#129: Mystery Package

I feel half-obligated to start things off by mentioning the sad passing of both the uber-talented John Cassaday and the less-well-known Karl Moline this past week. But while I worked with both men, I didn’t know either one especially well, and so it’s probably best left to others who ran more directly in their circles to eulogize them properly. Every death is a diminishment, of course, and this is another tragic loss for our field.

On a more pleasant note, I’ll be appearing at the Baltimore Comic Con on Friday and Saturday. This’ll be the first time in a number of years that I’ve made it down that way. Organizer Marc Nathan runs a very nice show down there, one still primarily focused on comic books rather than film or television or whatever. For those who care, I’ll be at Booth 1701 appearing on behalf of the Hero Initiative.

And for all two of you who are worried, I’m going to try to stockpile a stopgap edition of this feature to go out to you next week at the usual time, so that nobody who can’t be in Baltimore feels unloved or left out.

So time to get into the meat of things, beginning as usual with some half-baked answers to your fully-baked inquiries. Let’s see what the masses are thinking about this week:

Jeff Ryan

who's the best mom in the Marvel Universe?

Virginia Romita.

STILES

we see Emma snooping into the lives of some mutants at the end of Exceptional X-Men #1, and among these mutants are Banshee and Bishop. Can we expect more information about them or will we have to wait a little longer? I mean, if they're in any future projects.

, how were the talks to bring Bobby Drake to Exceptional X-Men?

You’ll see both Banshee and Bishop before the end of the year, Stiles—one of them in a project that we’ve just announced. And there weren’t really any talks about bringing Iceman into EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN. But the idea came up at our last Editorial Retreat, when I walked through each of the various new X-titles for creators and other editors. At one point, a few people—I forget exactly who, but I believe that Ellie Pyle and Dan Edington were among them—suggested that we might want to think about using Iceman in the series, since Bobby has established history with both Kitty and Emma. That sounded like a good idea to me, so I mentioned it to Eve Ewing, who was similarly on board, and away we went.

Diana

With the recent news of yet another Chris Claremont X-Men miniseries in the works, I have to ask: have you considered giving him an Infinity ongoing instead? Something with the space and flexibility to let him do the kind of long-form storytelling he's actually famous for, and which isn't dependent on the pressures of the direct market? I'm just saying, if Love Unlimited ran for 70 issues, maybe X-Men Legends could too...

I don’t know that we’ve considered such a thing, Diana, nor do I know whether Chris would have any interest in such a series. The audience and objectives of the Infinity Comics are a bit different than our print books, so I’m not sure that deploying Chris there would be a way to achieve what we want to achieve with them. Which doesn’t rule it out, but neither is it a slam dunk idea.

Steve McSheffrey

If the title doesn't succeed, do you think you'll go with bringing Jean home or just end it?

I tell you, Steve, I’m going to plan for success, not failure. If the time comes when we need to end PHOENIX, then we’ll work out what note to go out on and where and how to use jean thereafter.

Alvaro

Something that kinda irks me about Spider-Man is how he gets multiple love interests. While I understand that Peter being in relationships with other characters could be fun or interesting, I feel that it often clashes with the whole “relatable guy” aspect. What’s your stance on that?

Maybe it’s just me, Alvaro, but I think that most young people wind up having multiple prospective partners throughout the course of their dating life. it’s relatively rare that a person starts going out and ends up with their one-and-only partner for the rest of their life. So I don’t think this makes Peter Parker any less relatable. You also have to remember that peter’s dating life has been a lot longer than the average person’s, as we wind up compressing 60 years of stories into only around maybe 15 years of in-world time. But this is fiction, it can accommodate such things, so I don’t think this is a big issue.

Jordan

Would you happen to recall the name of the video/channel that recommended Witch Hat Atelier? I believe I may have seen the same video pop up on my youtube homepage. Curious to know which content creators you trust so implicitly that you would buy an entire series based on their recommendation.

