#112: This Marvel Comic Could Be Worth $2500 To You! (Details Inside)

No, it couldn’t. That was just a clever lie to get you to open the e-mail.

So it was a big week in the world of X as we let a bunch of details out about a couple of things that he hadn’t really much even teased before now: Storm joining the Avengers as well as headlining her own solo series, and Dazzler getting a limited series all her own. And this is still just the tip of the iceberg—there are still a couple of first wave X-Projects to be announced, and then we’ll be moving directly into the second wave and third wave stuff. It’s not that far off now before these books begin to start coming out in earnest—our next element to be visible to the public will be the epilogue portion of UNCANNY X-MEN #700, the final issue worked on by the outgoing teams. They very kindly gave us some space in the end to pick up the baton from where they’d left it and to begin to lay out where any number of the pieces are going to end up in our new world order. I spent a portion of this past week with my team polishing the lettering on both X-MEN #1 and UNCANNY X-MEN #1, so both will be coming your way before you know it.

We also had a book nominated for an Eisner award, last year’s MARVEL AGE #1000 in the category of best anthology. And thanks to everybody who passed on congratulation after that news came out—though I think any real credit should be directed to the variety of creators who participated in the making of that issue. Nobody on that nominating committee put it up because I worked on it, that’s for certain. Anyway, the odds of it actually taking home the award are relatively slim, but it’s perfectly nice simply to be recognized. I thought that book was under-appreciated and under-sold at the time of its release, so while this doesn’t really make up for that, it’s still a nice bit of validation

And, hey, the news broke just today that RED DWARF is coming back for another three-episode stint next year, which is absolutely wild to me. I’ve been a fan and a viewer since 1989, when the first two series aired on my local PBS station ad I happened to catch a bunch of episodes after work one night. What’s really astounding is that the cast remains absolutely the same after all these years. I haven’t always been in love with every direction the show has gone over the years, but you can’t count it out in terms of staying power. And just when you think that’s all there is, the damn thing shows up again, with more new episodes! It’s a wonder!

All right, now on into our ever-growing question and answer section. I’m beginning to get some questions on subjects that I either can’t or shouldn’t speak about or that want to know what’s going to be coming up next with either certain characters or in certain series. So if you see me not responding to a particular question in the comments, that’s the likely cause. There are only so many times and ways I can say either “wait and see” or “I can’t talk about that” after all.

Martin

Comics tend to relaunch and start with new #1s a lot. Under your leadership, if a book needs to change writers for a reason, will you keep the series going or restart with a brand new #1?

It’s not a question of my leadership, Martin, it’s a question of what Marvel as a whole thinks is likely to produce the best results. So it’s more than likely, it’s a veritable certainty that when a creative team changes that drastically, we’ll start things over with a new #1. To do otherwise would be self-defeating.

Joe West

What are your thoughts on the characters Cloak and Dagger? Also where do you think things stand in regard to their mutant status? Writers have gone back and forth for years now, and I for one really like them both as street heroes and X-Men, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

I think Cloak and Dagger are perfectly fine characters, Joe, but I can’t say that I have all that much of an attachment to them. I was around for their debut, when for a shining instance they were the hot new thing on the canvas. And I was around as they struggled in iteration after iteration, without anybody quite ever being able to unlock their potential to its fullest. We haven’t considered Cloak and Dagger mutants for decades at this point, and I think that’s correct—making them mutants was a blatant desperation ploy to try yo buoy their sales potential on the back of the more popular X-Line. Didn’t work, so it shouldn’t be maintained.

David Pierce

This may fall into the wait and see category, but will Gerry Duggan be staying on Iron Man? I’m not a big Tony Stark fan but I’ve really enjoyed what he’s done with the book and how he has tied it to the Fall of X storyline and would love to see where he might take it next.

Gerry’s run on INVINCIBLE IRON MAN will be wrapping up around the same time as the end of the Krakoa era and his stint on X-MEN, David. But glad you’ve been enjoying it.

Pierre Navarre

What’s your absolute favorite season of The Simpsons (if you could bring only one on a deserted Island) ?

Was the Unworthy Thor mini series always meant to be a limited series rather than an ongoing ?

Wow, I’d have to go back and look, Pierre—I’m not so conversant with the show to be able to recall one season from the next. It’d definitely be in the early years of the show, though. I haven’t watched THE SIMPSONS in decades at this point. And yes, UNWORTHY THOR was always intended as being just five issues.

Zach Rabiroff

Dan Buckley recently gave an interview to ICv2 where he mentioned Marvel's recent pivot toward greenlighting some new series for 10 issue runs, rather than the 4 or 5 that had increasingly become the industry standard. Now, the X-Men office is no doubt more stable (and less prone to early cancellations) than other groups, but even so: how does a move like that change your approach as an editor toward the types of books you move ahead with, and the way you ask writers to approach their story proposals for them?

