#131: Off The Wall

Okay, so the Baltimore Comic Convention was last weekend, a very fine show devoted almost entirely to comic books rather than assorted other media that have been spawned from them. I went down for an appearance on behalf of the Hero Initiative, and managed to raise just under $500.00 in donations in exchange for my worthless signature on a variety of comics I’d worked on and other items (including a few huge posters and at least two Captain America shields.)

But I was really there to attend the yearly Ringo Awards, named in honor of the great artist Mike Wieringo, with whom I worked on FANTASTIC FOUR and assorted other projects. I was there to present the Dick Giordano Humanitarian Award—an award given out to somebody in the field who is not just an excellent artist of creator, but who has spent a considerable amount of effort teaching and mentoring the generations of creators and would-be creators who came after them. This year’s recipient was the entirely-deserving Klaus Janson.

Of much less significant note, I was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Hero Initiative (or, as I like to think of it, a “You’re Old and You’ve Been Doing This Too Long, Get Lost!” award). Either way, it was very nice of them. After the ceremony, Klaus and I hung out at the bar for a bit with our awards, hoping that they’d get us a ten percent discount. They didn’t. Mark Waid was supposed to be the presenter of my award, but as he got sick right before the show and had to beg off, Fabian Nicieza stepped up to fill in for him with scant preparation time. It was perhaps some of the best fiction writing that Fabian has ever done that he peppered his introduction with.

On a less spotlight-enshrined note, I spent a good portion of the proceedings comparing notes with DC Group Editor Brittany Holzherr, whom I happened to be seated next to. The day to day workings of DC since they relocated to the west coast have been something of a mystery to me, so it was interesting to learn a few of the specifics. Apparently, Brian Cunningham swiped my weekly Reading Circle format for DC’s Book Club—I’d send over a Cease & Desist, but it’s too late, Brian’s moved over to Ghost Machine.

I also had a minor celebrity encounter on my way to dinner on Friday night. As I waited for the elevator to arrive, I was joined by another couple, who turned out to be actor John Wesley Shipp and his companion. I was a big fan of the FLASH television show that Shipp had starred in back in 1990, but reasoning that he was now “off the clock” as I was, I didn’t bring it up at all, and instead engaged in some trivial conversation with the pair about the city of Baltimore. Shipp was very charming. But all the way on the ride down, I was thinking, “I’m taking this elevator with the Flash!”

But enough about me and my adventures, let’s talk about you. And specifically, the questions that you’ve been asking me over the past two weeks. Last week’s stopgap Newsletter couldn’t get to any of these since it was written and posted before they came in, so hopefully you questioners have been able to be patient. Never fear, enlightenment awaits just seconds from now!

Stephen

Are there any other similar manga books you’ve enjoyed recently?

The real hook on that question is “recently”, Stephen. I’ve read a decent selection of manga over the years, but typically not when it’s been brand new (for all that I have the SHONEN JUMP and VIZ apps on my trusty iPad.) So I mainly seem to dabble in vintage material more than the current, though that’s not always the case. As I reported here a while back, I read the finale of MY HERO ACADEMIA in real time, and I also enjoyed the spin-off series VIGILANTES during its run. And I’ve kept up with both SHOW-HA SHOTEN and SAKAMOTO DAYS, though I’m a little bit behind on the latter. I also revisited MAISON IKKOKU through the recently-released omnibus volumes. And I read the entirety of ZIPANG, most of it in French as no English translation of the entire series has yet been released.

Alison Cabot

Tom, is the cast of Exceptional X-Men already complete, or do you have any plans to add more characters, such as new characters or characters that we already know about?

This is kind of a wait and see question, Alison. But at least for the moment, Iceman is the only cast addition that we’re really talking about right now.

Michael Perlman

The thing you received in the mail looks like it may be a corn on the cob corn peeler (per Google Image Search). https://www.amazon.com/Peeler-Stainless-stripper-Kernel-Remover/dp/B0DCJJX59F

It certainly is, Michael, thanks to you and all of the other folks who figured this out for me. No idea what I’m going to do with the stupid thing—maybe I’ll make it a prize of some sort.

