The long teaser campaign from Image is now complete with the big reveal being Butcher Baker: The Righteous Maker #1. The book is written by Joe Casey with Mike Huddleston on art. In an interview from May of this year, Huddleston is quoted as saying it is, “a twisted, adults-only tale of demented superfiction and two-lane blacktop mayhem. It’s a book where we’re really going to experiment with the form a bit. Mike’s a massive talent and he’s specifically asked me to push him in artistic directions he’d never been pushed before.”
Well that certainly puts the images in perspective, including the ones we didn’t run. The image above has the first issue coming in at $2.99, and since we didn’t see this solicited in the January or February 2011 orders, I’m going to guess we’ll see this in March 2011 at the earliest.
The bigger question is, now that you’ve seen the big reveal, did the teaser campaign work enough for you to want to pick up the book?
17 Comments
This is just me, but the campaign had the opposite effect. I was seriously turned off by tease after tease of stuff that really didn’t make sense at the time. I don’t think this book is for me, but if it worked for you, bully.
I’m with Josh – week after week after week of strainingly surreal teasers just made me feel like it should be unveiled just so Major Spoilers can go back to spending their energy on something valid. Seeing that the end product is from Joe “Mediocrity Is a Reach for Me” Casey doesn’t help the annoyance level, but that’s me.
I agree. I couldn’t care less about another Garth Ennis wanna be comic.
I’m interested, but I hope this doesn’t further delay Bad Dog.
I also agree with Josh, the teasers just took too long to pan out. Something like that shouldn’t take that long of a timeframe. If there was more substance to the teasers I would not have been as annoyed. Also in my opinion the art style really didn’t help matters any.
Why is it that “experimenting with the form” usually means “Superman-knock off will go ax-crazy and kill lots and lots of people (graphically)”?
I think we’re past the point of these being “deconstructions” anymore (which I’m assuming this is from the sounds of it, could be wrong though.)
Nowadays something like a straight up Justice League or Avengers title where the heroes do hero stuff and aren’t hunted as criminals…*that* would be a decontruction…
-D
I’m confused as to how you get “Superman knockoff” from a guy with a gun and a knife. More closer to batman, actually.
Plus, a “Deconstruction” is something that takes apart a genre’s “tropes” if you will, and analyzes them in a different context -it’s not a deconstruction if it doesn’t do that. A story with classic superheroes straight out of the golden age or silver age isn’t a deconstruction. It’d be a tribute.-
Yes, but often deconstructionism leads to a brand new norm of what would previously be desconstructionist. The bumbling dad in sitcoms was a deconstructionist version of the straight-laced dad in “Leave it to Beaver”, “Make Room for Daddy” and many more. Now, it’s the norm. A trust-worthy, buttoned-down father figure would be a change in the sitcom mix.
But that doesn’t make it a deconstruction. If you take something apart and put it back together with new parts, parts removed or changed, that makes it different. If you put it back the exact same way, it’s still the same thing.
You could certainly deconstruct a deconstruction that’s become standard in and of itself, but reverting back to the original state doesn’t do that. If you were to deconstruct, say, the superman as a horrible murderer analogue, you would do it by giving him complex motivations and a sympathetic backstory, or make it as though his crimes were exaggerated by an anti-superman propaganda campaign. If you just went back to everyone thinking superman was an awesome dude, that’s not a deconstruction. If you wanna get all techy-terminological, it’s a reconstruction.
Might be just reading between the lines, but it seems like Superman is usually the model for reimagining how superheroes are. I’ll wait to judge, but the promo stuff just sounded to familiar in some way.
If this came out before the Boys, maybe it’d have more of a punch, but it gets a “meh” from me. All those teasers for this? It doesn’t seem worth it. I for one am tired of the superfiction that isn’t the big two. Invincible has proven itself, so has Jack Staff, but this absurd, off the wall take doesn’t hook me one dang bit.
I’m not really one of those people to dismiss things based on the fact that similar things have come before. I’ll be checking this out for sure, it seems like something somewhat my style.
I thought the teasers were interesting, if a bit too drawn out – 3-5 would have been fine.
I, for one, enjoyed every teaser. In fact, I was actually hoping that they were just making teasers for a comic that did not exist. That would be hilarious! It generates interest, annoyance, and what have you, but the teasers themselves get your name out there. I liked how off the wall they were and that I really did not know what was going on.
Sure, I probably will not pick up the title, but I at least paid attention to the hubbub.
In an age where hundreds of comics are struggling to stand out from the rest of the noise, I think the ad campaign is at the very least, a commendable effort.
Since this comes from Image, this stuff came directly from the creators. I also have to admire their decision to hold the $2.99 price point.
Depending on how heavily discounted the book is through my preferred online vendor, I’m in for giving this a chance.
The teasers didn’t work on me. After a while I just stopped reading them.
That said, this cover -does- work on me. Butcher Baker, the Righteous Maker?? What’s not awesome about that?! I think this will be right up my alley, so I’ll be giving it a shot.
They worked for me. Yes, it got a little long in the tooth (perhaps only one or two ads a month would have been better), but it served it’s purpose: I badly want to see this book. It was a good (and somewhat bad) use of advertising.
I started loathing the teasers. I didn’t mind the teasers from Marvel for the Secret Avengers and whatnot because speculation can be had on the sillouettes and who might be on the team and whatever, but a teaser for something I have nothing to base it on just doesn’t work for me. I know though, that for me, a teaser is only effective if it’s referencing something I’m familiar with and something I’d be excited about. Like if I went to the theater to see a movie and before the movie I saw a date on the screen and it zoomed in on one of the “0”s in 2012 or whatever and the “0” spread out a little and some metal spikes curled up from the sides and the middle lit up with the Sword of Omens cat eye symbol and you just hear a panther roar, I’d be floored. I’d be teased for what’s to come and would be all over the place trying to figure out what’s coming out and what’s going on.
Maybe that’s just for me. And that’s just for a teaser. I don’t have the time nor interest to put into some slightly interesting teaser for something I don’t know anything about, I’ll just wait until it comes out and either watch a proper trailer or look at it once it’s out. And this, I’m not interested in at all. Just because I’m not interested in it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t read it, but when I’m jerked around for too long without giving me anything, I just don’t feel like doing the leg work to find out what it’s about. I’ll wait for the review and if I ever get a real idea of what it’s about maybe then I’ll look at it.