It sort of does and it sort of doesn’t, Zach. Because while we may be green-lighting certain series with a longer potential tail on them, a poor enough response from the marketplace is going to wind up cutting that tail right off regardless of any initial plan. I’ve been pushing my creators to be thinking more in the way of single issue satisfaction and not attempting to build sweeping issues-long sagas that may never be resolved. And in the case of any title where I don’t have the absolute confidence that it may be able to go the distance, that’s the approach I’ll continue to take.

Zack J

There have been many many Marvel prose novels over the years. Any of them worth reading?

There have been some, certainly, Zack, though I must confess that I don’t know that I’ve read a Marvel prose novel in years and years, so my couple of picks are going to be relatively ancient. If you can find it, Ted White’s Captain America novel “The Great Gold Steal” is a fascinating read, especially in that it was produced at a point where much of Cap’s mythos hadn’t snapped into place yet. (Cap pretty much has Wolverine’s origin in this book, with a metal skeleton and a constitution that allows him to recover from wounds quickly.) I remember a few of the 1970s Pocket Novel series being pretty fun, in particular the FANTASTIC FOUR and DOCTOR STRANGE books. But your mileage may vary depending on your tastes. And I also remember liking Will Murray’s strange NICK FURY, AGENT OF SHIELD novel that focused heavily on remote viewing, published in the late 1990s.

Mark Coale

I asked this in another place so maybe this is the right place. You've written about your fondness for the Elliott S! Maggin and Cary Bates era of Superman, but I couldn't find where you'd written about the Last Son of Krypton or Miracle Monday novels that Elliott wrote. If you haven't, any quick thoughts?

Love both of those novels, Mark, though it’s been a while since I last read either of them. I remember LAST SON being the better of the two, though most seem to prefer MIRACLE MONDAY. Either way, I thought they were both a cut above the Marvel novels that were produced during that same period.

Rob Secundus

I wonder if the particular structure of a serial makes it easier or harder to hit those "4 C's"-- not only if "writing for the trade" back in the 00s made it harder, but also if Marvel's ongoing-that-is-functionally-a-4-issue-miniseries model of comic makes it harder today. In television, we've seen far fewer shows that can manage satisfying individual episodes as the episode count in a season has gone down; Buffy or the X-Files could tell a big sweeping seasonal story while still consistently hitting those 4 C's every 44 minutes, but most streaming shows are structured a lot more like a movie stretched out over 8-12 hours. It feels telling, for example, that North's true ongoing is able to more consistently arrive at a satisfying individual issue than a lot of the series you see across the Big Two today.

I think there is something of a lost art to doing a story in a short amount of space, Rob, largely because the entire industry pivoted away from it for so long. But we used to routinely do full, complex stories in as little as 8 pages, so anybody who tells me they can’t manage to get a full story into every single issue is telling me that they don’t have the skills necessary to be writing that assignment. I don’t really care whether streaming series can’t do it, I care whether Marvel writers can do it. And I think the audience cares, whether they realize it or not, and that the books that can provide a satisfying reading experience every issue are the ones wit the best chance of sticking around.

Jeff Ryan

Some group artistic endeavors result in a wonderful experience but so-so art, while others are horrendous experiences that produce magnificent art. Have any stories about either of those sorts of projects?

Probably hundreds, but those mostly get told in the recounting of different books that I worked on, Jeff. Nothing immediately comes to mind in either case offhand.

Iioo

I generally do not take complaints that "comics are so complicated" too seriously, but this Red Band thing is a real head-scratcher. Are Red Band issues meant to be in a separate universe? All of them in a single one, or a new universe each issue? What happens in the non-existent Red Band analogue of the latest Dr. Strange issue, does the body just reassemble itself, or does Stephen only use his upper half? Are we meant to just infer the answer to the previous question? Is "reading the Red Band version, then reading the tie-ins (but not reading the main version)" even considered a valid way to follow the event? Was there no simpler way to make gore fans happy?

Forgive me, Iioo, but I think you and a few other people online are making things much too complicated on yourselves. Possibly that’s the result of the last few years of multiverses popping up everywhere. We’re doing something fun here, and I really couldn’t care less about the question of “how can they both be canonical”? They are. Trust me, they are. As you’ll see if/when you read the Red Band version of BLOOD HUNT #2. This is one of those areas where I think comic book fans get in their own heads too much. If you watch the director’s cut of a film, are you worrying about how it fits into canon? Relax! This is all entertainment, and if Red Band is your thing, feel free to enjoy it without the hand-wringing of being concerned that it isn’t real. None of this stuff is real—we make it up issue after issue.

