#148: In An Evil Time

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.

Ecclesiastes 9:12

Truly, we are now living in an evil time. Let’s all hope we can avoid the nets and the snares.

On a less high-falluting subject, I came across a great little pilot film this past week for an unproduced cartoon from 1968. It’s called Sally Sargent, and it can be watched in full at this link. It’s very much of a piece with the kinds of entertainment I was consuming when I was just a child, and so if the show had been picked up, I no doubt would have watched it. The design work by Iwao Takamoto is really strong, and it’s a bit less sanitized than his Scooby Doo work that would immediately follow. I’m told this short was released in theaters after it failed to sell as a television series.

And now, as always, it’s Q & A time to start things off.

JV

there are rumours that Dikto completed 1 or 2 Strange tales era Dr Strange stories - do you believe they exist somewhere?

And if they did would you publish them (as you did with that Wonderfull lost FF Kirby story a while ago)?

Who would you get to dialogue them (Mark Waid or Roger Stern would be perfect IMO) or ink them?

I don’t believe that those stories actually exist, JV—or if they did, Ditko destroyed them or repurposed them into Charlton stories in the dim and distant past. Everything else would depend on what they amounted to. At the time he left Marvel, Ditko was doing almost all of his drawing in the inks, so his pencils weren’t much for somebody else to work from.

Zack

Looking back on it, any thoughts on Spider - Man Fast Lane?

This was the famous series of anti-Marijuana insert comics that ran in titles throughout the Marvel line around 1999. While my Assistant Editor at the time, Gregg Schigiel, drew those books, I didn’t really have anything to do with them, Zack, and so don’t have much to say. But there was an oral history of the project over at the old Comic Alliance page. Be warned, though, that none of the images appear to be hosted there any longer.

Gwen

Stephanie said that she’s waiting for Marvel to give her greenlight to talk about PHOENIX future plans. May we know when that gonna be?

You guys really need to stop doing this, Gwen. If there’s a question that Stephanie has for me, she can always ask it to me directly. And I’m sure that she’s coordinating with PHOENIX editor Annalise Bissa about what to say about plans when.

Alison Cabot

Tom, is there a moment in the comics that stuck with you?

There are tons of them, Alison. I’m afraid that you’re going to have to narrow down what you’re looking for a little bit for me here. But I fill up this feature every week with all sorts of comics moments that stuck.

J. Kevin Carrier

Is there a modern equivalent to Buscema, a penciller who routinely just does breakdowns instead of full pencils? Or is that a thing, like "Marvel-style" plotting, that has gone out of fashion?

Not really, Kevin. These days, because almost everything is done as a full script, there isn’t the same need for artists who are excellent at visual storytelling of the sort that ruled the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, most pencilers these days work up very tight pencils, and the average inker doesn’t possess the skills of a Tom Palmer that might let them carry an incomplete art job to a polished finish. That isn’t everyone ,of course, but it is a lot of the current crop of artists.

Neon Frost

One follow up question on the Krakoa era: you said you were concerned that we’re still talking about the Krakoa era. Some books like NYX lean more heavily on it while others not so much. Is the goal to phase it out entirely or will it still have some presence? I’m guessing it’ll evolve into something else more through NYX than be entirely removed but I’d love your thoughts on it.

There aren’t any plans to phase Krakoa out entirely, Neon. It’s always going to be a part of X-Men history. But at a certain point, the titles do need to move beyond it. After all, how often do we talk about Utopia these days?

Seastar

Is there anything about the ongoing solos that you can share right now about their long-term futures? I know it's only been 6 months for Phoenix and less than that for Storm, but as early signs go, anything you can say that may suggest these being long-term fixtures for the characters?

When there’s something to say, Seastar, then something will be said. But I appreciate your interest on this matter. And as always, if you want any of these books to stick around, you need to buy it consistently and encourage other readers to do the same.

STILES

Tom, how do retcons usually work within an office? Do the editors suggest it or is it something the writers suggest? And in what kind of circumstances do you feel that a retcon crosses the line and you need to intervene?

Retcons are just stories, Stiles, so they come up the way any other story ideas do: some from the writers, some from the editors, some from other people. And they’re evaluated on their storytelling potential more than anything else. Speaking for myself, I don’t have a lot of patience for a story that only exists to overturn some other earlier story without anything to offer beyond that. And I’d prevent any retcon (or any story) that I thought did harm to the characters or that didn’t deliver story value for the audience.