JV

Lady Deathstrike and Lord Dark Wind were introduced outside of the X-men books (Daredevil and Alpha Flight respectively) - why were such important characters related to his origin introduced outside of the X- titles? Did Claremont or Byrne write the backstory (Byrne seems to have featured Lord Dark wind in his elsewhere fan fiction series as well as part of Weapon X)?

Was this established and just given to other writers to pick up (like Mantle picking up plot threads after taking over Alpha Flight from Byrne)? Denny O'Neil seems involved as well as he edited Alpha Flight and wrote the DD issues in question.

I don’t have any firsthand knowledge about this, JV, so I can only give you some speculation. But I think that Bill Mantlo and his editor went ahead and introduced them in ALPHA FLIGHT all on their own—I don’t believe that either Chris or John were involved in their creation. Once becoming aware of it, however, Chris folded Deathstryke into his ongoing narrative as he tended to do.

Jeff Ryan

As a longtime fans, I've loved the "creator reunion" limited series, such as Ron Marz and Ron Lim on Silver Surfer. If you had your druthers (and also the Infinity Gauntlet) to get one last story out of past creators, what title and which creators would it be?

I don’t really know, Jeff, I have enough problems getting work out of the living. The first thing that comes to mind, which doesn’t really fulfill the parameters of your question, would have been to have gotten John Byrne to finish THE LAST GALACTUS STORY. He agreed to do that for myself and Glenn Greenberg back in the 1990s, with Ron Lim set to illustrate the remaining two chapters, but after a lot of legwork had been done on our part, he simply changed his mind and dropped it. I suspect it delighted him to run us around fruitlessly.

Ray Cornwall

Looking at that Deathlok cover, did the words "The End...?" hurt sales? If I'm a casual reader, I might think that such wording on a cover means that this is the last issue of the series.

That’s a good point, Ray. I don’t believe there was any particular evidence of that happening, but it’s not impossible, Speaking for myself as a reader, I was far more likely to buy the final issue of a discontinued series to see just how everything was wrapped up.

Jason Colby

You promised early on that there would be a good number of them, and you did not dissemble! Looking through the list of titles I do notice that nearly all of them star a female character. All of them, in fact - other than the Logan-focused Wolverine titles. Just curious if the choice to lean that way was a conscious one, or if you and the other editors and writers chose individual characters for individual reasons and it just happened to turn out that way.

Pretty much just luck of the draw, Jason. One of the things that I did when we were just starting out was to poll the comic shop retailers as to which characters among the X-Cast were the biggest draws in their stores—which ones would regularly attract sales. The aggregated list that I compiled from their feedback played a part in deciding just who we were going to feature in our initial solo projects. And it turns out that a lot of the most popular X-Men are women.

X of Alex

Have you read or seen any One Piece, and what, if anything, do you think about it?

I read the first 100 chapters of ONE PIECE while SHONEN JUMP had them available for free during the premiere of the live action series on Netflix, Alex. And I enjoyed them well enough—but not enough to continue on through the remaining 900 chapters at that point. I did really enjoy the live action version, and as that’s how I first came to the material, that’s become something of my default in terms of the way I’d like to experience it.

STILES

I'd like to know how you decided it was time to put "Timeless" aside and embrace "Timeslide".

This was a pretty simple process, Stiles. When we were setting up this year’s year-end book, I was told that TIMELESS was beginning to show its age, and our sales department suggested changing up the title. And since the story was going to focus on Cable, making it TIMESLIDE this time seemed as though it would fulfill that request while still sounding similar enough to maintain the connection.

Cory Sinnwell

I was actually curious on a subject I don’t think you’ve touched on, and that’s crowd funding projects (your Kickstarters, Zoop, etc.) I find it reminds me of almost an artists alley situation (which is nice for those of us away from cons in flyover country) or the small press boom of the eighties. Have you ever perused any of these? Supported any projects? Or even found some talent that way? Personally I’ve found some great things, and have noticed quite a few breakouts on their way coming up, and am curious on your thoughts of the matter.

I’ve supported and purchased things through crowd-funding efforts such as these, Cory, yes. But I’ve also been stiffed on enough projects to eye many of them skeptically, especially if I’m not familiar with the creators involved. So it’s not the best way to get onto my radar as a new creator—not unless you have the finished project that you can show me.