It was less a matter of trusting this particular channel’s opinion to the point where I’d blindly follow anything they said, Jordan, than it was a case of my watching the video and becoming intrigued by the visuals and the descriptions that they laid out. But all of that said, you can find the video in question at this link.

Alison Cabot

is there any possibility of Emma and Monet interacting in this new phase of the X-Men? They were both so fun in Generation X.

There’s always a possibility, Alison. Though it’s more likely that Monet will be turning up in UNCANNY X-MEN (mainly because we showed her on the QR bonus page to issue #1!)

Gwen

At the end of Rise of The Powers of X #5 it was said that the White Hot Room is closed and evolves into a new form. Will this be addressed in PHOENIX? Will we see Jean interacting with these higher realms?

We’re not going to be telling stories about earlier stories, Gwen, if that’s what you mean. And I’m sure we’ll touch on the mythology involved in future tales if there’s a need to. But I don’t think that the events of RISE #5 were especially unclear, so I don’t see any pressing need to address them further.

JV

I reread the original Ms. Marvel run and had a few questions:

1) do you know what the original intent for Mystique was? She seemed to be an alien (and not a mutant - maybe Kree?) and was under the control of some entity (which can be easily retconned as the Shadow King). Why did she hate Carol Danvers originally?

2) Why was Ms Marvel exiled in Avengers 200? It seems mean spirited when she could have stayed on as an Avenger after her series was cancelled? Or just sent to comic book limbo (not the literal one ha ha :))? Any idea why he character was discarded so unceremoniously?

I love that image of Mark Gruenwald - what are your thoughts on his 80s era Cap run? His no killing rule, the John Walker saga, the scourge. etc - anything you are particularly fond of or disagree with/has aged badly?

1. I couldn’t tell you, JV, I don’t happen to know. Possibly Chris still remembers, but he’d often change his storylines on the fly as new ideas occurred to him, so he may also not remember what he had been thinking after all of this time.

2. As a general rule, as series ended during that time period, an effort was made to tie up any outstanding loose ends and shift the characters involved off the board, at least temporarily. This is why It the Living Colossus was pulverized in an issue of INCREDIBLE HULK, Rich Rider lost his Nova powers in ROM and Omega the Unknown’s story was (poorly) wrapped up in DEFENDERS. So I’d imagine that ushering Ms Marvel off-stage in AVENGERS #200 was with much the same intent.

3. I think that most people agree that Mark may have stayed on CAPTAIN AMERICA as writer for a bit too long. His best material was in the first half of his run, and he tended to have stronger artistic partners during that period as well. But I definitely didn’t buy the notion that Captain America had fought in World War II and had never killed anybody or fired a gun at anybody. But that sort of moral reticence to kill was very much the ethos of most super heroes at that time, though it was beginning to change.

David Baroldy

I’m wondering about the process for casting art teams. Does the artist on a book give input on which colorist, or style of coloring, they want to help create the look of a book? Social media chatter, which is always accurate, would lead one to believe that DC gives creators more say while Marvel has a more “assembly line” approach.

In most cases, a given artist will typically have inkers and colorists that they prefer to work with, David, but it isn’t always possible to get those other creators on board, for reasons of schedule or cost or availability and interest. But everybody has input. At the end of the day, though, the editor with the input of the editor in chief has to make whatever they think is the best choice for the project at hand. And I wouldn’t imagine that DC is any more accommodating about this situation than we are, as they face the exact same problems. But who knows, maybe they are.

Bic

the scene with the bouncer in Exceptional X-Men seems to have confused quite a few people.

First, why was Bronze/Trisha not let in? She did not look like a mutant before things heated up, so that does not seem to be the reason.

Many also thought that Trisha came across as unsympathetic since she responded with using her potentially deadly mutant powers against a man just doing his job trying to send her on her way. As far as she (and the reader) could tell at least.

Might there still something more to be revealed regarding this scene?

I think that scene is that scene, Bic, so I don’t really want to go interpreting it for the audience. We’ll definitely come back to Bronze further, though I don’t know that we’ll be revisiting the events of that evening in particular.