JV

A fun feature would be your thoughts on past events/crossovers that you helped oversee (Secret Invasion, Civil war, etc) - what worked, what did not, what is a perennial now with some hindsight.

I was rereading Fear Itself and some of the tie in minis - I know at the time it was not well received (even by me as I was loving everything Marvel put out at the time and found it lacked something special compared to comics of the last few years- but I find it enjoyable now. And I really liked the wolverine mini of all things (die hard on a helicarrier!!). Maybe it got drowned out in a sea of great comics (Winter soldier, Civil war, etc) - good problem to have I guess!

It's funny how some stories removed from the weight of expectations (especially compared to other popular stories like civil war or Siege) age better than we thought (happens to me on second or third viewings of some movies after my high expectations/excitement abates a bit).

Chronologically or jump around (maybe start with Fear Itself?) - would be fun if you are so inclined Tom.

I’ll give it some thought, JV, I tend to cover these sorts of things when they come up in that selfsame Comics I Worked On section. But I agree with you on the fact that most Event series are looked on more favorably after they’re finished. Brian Bendis and I used to talk about this on a regular basis while we were working on a lot of these, HOUSE OF M and SECRET INVASION and SIEGE and so forth. And what it seems to boil down to is that, while the story is still ongoing, fans are worried about the outcome. They can’t enjoy the roller coaster because they’re not certain that they’re going to survive it or that everything is going to be okay. But after the story is over, they can see that all of their worst fears didn’t come true after all, and so they can now enjoy that ride without any anxiety about how its finale will louse up everything they love about Marvel.

Steve McSheffrey

Is the FCBD X-Men story indicative of the tone the book will be using when it debuts? I'll be buying pretty much everything announced (except Wolverine. Wolverine solo books have never connected with me) so I'm not asking because I see anything wrong with it. I'm just curious. I'm also wondering if Greg Land is still working for Marvel because I would love more Land X-men.

Oh, and Timeless having three number ones just means there were three volumes, right?

I’d say that the FCBD story is somewhat indicative of the tone that Gail’s book, UNCANNY X-MEN, will have, Steve. But as I’ve been saying all throughout this process, my intention is to have a line of titles that are all different from one another, and that goes for tone and style as well. Greg is doing covers for X-FACTOR, so he’s in the mix at least. And yes, three TIMELESS #1s mean that there are three volumes—at least so far.

Craig Byrne

why do you think the Defenders as an ongoing book concept has hardly lasted over two years in the last 35-40 years? I always thought they should be #2 to the Avengers, and I remember especially loving the Kurt Busiek-Erik Larsen take in the late 90s.

I think the reason, Craig, comes down to something I mentioned in a prior Newsletter: Roger Stern’s concept of a “fake book.” To reiterate, Roger coined the term fake book years ago to describe those projects whose premise only works due to editorial fiat, rather than because the actions the characters take make any sense. MARVEL TEAM-UP, for example, was a fake book, a monthly title in which Spider-Man, the ultimate loner, outsider super hero regularly teamed up with other players from across the Marvel Universe. It existed because there was a market for more Spider-Man material, not because it made sense for the wall-crawler to be constantly hanging out with all of these other weirdos. DEFENDERS was similarly a fake book, a “non-team” that nevertheless had a regular headquarters/meeting place and a regular cast of characters comprised of heroes with nothing in common apart from being outsiders and non-conformists who nonetheless hung out together all the time despite the fact that they mostly didn’t even really like one another. So the premise of the book is flawed, and in all of the latter day attempt to mount a new, updated version, nobody has ever quite hit on either a replacement formula or perfected the original formula well enough for it to go the distance. All DEFENDERS really has going for it at this point is nostalgia, and not even enough of that to make a real success out of it.

Clive Reston

one of the things I really enjoyed about the Krakoa-era X-books was the way that design elements made them look like a unified and fresh body of work--Tom Muller's logos and trade dress, most obviously, but also things like the text pages and the line's shared color palette. (And radical logo redesigns have also been a sign in the past that something exciting was happening with the X-titles; I'm thinking of examples like Steranko's redesign in the '60s and New X-Men in 2001.) So I'm a little surprised to see some very old designs turning up for the relaunch, including Phoenix and Storm logos that were barely used in the mid-'90s and haven't been seen since. What was the idea behind using those, rather than commissioning something that looks more contemporary, to signal the new wave of titles?

The shortest answer, Clive, is that I like them. But a slightly longer answer is that the classic X-MEN logo hasn’t really been on the series in something like two decades, not since the last time that the X-Titles were the absolute pinnacle of the sales charts. So when readers and retailers see these new books, I want them thinking, even if it’s only subliminally, about how much they loved the X-Men back in those earlier days, and to create a connection between our books and that older era. Also, it’s sometimes just that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, people love wheels, you just need a good, solid wheel.