Malachi Wells

Back when G.O.D.S. was coming out, you mentioned that the current Living Tribunal is not the Adam Warlock from "Thanos: The Infinity Revelation". Is that because Jim Starlin's "Thanos: Infinity Noun" saga is not in-continuity, or the traditional Living Tribunal had already resumed his position in another story (Secret Wars 2015, Ewing's Ultimates 2)?

Those THANOS graphic novels sit in their own little side continuity, Malachi. If the Marvel Universe is Earth-616, think of them as Earth-618 or something—close, but not the mainstream universe.

Jeff Ryan

You mentioned Klaus Janson's tremendous inks being overlooked due to the a-list pencilers he works with: what other inker(s) do you think are underpraised?

Just off the top of my head, i would say Tom Palmer, Jeff. As in the case of Klaus, it’s not about his inks being overlooked due to the quality of the pencils he worked on so much as it is his own artistic abilities being overlooked because he’s typically operating within the shadow of those more well-regarded pencilers, just as Klaus has been.

Branden

is Storm Eternity itself the same way that Jean is Phoenix, or is she a host/connected to Eternity?

Storm is a host for Eternity, as will become clear in future issues of STORM, Branden.

Callie

I'm just wondering, are there any plans for more stories with the G.O.D.S. characters other than small cameos in books like spectacular spider-men? Did that book do everything you and jon hoped it would, and then it could be left to fall into obscurity? did it simply not sell well enough to warrant those characters taking the spotlight again?

There are such plans, Callie, yes! And in fact, I’m working on one such project right this moment.

Zenon

If you have plans for any development of Cyclops' powers; Doesn't it necessarily have to be in regular history? (I would really like to) - Is there any plans for him to appear in a (What If...?) or in some Marvel stories besides X-MEN this year or next.

What sorts of developments are you looking for here, Zenon? I feel like Cyclops’ powers are relatively straightforward, and that they don’t really lend themselves to other applications such as his optic blasts coming out of his ears or whatever. And he’s perfectly formidable as he is, so I don’t see any great reason to change him materially. As for appearing elsewhere, we’re just starting to talk about a potential CYCLOPS limited series, so we’ll see whether that comes to pass in the days ahead.

Glen Cadigan

As long as we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of characters who first appeared in Giant-Size X-Men # 1, under the bylaws of Absolute Parity and Equal Promotion, will Illyana Rasputin receive her own title, and will it receive more or less promotion than other X-titles?

She already has, Glen—where’ve you been? MAGIK is on sale now—get it, get it, GET IT!

CG

Youre a senior editor: "Also, when you say “put a great writer and a great artist on it”, we first need to have a great writer and a great artist that truly want to do it."

You literally just have to ask them. But like you said its not a priority for your X-Office. Good to know.

See, this snarkiness is not helpful, CG. And you clearly don’t quite grasp how this all works. I ask creators about coming onto a project all the time and get turned down by them if they aren’t interested in the idea or are just busy or whatever. And yes, doing a CAPTAIN BRITAIN project isn’t a priority for me right this second—but I maintain that my earlier point is also true, that there aren’t a ton of absolute top-flight creators who are simply dying for a chance to write such a series.

Dylan D

Do you have any plans to publish new X-Men stories from classic X writers such as Louise Simonson, Fabian Nicieza, Ann Nocenti, Scott Lobdell, Larry Hama, and Peter David?

Currently there is no X book on the market for me.

I find that last point hard to believe, Dylan, given the broad range of styles of storytelling we’ve been attempting to employ across the line. Maybe you just haven’t sampled enough. In any case, Ann just wrote a WHAT IF story featuring Rogue, and Fabian is working on a story for X-FORCE #300, so creators of those earlier generations are still in the mix.

Chris Sutcliffe

I'd love to know the mechanics of how a big event comes together behind the scenes. Take the upcoming One World Under Doom: Ryan North is leading the event, but how much say does he have on what the spin-offs will be?

Do the other offices pitch ideas towards this event or does the even organiser reach out to different offices with ideas? Is your team editing the event because you look after Fantastic Four, or does it sit somewhere else?

That's a lot of questions but it boils down to: How does a big event that spans multiple offices get pulled together internally?

You’re asking a very involved question here, Chris. It’s something I’ve done a bunch of pieces about over at my Blog over the years. But I’ll try to break things all down for you.

In terms of tie-ins, the central writer—in this case Ryan North—may come in with ideas as to what some of those could be. But most often, they come out of discussions with other creators and other writers about where and how they might like to fit into the story being developed. At this link I posted the text of the Planning Sheet for CIVIL WAR, which broke that story down for editors and creators and solicited their ideas for tie-in stories. It still works very much along these lines today. And yes, I am editing ONE WORLD UNDER DOOM, both because it grows out of FANTASTIC FOUR and because Ryan is the one writing it. (Also, I’ve done a lot of these over the years and have more experience at doing them than anybody else in the field.)

