#117: The Saga of Chesty

This is ultimately my space, so I can spend it doing whatever I want. And what I want to do today is complain about my commute this past week, which extended into a multi-day set of ordeals, one that I can’t be sure is even over going into next week.

So, to set the stage, you need to understand that, in order to get to the Marvel offices on time for work, I need to get up at 5:00 in the morning in order to catch a 6:00am train that takes me to a transfer in Secaucus. That transfer gets me into Penn Station by around 8:00, and from there I take a subway uptown to the Marvel stop. In the evenings, there are only three trains running out of Secaucus back to my home area during the Rush Hour period, so if I miss all three of them, the best-case scenario is that I need to wait for another two hours for the next train.

The choke point of this entire affair is the tunnels into Manhattan from New Jersey. If something does wrong in or around there, then the whole system gums up. Last month, when some problem shut them down completely, I wound up having to take a $400.00 Uber back to my home. So I’m insanely focused on making sure that I can hit the window of those three trains, each of which originates in Hoboken just for the record.

So on Monday, there was a jam-up in Penn Station and no trains were running out to Secaucus. In that instance, I lucked out, in that eventually a train did become available, and I was able to squeeze onto it. An uncomfortable ride, but one that made my connection. Tuesday morning, though, the tunnels were still down, which meant that I had to divert out of my way to Hoboken and then take the Path train into the city. From there, I wound up having to walk twenty blocks or so to the offices, so I was pretty wasted by the time I walked into the place. And then in the evening, same thing still going on. Again in this case, I got lucky and got onto a train to Secaucus, but things had been backed up for long enough that the train out of Secaucus was likewise packed, and I wound up standing for something like half the trip. Having not done anywhere near as much walking as I had done that day in a long while, my legs and especially my knees were not happy by the end of this journey. This, of course, while a heat warning was in effect for the city pretty much all week.

Fortunately, Marvel was closed on Wednesday for Juneteenth, so I got a day to recover. And the morning commute went off without a hitch. But around 4:30, I started to catch word that service was again suspended through the tunnels, with no idea as to when it might be coming back up. When the day ended, I went to Penn Station to check it out and confirmed that nothing was running and nobody had any idea as to when it might be. So I walked over to the Path Station and took a train back to Hoboken—a train that started out maybe 110% full and which was 120% full by the time we’d made all of our stops. But I got a train back to my neck of the woods, so everything seemed as though it was going to be all right. But halfway there, there was a problem with one of the switches and it couldn’t be repaired remotely. So we had to wait on the train for 30-40 minutes as the Switch Guy who could remedy the problem drove up from headquarters with the necessary part.

So what does all of this amount to? Nothing, really. It’s just me bitching about my week, as you do. Plus it fills up some column space pretty danged well. Ultimately, it’s my fault, I chose to live where I am, so the commute comes with that. But when stuff like this goes wrong so consistently, it’s no fun at all.

But hey, you don’t care about my trials and tribulations! You want answers to your questions! Well, we aim to please. So here’s what readers were asking about this past week:

Chris Sutcliffe

Now that the X-Men line-up has been announced, I'd love to know the chicken/egg of relaunching a series like you're doing. Did you have an overall structure in mind (the three core pillars) and then reached out to creatives to tackle each pillar? Did you reach out to creatives first, got their ideas, and molded it into a structure? Or was it some third thing, that's a mixture of the two?

I think I’ve spoken about a bit of this in the past, Chris, but just to recap: I started out by brainstorming all of the assorted titles that I wanted to do as part of the launch (and a bunch of the second and third wave ones as well) after having surveyed the Retailer community as to which characters were the biggest sales drivers in their stores. From there, I wrote a very long position paper that laid out not only my thoughts for all of the books but also for the state of the world post-Krakoa and a couple of ongoing threads and storylines that I hoped to see develop. From there, I assigned certain titles to my subordinate editors and we went about casting the titles. In doing so, many of the particulars of that initial document changed as people came in with better, fresher ideas. But the line as it’s going out is still remarkably close to what I had written in that first document.