Alison Cabot

Tom, what did you think of Tony's relationship with Emma? I honestly loved their dynamic, and they both have great chemistry.

I thought that Gerry did a very nice job with it, Alison.

marvelwizkid

What are you thoughts on the Krakoan era changing up the dynamics of the Scott-Jean-Logan relationship to having Jean openly be in a romantic relationship with both men? Is this something you intend to carry on in From The Ashes or something to be left behind

A couple of people have asked me about this, wizkid, and so let me turn this back around on you. Because I don’t think there was ever much of anything that was on the page in any of the Krakoa stories that said anything of the kind. Jonathan was perhaps cheeky in an interview or two, as is his way, but if it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage, and I don’t recall there being a lot of on-page action that would need to be addressed.

Mickey Hewer

Can share share a glimpse at the thought process/decision making behind partnering Stephanie Phillips to Phoenix? I've read her work and she does excellent character work but has not tackled "cosmic" territory from what I can tell and has worked on mostly street level characters. I'm sure she'll do great but just curious about what makes Stephanie a good fit for this book (I'm sure she is!)

Ultimately, Mickey, this was the decision of the book’s editor, Annalise Bissa. But Stephanie had recently done a COSMIC GHOST RIDER limited series for Martin Biro that showed that she could do stories with a cosmic background to them. So i wasn’t at all concerned about it.

Brandon J. Beane

Like most fans, "my ________" is from my age 10 to 15 years. So for the X-Men that is mid to late 80s, super early 90s, Wolverine was becoming a superstar and there was one book plus New Mutants and then Marvel Comics Presents & Wolvie. I check in every 5 years or so and quickly determine it isn't for me and move on. X-Men '97 captures so much of what I am looking for- is there a book for me in your new line?

I suspect that there are probably a few of them from what you’re saying, Brandon. But let me say that the title that’s spiritually the closest to the ethos of that Australian Outback X-Men era is UNCANNY X-MEN. But I’d say that you can check in wherever looks interesting or where some favorite character of yours is being featured.

Evan “Cool Guy”

My question is very broadly about retcons. A favorite retcon, least favorite, or maybe one you think should happen but hasn't?? Retcons!

This is a pretty broad question, Evan. I don’t know that I have a particular retcon, good or bad, that I can point to. There was a time when I was enmeshed in all of this sort of stuff, back in the days when I worked on the Handbook and similar projects. But today, I’m a bit more mellow when it comes to this sort of thing. I will say that Bucky Barnes still being alive seems to have turned out pretty well, so maybe that’s the one.

Leigh Hunt

I have a question - well two really, the first being "How on earth does McKay write so many books?" but the real one is, when you have a writer able to lead up to an event by laying in plot points in various places, are you not tempted to go old school and have some sort of 'Road to Blood Hunt' banner OR even announce when each book starts that the storylines will be feeding into each other/an event later down the line.

Just like with this column every week, Leigh: Jed does it by doing it. And sometimes we will do a ROAD TO banner or set-up if we know that’s where we’re going. But while we build BLOOD HUNT out of stuff that Jed and a few others had done along the way, we didn’t really know that this was where we were going when we were making those stories. So there wasn’t any reason to do a ROAD TO designation on them. A lot of what we do narratively is like playing jazz, and that means that every once in a while, things lead to other things that we didn’t expect.

Robert

What is the process like finding a writer/artist for a book?

Depends entirely on the project in question, Robert, and what sort of a vision you’ve got for what you’re looking for. I tend to want to have a relatively formed idea in clay before I make any outreach, but that idea can bend and stretch and change as I’m interacting with potential creators who work with what I’ve come to them with to make it their own. Outside of that, it’s a lot of e-mailing and phone calling.

Marc Guggenheim

Hey Tom. I've got a question that's been nagging at me for a while: How do facsimile editions deal with the copyright and trademark issues attendant to reprinting ads from non-Marvel companies?

I’m no lawyer, Marc, so I certainly can’t answer this question from any legal position. But my understanding is that, as the facsimile editions are replicas of earlier existing comic books, it constitutes a fair use to reprint all of the advertising material and so forth just as it was.

Shaun

You've mentioned before that you want to have every flavour of X-Men for the Beyond The Ashes era, so that way everybody can enjoy at least one book. I think I can see the influence for some of them. Jed's X-Men seems to be pulling from Bendis' revolutionary Uncanny and Morrison's New X-Men. Gail's X-Men seems to be inspired more from the 90s. NYX seems like it's harking to the Academy X days etc. But if my favorite flavor of X-Men is the Krakoa Era, what book am I meant to be reading?

