#111: I Would Like To Feed Your Fingertips To The Wolverines

That’s it. That’s the message this week. I would like to feed your fingertips to the wolverines.

So, questions! You’ve got them—quite a few of them this week. Do I have the answers/ Probably not, but let’s find out together. Here we go!

Zach Rabiroff

My question was piqued by your mention that the thinking "at the time" of Chris Claremont's third X-Men stint was to write for the eventual trade collection -- which implies that *isn't* the thinking in 2024. So I'm wondering, what is your policy on what a single issue ought to do these days? Certainly, telling a full, self-contained story in 20 pages given the storytelling style of modern comics is near-impossible, and the sort of neverending inherited subplots that used to permeate Marvel have gone out of style. So what do you try to make a comic do?

Well, Zach, I don’t think telling a full, self-contained story in 20 pages given the storytelling style is as near-impossible as you seem to—Ryan North does exactly that in most recent issues of FANTASTIC FOUR (with an occasional two-parter thrown in along the way.) But to get to the crux of your question, as the younger editors at Marvel have heard me express a lot in recent months, I feel like every individual comic book, regardless of whether it’s a portion of a larger multi-issue saga, needs to include a story. I define a story as being the “Four C’s”: A Character has a Conflict, makes a Choice and deals with the Consequences. You’d be amazed (or maybe you wouldn’t) at how many comics released these days fail this simple metric, but it’s the yardstick that I’ve started using. The comics whose every issue feels satisfying tend to be the ones that have a defined story in every issue.

Cian McDarby

You’ve been talking a bit about how you want to focus on more solo books, and I’m curious to why. Is it a matter of just thinking the line would do better with more solos? Is it just “We haven’t tried this yet, might be something to pursue”? Or is it some other reason that the average comic nut wouldn’t even consider?

It’s more the fact that I’ve felt like a lot of the X-Projects over the past several years have felt just a bit random to me, Cian, where their casts seem to have been assembled based on who happened to be around and available rather than any relevance to the concept of the series. (Roger Stern had a name for books like this, where the characters were bent out of alignment in order to support a concept that wasn’t relevant to them: “fake books”. ) Plus, I think there are any number of X-Characters who have proven themselves popular and certainly capable of floating a series of their own where the focus can be more tightly on them rather than them being part of another temporary ensemble.

X of Alex

what is your favourite Marvel story featuring the King of Vampires? I myself am fond of Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk's tremendous Captain Britain and MI13.

That’s a really good question, Alex. And something of a tough one for me to nail down, actually. While TOMB OF DRACULA is an acknowledged classic series, I never really found my way into it. So I think that maybe it’s the thoroughly off-beat encounter between Spider-Man and the Lord of the Vampires in GIANT-SIZE SPIDER-MAN #1, which I read when I was a kid. Even then, it felt like a weird confluence of two concepts whose realities shouldn’t be overlapping with one another. But it was still pretty memorable.

Mortimer Q. Forbush

In what earthly body of water is Bagalia located?

The ocean, Mortimer. The ocean.

Leigh Hunt

Tom, how much thought from an editor's point of view goes to thinking how the Local Comic Shops can be supported as the lifeblood of the comic reader community?

I’d imagine that every editor thinks about this a certain amount, Leigh. But I don’t know that there’s much that any given editor can do to affect things in this regard. That’s more an effort for the organization as a whole, in particular Marvel’s Sales department, which interfaces directly with the Retailer community on the regular. And there’s always a focus on this question among the senior staff—as much as some Retailers might profess surprise at that.

Kurt Busiek

Are you suggesting that the "Xavier" in those Korea scenes was meant to have been just some random G.I., who witnesses the creation of the Juggernaut and escapes to tell the story? If so, that would make sense, though it's kind of bland -- and it still leaves Xavier's loss of his ability to walk kind of unfinished, since you'd expect to see Kirby show a hospital scene or something, to get some greater impact out of it.

Or did Stan make Jack rework those pages, showing Xavier in the scene because of the Lucifer thing?

