The Hype of Reilly: Part IX

This installment of ‘Hype’ is a little later than the bi-weekly schedule that I’ve tried to keep, but I’ve been a lot busier with the book lately so…

In the past couple of weeks I was able to get Fabian Nicieza to do a short interview for the book and got it completed, as well. Fabian had a small but pretty crucial role to play in the Clone Saga with The Final Adventure. Glenn Greenberg had previously written about how that mini-series almost didn’t come to pass with all of the revisions involved and I wanted to get Fabian’s take on the situation. His interview is a nice addition to the book.

I also touched base with former Spider-Man Editor, Eric Fein. Eric was working on the books with Danny Fingeroth before the Clone Saga even began and continued on Spider-Man well into the storyline. We’ve just started things rolling, but I really do enjoy getting editors on this storyline involved with the book. They have a perspective that reaches beyond the creation of the stories and are fleshing out these behind the scenes details even more.

Fans of the original columns were really interested in hearing what some of their favorite writers had to say about their time on this story and I think I’ve done a good job of capturing that, but the real behind the scenes stuff seems to come from the editorial side. Bob and Eric have had some interesting information that even surprised me and I anticipate more details when Danny Fingeroth gets his say.

The JM DeMatteis interview was also completed this past week. Currently the JMD segment is around 18 pages and just shy of 9000 words. It’s the longest interview I’ve ever done, but DeMatteis is a wealth of information and it’s fascinating to pick his brains on just about everything. In terms of the Life of Reilly, the DeMatteis segment is second only to Glenn’s in terms of content. We’ll see how things stand once everything’s wrapped up, though.

It looks like the big Howard Mackie/Terry Kavanagh mini-summit will occur in the next week or so. Coordinating schedules between people is difficult, but it’s going to be well worth the wait. Terry and Howard are two of the people that were most requested by fans of the original columns to be interviewed and I’m ecstatic to have them both on board.

New York Comic Convention is nearly here and that’s where the Life of Reilly hype machine will officially start. Due to my frequenting of a lot of Spider-Man related websites, as well as a few other mainstream comic sites, a lot of people are aware of the book, but the NYCC is where I will unleash to information to all. It’s actually part of a long term goal of getting out to a bunch of cons this season to promote the book and by this time next year there should actually be a book to show off/sell. I would like nothing more than to usher in a Clone Saga panel at the ’09 New York Con as a wrap up to the whole thing. We’ll see.

That’s it for now. Gotta go finalize the Budiansky piece.