Alison Cabot

Tom, how would you describe Emma in this new era after all the mutants of Genosha have been resurrected?

I would say that Emma, like so many mutants, is looking for a direction, Alison, for a challenge in this new landscape, for a new project worthy of her time and attention. And instructing the next generation of mutants on how to survive in a hostile world has always been a passion project for her.

Jordan L

will we have to wait long to see more of the original New Mutants appear in any of the upcoming X-books?

Depends upon your definition of long, Jordan. I don’t think it’ll be long, but you may be more thirsty for these characters than that.

Mortimer Q. Forbush

Have you checked out the streaming Hulu series EXTRAORDINARY? Its a comedic series out of the UK in which everyone has superpowers — except for the lead character whose power hasn't come in yet. In some ways it feels like it could have been an X-Men pitch that flowered into its own thing. Its a wickedly funny and a little twisted but with a lot of heart. If you haven't already checked it out, its worth an episode or two.

I have, Mortimer. I liked the first season a whole lot, but ground out on the second after three or four episodes. I may go back to it at some point as it’s sitting there on Hulu, but I haven’t yet felt the compulsion to do so.

Evan “Cool Guy”

Have you started planning any events for the X Men? Or does that come further down the line once your books are established?

I’ve been planning events for the X-Men since day one, Evan. Quite possibly too many events. But we’ll see how everything flows out.

Mark Coale

Since I was reading your retro All Flash reviews this week, do you have a favorite DC Golden Age villain, Flash or otherwise, esp if they don’t have an Earth-1 counterpart?

I think it’s really hard to finger anybody here other than the Ultra-Humanite, Mark, who was both Superman’s first recurring foe and also the first cross-gender character in comics. The bronze age and later version, where his brain has been transplanted into the body of a huge white gorilla is like some mad distillation of the DC ethos into a single individual.

Iioo

I must ask, is it Conductor in the bus sense or in the electrical sense?

It’s Conductor as in an orchestra, Iioo, and Conductor as in a train.

Zack J

Ghost Rider is 3 of the coolest things ever (skeleton, motorcycle man, fire) in one slick package. Why isn't he the most popular character in the Marvel IP portfolio?

Well, if I had to take a guess, Zack, it’s that the aspects of a character that really connect with most people aren’t necessarily the surface trappings but the specifics of the individual. And also, there were a lot of bad or dull Ghost Rider stories, especially in the 1970s, which couldn’t have helped matters.

annataZ naf

what is your opinion or retcons? Is it something you don't do or just if someone comes to you with an interesting story that happens to retcon things. Especially retcons for what fans refer to as character assassinations or as you say bad stories and short sighted decisions that you say remain part of their legacies. I know you mentioned there are stories you wish hadn't been done, are you ever concerned with those stories being picked up by later writers?

I think that a retcon is a storytelling tool like any other, annataZ. They can be used well or they can be used poorly. But as a general rule, I’m not really all that interested in going back and relitigating the stories of the past. There’s a term that we sometimes use, “Comics about comics”, which is something that we try to avoid, as the number of readers who are going to care either way are likely to be limited. On a certain level, though, the definition of retcon has become so broad in fan circles that just about any story that does something new is considered a retcon, and that part isn’t right. I think you constantly need to be showcasing and revealing new things about your characters, and it can be fair to recontextualize older events, or to reveal new information that has up until now never been presented.

Omar

I just found myself curious today about why a couple of #1s like Ultimates, Phoenix and Scarlet Witch have earlier final order cutoff dates than books coming out the same week as them and I wanted to know if there’s any particular reason to it

Those books will have foil variants, Omar, and those covers require longer to manufacture.

Cian McDarby

I’ve always been very curious about how Uncanny Avengers works, and which Editorial Office it falls under. It’s a crossover between two lines in a way, so which editorial gets it? And how is it decided? I believe at least some of the early runs were under you, while the most recent run was clearly an X-Line book. Is it a case where it’s more who pitched it and what the team and intent is? Logistically, how does a book about combo two separate team books from across Editorials work? Is there cases where there’s a lot of negotiation over the characters on the team?