You know, that’s a good question, Shaun. And I don’t know that I have a perfect answer for you. We’re definitely not going to have much in the way of books in which the whole of mutant society lives together on a big ol’ sentient island. So I suspect that it depends on what aspects of the Krakoa era have appealed to you. Certainly, nobody in our assorted titles will have forgotten about it, and its absence will impact on their lives in a very direct fashion. Beyond that, I’d need a bit more to go on from you.

Ben Morse

Tom, I’m really bullish on the creative teams for the solo X-books that were announced this week (Dazzler, Storm and Wolverine). Can you give any behind the scenes tidbits on the casting of creative teams for these?

I don’t really know that I can, Ben. So much of this stuff really just comes down to a gut instinct. And I only directly cast one of these books, STORM. DAZZLER was put together by Martin Biro, who had been wanting to do a DAZZLER project for some time. And WOLVERINE was assembled by Mark Basso. I will say that I was the one who pitched the idea of Storm joining the Avengers to Jed and new editor Wil Moss once I realized that her presence in any of the other main X-Titles threatened to unbalance them, and that it would be an unexpected and hopefully shocking move—one that might potentially serve to elevate her as a solo character.

Ducc

I am back to complain about legacy numberings again (sorry). I noticed that the Jean's upcoming ongoing is outright missing a legacy numbering when Jean already has 15 issues under belt thanks to her previous self-titled comics and Storm's ongoing while using the logo of her first ever miniseries, the legacy numbering of it is only accounting for her previous ongoing when if you were to account for all of her previous self-titled series would put her Legacy numbering at 26. I assume that these cover mock-ups are not the final product and that they will be corrected because it would feel a bit silly to leave those issues out, especially since both Jean and Storm each had a self-titled miniseries just last year that were written by X-Men Legends Louise Simonson and Ann Nocenti respectively.

Let me say up front, Ducc, that this is the last time that I’m going to litigate legacy numbers in this feature, because different readers have different preferences. But Marvel has a system that we use, and that system is what we abide by. So, to begin with, JEAN GREY books aren’t PHOENIX books, regardless of whether the same individual is featured in both of them. So PHOENIX doesn’t get to add any JEAN GREY numbers to its count. And likewise, limited series don’t typically get added to an ongoing series count, so those earlier STORM limited series are likewise not a part of that book’s count. You can certainly disagree if you like, but that’s the way we do it.

Omar

1) Phoenix has been one of the books the creative team has been the most tight lipped about out of any other series, especially compared to Storm which was just revealed but had a huge amount of exposition from the writer revealing the basis for pretty much the entirety of the first 5 issues, which I’m guessing is due to the very long wait for the events of Rise of the powers of X #5 to pass but we do now know Eternity is connected to both. Was involving Eternity one of your ideas? And can we expect more reveals when it comes to Phoenix to dispel the air of uncertainty around it, seeing as it’s the second book from the relaunch but we haven’t really had the chance to see any art from it like X-Men or Uncanny nor have we gotten any insight from the creatives like NYX or X-Force?

2) With Eternity having his sights set on Jean and Storm from what I’m guessing, Can we expect Iceman to come up as well somewhere in this mix? Am I hot or cold when it comes to your previous statement about him being a talking point by the end of the year?

3) We have a pretty solid lineup of ongoings so far that have peaked the interest of most of the major spheres in the X-Fandom with Phoenix, Storm and Dazzler all soliciting a movement to come out and support these female-lead books in droves. Although Dazzler’s been revealed as a 4 issue mini-series, Jean and Storm’s fanbases are still anxious about a pre-mature cancellation or no renewal past issue 10 (What I’m assuming is the new cutoff point set by Marvel for ongoings if I recall correctly). Is there any information you can share when it comes to what expectations these audiences should have as far as the number of issues and how to best support these blossoming titles?

Woof, those are long questions, Omar, and a lot of them come under the Wait and See heading. But just to cover a few things that I can give you answers for; 1) You heard more about STORM than you did about PHOENIX because Murewa is very active on social media and Stephanie is not. Doesn’t really mean much more than that, honestly. 2) There’s no particular connection between Eternity and Iceman that you need to be concerned about. 3) It feels like your question here amounts to, “When your books all fail, what are you going to do next?” And my answer here is that I’m not building any of these books to fail. Some of them will, no doubt, because the marketplace is a harsh and competitive place. But on the most basic level, if any of these titles does fail, don’t expect us to begin immediately pushing for another title featuring that character. There are a ton of good players in the X-Men repertory company, and so if something doesn’t work, we’ll try something else. If you want any of these books to continue, your best bet is to buy and support them; talk them up among other fans and just generally enjoy the hell out of them.