I hadn’t gone back and looked at the issue, Kurt, but that car crash was pretty clearly staged in such a way that Xavier was meant to have lost his mobility as a result of it. My guess would be that Lee had a conversation with Kirby, and possibly even threw out some pages showing the aftermath of the accident—enough so that Jack included Xavier in the Korean War sequence. As the accident happens at a page turn, it seems likely that the next page was reworked or redone. I have a copy of the upper portion of that page with Jack’s border notes, though, and none of it mentions the loss of Xavier’s ability to walk—so possibly it was all just a strange coincidence. Also, it’s not impossible that, moving as fast has he was in those days, that Kirby just plain forgot that Xavier should be wheelchair-bound by that later sequence. Or that figure, whose face is never seen clearly, was initially drawn to be just another G.I and Stan decided that it was Xavier.

JV

Any tales from the Marvel vaults that you would like to see completed? Is there a lot of art in the marvel (virtual) vaults for some cool unfinished tales?

People seem to have the wrong idea about this, JV. While there are certainly projects over the years that were never finished, none of the materials for said projects are just sitting around at Marvel somewhere, waiting to be finished. Stuff like that Gregory Wright and Jim Lee “Rules of the Game” graphic novel have long since been returned to the artists and broken up among original art collectors. What stuff might have been available and was complete enough that it could be finished was all released a decade or so back as the FROM THE VAULT series of one-shots.

Jeff Ryan

Do you have a process how three or four vague concepts turn into one concrete we're-doing-this idea ?

Your question is broad enough, Jeff, that I don’t know that I can answer it satisfyingly. But let’s give it a try. When you’re talking about a project that is either editor-conceived or creator-conceived, what it needs to have is some central idea at the heart of it that convinces the editor that it’s a project worth doing. So it needs to appeal to that editor in such a manner as to get them to advocate for it up the line. Then, it comes down to that editor being able to successfully convince the Editor in Chief that the project in question has merit and the potential to be successful and make money. At that point, a P & L statement is run, which attempts to quantify whether a given idea can make the necessary margin by estimating the likely A & E costs as well as predicting the sales curve of the series based on how attractive it would seem to be to fans and Retailers. Assuming that it’s predicted to perform at above a certain margin (or, in certain cases, even if it isn’t, there’s some other tertiary need being covered by publishing such a book) then the project is approved and we get down to the business of actually making it.

Ben Morse

with the goodwill you’ve showered on the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans of late, did you have a favorite lesser known or unheralded story or issue from the run? I’m not talking about Judas Contract here, more along the lines of Who Killed Trident?

I don’t know that anybody really loved “Who Killed Trident”, Ben, as it was a bit of a lesser effort. But I liked pretty much the whole of that run, as much for the ongoing development of the characters and the sharpness of Perez’s art as anything else. If I had to point to a particular story, it might be the three-part Hunt for the Killers of the Doom Patrol in #13-15. But I was well on board with the book by then.

Martin

Who are your favorite mutants? a top 5 maybe?

I can’t say that I’ve ever made a list, Martin. And I don’t know that it’s a good idea to start now given how reactive a certain segment of X-Fandom tends to be.

Ray Berg

You almost had me back with Blood Hunt. When you described a “red band” issue, I became quite intrigued. I was thinking it was something for adult readers.

I was wrong. I can’t just walk into a store and buy that book because apparently it’s a retailer incentive and either unavailable to the general public or being sold for outrageous prices.

I can’t speak for wherever you might be shopping, Ray, but you’ve got it wrong. The Red Band version of BLOOD HUNT was available for Retailers to order just like the regular edition—it wasn’t an incentive edition. But like any comic book, your Retailer is free to sell it for whatever price he thinks he can get for it. But most places I’ve seen are selling them for the standard retail price. If you really want it, you can mail-order it from Midtown Comics in NYC here.

Rob Secundus

Reading some of the questions answered above, I have to wonder: why, in 2024, after lifetimes of letterpages, Q&A panels, and blogs, do comics readers still ask editors and creatives variations of "could you tell us what happens next in this story" and/or "could you announce corporate plans right now, instead of when the company has decided to announce them?" The answer is always going to be "well, you'll just have to wait and see!" What is it about the comic fan's mind that leads him to ask these things, over and over again, across all of time and space

I think that’s just human nature, Rob. And it isn’t necessarily the same people asking time and time again (though occasionally it is.) But for some folks, that desire to know what happens next is compelling, like an itch. For others, they want to ask a question but they’re not sure quite what to ask. And for others, they’ve made up an outcome in their mind and want to have it verified. And probably more than a few reasons beyond that.