Up until the present time, Cian, I have edited every issue of UNCANNY AVENGERS that we’ve published, with the exception of, I think, one Annual. So it’s always been a book that’s lived on the Avengers side of the street despite its obvious connections to the world of X. And were we to do another iteration, I would expect that to be the case again. Why? Because that’s the way I built it. But it’s always been done with the cooperation of the X-Office.

Jeff Ryan

How much of Marvel's weekly output do you read while it's in production, and how much do you only read the final print copy of? (And are you able to enjoy it, like us in the cheap seats, or are you just making sure all the fonts in the word balloons printed properly?)

Not anywhere as much as I used to, Jeff. I used to read all of the Marvel Heroes books as part of my duties as the AVENGERS editor, but I haven’t done that in some time. I do still do read-out on the STAR WARS line of books, but that’s outside of the universe and doesn’t help all that much. Consequently, I’m a bit further behind on stuff than I had been. Once a month, Marvel sends me a set of comp copies of everything that we put out that month—a set of boxes came in just this past Friday. And from there, I organize them into three categories: books that I’ve read already, books that I want to read straight away so as to keep up with current affairs, and books that I’ll possibly read eventually but don’t need to prioritize. Part of what I’ll be doing tomorrow afternoon while you’re reading these words is working my way through as much of that middle stack as I’m able to.

Dylan Dunn

Quick question: are there plans for a new Chris Claremont X-Men series set in the present day continuity?

Chris is doing work in the X-Office, Dylan, and I expect that at some point he’ll write another present day set X-Men story. The piece he did in UNCANNY X-MEN #700 with Salva was quite nice. But I don’t know that I see a world in which he’s situated on a series at the center of the line again. And that’s really a reflection of how long Chris wrote the series and how much time has passed. You see, Chris spent 16 years living with those characters inside of his head, and he’s consequently got very strong feelings as to who they are, what they would and would not do, and of backstories that never made it into print. But over the past 30 years, a ton of additional stories starring them have been printed—most of which are at variance to Chris’ “head canon” to one degree or another. So, to give a sort of an example, pretty much everything that we know about the background and history of Mister Sinister is something that was created after Chris’s departure. So his version of Sinister isn’t that guy. There’s a dissonance—it’s not anybody’s fault per se, but it exists, and it makes it difficult for Chris to sometimes work within fields that have now been tilled by others for as long as they were tilled by him.

Zack J

Now that she's in a hot multimedia property (Marvel Rivals) in a prominent role are you willing to admit that Galacta Daughter of Galactus, Granddaughter of Taaia is canonical?

I admit nothing, Zack, because she’s not. And the Marvel Rivals game, for all that it’s hopefully a really good game, is no more canonical to our publishing world than any other game we’ve produced. They all sit in their own Gamerverse, if anything.

Bos

My question this week is about the urban destruction in big superhero fights. I’m from Spain, so when a bunch of aliens come and destroy NY it has never hit as hard as it may hit readers from NY or the US. But the other day I was reading the Hickman’s Avengers/New Avengers and there is (SPOILERS a comic that came out a couple of years ago) an awesome fight between the different Avengers factions of that era that takes place in my hometown Cádiz, Spain (same province as Carlos Pacheco’s hometown btw). And as cool as the comics were, there were times I stopped and thought “ouch I think the Hulk just wrecked my mum’s office”.

So my question: As someone who has worked and I guess lived in/close to NY, when putting together a story and there’s a big fight, do you sometimes go “Guys I think we should cut down on the mayhem”? Do you recall any comics where you thought maybe they went a little to far destroying NY?

Not really, Bos. This is all fantasy, and a certain amount of carnage and destruction is a part of the formula. And additionally, since none of this stuff is real, Damage Control can have set everything aright in-between issues, just in time for the next big throwdown. Now, i don’t think that we should be frivolous with the stakes involved in our big fights. Pure carnage alone isn’t going to be enough to make anybody care about what’s going on, after all. But super heroes are going to do super things—that’s the nature of the beast.