Grrregory

I have a question about Blood Hunt logic. I’m enjoying it, but it seems like some of the superheroes are just killing vampires while other ones are fretting over the fact that they are victims and Spider-Man seems to know that if he can kill the vampire higher up on the food chain the turned victims will be back to normal. Was this up to the individual writers or something? Or maybe the ones that have decided to kill to survive are fair game?

We did a bunch of research at the start of BLOOD HUNT, Grrregory (by which I mean that our Handbook Research Team did) and defined the rules that govern vampires within the Marvel Universe. The thing that makes this tricky is that there are a number of rules that apply to some vampires, not all of them. But as long as a given set of creators were operating within those parameters, then it was fine with me and up to them and their editor to determine just how homicidal to have their heroes be towards the vamps they were fighting.

Leigh Hunt

Hi Tom, for the first time in many a year I picked up some variant covers of your X-Men #1s - namely the Scott Koblish ones with the millions of X-characters on. I'm not even particularly an X-nerd but I still pored over those covers trying to spot all my obscure favourites. Probably not your department but any chance the interconnected version of this gorgeous artwork might come out as a poster. Do posters still exist in this modern world?

We do still produce posters, Leigh. And that piece would certainly make for a great one. There’s only really one problem: it’s just so long that it would cost a lot to produce, and that cost would be passed on to the consumer in the cover price of the thing. Doesn’t mean that we won’t do it at some point, but it didn’t seem immediately affordable to us.

Arnie

Storm has replaced Thor on the Avengers but why can't they be on the team at the same time? They're both the only gods and friends on the avengers, now she is left only with her ex-husband and people she barely knows.

You’d kind of have to direct these questions to AVENGERS editor Wil Moss and maybe writer Jed MacKay. It’s nothing to do with me at this stage. I will say, though, that Thor was always going to have to depart the Avengers roster at around this time due to stuff that Al Ewing has coming up in IMMORTAL THOR, so his exit isn’t because of Storm’s arrival.

Martin

Should we expect any big announcements for NYCC?

I’m sure there’ll be a few, Martin, yes.

Alex

X-men & Uncanny X-Men has gotten more than one issue per month at least once, there's a possibility of it happening to exceptional x-men too, maybe next year

it isn’t impossible, Alex. But at least at the outset, that seemed like simply too much X-MEN to ask readers to keep up with all at once. Let’s let EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN finds its legs first before we begin asking it to run at that accelerated pace.

Joe West

As we get closer to the MLB postseason, and since the X-Men are obviously big baseball fans, who do you think are the favorite baseball teams of each of the flagship leaders (Rogue, Cyclops, Emma+Kate)? Feel free to throw in any other character(s) you feel passionately about lol

This is totally outside of my area of expertise, Joe, so I don’t think that I can give you any sort of worthwhile answer on this. But maybe some of our readers will have some suggestions that make sense. (Kate, I believe, has been established as a Cubs fan, though that may simply be mischievous slander.)

CG

You left out X-Force again

No, I didn’t, CG. I only list the books that are coming directly out of my office, which means titles that are edited by myself, Associate Editor Annalise Bissa or Assistant Editor Martin Biro. If I also did all of the books that were coming out from X-Editors Mark Basso and Darren Shan, I’d be here writing that portion all night. I do make an exception for when X-titles are launching, since I want all eyes on those at that moment. And it certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t want you picking up X-FORCE (or X-FACTOR, or WOLVERINE, or MYSTIQUE, etc.) In fact, heck, buy two copies, one for a friend!

Ray Cornwall

Do you have a favorite memory from Baltimore?

See above, Ray. Unless you mean in years past. In that case, I’d tell you that I quite miss the Geppi Entertainment Museum that used to be nearby and which displayed a massive collection of old comics and related memorabilia. I would make it a point to visit and take in the new exhibits every time I went down that way.

Evan “Cool Guy”

When you bring in an outside writer who usually works in other mediums, do you impart any tips, tricks, rules, guidelines etc. about writing for comics and specifically Marvel Comics?

There’s always a bit of a learning curve when somebody comes to our medium from another, Evan. And so editor Sarah Brunstad put together a briefing document called “Welcome to Comics” in which she laid out a lot of the terminology and described the differences for newcomers. I believe I posted a bunch of it in Newsletters past.