Iron

What grabbed my attention was your approach to the X-Men line, which seems to be quite focused on characters, be it evolving old characters and establishing them in a new revolutionary way, or creating new and contemporary "new mutants" (pun intended!) for a new generation of readers to see themselves in. Unfortunately the future is always uncertain in the comic book world, but given your new position of leadership, my question is: Characters like Storm and Phoenix in particular have been awarded a very deserved and a longtime coming push forward, which is finally establishing them as solo superhero brands, and as such many fans are very excited about this approach. However many of us are anxious about the future of said characters once the present books wrap up, and are afraid of the cyclical regression that comic books often put characters through (female characters especially!). What is your opinion on this and are you committed to working towards the future these heroes have been promised and deserve?

See answer 3 above, Iron. But if titles featuring these characters fail to catch on, that’s going to be a pretty compelling indicator that, at least at that moment, there isn’t sufficient interest from the readership base to make a series starring that character viable. But I’m not planning on the books failing, so it seems a strange thing to be worried about this early on.

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Behind the Curtain

Man, I love it when stuff like this turns up. It’s a little lost piece of Marvel history.

.An original art collector posted this board a week or two back and set off a whirlwind of activity among knowledgeable fans attempting to determine whether it was real or just an elaborate fake. But Jim Salicrup, who was the editor of UNCANNY X-MEN at this time, confirmed that it was genuine. What you’re looking at here is an alternate cover set-up to the classic final chapter of "The Dark Phoenix Saga” as it might have appeared on comic book racks back in 1980 had things gone down a little bit differently. Jim revealed that nobody in Marvel editorial had been made aware of that massive banner that was going to need to be run at the top, and so in order to make sufficient room for it, he had the artwork reduced and extended on the left side. He wrote all of this cover copy, which was lettered by the great Gaspar Saladino. This would have been for the initial version of the book, the one in which Jean Grey didn’t perish at the end.

But of course, EIC Jim Shooter became aware of the storyline and demanded changes to its ending, and so Jean Grey met her maker. As a part of this, Jim Salicrup was replaced as the books editor by Louise Simonson, and either Louise or Jim had the cover set-up reworked into its final published form, which kept the artwork at the size it had been drawn. This original version of the cover hasn’t seen the light of day in over 40 years.

Here, you can pretty clearly see the L-shape where the artwork had to be extended on the left side, presumably by John Romita and his Romita’s Raiders.

The comics code not being on the final printed issue was just a mistake. It was overlooked in the new paste-up, apparently.

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Pimp My Wednesday

Hey, we’re back to having comics come out, how about that? And even though it’s only one, you can get it in two different flavors!

BLOOD HUNT #2 by the overworked Jed MacKay and the brilliant Pepe Larraz hits comic shops this Wednesday, and I look forward to more absurd news pieces about whether its events or those of the Red band edition are really “canon”. (Hint: they both are!) Anyway, the Avengers are down but not out, fighting and half-strength, while Doctor Strange and Clea try to pull themselves together and the Sanctum Sanctorum entertains visitors from the Midnight Mission, while vampires rule the night-which-is-day! And as it did last month, the Red Band edition includes some added gruesome material including pages not available in the regular version. but I’m sure those are all taking place on Earth-Umpty-Umph, so maybe they aren’t so important. Plenty of fun, though!

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A Comic Book On Sale 75 Years Ago Today, May 19, 1949

VENUS was a really wonderful, really crazy series that ran from 1949-1952. What made it so crazy was the way that it changed its tone and direction in response to market conditions. At different times, it was a super hero series, a romance book, a working girl comedy series, a supernatural horror series, and a fantasy series. All this in just 19 issues. The premise of the series, which didn’t actually change all that much even when the tone and approach to the stories did, was that Venus was the legitimate Olympian goddess of love and beauty of myth. She’d come to Earth and fallen in love with Whitney Hammond, the publisher of BEAUTY Magazine, and so she adopted a human identity and began working for him as a model and an editor. This particular issue of VENUS, #6, is noteworthy in that “prototype” manner, as it represents the first time that Loki made an appearance in a Marvel comic. But this isn’t quite the Loki that we’re familiar with today. The mythology in VENUS was a bit of a hodge-podge, with not just Greek and Roman Gods represented but also Norse Gods and other players, all presented as a part of the same pantheon. It’s a daffy story that doesn’t quite seem to know what sort of a tone it wants to hit. I showed it off in greater detail over at my website at this link.