ComicbookDad531

I hope it’s not too late for a question but I saw that it’s Mark Gruenwalds birthday today and besides the Squadron Supreme mini series, what’s your favorite Mark Gruenwald story or creation at Marvel. I loved a lot of his work growing up from the Cap run to Quaser

I like a bunch of different stories that Mark wrote, Dad, including the origin of Origin and Unbeing in QUASAR and its follow-up “Cosmos In Collision”, some of his WHAT IFs where he’d push his ideas about the make-up of the Marvel Universe to the limit, such as in WHAT IF #32. There was some good stuff in D.P. 7, and his MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE with Ralph Macchio was always very readable. And I also really loved the stealth story he did in BIZARRE ADVENTURES about the Aquarian becoming the last person left alive on Earth.

Rob Secundus

do you recall any similar discussions around the now-infamous 9/11 issue? Was anyone trepidatious about putting that out? And looking back, do you think it was the right call?

Not really, Rob, because the circumstances were different. While shocking and horrifying, 9/11 happened and then was over, though the fallout would continue for months and years. I would be willing to bet that there were people up at Marvel during that time who may have been uncomfortable with doing an AMAZING SPIDER-MAN issue reflecting that tragedy, but if so, they kept such feelings largely to themselves. And I think that was a great, milestone issue, incredibly powerful even when I first read it as just J. Michael Straczynski’s script, which Axel Alonso had a bunch of people look at to make sure that nothing in it was crossing a line or causing harm.

Ben Morse

is there any secret to a successful long term super hero marriage? From a creative standpoint, not in universe. Most seem to dissolve eventually, but I now could not picture Superman and Lois any other way and feel like marriage is a nice button to the decades long soap opera with Rogue and Gambit.

I suspect that it depends on the characters involved, Ben. For me, Superman and Lois as a married couple simply cuts down one of the fundamental tenets of that series in a way that I don’t think is great for its long-term health and viability. But there have been plenty of married Superman stories that fans have liked. Even Reed and Sue, possibly the most stable marriage in the Marvel Universe, only stayed married because they got hitched so relatively quickly, a mere four years after they were created. And that was a reflection of the fact that nobody expected that series to run for five years, let alone sixty. One of the clear driving forces of comics is the soap opera element, and romance in a will-they-or-won’t-they manner is out the window once a couple weds. From that point, the best you get is temptations for one character or another to break their vows and cheat, or a constant reiteration of the deathless love between those individuals. Both can be fine, but they aren’t as dynamic a storytelling engine as struggle and pursuit. That said, I don’t really have a problem with Rogue and Gambit being married, for example, as they’ve been so connected at the hip for so long as characters that attempting to separate them feels like a no-win scenario. Everybody’s barometer on this question registers differently, I think.

---

Behind the Curtain

.We do a lot of dumb things to entertain ourselves at Marvel, and what you’re about to read is the result of one of those. At some point a few years ago, when we had just started publishing a POE DAMERON series, I did some extemporaneous bit of comedy in which I decided that the breathing unit on Poe’s flight suit had intelligence, like a ‘Droid. Named “Chesty”, he lived an unfulfilled life of seemingly romantic longing for Poe. After bouncing around on this theme for a day or two, I took a recent cover and created an eight-panel template, in which I crafted the first CHESTY strip

What’s more, I made the template available to all of our assorted editors, many of whom got into the act with their own takes on Chesty’s many exploits.

Meanwhile, I’d do the occasional new Chesty strip as well, such as this one that breaks format a bit:

Somebody, I’m not sure who after all this time, improved on matters by using an actual still from the films:

And yet another worked off of a cover illustration:

Finally, somebody was inspired to go even further afield with this strip about Chesty’s evil counterpart, D-Chesty:

---

Pimp My Wednesday

All right, time to release some new comics to astound and enthrall you!

BLOOD HUNT #4 was described by Marvel EIC C.B. Cebulski as a perfect multi-reveal issue, one in which a whole series of surprises or appearances or revelations are made in quick succession as we ramp up to the climax next issue. Jed MacKay and Pepe Larraz pair with the underappreciated Marte Gracia to bring you this latest issue. And the Red Band version is even more spectacular.