Carlos Fuenzalida

I don't necessarily have an issue with the QR codes for the bonus scene, but why use a printed page for only 1 page of a bonus scene? Why don't you just print the bonus scene itself instead? I can see the point if you produced 2 or 3 pages of bonus scene so that there's an economy in the QR code usage. Also, how long will that bonus scene be up on the website? I hope that some one would picked up Exceptional X-Men 1 in 10 years eager to read the first appearance of Trista and then run into the QR code and still be able to access the bonus page.

We’ve covered this ad nauseum in previous Newsletters, Carlos, so I understand why people are put out by having to use a phone to access a page of their comic. But really, I think that everybody should look at that page as being more like a house ad in the first place. Sure, we tried to fill them with content that you would be interested in, but they weren’t a direct part of the story being told in that issue. They’re bonus content. Also, I’m not really worrying about potential readers of ten years from now any more than I was when we were doing AR activations back in the day, or whenever we run contests or advertise literally anything. If you’re concerned about it one day vanishing, then my suggestion would be that any device that you’d be able to use to view the page in the first place should have the functionality to take a screenshot of it.

Joey Carlini

There's an ongoing brand strategy around releasing books for characters around the MCU. Does that extend to tie-in media for games in that if a character is featured in a particular Marvel game, or as a guest in another property, it may be that that something is coming with them bookside in the future? Or is it two completely different arms of Marvel in a way that one can't help you read the tea leaves for the other? I understand if it's a "no comment" answer.

That isn’t really something I can tell you much about, Joey, as it isn’t my area so i only have a sketchy sense as best as to how the sausage is made in those businesses. Sorry.

Evan “Cool Guy”

Hi Tom, I'm curious as to the impact of Covid on your job and Marvel Comics/the industry in general.

Well, it kept us out of the offices and working remotely for something like three years, Evan. On a day-to-day basis today, it doesn’t appear to have a great impact, though those who want to are free to continue masking and taking appropriate precautions. And it still makes attending any convention something of a dice-throw, as inevitably somebody shows up there who has it and spreads it along to other people.

Cian McDarby

I’ve recently (in the last hour) read the first issue of Starbrand, the New Universe book. I really liked it. New Universe of course I believe is infamous for not really selling well, with a revival 20 odd years ago ending when the writer lost his hard drive. I doubt we’ll ever see it get a third shot like Shooter’s slightly more successful, significantly more tragic Valiant did. But my question is: What do you think about the New Universe? Love it? Hate it? Indifference it? Any interesting thoughts on Marvel’s failed effort to create The World Outside Your Window?

When they were first coming out and I was just a reader, I sampled all eight of the initial New Universe titles, Cian. The only one I continued to follow was D.P.7—and even then, i think I dropped it after around five issues. That was a launch that had a whole bunch of problems with it, both in terms of attracting and keeping talent on it as well as laying out a consistent vision for the books that wasn’t a detriment to exciting storytelling. I’d say looking back that STAR BRAND was likely the best, with strong art by John Romita Jr and with Jim Shooter writing a character that seemed very personal to him. (He also had the freedom to break his own rules, as he would do occasionally during that run.) But launching that line would have been a challenge for anybody. The kind of creativity that built the Marvel Universe can’t simply be machined out on demand. I do think that a lot of the Valiant launch benefitted from what Jim had learned from the New Universe and what and how it went wrong. A lot of the sensibility is similar, but the rules there weren’t quite so onerous and restrictive.

Clive Reston

Are there any local comics stores outside the NYC area that you particularly like visiting when you're in their town? What makes for an especially good comics store, for you?