JV

I read an old fanzine blurb on how Kurt Busiek was planning a Madame Masque mini series - any memory of what this would have been about? I guess this was on his time on Avengers?

Kurt answered this for you in the comments, JV. But just so that everybody else can read it easily:

Kurt Busiek

That was waaaay back. To give you an idea how far back, it fell apart when Denny O'Neil abruptly left Marvel and went back to DC. And I asked Jerry Ordway if he'd be interested in drawing it, but he was tied up inking CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. Way back.

It was about Whitney realizing she wasn't in good mental health (as indicated, back then, by how she had been a good-bad girl with a tragic past up until Bill Mantlo left the book, and then a stone killer in the Michelinie run. Her good side had become aware of what her bad side had been doing, and she'd sought out therapy. Her therapist told her she needed to avoid stress, but the only way out Whitney could see was to bring down the Maggia, which she'd been building up as her bad side.

To do that, she'd need help, so she sought out Iron Man. And Iron Man had to figure out how to help her dismantle a worldwide crime organization while struggling to hold on to her fragile mental health and prove to herself she could overcome her issues.

Which was very much not what the therapist had suggested.

I used bits of it in her AVENGERS appearances, but that was so much later that it all took a different form. I still wound up putting her back in the role of "bad girl with a good heart, and no one knows what she'll do next." But as I recall, the next time she showed up she was a stone killer again.

Ah well. Comics!

Craig Byrne

Got a question that can also give you an excuse to plug: I've really been enjoying the new X-FACTOR series and was curious what went into the selection process for the members of the team? Were there any that have surprised you with how well they've been handled?

Also, you don't have to tell us what, but is the return of any other classic X-book on the horizon for 2025?

I couldn’t really tell you, Craig. While I made a few suggestions at the outset, the ultimate line-up of that series was determined by Mark Russell and his editor, Darren Shan. I simply blessed it, making sure that it didn’t conflict with character uses being planned elsewhere.

And I would say that yes, you’ll see some other classic X-titles return again as 2024 becomes 2025.

Iioo

What was the process of getting Declan Shalvey to do Mystique? Like, I'm assuming he's not currently on a Marvel contract, so it wasn't just spreading the pitch around the office. Did you specifically reach out to him suggesting a Mystique project?

My answer here is the same as the above, Iioo: I really couldn’t say, as it was editor Darren Shan who thought to approach Declan about doing the MYSTIQUE project when I handed it to him to develop, and he was the one who’s had most of the conversations with Declan about it. But yes, the idea for doing a MYSTIQUE series came from us.

Kevin F

X-Force #10 will have a legacy numbering of X-Force #300. Will it be a special edition, double-sized, or just a regular issue?

It’ll be a larger-than-normal anniversary issue, Kevin.

Stephen Nulty

In Spider-Man specifically: One More Day/Brand New Day, or more to the point our knowledge of the behind the scenes decisions, broke any sense of investment in will they won't they because we know the answer will always be they won't, they can't. So readers have no reason to get invested in Peter and MJ since they'll just break up again, and any other love interest will soon be unceremoniously put on a bus.

In reference to Superman and Lois, I personally think the idea that marriage kills romantic tension to be the result of an inability to write romance that isn't based in conflict and push and pull, also infidelity is not the only external source of drama for a committed relationship. Oh, and in 2024, Clark maintaining 2 identities with Lois smacks of gaslighting and red flags, it's not fun and romantic.

Lastly, will they won't they is an inherently flawed concept. When it works, it's only in stories that end novels/films/TV, it only works if they do or they don't. You can't maintain it for 80+ years of stories and expect the audience to continue to care. Consummating a relationship doesn't kill romantic tension, a difficult pregnancy and terrorists at the Nakatomi Plaza taking away your leads and them developing a toxic dislike of each other kills romantic tension (Moonlighting).

TLDR, people who want to write compelling relationships/drama between settled characters can do it, they just have to imagine it's possible.