Often, we wind up with more ideas for projects than we can execute, so then they get evaluated on the basis of which ones seem the most commercial, the most likely to sell, which ones strike people as the coolest and most interesting, which ones represent a chance that we want to take or an opportunity to do something that expands the scope of the publishing line. And every time, certain ideas don’t make it to fruition. Also, there are occasions when we feel like a particular Event story isn’t yet having enough of a “footprint” across the line so that it feels like an MU event. In those instances, we may prevail upon the editors of specific titles to find a way to build a tie-in for their worlds.

Alex Redwing

Do you know where the Avengers origin monologue came from? I remember it vividly in Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes and it’s currently in the recap page for Mackay’s Avengers but I haven’t seen a clear answer on where it came from.

You already got your answer to this, Alex, but to reiterate it for everybody else: a longer version of that boiler plate copy (what we refer to as “Top Copy” internally, as it used to run at the tops of the splash pages) was generated in 1974 and ran on the book on and off for decades. The idea was to sum up the essence of the series and its characters in a compact way so that readers who might be coming to a title for the first time ever would have a fighting chance of understanding the story they were reading and who everybody was.

Isaac Kelley

So how much do crossovers move the needle? There are what, 3 different types of crossover, broadly speaking? Two books coming together for one story, a crossover between a "family" of titles such as Batman or X-Men, and a linewide event with tie-in titles. Does the market respond to each differently?

I’d say that it’s pretty obvious that crossovers often do move the needle, Isaac, as can be proven by just how often everybody across all companies tends to do them. And it’s not a stable situation, what works one time won’t necessarily perform the same way the next time you try it, so all of the styles that you list have worked differently depending on the specifics of the story being told and whether it captured the zeitgeist of that moment.

Mark Coale

Since the Waid/Ringo FF has come up a couple times this week, a question about the 9 cent issue. Whose idea was it to put those issues in the newspaper the week of Baltimore Comicon? You? Waid? Marc Nathan? I was in artists alley at the show that year and I remember lots of people loving the idea

That was entirely the doing of Marc Nathan, the organizer of the Baltimore Comic Convention, which was then a relatively young show. He arranged to purchase 200,000 copies of a boutique version of that issue with a cover dedicated to promoting the show, and had them bundled into the local Sunday newspaper like a circular. I don’t know how well it did for him in terms of increasing attendance that year, but he seemed to be happy with the result. And I liked that it got our material in front of the eyeballs of a lot of people who wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.

William Outlaw

What happened with the tease of Miracleman coming to the Marvel Universe in Timeless 2021? It seems like Marvel has been flirting with that for a while.

That ending to TIMELESS wasn’t a tease of Miracleman coming to the Marvel Universe, William. It was a tease of MIRACLEMAN: THE SILVER AGE coming out—which it did shortly thereafter.

Bob Fifteen

I know synergy with the film and TV adaptations is a complicated subject, but having (finally) seen Agatha All Along and how the script and Patti LuPone's performance brought Lilia to life, I immediately went looking for details on the original comic character... and found that she was much less interesting, an antagonist for just one issue, fifty years ago.

Which leads on to the question: when Disney's adaptations do something special with a new or very minor character, how and when does that feed back into the comics?

I'm sure the decision to introduce, revive or reinvent them will be down to individual editors and writers who see a spark there - but are they reacting at the same time as the rest of the audience? Or does something like 'Alligator Loki' potentially start taking shape at Marvel before the Loki series is out there with the public?

Again here, Bob, you’re asking a question for which there isn’t one definitive answer. sometimes, we know about such an appearance ahead of time and see the value of steering into something similar in our Publishing world (occasionally in advance of whatever film or show we’re talking about.) In other instances, it’s the reaction of the audience to a story or performance that inspires creators to want to follow suit in the comics they’re crafting.

Dan Stringer

Very excited to see Alpha Flight appearing in the upcoming X-Men 11. As part of a regular follow-up question, any chance they get their own spotlight soon?

As a side note, I recently got a copy of X-Men 251 in a "storage war" type purchase of early 80s comics which (like many) is one of my favorite covers. Do you have any particular cover that resonates with you, either from your work or your youth?

I think the problem with Alpha Flight, Dan, is that for all that they’ve been around for a very long time, they were never more interesting than they were in their first few appearances as guest-stars, when not a whole lot was known about them. And since then, try as we might, we haven’t been able to launch an ALPHA FLIGHT project that has legs to it. So right now, my game plan is to set them up so that they can be featured across the Marvel Universe, not even solely relegated to the X-titles. And eventually, the hope is that we’ll do enough cool things with them that interest in seeing them in a project of their own will grow among the audience. But I feel like if we try to rush there, the book won’t have the necessary staying power again.