Montana Mott

My question for you is not X-related, but about a character you've been deeply involved in. I'm a huge Hulkling fan as you know, and today I've seen quite a bit of confusion online as well as in the past, about his name and (lack of) relation to the Hulk. Now, the reason for the name is clear to anybody who has read Young Avengers Vol 1 but I'm wondering if editorial or creatives have wanted to rename/rebrand him over the years? Like how Asgardian became Wiccan and stuck. I am aware of the early, early plans from Heinberg to have him be Chimera (and that very funny-in-retrospect Lindsay Lohan description) due to his initial concern that he couldn't have a gay couple in the book, but nothing more recent than that.

That was always the misdirect built into YOUNG AVENGERS, Montana—the fact that, on the surface, the four initial characters seemed like one thing but would eventually turn out to be something else entirely. But I can’t think of any point where we’ve seriously considered changing Hulkling’s codename.

Kells

You mention there being that divide where it'd be difficult to make everyone happy. Do you see that sort of divide and debate among fans as a positive, a negative, or even just a neutral part of doing the job?

I think it’s just a fact of life, Kells. Not every reader wants the same things from the characters or the stories, and so you’re always going to run into situations where you aren’t able to make absolutely everybody happy. Even the most popular stories in history have people who didn’t like them, or who would have liked them more if some aspect of them had gone some other way. So it’s just something that exists, and not anything that you can really do anything about.

Ian A

Since you're the Man With a Hat, how would you rank the iconic headwear and outfits of the fourteen previous Doctor Who incarnations?

This is a nice question, Ian, but I don’t know that I would. I do think that Patrick Troughton’s initial tall headgear did a fine job of differentiating him from the outgoing original Doctor, William Hartnell.

Nick

My line in the sand when it comes to comic book minutia is that Peter shouldn’t be able to stick to walls with his feet when wearing shoes. Socks or the thin slip on boots he wears in costume? Perfectly fine! But anything with a thick ol sole sets my OCD off something fierce. I bring this up as there was a panel in a book recently of Peter doing just this and it for me thinking, is that an editors job to spot and get fixed? Or is it deemed not worth the time to amend as only pedants like me are likely to get annoyed by it? In your opinion is it even an issue, should he be able to walk up walls in shoes?

Spidey’s powers are well established at this point, Nick, and should be depicted consistently. But people also make mistakes, so it’s not the end of the world if something is a little bit off. That’s what the No-Prize was all about, after all, encouraging readers to come up with their own explanation of those seeming errors. Certainly, it didn’t bother either Stan Lee or Steve Ditko in the early days when Peter would climb up a wall in his shoes. It was only once John Romita started to draw the strip that it became a concern—Romita would often have Pete ties his shoelaces together and string his shoes around his neck. By that same token, because he worried about the plausibility of things, Romita innovated the web-sack that Peter would carry his civilian clothes in while traversing the city as Spidey, so there wasn’t any question where his duds came from when he switched back to being Peter across town. All that being said, none of this stuff truly works in real life, so everybody’s line in the sand is going to be just a little bit different.

Martin

The wolverine book looks promising. Any chance it's going to be a globe-trotting solo where we can see him in the canadian wilderness, madripoor, japan and other locations he's associated with?

This is the sort of Wait and See question that Rob was talking about above, Martin. So I’m afraid that you’ll have to do just that.

FTorta

After seeing the Wolverine's announcement I can't help myself asking a question related to artists on current Marvel's books.

Martin Coccolo is an amazing artist, one of the best working at Marvel these days. So it's natural that you want to have him for a new #1 to entice the readers.

But in the last 18 months he was announced as a regular artist on 3 different new ongoings: Deadpool, Immortal Thor and, now, Wolverine.

I consider Immortal Thor one of the best ongoings in Marvel's main universe (616) at the moment and I think as a story it's really growing with each issue, so I am bummed that Martin won't be there to continue the series original artistic vision alongside Al, especially because he's still exclusive at Marvel so he's doing an internal transfer to a title of comparable importance to the line. We had such an example of success and sales growth in Immortal Hulk that benefitted from a great coherence on pencils. Or as another example Chip said that so much of his Daredevil's success was thanks to Marco Checchetto continuous presence, even if he couldn't draw all of the issues, naturally. Or, citing a title you edited, the great work of Alessandro Cappuccio and Federico Sabbatini on Moon Knight.

How can a book mantain its initial success and maybe even increase it over time if the artist is going to be moved after the initial arc and will probably replaced with a penciler with less reader's recognition and sales power?