I don’t travel all that much any more, Clive, next week’s Baltimore trip notwithstanding, and my needs for a comic shop have changed over the years. I have a nostalgic fondness for the sort of haphazard shithole that I frequented during my youth, where you never knew what treasure you might find in the next box. But today, I' pretty much have everything that I want, so other than the occasional flight of fancy when I buy a book on a momentary impulse, I don’t really need back issues. And as I’m ordering my books online these days, I also don’t entirely need new releases either, especially on the day of release. So these days, what I prefer is a well-curated space with a good selection and a welcoming atmosphere—not just to me but to customers in general. I think I’ve written here before that just about the best comic shop I’ve been to in recent years was a store in the Cincinnati area called UP, UP AND AWAY. I have no idea whether it’s still there or not, but it had a huge space, was set up almost like a museum, and the selection could not be beat.

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I Buy Crap?

As I’ve spoken about before, I have poor impulse control when it comes to buying stuff that catches my eye. At this point, I can afford to pick up anything that’s semi-reasonably priced, and so I do. But this week, I got a delivery that confused me. The package was in my mailbox and it was addressed to me, but I had no idea what it might have been—I didn’t recall ordering anything that would have fit into the packaging. After I opened it, I thought it might have been intended for my wife Jes, a tool for use in her pottery work. But she had no knowledge of what it was either, nor where it came from. So I’m stumped—and I’ll share the images with you. Does anybody out there have any idea what this tool is and what it’s for? (Our best guess: an oddball shoe horn.)

No idea what this is or where it came from, and I certainly didn’t pay for it.

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Behind the Curtain

Here are a pair of pages that I was inspired to share after receiving my copy of the forthcoming DC/MARVEL AMALGAM Omnibus volume this past week. I worked on a bunch of the books that are collected in it, and I also wrote an Afterword for the collection. So here are two pages by John Romita Jr for his and Keith Giffen’s THORION OF THE NEW ASGODS.

.As you can see, these pages weren’t inked, and were consequently penciled super-tightly by John. And the reason for this is that, when I inherited the project following Mark Gruenwald’s untimely passing, John had other commitments to other titles, and was only going to be able to devote so much time to THORION. As we were already right down to the deadline and none of the Amalgam books could miss shipping, I made the executive decision to reproduce the book straight from John’s tight pencils. DC Honcho Mike Carlin wasn’t really happy with this choice, a fact that he was very clear about. But this was a Marvel-produced book, and so he let me run with it. And for the era, it still turned out relatively well. The power of John’s work came through even if the lines themselves weren’t as crisp as they would have been in ink. It was doing this book and enjoying it so much that prompted John to approach me shortly thereafter wanting to be the person who worked on the relaunch of THOR, which worked out extremely well.

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Pimp My Wednesday

Two titles will await you at your local comic book retailer this coming Wednesday. No life can ever be considered complete without them both!

Ignore those first pass credit, this fourth issue of X-MEN was actually produced by Jed MacKay and swing artist Netho Diaz, with Sean Parsons handling the inking and Marte Gracia on colors. It puts a spotlight on Magik just a little bit while also bringing back not just Trevor Fitzroy and a number of other almost-forgotten characters as the new Upstarts, but also a once-prominent X-Villain that you never expected to see again. And in fact, the only reason he’s in this story is that Ryan wanted to draw him—but then the schedule caused this to be one of the issues that he had to skip over! But don’t you go skipping it!

And from Assistant Editor Martin Biro we have the first issue of his dream project, DAZZLER #1. This was a book that he pitched to me verbally just after we took over the X-titles, and while it changed a little bit from his initial vision, it’s still very much the kind of book that he was talking about. It’s written by Jason Loo and drawn by Rafael Loureiro, and it’s poppy and sparkly and fun! Jason even went so far as to compose an entire album’s worth of songs for Alison Blaire to sing on her new world tour—you’ll experience a different few each issue!