See, I don’t know that I can agree with your premise, Stephen. I don’t think that the one and only outcome for the success of any romantic relationship has to be marriage. So your point that good stories can be told about married people isn’t wrong. However, the question in this instance is about these specific characters—and there, I tend to think that those properties are better served with their main characters unattached. You can disagree, of course—that’s what makes horse races. But trying to apply broad rules to a specific situation isn’t going to get you anywhere in this argument. I’m not worried about any possible story about a married person being all that it can be, I’m worried about a specific individual character, Spider-Man.

Tho mas

In the xmen community rogue and gambit or jean and scott are endgame , is there or will there be such a someone for wolverine in the marvel universe?

Kind of the same answer that I gave above, Thomas. I don’t know that Wolverine is best served in the same sort of relationship that might work for Rogue and Gambit or Cyclops and Phoenix. Perhaps there could be, but we’re not really there yet.

Jeff Ryan

Which of the four FF members do you think is the most challenging to craft a storyline for? Who has traditionally gotten short-sheeted?

I don’t know that any one of the main four is especially difficult to create stories for, Jeff. But I’d have to say that historically, it’s typically been Sue who’s gotten the short end of the stick in terms of individual focus and development. Though these days, writers are more likely to overlook Johnny.

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Off The Wall

Hey, I’ve got a new category for you here! Inspired by last week’s walk through the sketchbook I was gifted for my 20th anniversary of working at Marvel, I realized that I have a bunch of cool original artwork around here that it might be fun to share and talk about. So that’s what we’re going to do under this heading.

And to begin with, what you see here on the right side of the above image is the one and only Jack Kirby page that I own. It’s from FANTASTIC FOUR #76, and I bought it at the San Diego Comic Con in 1991 for $40.00—which is a mind-boggling figure given how much Jack’s pages fetch these days. I’d always wanted a page of Kirby’s from FANTASTIC FOUR, and this was the most affordable page that was available. At the time, four bones was some real money to me still—I was only making around $18,000 a year as an Associate Editor at the time. But while it doesn’t have any costumes or villains or actions, it is a great example of Jack’s ability to make a quiet scene interesting, and his innate design and compositional sense. The page was inked by the great Joe Sinnott, my favorite Kirby inker who was also a hell of a nice person. Now, on the left, I’ve also got a copy of the original pencils for this page. I came by it through a fluke. In the late 1990s, I was working with Greg Theakston on a couple of Kirby-related projects, and one day he brought a stack of photocopies of Jack’s originals to the Marvel offices. This page, my page, was among them, and I took the opportunity to run off a set of copies of everything he had. Displayed side-by-side, you can see where Sinnott embellished what Kirby had done, most times for the better, but occasionally losing a bit of specificity that the King had put down. Joe especially put some work into prettying up both Sue and Crystal’s faces from Kirby’s more stylized facial treatments.

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I Buy Crap

So a few weeks back, as reported in this very space, I bought a copy of UNCANNY X-MEN #94. And that got me to thinking…

And so, even though I must have a copy of this story in a number of different formats already (I first read it when it was reprinted years later in MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION), I decided to pick up a copy of UNCANNY X-MEN #93, the final reprint issue of the series. Looking at it up close, the cover reproduction is almost criminal, with most of Quicksilver’s face dropping out. I’m surprised that they let it go to press like that. But as a reprint book, X-MEN wasn’t given a whole lot of attention during this time, I expect. A fun little discovery is that the final panel indicates that this story will be wrapped up in GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1—which it wasn’t. My guess is that somebody had forgotten that the final chapter appeared in an issue of AVENGERS and ran 20 pages rather than in X-MEN where the lead story was only 15 pages long (to allow for the Origins of the X-Men back-up feature.) So instead of the finale of this story, GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 included three of those Origins back-ups, two of them featuring characters that weren’t really featured in the main new story. So it goes. The back portion of this issue, as was the case on many of these reprint issues, included one of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s shot 5-page suspense stories. It’s probably the best-drawn thing in the issue, honestly.

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Behind the Curtain

A quick one this time, to compensate for the otherwise-long Newsletter:

.A bunch of years ago, I awarded Russell T. Davies, the writer and showrunner of DOCTOR WHO and many other things a No-Prize. That’s my handwriting on the envelope above. And years afterwards, he posted the above on his Instagram account.

I’ve also awarded No-Prizes to both David Tennant and Toby Whithouse as well, though not to Steven Moffat when he came by.