And under the guiding eye of Associate Editor Annalise Bissa, X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE continues to bridge the end of the Krakoa era with what is to come. This series was initially going to be edited by Jordan White’s team, and they had started to build some infrastructure for it when the switch-over happened. And they preferred that we do it. Consequently, we factored its events into our long-term planning, so you can rest easy knowing that the events of these four issues, in which Apocalypse searches for a successor, will have a direct and dramatic impact on the X-Line in the days to come. Steve Foxe and Netho Diaz are the creative team here.

---

A Comic Book On Sale 25 Years Ago Today, June 23, 1999

The Justice Society of America was the very first super hero team in comics, and the first time the characters from assorted different story lines came together in a unified adventure. They were that radical an idea back in 1940. But over the years, as the core cast got older and further and further removed from their originating era, the common wisdom became that the JSA was past its prime. On at least two occasions, folks at DC attempted to permanently retire the group. But in each case, they refused to lay down and die. But it was really with this series, launched by writers James Robinson and David Goyer and artist Steve Sadowski, that made the group a going concern once again. Part of that is that the book built on the good will that Robinson had gained with the readership for his handling of the assorted golden age heroes during his acclaimed STARMAN series. But as important, he and Goyer and later co-writer Geoff Johns honed in on a specific and unique mission statement for the team. As the heroes who started the whole Mystery Men phenomenon, the Justice Society now took on the responsibility for training the next generation of costumed heroes in the DC Universe in the manner of their storied traditions. It was a hook that worked, allowing for a chunk of the cast to be made up of modern day successor heroes such as Sand, Stargirl, Atom Smasher, Hawkgirl and so forth. It was also treated as something of a sister title to JLA, which was then experiencing a renaissance under writer Grant Morrison. Like the JLA, the JSA dealt with situations and menaces that were awesome in scope and terrifying in detail. it wasn’t a safe book any longer, but one where anything could happen. And, riding on the coat tails of JLA or not, it was a big hit, and ran for years as a mainstay of the DC line. Eventually, though, a couple of ill-considered decisions ended its run (when your popular mainstay writer is departing, that’s probably not the best time to try to split your title into two related books) and then the spin went right back to the JSA being a product of a bygone era that needed to be erased from history. And they were, for a while, though they’re back now again. DC continuity, am I right? Anyway, this was a really good series for much of its long run.

---

A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

AVENGERS #84 came out on June 23, 2004 and was the last issue of the title before Avengers Disassembled turned over the board and changed absolutely everything. This is a period that doesn’t get talked about all that much, as it wasn’t well beloved even with some very fine artwork. Writer Chuck Austin has gotten something of a bad rap in fan circles for his writing work, but I feel like he gets a bum treatment on AVENGERS, largely because the stories that he wanted to do each time ended up getting altered pretty severely along the way, so what he did wasn’t really quite what he pitched, and so he wasn’t responsible for all or even most of the choices during his run. At the start, he wanted to open his tenure with a storyline that would pit the Avengers against a new and more interventionist team of uncompromising super heroes clearly inspired by the Authority. In a way, this would have been Chuck’s take on Joe Kelly’s Superman story “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice And The American Way?”But Bill Jemas, of course, wanted to start things off smaller and more human, and so Chuck’s first arc became about other things entirely. Along the way, Joe Quesada went to a comic convention where he was cornered by a bunch of fans who wanted to see Marvel bring back the Invaders as a modern day team in the manner of DC’s JSA. Thinking there was some merit in this, Joe reached out to Chuck and convinced him to turn his Authority-style team into a new version of the Invaders. The idea was that a series starring these characters would spin off from AVENGERS #500, and so Chuck began writing in that direction. I can remember that the antics of the insane Blazing Skull in particular had some fans among the staff. But unfortunately for Chuck, during this time the editorial retreat happened where the idea for NEW AVENGERS was hatched, and Brian Bendis was going to be coming on board with issue #500 to start up this new direction, This was late enough in the process that Chuck had already written his script for #500, which was meant to lead into NEW INVADERS #1. It was a real mess, and we wound up rewriting and condensing it into a hasty NEW INVADERS #0, which was a terrible way to launch a new book. From that point on pretty much, NEW INVADERS was a dead launch, a casualty of the Avengers Disassembled plan, one that Chuck quickly handed off writer duties to his fellow animation scribe Allan Jacobson. It was a shame, but that’s the way things go soemetimes.