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A Comic Book On Sale 70 Years Ago Today, May 19, 1954

And so we bid a final farewell to the star-spangled defender of liberty, Captain America. This issue, #78, was the last in his short 1954 revival, and even the artwork of a young John Romita couldn’t keep the flag a’flyin’ by this point. Surely we will never see his like again. Seriously, CAPTAIN AMERICA had been one of Timely Comics’ biggest hits in the 1940s, but in the postwar period, sales flagged and the book was axed. But a few years back, buoyed by interest in the new ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN television program and suspecting that a super hero revival was on the horizon, publisher Martin Goodman brought back not only Cap but also the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner as well. What’s more, they were all given backstories to explain where they’d gotten to. In Cap’s case, as things quieted down after the war, he went back to teaching at the Lee School, where Bucky was a student. (Nobody bothered to even try to explain how Bucky could have been active in the war and yet still in school a decade later. Comics!) But when the Red Skull comes back, now working for the Communists, the ideologically flexible villain, Cap and Bucky come out of retirement to give it to the Reds. One of the real problems with this revival was that the stories were simply too short. You’d get three of them to an issue, meaning that they all ranged between 6-9 pages. So even villains such as Electro, seen on the cover above, didn’t have a whole lot of space to make a splash. The whole thing lacked any necessary spark, and so it failed to catch on. Goodman was right about the coming super hero revival, he’d just acted too quickly. But he’d also need Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to make Captain America relevant in a new decade and to a new crop of readers. Regardless, this is a very cool cover.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

THE INCREDIBLE HULK VS SUPERMAN came out on May 19, 1999. It was one of the today-rare crossovers between Marvel’s heroes and our rival DC’s. It’s the one crossover in which Superman takes second billing due to the fact that it was released by Marvel. It was also something of a passion project for editor Glenn Greenberg, who had started working on it under my supervision. There was some point where somebody up at Marvel had worked out that DC had produced more crossover books than we had, and so there was a sudden push to get a couple of these done. EIC Bob Harras couldn’t’ve cared less about them, but he brought them up at a meeting and Glenn jumped at the chance. The Hulk had always been Glenn’s favorite Marvel character, so doing a book that put him up against eh Man of Steel, another favorite of Glenn’s, especially the Mike Carlin triangle-era, seemed like a no-brainer. It was Glenn who came up with the notion of recruiting artist Steve Rude to draw the book, having enjoyed Rude’s work on an earlier WORLD’S FINEST project. To write it, Glenn was hoping to be able to land Stan Lee, but The Man proved elusive in this instance. As a second choice that wouldn’t be a step down, Glenn then turned to Roger Stern, one of his favorite writers. Together the two of them came up with the idea to set the story during the earliest days of each character, during John Byrne’s MAN OF STEEL series and the Green Goliath’s initial short-lived six issue run. This was in order to sidestep needing to work with an intelligent Hulk as Peter David was then writing, or a mulleted Man of Steel. But this was all happening in the late 1990s, the Marvel bankruptcy era, and every year we hit layoffs. That year, Glenn was on the kill list. Anticipating this, he had actually lined up another job for himself—he was laid off on the very day he had been intending to put in his notice, thus getting his full severance package in an extraordinary stroke of luck. But this meant that INCREDIBLE HULK VS SUPERMAN passed to me to complete. Now, Steve Rude is an incredibly gifted artist, but he doesn’t really live in the same world as the rest of us. By which I mean that he just wants to do what he wants to do, and is heedless of matters such as copyright and trademark. All of which is preamble to the one big problem I faced on this project. There were smaller things: DC (in the person of Mike Carlin if memory serves) requested that the Man of Steel’s insignia be drawn larger in what was then the modern style. Rude had been basing his version on the 1940s Fleisher Brothers animated cartoons. Not a big deal, but it rankled Rude, and we had to increase the size of the thing the whole way through the project, as he just would not draw it at the requested size. A very inflexible Steve Ditko-like mentality. But the bigger problem came at around Page 12. In the story, the Hulk crashes through a park, causing a family to dive for cover as he swipes their picnic lunch. For no discernable reason apart from that he thought it would be fun, Rude decided to draw the characters as the cast of KING OF THE HILL, which was airing at that time. Now, neither Marvel nor DC had any rights to those characters, and there was no way we were going to be able to run that page as is. So after a brief consultation with Carlin, I called Steve up and laid out the situation, telling him that he was going to have to change those figures. There was some back-and-forth, and I told him straight up that if he didn’t make the changes, I’d be forced to do it on my end, and that I didn’t want to mess around with his art. Steve said that he understood, and I sent the board for that page back to him. A week or two later, a package arrived from Rude. In it was the board, unchanged and untouched, along with a three-page letter explaining in glorious detail exactly why Steve felt that he could not make the change that we wanted, that the cameo as he had planned it was a perfect gag and harmed nobody, that the fans would be surprised and delighted by this unexpected insertion, and that the world was being ruined by lawyers and legalities. So I did what I had to do and had the alterations made in-house. The killer of fun, that’s me. The rest of the project went pretty smoothly, however, and I think the end result is one of the stronger Marvel/DC crossovers of that second era. All of which is really down to the work that Glenn did in putting the book together in the first place. And Steve and I have worked on a couple of other projects since then. The one other thing I remember is getting the DC masthead and seeing that the thing was twice the size of the Marvel one. So as a gag, I added Irving Forbush to the Marvel masthead, giving him an absurd title that was made up of a hodgepodge of words from assorted DC titles in their masthead. Of course, today Marvel’s masthead is at least as long as DC’s is and was, so it seems like they got the last laugh in that arena.