And I have a whole section of my Blog that’s dedicated to Great Covers, so it’s difficult to boil my tastes down to just one single cover image, sorry.

Michael Baumann

when will we get to hear more about the next Marvel cosmic project? And can we expect Phoenix to be involved?

Quite possibly, you’ve already heard about it, Michael!

Firebat

just out of curiosity, when we get phrases or terms like "in all of existence" in the comics these days, is this usually meant to convey in all of the universe or multiverse?

Depends entirely on the context of what is being talked about, Firebat. And sometimes, it’s simply hyperbole.

---

Off The Wall

What you see here is a page from UNLIMITED ACCESS #2, the Marvel and DC crossover series that I edited. The main character, Access, had bene created in the MARVEL VS DC crossover series as the only person who could travel between the Marvel and DC Universes at will. There had already been one previous Access project, ALL ACCESS, published by DC, but there really wasn’t all that much to the character. he was mainly a prop to allow for crossovers between other characters that you actually cared about. Writer Karl Kesel and I, with the help of Mike Carlin, set out to try to change that, and though I can’t say that we were entirely successful, it did make for a fun ride. We expanded Access’ powers, allowing him to travel to the past and the future, which allowed for some fun interactions between characters from the two universe. Which leads us to this page. This is the point at which the original Justice League of America enters the adventure. In fact, this was the revised original JLA line-up because at this time, Wonder Woman, Superman and batman had been removed from the foundation of the JLA in DC Continuity. Nevertheless, this was really the first time I got to play with the characters who meant so much to me in my childhood. And so I asked artist Pat Olliffe if I could buy this page from him, something that I wasn’t really comfortable about asking. As I recall, Pat then sent me the page gratis, which was extremely nice of him, and he wouldn’t take any payment for it. Since then, it’s been framed and up on the long hall wall where a bevy of art is displayed in my home. The page was inked by the great Al Williamson. It’s always bothered me that I didn’t get Al to fix Green Lantern’s chest insignia, which is here missing the bottom bar on the lantern symbol. Anyway, I did get to play with all of these characters again, but at that moment I couldn’t know that would be the case. So getting this page marked a career milestone.

---

Behind the Curtain

Here’s another unused cover for you to gaze at.

When we were getting ready to launch the new series of FANTASTIC FOUR after a number of years away, in order to prime the pump we did a set of variant covers from throughout FF history. This piece by Mike and Laura Allred was commissioned to be one of them, based on the famous issue of WHAT IF in which, in a storytelling choice that defied all reason, the original members of the Marvel Bullpen became the Fantastic Four. It’s a really nice piece that captures the insane essence of that crazy story, but upon reflection, there were concerns about using the likenesses of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Sol Brodsky and Flo Steinberg without permission, and so we had to scrap the piece. Kind of a shame, but I couldn’t argue with the concern.

---

Pimp My Wednesday

Here we go again! Hopefully, somebody will be talking about some of these releases decades from now, too!

This cover to X-MEN #10 is an absolute favorite, and not just because I did the sketch for it:

But clearly, Ryan Stegman improved on my layout and concept on every conceivable level. Anyway, this issue takes the X-Men back to Alaska and a confrontation with O.N.E. in the wake of their Raid on Graymalkin Prison. It’s a very fun confrontation, with some hopefully-unexpected mutants making a reappearance and an absolutely badass performance on the part of Cyclops. It’s by Jed MacKay and Netho Diaz.

And Assistant Editor Martin Biro wraps up his five-book WHAT IF project with a final release that reveals what would have happened had Galactus chosen Ghost-spider to be his herald. Kalinda Vazquez writes and Daniel Picciotto illustrates!

---

A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

The THOR ANNUAL was released on January 29, 2000 and is a pretty good package all around. It was part of a long run on the series written by Dan Jurgens that has mostly been overlooked and forgotten contemporarily. But it was a very solid-performing title all throughout Dan’s tenure, and this Annual was no exception. The lead story picked up on story threads from the main series concerning the Thunder God’s then-current human host Jake Olson, and was illustrated in full by Jerry Ordway, who had worked alongside Dan for years on the Superman titles. But the real prize here is the back-up story. Knowing that we were going to be moving into a big story arc featuring Thanos (back before he showed up in a comic book every five seconds) and Mangog, we kicked off that saga her in a lead-in tale that was fully painted in what I can only call a HEAVY METAL style by artist Jose Ladronn. This was, I believe, the first place where Ladronn’s fully-realized style was seen, and from here he went on to do the INHUMANS project with Carlos Pacheco. I had wanted to get him to do more, an entire project in that style, but over the years it simply has never come together. So this Annual is something of a secret gem—if you come across a copy out in the world, snatch it up!