And what, as a reader, can I expect regarding a new series' artistic team announcement knowing that after 6 issues I won't know if the artist will ever be back on the title? A title I started reading also thanks to them?

Well, FTorta, there are a couple of different factors that come into play when an artist switches assignments. Some of it has to do with what’s the most important to the organization at that moment. Some of it has to do with what characters and stories the artist in question is most interested in drawing. And some of it is simply based on schedule, and the need to produce so many issues in a given year. But our creators are neither chess pieces to be haphazardly moved around nor slaves that we can command to do whatever we want them to do. I don’t want to speak for Martin, but an opportunity came up for him to take on the WOLVERINE launch, and as invested as he was on IMMORTAL THOR, that opportunity proved to be more enticing to him. That isn’t any knock on IMMORTAL THOR, which we clearly want to be successful as well. But it is a reflection on the preferences of both the artist and the company.

Callie

What's up with one shot numbering conventions? Why are they all #1 if there's only one planned issue, why not just have no number, especially if it's a 1 shot like the recent Timeless that repeats every year? Like, Timeless #1 from 2023 is the third book titled Timeless published a regular amount of time from one another with a similar premise/purpose, why not just call it #3 and Timeless #1 (2022) #2? Or just call them all timeless with no #? Same thing with things like Roxxon Presents: Thor #1, Giant Size X-Men #1, pretty much any other 1 shot marvel has ever published. Is it just because a #1 on the cover might get more sales?

I bet you know what I’m going to say here, Callie, right? #1s tend to sell better, which is why they get used so often. But in the case of TIMELESS, that first one was intended as what it was—a one-shot. It performed well, so we decided to do another one the following year. But making that one #2 immediately creates a barrier to entry—especially since the story in that second TIMELESS issue was, like the first one, a self-contained thing. It didn’t continue on from the first TIMELESS in anything other than a spiritual sense. So having it be a #1 made sense. And then when we did a third the following year, the pattern was already set (and that third TIMELESS had even less connection to the first two, both in terms of creative team and central characters.)

Weslley W

There's a Foreshadow Variant Cover featuring Dazzler front and center. Can we safely assume she'll emerge... FROM THE ASHES?

Only time will tell, Weslley. But you can assume that I wouldn’t have done a Foreshadowing variant featuring a given character if it wasn’t Foreshadowing something.

Kevin F

What's your policy regarding artists sharing WIPs? I ask because Ryan Stegman frequently shares upcoming panels, while others don't. We've specifically asked Marcus To to share the X-Force costume design sheet, but he seems to believe he's not permitted to. Geoffrey Thorne mentioned the same.

As a general rule, Kevin, we prefer for our artists not to share WIP materials without checking with us first, so as to avoid spoiling any future announcements or story surprises. But there are instances when we’re happy to have our creators beating the bushes to promote their upcoming work as well.

Mark

My question: I'm pretty sure that the creative brief given to editors launching new books/lines of books will always be some version of 'tell great stories' but can you share anything on the level of specificity in the commercial brief? For example, when you were given the X job, did it come with a mandate to build readership among particular demographics; to design product that works for particular routes to market; to hit particular synergies with wider corporate aims; or to position the brand in any particular ways?

I suspect that you’re imagining a much more elaborate set of objectives than actually exists most of the time, Mark. At the end of the day, the mission statement for any project is do good material and sell a lot of copies. Beyond that, there may occasionally be either objectives or preferences that get discussed about a given project. In the case of X-MEN, I wasn’t really given much more than that we wanted to be moving away from the wrapping Krakoa era and that because the characters were going to be of greater importance to Studios in the years to come, it made sense to have a more senior editorial presence overseeing the book. And nobody at all objected with my loudly announcing that the objective of the X-Line would be to scratch and claw our way back to the top of the sales charts, where X-MEN had long sat and where it belongs. In other cases, there might be other considerations—but not all of the time, and not even most of the time.

Hans

I have a genuine question Tom, what's the point of keeping Scott and Jean's marriage and relationship when the general audiences already think of Jean as Logan's love interest courtesy of the Fox movies. The upcoming Wolverine game will further cement that Idea. If any comic book relationship deserves to be One More Day'd it's Scott and Jean's. Morrison simultaneously nuked it into oblivion in the comics when the movies were released. Their relationship has not felt genuine for two decades and Scott deserves someone like Emma Frost who loves and respects him and is only attached to his name

I don’t agree with your premise, Hans, so I don’t really have a rebuttal for you apart from saying that I think your take on this is off-base, at least as far as the audience as a whole is concerned.