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A Comic Book On Sale 70 Years Ago Today, September 15, 1954

Back in the early 1950s, and with the worst possible timing that they could have had, creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby attempted to start their own publishing line after a decade-plus of turning out hit after hit for other publishers. At the time, publishers were beginning to drop out of the field thanks to the Anti-Comics crusade stirred up by Dr. Frederic Wertham and his cronies, so the printers, needing their pressed to be running in order to generate income, made a deal to help finance the start-up of Simon & Kirby’s new venture, Mainline Comics. It was, by all accounts, a massive failure despite the quality of the material that was created. Mainline’s books were being distributed by Leader News, who was also the distributor for the notorious EC Comics, and consequently, the Mainline books often didn’t get put on sale at all, as the crackdown on EC was happening. Eventually, the advent of the Comics Code put Mainline out of business, with both Simon and Kirby having lost a substantial investment when it went down. It severed their partnership, with Simon leaving the field to find work elsewhere while Kirby soldiered on, offering his services to the few remaining publishers. There were four Mainline titles in all: IN LOVE, a romance comic by the team that had created the genre in comics, POLICE TRAP, an attempt to create a crime comic that would be acceptable as well as commercial, FOXHOLE, a war comic, and BULLS EYE, a western series with just a hint of the super hero about it. The lead character, Bulls Eye, had been branded by Indians with a concentric circle target on his chest in his youth, which he wound up making his symbol. He’d tour the countryside as Panhandle Pete, a peddler of kitchen utensils and other exotic hardware. But when trouble came calling, he’d don a mask and a disguise and meet it as the master marksman Bulls Eye. Simon and Kirby stressed dynamic action in their work on this strip, as always, but the Comics Code often didn’t differentiate between action and violence, and so a number of the later stories were censored. Most comically, a tale entitled “Tomahawks for Two” about Bulls Eye fighting a duel with a powerful Indian warrior had all of the tomahawks whited out, leaving the two men flailing wildly at one another with empty fists. It was a high-quality, fondly-remembered series that didn’t last long and simply had the misfortune of being the wrong comic at the wrong time.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

CAPTAIN AMERICA: PATRIOT #1 was released on September 15, 2010 and was a story that I was interested in telling for a very long while, ever since I was a young reader and became aware of the retcons which established that after Steve Rogers was presumed dead towards the end of the war, two other heroes took over in the role: the Spirit of ‘76 and the Patriot. No really good reason was ever given for why the Patriot eventually hung up his shield in 1949, nor why he didn’t do anything when a new Captain America turned up a few years later in 1953. So with the CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER film in the offing and Marvel wanting to produce a swath of Cap material to take advantage of the marketing for the movie, it was the right time for me to get this project approved. The four issue series was written by Karl Kesel, who did extensive research on the period, both the real-world and the events that happened in the comics of the time, and so he was able to flesh out what began as a dopey continuity-concerned “comic about comics” into the story of an underdog hero, Jeff Mace, who was firs the Patriot and then Captain America. The artwork was provided by Mitch Breitweiser, who had done a great job on a number of projects around this time, including a CAPTAIN AMERICA series written by David Morrell, the creator of Rambo. Mitch’s artwork had a convincing real-world flavor to it, and he seemed to enjoy working in the period of the late 1940s as well. As you might expect, the book did fine, but it didn’t burn up the sales charts—it was really only of interest to a select few hardcore readers. But still, I was very happy with the end result.

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The Deathlok Chronicles

As always, we begin with a few remarks from DEATHLOK writer Gregory Wright:

Gregory Wright

The part of Siege that was SUPPOSED to be interesting was the fact that he was a sentient being who had memories but no actual feeling of what he was doing or anything. He was essentially AI made from the memories of John Kelly but couldn't really process this...it never really came through in the stories for some reason. He also had all of Michael's memories for as long as Michael was in the Deathlok cyborg...which is mentioned in this issue...and could have been fodder for a much more intriguing story. My intent with bring Siege and Timestream into the book was to give the book it's own group of characters that were created for this book. When we had the opportunity to to an Infinity Crusade crossover...I had hoped it would bring in some readers to try the book out again...especially since I had utilized Timestream to bring back the Demolisher in a couple different ways...trying to give every reader something they could enjoy...it was too late, but man Kevin's art is so good...