---

The Deathlok Chronicles

As is now standard, let’s kick things off with some recollections from DEATHLOK co-writer Gregory Wright:

Gregory Wright

Memory is a funny thing. I don't always remember what I wrote in a plot or script that was sent to an artist and BELIEVE that what I wrote is different that what got drawn. I like to go back and find an original plot/script to compare what I THINK versus what was real. In this storyline' case I had to do a LOT of rethinking due to Dwayne's story involving Kelly and his having Deathlok come home to his family the way he did. I recall lots of discussion with you Tom, on navigating what I wanted to do in a manner that FIT with what Dwayne had done and where the character was going. It was valuable editor/creator stuff. At this point I had really felt like I was almost not part of the book due to how much Dwayne had written at this point, the storylines being out of the order I had hoped they'd be in...the crossover that I elected to do instead of THIS storyline early on...so I was DETERMINED that this story was going to firmly plant me as important on this series. I wrote THIS issue breaking down every page into panels. Almost a full script. The very first thing Walter did...which baffles me...is he divided up the SPLASH page into 4 panels...it looked terrible, but...the book was already LATE, so complaining about it wasn't necessary, but I called him and told him to stick to the plot. Draw the panels I wrote. And for the rest of the story he did. The only thing was that everything seemed too BIG. Every panel was just crammed with large figures as if he zoomed in a bit too far. Still workable. And like every other artist...he just could not understand CYBERSPACE and didn't draw it how I wrote it...there was a whole cyber-tornado that was pulling Michael and Kelly apart and together and well... again...late book you just roll with it as long as the story is being told and here... it was. It was fine, it looked big and loud and was definitely going to make an impression. But I kept noticing that he'd focus real hard on large figures, and the small figures...were pretty terrible...but I had faith that some discussion was going to get him doing terrific work and had several good conversations with him. He was definitely open to the feedback. At the same time...I'm talking Jimmy...and he HATES the art. He hates inking it. He echoes the same things that Mike had echoed to me earlier..this concerns me...I don't understand what it is exactly about the pencils that bother both of them so much. Jimmy tells me he's going to quit. He hates to do it...but he can't work over this art. This is early in Jimmy's career and quitting a book is not an easy thing. I beg him to stick it out at least one more issue, talk to Walter...the book was so late (so much for a new artist getting the book back on time) I couldn't color the entire issue. And truth be told...much like Jimmy and Mike...I really hated coloring the art. I don't quite know why, but I could never get a handle on how to get it to look how I wanted. I HATED to give up coloring any book I wrote because I would use the color to help tell the story. But here...I told myself to stick it out with Jimmy and try to figure it out. But...the book being so late...made it difficult. This was the first time I fully created and designed character MYSELF. I drew up the design for SEIGE and was overall very happy with how Walter drew him, as well as others who came later. It was a real thrill to see an actual artist draw a character that I created visually as well as as a writer. But the one thing that just never got drawn visually as I saw it in my head was Seige's ability to ROTATE his upper body around. I wrote a scene where he surprises his opponent by rotated his torso around so you could never get behind him and it just never visually worked. And no artist ever pulled it off. Very strange. At any rate I felt very good after the issue was done. I was really happy having released Kelly's memories as an AI and having Deathlok with three voices in his head...I felt like this story connected with ALL the continuity of the series so it really FELT like it was an important chapter that would go onto be utilized in the future issues. I firmly believed Walter was just going to get better and better and that we were going to get sales back up. I really felt that way. This is why my demented brain decided that the best way for Walter to do his very best work was if I DIDN'T break down the next issue into pages and panels and gave him the freedom to really show his stuff...and I encouraged him to do double page spreads wherever he could do them...because next issue was going to have the biggest and loudest action scenes I'd ever write. What could possibly go wrong?