Taimur Dar

With FCBD being so recent, I was reminded of one year (I believe 2009) when Marvel published a FCBD book that was smaller in its physical dimensions than normal comics. You may have explained in the past, but just curious how that idea and decision came about.

If I’m remembering things right, Taimur, we had a stockpile of paper at that size left over from some other effort, and the decision was made to do the FCBD release at that size that year to use up that paper, because the books were giveaways in the first place.

Hector

You said iceman yes in one of your interviews and that we would be talking about him this year

Which is a relief because out of the original five he's the only one that haven't been announced in any book yet, being honest he haven't been anywhere this year so far, so my question is

are we gonna have to wait and read the announced books to know what happened to him or we may have something announced about him before the release maybe in some of the books that are yet to be announced

Well, I said that we’d be talking about Iceman by the end of the year, Hector, and we’re still not even halfway to that point. So like so many other X-Characters that fans are asking about, you’re going to need to wait for the proper moment to arrive.

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Behind the Curtain

.It should come as no surprise that the covers on assorted Marvel comics are among the most scrutinized images in the line, and they’re often reworked and adjusted right up to the moment where they’re sent to print. Case in point:

What you see above is the cover to INCREDIBLE HULK #102, the first issue featuring the character as a solo headliner after years being half of TALES TO ASTONISH. As you can see, Marie Severin drew the initial cover image at the left, but it was substantially altered once it eventually left house. The image is essentially the same, but the details have been changed. The big Hulk head and hands have been completely redone, as has at least one of the interim steps in the transformation from Bruce Banner. The third Banne’s arm has been tucked in as well and a bunch of the background radiant lines eliminated so that the key elements of the cover image silhouette well. Publisher Martin Goodman believed that the cover was what sold the magazine, and his philosophy was that all of the important information had to be clearly visible from across the room, or else the cover was worthless.

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Pimp My Wednesday

Believe it or not, my office has no books coming out this week! It should feel like a vacation, but instead it’s more like the calm before the storm.

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A Comic Book On Sale 60 Years Ago Today, May 12, 1964

As the Marvel line was starting out, editor Stan Lee wasn’t one to rest on his laurels. In particular, there were titles and strips that seemed to struggle, unable to find their footing. In those instances, Lee would continue to mess around with the strip—sometimes changing costumes and even powers, or bringing in new co-stars to attempt to broaden the appeal of the strip. This was the case of the Human Torch solo series appearing in STRANGE TALES. Doing a Torch solo series seemed like a safe bet given the character’s popularity during the Golden Age of Comics. But without Jack Kirby, who only did a couple of stories along the way, the feature felt like a watered down version of the much more accomplished FANTASTIC FOUR. This eventually led Lee to bring in the Thing as a regular co-lead with this issue, really making it akin to a second FF series. But this didn’t really help matters, the stories were still pretty weak sauce, and the feature ran out of steam less than a year later, giving up its spot to Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. This Human Torch story is notable for one other thing as well, it’s the last Torch story drawn by the character’s creator Carl Burgos. Carl was a mainstay of the Marvel Bullpen in the 1940s and 1950s, and Lee had tried him out on a few of the new Marvel super hero strips. But Burgos either didn’t have the storytelling chops that Lee needed or else he didn’t want to put in the effort to do most of the plotting on the stories. Shortly hereafter, he’d file suit to attempt to get the copyright to his creation back, an effort that would fail. But there was a second feature in STRANGE TALES as well, and that second feature had ben growing in popularity. That was Doctor Strange, who had shown up in several issues without any fanfare, not mentioned on the covers or anything. But thanks to the visual panache of Steve Ditko, the strip was visually striking and the character grew in popularity. By #123, he had started being featured on the covers, as he was enough of a draw to be worth spotlighting. In this particular issue, Lee had another reason to showcase him: the fact that the villain in this story was Loki from the Thor series, and the God of Thunder himself would be making an appearance. Thor was the number three feature in the line, behind only FANTASTIC FOUR and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, and so it’s likely that Lee figured that showcasing Thor and Loki on the cover was likely to bring in some readers who might otherwise ignore the issue.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT COMIC BOOK #8 came out on May 12, 1992. The book was really good, both written and drawn by Evan Dorkin who did a killer job with it. This issue, though, was the one story that Dorkin didn’t work on, apart from the excellent cover. And that’s because it was a fill-in written by myself and my partner Mike Kanterovich. It’s considered the one dog issue in the run, and for good reason. And it’s the one story that was left out of the later Trade Paperback collection that compiled all of Dorkin’s work on the series. BILL & TED was being edited by my pal Evan Skolnick, and like every ongoing title in the line at the time, it was required to keep a stand-alone completed fill-in story in the drawer for use when the regular creative team couldn’t get an issue done. That’s what happened here. Evan had asked me and Mike to come up with a fill-in story, and we dutifully complied. We’d been fans of the first film since watching it in its initial release, and we came up with what we thought was a fun reversal on the premise: In our story, Bill and Ted are collected by a time traveling high school student from even further in the future than we’ve seen before. This is because, from his perspective, they are historical figures the equal of Billy the Kid or Socrates, and he wants them to help him pass his history report. I remember that we had a central bit of business where the kid had already failed a history test, and he figured that by pulling Bill and Ted into the future and never putting them back, they would never get to do the stuff that history said that they’d do, and so his incorrect answers would turn out to be correct. This is playing extremely daffy with the rules of time travel, but in the reality of BILL & TED, the fact that it didn’t really make sense seemed allowable. Evan, though, was more pedantic on this point and disagreed, and we wound up having to revise that element. In any case, Steve Buccellato drew the issue and did a great job of it, even if it wasn’t Evan Dorkin. And it all came out well, we thought. But that only lasted up to the point where the issue was being readied to go to print. As it turned out, the licensors wound up cutting just mountains of jokes out of the story—specifically anything that referenced real-world bands and individuals, but a bunch of stuff that they just didn’t like. And it just butchered the piece, especially since a lot of the set-up material was left intact. So you had set-ups without any punch lines. We got paid, so there’s that, and we got published. But the story that saw print didn’t really represent the work we had put into it, and so Mike and I have really never been able to look at the finished issues without flinching a bit. Still, that’s the risk you run when working on any licensed property—the rights-holder gets to decide what is right and what is wrong for them.