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The Deathlok Chronicles

Once again, here’s your weekly dose of DEATHLOK co-writer Gregory Wright:

Gregory Wright

Much like the previous issue, this one had another recap of what we saw before, this time just a couple issues before and I couldn't understand why that was part of the story...it was a RELIEF to have Mike step in on this story because it had been a lot of stress trying to decode some of Denys's breakdowns...and Mike was crystal clear. He never really talked to me about wanting to take over the book...and like you, if we were going to have to replace Denys, I felt we needed something closer to what Guice did...or something that had more of that current appeal...of course that would become a bunch of figures standing around on full page splashes...very little story-telling and lots of ignoring what a writer actually wrote...careful what you wish for--I thought maybe this was your way of trying Mike out for the book and wondered what he would do if it was HIS and not a fill-in between issues of Denys.

I seem to recall that you and I were of a similar mindset in terms of needing a replacement for Denys, and that Mike was never in serious consideration for the gig, his style being too close in our minds to Cowan’s rather than what we were hoping to find. End of the day, though, I was the editor, so this is all on me.

The cover to DEATHLOK #15 was done by Lee Weeks. I don’t think this was because of what happened this issue, because the cover would have been needed ahead of the issue for solicitation. Rather, I think it was a byproduct of the scheduling hole we were falling into. I couldn’t spare Denys Cowan on the interior pages for long enough to execute this cover.

So now we come to the ill-fated moment, and one of the stupidest things I ever did, in the stupidest way possible. All during the last couple of months, Greg and I had been looking for an artist to take over the series—although the prospect of having to fire Denys (or anybody) still filled me with dread. We’ll get into this more next time, but as this issue went into production, we decided that we had found our person, and moved to get them in the chair. Which meant that it was going to fall to me to tell Denys that he was done. Now, I swear, my motivation here was genuinely decent: I figured that I ought to try to give Denys the news as quickly as possible, so that he would have the time to line up his next assignment while still having work on his desk. But that was dumb. As the editor, your first duty is always to the book. But I hadn’t learned that yet. And so, one day Denys came in to drop off the first batch of pages, and I stammeringly gave him the news that he was being fired. I didn’t use that word, but that’s what it was. Now, remember, he didn’t really have any inking that this was coming, I had kept most of my concerns and those of Greg to myself all during this process. He looked as though I had hit him in the face with a two-by-four, and he angrily bolted from my office, upset. But now I had a problem. Because Denys hadn’t finished he issue and I had no way of telling whether he ever intended to. This is why you don’t tell somebody that they’re done until after the assignment in question is completed. We were still in deep schedule doo-doo, so there was only going to be so long that I’d be able to wait before having to make a move and try to find any warm body (or bodies) to finish out this story. I was already bugged with having to bring in Manley for an issue mid-storyline, this was going to be an absolute mess. Fortunately for the series, my assistant editor Mindy Newell was still on good terms with Denys, and she was able to convince him to finish the book. I remember him bringing them into the office and hurling them at me wordlessly. I have to imagine that they were among the toughest pages that he ever had to do, and it’s a testament to his professionalism that he finished the job even after the disrespectful manner in which I had treated him. I loused this up big time, and it embarrasses me to this day. While we’ve spoken casually a couple of times over the years, Denys and I have never cleared the air about this. But the point is, I did him wrong, and I regret it. I was young and inexperienced and cowardly and stupid. I don’t know that he cares so many years after the fact, but I’ve carried this with me ever since. Denys Cowan, you were a great artist and a good person who deserved a lot better than you got, and I’m sorry about that.

And, of course, all of this pain turned out to be in the service of making our situation on the book a dozen times worse! But we’ll start to get into that next time!

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I wrote about the fourth book in the ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS line, THE SUPERHERO WOMEN

Five years ago, I wrote about Marvel Covers Around The World.

And ten years ago, I wrote about THE MAGNIFICENT SUPERHEROES OF COMICS' GOLDEN AGE

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Well, once again, no piece on WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. I think I may keep it unwritten as a running joke at this point since it gets cut week after week. But as teh Q & A section gets longer, it takes up more time and more energy—and that has to come from somewhere. But who knows, next weekend is Memorial Day, maybe that added day off will prompt a flurry of extra activity. We’ll see!

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B