DEATHLOK #18 is the issue that I’ve probably written the most about before this, due to the fact that it was a comic book that I was sure was going to get me fired. I wrote about it and others like it at this link. But so that you don’t need to make the journey (and so that I don’t have to recount the same events again) I’m posting the relevant section below:

DEATHLOK #18: That cover copy is fun, but largely unreadable against that background. Anyway, the issue with this particular book wasn’t actually my fault, but it was the first time I’d experienced that world-ending panic of finding out about a situation and realizing that it was possibly going to cost you your job. You see, in the days when this issue of DEATHLOK was put together, everything was still being pasted up on the actual boards to be sent to press–nothing was yet digital as it is today. And for most Marvel titles, there would be two editions, one for the Direct Sales marketplace of comic book specialty shops, and one for the Newsstand Marketplace of candy stores and 7-11s and newsstands. What that meant is that a different corner box and UPC box had to be put together for each version, one for the Direct Market (seen on the copy above) and one for the Newsstand Market that would include the distributor’s codes and other such info. The way this was done is that one version was pasted up directly onto the art board, and the other was packaged in an envelope attached to the back, to be stripped in at the printer.

Now, the other thing you need to understand is that the issue after this, #19, was going to feature an enhanced cover, and as such was being up-priced to $2.25 (the regular price at this time was, if I recall properly, $1.75). And the person who generated those UPCs and corner boxes made a mistake on the Direct Edition for this issue–listing it at the higher $2.25 price. But because the version that was pasted up on the board happened to be the Newsstand version, I didn’t see the mistake–it wasn’t the responsibility of the editor to check such things, but rather than duties of the sales department as the cover was circulated for sign-off prior to going to press. And whoever it was didn’t check this cover properly.

I can remember the shock and horror I felt that Wednesday when I stopped into Jim Hanley’s Universe (a local Manhattan comic book store) for the new books and saw the above cover sitting on the racks with its incorrect price. I felt as though I was having a heart attack, and I thought my number was up for certain. What’s worse, in those days before cell phones, I had to wait until I could reach home before I could even begin to make any calls about it, and I was freaking out the entire time. In the end, the next day, the decision was made not to recall and reprint the book, but to let it stand with the wrong price. According to our sales team, retailers really weren’t having any reaction to it or seeing any pushback from their customers. Which seems odd to me–I maintain to this day that this snafu had to be one of the factors that led to sales dropping on the title (though it certainly wasn’t responsible for everything–I made a bunch of mistakes on this book.) And as far as I can remember, nobody else treated it as a big deal.

The other thing that I remember about this issue that’s entirely unrelated to cover price was making artist Walter McDaniel redraw the big spread on Pages 2-3 completely. As I’ve said previously, Walter was both young and raw, and his storytelling instincts weren’t always the greatest. The spread in question was meant to depict Deathlok kicking his way into a secret lab full of highly-armed bad guys. And when Walter first brought in the spread, I think everybody involved was dismayed. He’d place Deathlok in the background, tiny, and had eaten up a ton of the space on the metal door that Deathlok had kicked flying directly towards the camera. I don’t have a copy of this initial version, but take my word for it, it was a criminal waste of a double-page spread. So I unfortunately had to explain to McDaniel what was wrong with what he’d done and ask him to redo it. I may even have done a little doodle to get the idea across. Either way, Walter’s replacement spread was much more on the mark—but going back like that cost us time we could ill afford and put another punctuation on just how bad our situation was. At this point, I still should have taken him off the assignment, but my head wasn’t anywhere in that space. It was always painful to have to fire somebody, and especially on the heels of having let Denys Cowan go, I didn’t want to have to admit that my judgment had been faulty. And so here I was breaking what became a cardinal rule that I preach to Marvel’s younger editors today: your first loyalty is to the book. You can’t save all of the talent that you work with, given enough time you can’t save any of them. But it’s your responsibility to make decisions that are in the best interests of the title that you’re working on, as painful as those might be. I wasn’t anywhere near the point where I could think about doing that yet.