---

The New Warriors Chronicles

This issue of NOVA, #13, was i think the only time in my editorial run when I used the triangle-pattern background that prior editor Rob Tokar had devised. He saw it as a way to make the New Warriors titles pop out from everything else on the stands. I mostly thought it created more visual clutter to no great effect. But this cover looked so empty without it that I went ahead and used it. After all these years, I can’t remember whether this cover had been started on Tokar’s watch or if it was entirely mine. I tend to think the former, as if it had been me, I likely would have made sure at the concept stage that we didn’t need that background.

Anyway, like all of the Warriors books when I inherited them, NOVA was also running way behind schedule, so this was the second issue in a row where guest-artist Dario Carrasco Jr. filled in for Chris Marrinan, who only handled the script. Looking over it today, it’s a perfectly functional Marvel action comic, with a lot of action and gritted-teeth emotion (pretty much the only emotional response that was considered cool back in 1994) but also relatively thin. Stuff is happening, plot is moving forward, but the treatment is very surface. Consequently, Nova himself doesn’t have a lot of personality to distinguish him from any other super hero of the day, Marvel or not.

As another effort to increase sales, Chris and Tokar had worked out a build-up to a big story, DEATHSTORM, and that’s what the topstrap copy is all about. In the story, Nova has received a premonition of an extinction event that’s coming in the near future, the Deathstorm, from which only he can protect the Earth. The hope was to excite readers with this build-up, but I don’t know that it made a whole lot of difference in the performance of the series. A year into the run, most fans had made up their minds about whether they were going to be reading NOVA or not, and there wasn’t enough of a simple hook to this story to grab new readers or lure back lapsed ones. That said, Chris was entirely game and he worked hard, taking every note that I threw at him and working to make the series the kind of book that he wanted. As i said last time, I knew that the series wasn’t firing on all cylinders, but just as I didn’t have the bandwidth yet to focus on repairing NIGHT THRASHER, I wasn’t ready to clean house on NOVA either. But I could tell that something had to be done if the book was going to have a chance of surviving. This was all going on just as the speculator bubble of the early 1990s had burst, and so sales in general were beginning to freefall throughout the industry. A number of companies bowed out at this point, and even more individual series. It would be up to me to prevent that from happening to NOVA. And as history tells us, at that moment, i wasn’t up to the task. But more about that in the near future.

---

Monofocus

I’ve spoken before about the “Chasing the Dragon” feeling that comic book readers of my age often feel. By this point, we’ve read so many comics over the course of our lifetimes that we’re really jonesing for some new thing that can stand apart from the pack and hit the sweet spot of comic book enjoyment. For me, in recent months, that something is the just-released FORTUNE AND GLORY: THE MUSICAL by Brian Bendis and Bill Walko. It’s a spiritual sequel to Brian’s earlier FORTUNE AND GLORY project in which he told he story of his earliest adventures in and around Hollywood. This sequel focuses specifically on the time that Brian was asked to work with Julie Taymor on the SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK Broadway musical. But it’s a lot more than that. Brian is an accomplished raconteur, and this is perhaps his most revelatory work, recounting his earliest encounters with the medium of comics and how they guided the trajectory of his life. It’s strong autobiographical storytelling, and given that Brian and I are the same age, all of his experiences resonated with my own that were happening elsewhere at the same time (though nobody has ever asked me to work on a musical.) Brian had been serializing the story on his Squarespace Newsletter while the book was in production, so I read a little bit of it there. But I held off on really diving into it in a big way until I could read the entire thing front-to-back. I won’t say that it’s his best work, because Brian is good at a lot of different things. But it’s a very personal work, with some very uplifting messages about creativity buried within it, and I dug it a whole lot. I also find it quite funny that Brian got artist Bill Walko to pretty much draw his old caricature and Bill’s better at it. Thought it was great, go get it!

---

Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I wrote about The Last Shield Story

Five years ago, I wrote about the strange parody of the comic book industry that was a short-lived feature in SICK magazine, Ego-Man!

And ten years ago, I wrote about editor Julie Schwartz’s favorite Great Cover that he had commissioned.

---

All right, everybody, that’s where I’m going to leave you off this time. So stay on your toes, avoid those nets and snares and hopefully most of us can make it back here again in a week for more. I’ll be keeping a light on for you!

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B