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Pimp My Wednesday

The beat don’t stop, so here are a number of new treasures just waiting for you at your local fine comic book retailer this Wednesday!

STORM #1 by Murewa Ayodele and Lucas Werneck kicks off the solo career of Earth’s Mightiest Mutant. I think that it’s a surprising book and that some people will be taken aback by it a little bit—in part because Murewa isn’t yet a household name. But if nothing else, you can rest easy knowing that Lucas smashed it on the artwork, so it’s a great-looking debut! And it’s the last of our FROM THE ASHES debuts—from here on in, we’re simply going to be doing X-titles.

And from the world of crossovers you never thought would ever happen, ULTRAMAN X AVENGERS releases its second issue. Kyle Higgins, Mat Groom and Francesco Manna showcase the Tokusatsu world of Ultraman preparing for a visit from the Devourer of Worlds, Galactus! But fortunately, they’ve got some assistance in the form of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to back them up.

And over in X-MEN #5 we’ve got the extra-spectacular and visually-resplendent Psychic Rescue In Progress, as Psylocke and Kid Omega descend into the psyche of the x-gene activated man the team rescued in issue #2. This one does some fun things with the form, and also includes the first revelations as to what is behind what’s been building in the background these past few months. Jed MacKay wrote it, and Ryan Stegman went to town on the visuals.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

September 29, 1999 was a good day for me to put out comic books, as I had three really excellent issues come out on that day. The first of them was this, AVENGERS #1 1/2, which purported to be a new issue of the title that would have come out in-between the original AVENGERS #1 and #2 from 1963. It had a bit of a strange origin. Some time earlier, for AVENGERS FOREVER #4, we were asked to generate four variant covers for the issue—”Four for FOREVER”. And we did so, with contributions from Frank Quitely, John Buscema, Jeff Smith and regular FOREVER artist Carlos Pacheco. But because assistant editor Gregg Schigiel and I were concerned about a few of these artists making the deadline, we went ahead and commissioned five cover pieces. The fifth was by Bruce Timm and depicted the original Avengers roster. (It’s included in AVENGERS #1 1/2 as the bonus pin-up.) In the end, we didn’t wind up needing it, but in speaking with Bruce, Gregg had gotten him thinking about producing a story in the style of those early AVENGERS issues, which would give him an opportunity to play Jack Kirby a little bit. This seemed like a great idea for a one-shot, and with Bruce’s involvement, it was easy for me to get approved. We paired Timm up with writer Roger Stern, who was working in our office at the time and who was intimately familiar with the history of the team. I think the only disagreement the two creators had was over sound effects—Bruce didn’t like a few of Roger’s choices and wound up doing his own as a part of the art. Not a big deal from my point of view. And it’s a great, fun little story depicting a conflict between the brand-new Avengers team and the early Doctor Doom. In later years, Bruce has expressed some dissatisfaction with his work on it, feeling that he didn’t quite capture the Kirby spirit the way he wanted to. But it’s a great-looking book, and an entertaining read. Gregg and I also pulled out all of the stops to make the rest of the package period-appropriate, with some ad pastiches pulled from CRAZY Magazine, house ads for other titles that were bimonthly at the same time and so could have had a similar 1/2 issue in the cover month of October 1963, a fake letters page with a Special Announcements section cribbed from that period, and more. In terms of modern ads, we limited ourselves to a spot for X-MEN: CHILDREN OF THE ATOM, which was a throwback to the earliest X-MEN days, and Graffiti Designs’ reissues of the 1960s Marvel T-Shirts. When we wound up short an ad right at deadline, Gregg sat down and pounded out new text for an ancient ad stream-of-consciousness, producing hands down the funniest thing in the issue. You can read it for yourself at Gregg’s website here. One mishap that we weren’t able to avoid was the inclusion of the Anti-Drug comic “Fast Lane” in the center of the book (which was ironically drawn by Gregg.) We had arranged to get this issue excluded from the list of titles in which it was to be run, but somehow somebody along the way messed up and the insert was there in the printed copies of the book. It didn’t hurt the reading experience in any material way, but we certainly weren’t happy about it.