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Another Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

This well-remembered issue of SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN came out on May 12, 2004. it was noteworthy because the story was fully painted, the first full-length comic book story by artist Paolo Rivera, whom Joe Quesada had met while on a visit to the Rhode Island School of Design and brought into the Marvel fold. It also played to writer Paul Jenkins’ strengths, as it was a self-contained story that focused on creating a singular impression. In this case, it was about a handicapped man who, in MARVELS style, gets to witness and even participate in a battle between the Web-Slinger and Morbius the Living Vampire. It was a story that everybody involved put a lot of effort into making special, especially since it took Paolo so long to paint its 22 pages plus cover. But the version that was first released into the world wasn’t without incident. At the time we were working on readying the issue for print, I wound up having to spend a week or so at my Mom’s house, looking after my elderly Grandfather while she was out of town. This came up suddenly, and so our team wasn’t prepared for it. And in the scramble of working remotely, the wrong version of the script was sent for lettering. We worked from the initial draft of the story, rather than the massaged and modified version that Paul had done upon receiving the artwork. By the time anybody realized, though, the book was already at the printer and being plated. I called back to the office in an attempt to get the book stopped and the story re-lettered, but to no avail. I offered to pay for the costs to replate the issue out of my own pocket. But I wasn’t on site, and so my ability to argue convincingly was somewhat curtailed. In the end, the issue was printed with the earlier version of the script, though we did go back and get it relettered correctly for the eventual collection, and that’s still the version that gets reprinted today. But it was a mess that I take full responsibility for as the editor. I also don’t know that our printings really did justice to Paolo’s paintings, which were a lot more lush and colorful than what wound up on the page. Below is the cover image—just compare it to the actual cover above for a sense of the difference. This was and is often the case with painted material.

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The Deathlok Chronicles

As is tradition, we open with thoughts from DEATHLOK co-write Gregory Wright:

Gregory Wright

I will always have to say that you are far too hard on yourself in these Chronicles. Everyone on the book had tremendous respect for you. And having to work with two writers you interned with had to get into your head. Dwayne was tough to argue with. He knew how to really make his point and convince you whatever he wanted to do was right. And for all of us who ever had a schedule breathing down our necks, we get how stories that maybe should have been rethought go through until it’s too late. We were all concerned about his story and none of us stood up and said no way. Today, when I consult on a story I no longer sugar coat it. I’m blunt. More so than you remember lol. But as an editor, I made these same choices and now I kick myself. I wish Dwayne and I would have discussed all our storylines together. We didn’t. We sort of let each do as we pleased. I feel like I kind of left you to be the bad guy. And it was terrible to realize that maybe it was time to replace Denys. Especially since we all really liked Denys personally and had a ton of respect for him. But Mike and I spent a lot of time decoding the breakdowns so they could be inked. And this family story just played so strangely normal. I really had to wrack my brain to figure out how I was going to handle this in my stories.