That cover copy is fun, but that red text against a multicolored background is absolutely invisible and looks amateurish. It also steps on a decent promotional line. More stuff to learn.

---

Monofocus

After a couple of lighter weeks, I’ve been watching and reading a bunch of different new things that are worth a mention.

Having finished up the last season of the volleyball anime HAIKYUU and craving another sports-themed series, I tried out BLUE LOCK over on Hulu. It’s a soccer anime, about 300 contestants who are invited to train and live in the mysterious Blue Lock sports complex with the intention of turning one of them into the ultimate Striker, a person who can lead Japan to winning the World Cup. It’s a lot more stylized and over-the-top that HAIKYUU, which is something of a double edged sword. The soccer that is played in this series is even more removed from the actual sport—like in KUROKU’S BASKETBALL, almost every player possesses a singular talent that functions almost like a super-power on the field. The manga is incredibly popular and I’m told the anime has also done well. And I can see why. But I don’t like it quite so much as either of the other two shows. It’s a bit of an acquired taste—it took me until maybe episode three until I was truly on board with the storyline.

A bit more fun is Netflix’s latest import from Korea, AGENTS OF MYSTERY. It’s another in the bizarre realm of Korean Reality Competition shows, a genre that they do far better than anybody else. Except this one isn’t a competition per se. Six celebrities, actors and comedians and the like participate in a series of adventures, acting as the operatives of a clandestine organization. In essence, it’s like a murder mystery party crossed with an escape room, but one where there’s a running plot that the characters interact with in real time. On each mission, most of which span multiple episodes, they need to solve puzzles and work out clues to get to the bottom of some mystery without being seen or discovered. And the missions themselves are pretty creepy. The first concerns the abduction of a trio of girls by the members of a satanic cult that intends to sacrifice them in order to achieve immortality for their leader, and the next is set aboard a submarine in which the crew has all been killed with the exception of a last member, who has been transformed by an illicit experiment into a feral monster. It’s pretty awesome stuff, and the cast takes it all very seriously, which is part of what makes it work. Nobody is in any real jeopardy, but there are clearly moments where those involved completely forget that.

On paper, I used by day off this week to read through the new expanded edition of COMIC BOOK IMPLOSION, concerning the proposed expansion and then contraction of the DC line and staff in the late 1970s. And to be transparent about things, I gave a few quotes for the original version of this book which was released a couple of years ago. Still, it’s a great piece of work about a seminal time in the industry, and writers Keith Dallas and John Wells assemble quotes and testimonials and ancient fanzine news stories into a timeline that walks through everything and which sheds some light on the many stories that never saw print. (The DC Implosion is what led to the creation of two of the rarest DC publications, two issues of CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE, which were essentially bound photocopies of a ton of never-to-be-printed material so that DC could maintain the copyright to the work in question.)

I’m also in the middle of SOMEBODY TOLD ME, the latest release from one of my favorite writers, Danny Wallace. I think the best way to describe Wallace’s work is performative journalism, as he writes about actual events that he has experienced, though often with an off-kilter premise behind his experiences. His most famous work, and the one my former assistant Gregg Schigiel first pointed me towards, was YES MAN, in which Wallace spent a month saying yes to absolutely everything he was asked, with comic results. It was later made into a fairly terrible movie starring Jim Carrey, but the book itself is great, with an important message about being open to possibilities. This latest release is about Wallace’s explorations about how regular, ordinary people can fall down the rabbit hole of believing in wild conspiracy theories, to the point where they alienate everybody around them. It’s his typical mix of dry British humor and potent insights, and I’ve been loving it so far.

---

Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I wrote about the solution to an AMAZING SPIDER-MAN murder mystery.

Five year ago, I wrote about one of the best-remembered episodes of STAR BLAZERS.

And ten years ago, I reposted this 15 year old piece on another crazy issue of SUPERMAN’S GIRL FRIEND LOIS LANE:

---

And we are out the other side once again! Thanks for stopping by—hey, let’s make this a regular thing! See you back here in a week or so, all right?

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B