I think you were definitely right to start to build up a cast of characters, heroes and villains, that were part of the DEATHLOK series—that was a good instinct.

DEATHLOK #29 was the second of our two INFINITY CRUSADE tie-in stories, and like most of the other tie-ins, it didn’t really do much to boost our sales. The third INFINITY series wasn’t as red-hot as the previous two had been.

This was the last cover in the run that I colored myself. I had a very clear picture of what I wanted from it once Kevin Kobasic turned in the art, and it was easier just to do it myself than to explain to somebody else. I can recall debating right up until the last second whether or not to fill the dropshadow on the DEATHLOK logo in black. I thought it was truer to the concept to leave it open, but the logo read better from afar if the shadow was dark. In the end, visibility won out.

This issue is a lot more heavily and directly influenced by the larger INFINITY CRUSADE story that the previous chapter, taking place almost entirely in Michael Collins’ head as the Goddess tempts him, passing judgment on the many choices he had made since becoming a cyborg death machine. This permitted Greg to attempt to take all of the previous stories done by both himself and Dwayne McDuffie and try to threat them together into a consistent whole, a cohesive characterization. I don’t know how truly successful it all was, but it may have done a bit to exorcise any lingering feelings on Greg’s part that he was still operating in Dwayne’s shadow.

Kevin Kobasic continued to grow as an artist by leaps and bounds, and his work here is already much improved from his first regular issue, #26, to say nothing of his fill-in on #22. But knowing that we wanted him to do the entirety of the upcoming Luther Manning storyline, which we’d been building up to since the final page of #25, we had the lead story in this issue intentionally run short. For the back-up, we once again tapped John Hebert, who had earlier drawn issue #8, and used it to introduce our new modernized version of the Manning Deathlok, now called simply the Demolisher. I’ll have more to say about this when we get to the issues themselves, but I think we made a big tactical error here by fielding two different versions of the Manning Deathlok, the original and this updated version. It took what was already a confusing time travel story and made it even more confusing. But much of this was my own doing, having worked for so long to get access to the Manning Deathlok, I wanted to be able to show him recognizably as a cover element so as to attract those fans of the character who’d given the series a pass.

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Monofocus

As I mentioned a week back, on the spur-of-the-moment after watching a video extoling its virtues, I ordered the entire 12-volume to date set of WITCH HAT ATELIER, the manga by Kamome Shirahama. I’ve now read a couple of volumes, and it is delightful. Right off the bat, it’s beautifully and sensitively drawn and composed—the artwork is really quite amazing and distinct. And the story brings a very nice, very simple system to the rules of magic that I can appreciate and, more importantly, understand and follow. Nobody gets to just pull powers out of nowhere in this strip, you understand exactly who can do what and why at pretty much all times. The whole story has a bit of a Hayao Miyazaki flair to it, involving the lead character Coco’s journey to become a witch so as to restore her stricken mother, who was turned to stone in an early magical misadventure. It’s no wonder that the trailer for the upcoming anime adaptation has such a strong Studio Ghibli flavor to it. Good stuff.

And I was also happy to receive the third volume in Jason Shiga’s ADVENTUREGAME COMICS series, this one entitled SAMURAI VS NINJA. As with the first two volumes, it uses a specific set of instructions and simple systems to create a choose-your-own-adventure story with a number of different possible conclusions. In this one, depending upon your early decisions, you will either train as a samurai or a ninja in pursuit of getting revenge for a wrong done to you father, with each profession giving you certain specific skills that can be employed at key moments throughout the book. It’s an all-ages production, unlike Shiga’s earlier DEMON, which was quite exceptional, so you can share these books with a younger audience with perfect security.

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I wrote about this great John Cassaday cover.

And five years ago, I wrote about The Death of Bucky

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No rest for the weary, so I’m going to immediately be jumping into next week’s Newsletter directly. I’m sure that I’ll see some of you in Baltimore. As for the rest, we’ll have no interruption of services here if I can help it! So check back in a week!

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B