The big thing for me in this period was the move to look for a replacement for Denys, which was at the forefront of my mind all through this period. But that’s a good lead-in to our next issue.

With DEATHLOK #14, the book was again in schedule trouble, only this time we were in the middle of an ongoing story, and so the situation couldn’t easily be solved by dropping in an unrelated fill-in story as I’d done in the past. But the solution was right at hand—though it came with its own complications. Since the regular monthly DEATHLOK series had been started, the book had been inked by Mike Manley, who was an artist in his own right. During this same period, he was toiling away on DARKHAWK as well. Mike was a sweetheart, a guy with an appreciation for the great comic book artists of history and a gregarious spirit. He eventually went into animation, where he plied his trade as a storyboard artist very successfully. But at this moment, he was inking DEATHLOK, and he was aware of the schedule. I can’t swear that he offered to pencil this next issue himself, but I think it’s likely. I don’t know that I would have thought to ask him about it given his other DARKHAWK commitments (though it’s possible that Greg Wright played middleman here and let me know about Mike’s interest.) But the key thing was, having been in regular contact with Greg, Mike knew that we were looking for a replacement artist on the series and he made no bones about wanting the gig. Now, if I’d ben smarter, maybe I would have taken him up on it—if nothing else, it was the path of least resistance as well as somebody who was already in place and knew the character and the material. But I was still determined that the look of the book needed to swing back more towards its initial Butch Guice roots in order for it to remain successful, so I ruled Mike out in my mind early on. But I didn’t tell Mike this until our new artist was in the chair—at which point, he immediately quit the series, leaving me in need of an inker as well as a new artist. But that was all still an issue or two away. For right now, Mike drew all of DEATHLOK #14. And he did a credible job of it. He didn’t quite convey the mass and power that Denys drew so effortlessly, but his storytelling was good and his finish was identical, so it wasn’t all that jarring a switch-out for the readers.

On another level, this issue set off sirens in my mind, as it was the first issue in the run whose sales dropped below 100,000 copies, which wasn’t a good sign for the longevity of the title. The book was still on the Newsstand at this point, too, which meant that nobody involved was making any incentives, 100,000 copies being the threshold for Newsstand titles. Shortly hereafter, the book went Direct only, which paid out incentives at above 40,000 copies an issue, so the creative team started making some real money again. But this was another indication to me that something had to change.

And it would. it all hit the fan an issue later.

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Monofocus

This past Friday, DOCTOR WHO returned for an all-new season, its first to be streamed on Disney+. There’s very little that I love more than this show, so it was a big deal for me on Friday evening. And I wasn’t knocked out, but neither was it a complete disaster. As I’ve been doing, I posted my impressions over at my blog. So the first episodes, SPACE BABIES can be read at that link, and the second, THE DEVIL'S CHORD, is reachable there.

I also discovered that the later seasons of the anime volleyball series HAIKYU!! had been dropped on Netflix at some point when I wasn’t paying attention, and so I’ve been working my way through them one a day. As I’ve said before, I’m not really much of a sports guy, but I’m a sucker for sports-as-story, and so while you’d think that a show about playing volleyball would be limited in terms of its drama, the truth is actually quite the opposite. It also helps that the graphic treatment is really excellent.

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I wrote about ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS

Five years ago, I wrote about the forty-fourth episode of STAR BLAZERS, the first one I ever watched.

And ten years ago, I wrote about finally becoming a Marvel fan after reading my first issues of FANTASTIC FOUR.

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And that’ll take us to the finish line for another one of these. Sorry it’s been a bit choppier than usual—though I think I say that every week at this point. I keep intending to scale back but I wind up doing the opposite. And that’s after cutting the piece I’ve been meaning to write up about WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT for the past three weeks. Maybe we’ll get there next time, who can say? Anyway, have a good time doing whatever it is that you’re doing, and I’ll see you in seven.

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B