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Another Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

AVENGERS #22, the climactic part to our big “Ultron Unlimited” storyline, also came out on September 29, 1999. Secrets Behind The Comics: the limited palate approach to this cover was suggested to me by editor Ruben Diaz. I had been struggling to come up with a color approach that really worked—coloring the piece in representative colors just didn’t have the necessary impact—and Ruben suggested the red color scheme to me. One of the key things that Kurt Busiek and I tried to do during our time on AVENGERS was to rehabilitate the team’s two biggest villains, Kang and Ultron. Both had appeared in some killer stories, but over the previous decade or two, they had been allowed to appear as second-stringers in a series of encounters that diminished their impact as big-level threats. We had already largely accomplished Kang’s rehabilitation with AVENGERS FOREVER, and now it was time for us to address Ultron. George Perez, who had drawn some of the seminal Ultron stories in his first tenure on the series, was of immense help in making this one work, as we intended to pit the team against a veritable army of secondary Ultrons along the way—and George, of course, drew every single one of them. This was also where we brought Justice’s crisis of confidence to a head, having him be the one who worked out that Ultron’s adamantium body could be disintegrated by Antarctic Vibranium, the “anti-metal”. But in particular, I remember how excited I became as Kurt and I talked through the story and we hit on the obvious-but-never-before-revealed idea that, just as Ultron had used Wonder Man’s brain patterns to create the Vision and the Wasp’s brain patterns to create Jocasta, Hank Pym had used his own brain patterns in creating Ultron. This made Ultron a dark reflection of that troubled Avenger, and made him a much more personal symbol of Hank’s own mental problems. The catharsis felt when Giant-Man pummels Ultron into a wreck, a stone canister of Antarctic Vibranium in each oversized hand, was especially thrilling. But the moment that really stuck with people—the one that’s still quoted back to us all the time by reads who enjoyed this run—is when the battle-damaged Avengers break into Ultron’s main control room, looking torn up and pissed as hell, and Thor intones, “Ultron. We would have words with thee.” This was one of those issues where absolutely everything comes together just perfectly, likely the best single issue in that run.

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Yet Another Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

On that same day, September 29, 1999, the issue of WIZARD magazine for that month dropped, which included this #0 issue of CAPTAIN MARVEL as a freebie. This was a pretty key strategy, as Captain Marvel had never had a huge fan following, so getting readers to sample the book was paramount. But the character had drawn some interest during AVENGERS FOREVER, where he was set up as a future Avenger who was bonded with Rick Jones just as his father had been before him, and Carlos Pacheco had designed him a sweet new look. Given the success of FOREVER, everybody was interested in launching something out of the end of it, and that wound up being this new CAPTAIN MARVEL series. We must have done something right, as the book ran for 60 issues across two volumes. It also represented the return of writer Peter David to Marvel following his acrimonious dismissal from INCREDIBLE HULK a couple of years earlier. Realizing that Peter had a real affinity for both Rick Jones and his wife Marlo, I used that as my in to get him on board with doing the new series—that and permitting him to do his own thing with the book tonally. Which meant that there was a lot of humor along the way, never entirely at the expense of the drama though occasionally coming pretty close. It was a smart, dumb book. The artwork on the series was done by Chris Cross, who had previously drawn SLINGERS. His work was kinetic and energetic, with a certain cartoony appeal to it, and while he’d occasionally sacrifice storytelling for image impact, it was well within my tolerances for that sort of thing. We started the book under the gun, though, requiring a couple of fill-ins early on. Anyway, this #0 was an all-new story that set up Genis and Rick in their new roles and led directly into the new #1 a short while later. And I don’t know why we didn’t use the actual AVENGERS FOREVER logo on this cover—my only guess looking at it now was that we thought that the regular AVENGERS logo would be more of a draw for readers at that moment.

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The Deathlok Chronicles

As usual, let’s kick off with a few comments from DEATHLOK writer Gregory Wright:

Gregory Wright

I just have to say I HATE white covers. HATE THEM. But this particular one really really worked for me all all levels. Kevin did a great job with the design and you colored it perfect. I also think the logo works as well as the cover copy, which is white.

