on all the little catchphrases and things that make those universes so rich - you have to make things up from scratch. So writing this was very much like writing a movie, as opposed to writing a comic book."

* Millar explained his take on new readers in general: "Well, it's interesting that the number of women that have been going to conventions has risen over the last three years. I found this on my website as well. There are so many women involved, particularly younger women. A lot of them were saying was if they had to keep reading the same kind of material. I have nieces that are 11 and 12 years old, and the kind of thing that draw me to a comic aren't the things that draw them. They quite often want to read comics, and they come to my house to read something that interests them, and there's little they can take away. I thought it would be interested to do somehting that would lure them in. Iron Man lures me in to a comic, but they don't. I wanted to find material that they were interested in, and hopefully introduce them to the comic form that way."