I really liked writing this issue. I'm not sure it came across to the readers that both Michael and John Kelly were accusing THEMSELVES within the sequences or not. I really liked getting Michael to come to terms with who he has become and why. It was good for me to have to go back and make sense of all the stories we did and how Michaels own POV of himself changed. I'm not sure if by this point we had ben told the book only had so many more issues or not, but I know I felt the need to get as much done as I could...so the Demolisher came into play a bit earlier than I really wanted...plus I was really keen to use GODWULF and the TVA...so I concocted this story with 2 versions of the Manning Deathlok because I wanted to do both...in retrospect...it would have been smarter to choose one. Sigh. Kevin’s work is just so good here. And one of the things I enjoyed writing the most was the interaction between Tracy and her sister and Nick as the realization that they just can't stay together is hitting home, hard.

White covers always work, Greg, as I expect you know. But I get it. I have a similar feeling about primary yellow covers, even though they always work as well. As I remember things, we didn’t know that the series was ending until we’d gotten started on the Luther Manning four-parter that closed it out, so here we’d have simply been trying to right the ship and stop the bleeding of sales.

We also got a comment from DEATHLOK artist Kevin Kobasic, so I’m printing that here as well:

Keviemetal

That Deathlok #29 cover is one of my favorite things I ever did, it’s my convention banner now. I was trying to mimic the crazy expressive lines of French comic artist Phillip Druillet. I can’t thank you enough tor the bold choice to leave the trade dress open, and you were also right to fill in the drop shadow. Thank you again for the most kind words.

And thanks for all of your work on the book all those years ago. If that cover is any good at all, it’s because you made it so.

A brief detour this time out as we approach the end of the DEATHLOK series. The book was still doing well enough, apparently, that it got a second Annual. But this one came with a catch: the concept for the 1993 Marvel Annuals was that each one would introduce a brand new character, in the hopes that some of them would go on to become figures of prominence. That really didn’t happen in most of the cases—Genis, the Captain Marvel of the earlier piece, was likely the most noteworthy character to come out of this initiative. What was worse, DC decided to do the exact same thing that year, so their Bloodlines Annuals also introduced a new pack of never-wases. They did probably score the best overall, though, with the introduction of Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s Hitman, who carried a well-regarded title for several years. Anyway, by this point, Marvel Trading Cards were a big deal, so each of the 1993 Annuals also included a rookie trading card of the new character. Consequently, the books needed to be polybagged to contain the card, which caused some difficulties with the covers. The finished product, sealed, looked like this:

Even without the polybag, this cover suffers from the necessary placement of the UPC code—it looks as though our new guy is chewing on it.

Anyway, with Greg Wright busy with other things and not really in the headspace to create another new character, I needed a writer for this Annual. And despite the many hours I and the others of my generation complained about the nepotism through which different Marvel editors would give one another assignments, I wound up being a hypocrite and doing the exact same thing. The author of this issue was Evan Skolnick, who was then working as a line editor for Marvel primarily in Bobbie Chase’s Midnight Sons office. Evan was a good friend of mine, one of the people I had interned for back in the day, and he harbored a desire to write as well. So I let him debut his character Tracer, a bounty hunter who pursued super heroes, in this story, which set him against Deathlok. John Hebert, who had filled in on the title earlier, did the artwork. It’s a perfectly fine story, but not one that made any impact on anyone. And in fact, I don’t believe that Tracer has been seen since.

Greg did write two other back-up stories for this book. The first was the one and only solo story to star Siege, which was illustrated by Steven Butler. It’s a pretty good outing, though nothing especially memorable (and in fact, I’d forgotten all about it until I cracked this issue for this piece.) Greg’s other story was a quickie Deathlok tale illustrated by Kirk Jarvinen, whom I ran into while speaking with Jack Kirby at the San Diego Comic Con that year. I hired him for this based on opportunity, and he did a very nice job on it.

So it’s a perfectly adequate Annual, but not really anything outstanding.

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I wrote about the 1988 MAZINGER Graphic Novel put out by First Comics.

Five years ago, I wrote about the memorable Marvel-inspired mess that is FLY MAN #35.

And ten years ago, I wrote about the cover to X-MEN #17.

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All right, I’m about to get on a flight for a secret Marvel mission, but I should be back in plenty of time to pound out another one of these things for you all next week. Until then, be well and keep your powder dry!

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B