#153: Don't Be a Gimboid
Today is the birthday of my youngest brother, Mike. Given our age gap, he’s the brother that I know the least, given that I was out of the house and off to Marvel before he hit his teenage years. And in more recent times, he’s been the toughest to connect with as he relocated to Colorado many years ago. But like the rest of my siblings, he’s done well for himself in the field of computers and technology, married well and raised an extensive family of five kids, all of whom are far more active and physically fit than anybody from my branch of the tribe. Seriously, they’re a pretty amazing group. Anyway, Mike is now closing in on his fiftieth year, though he’s not quite there yet.
Our headline this week reminds me of another concept that crossed my mind earlier, and that’s Confidence and Paranoia. Top of this week, the senior staff of Marvel went out to lunch with former EIC Joe Quesada and his daughter Carlie. The pair were in town for the premiere of the DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN television series soon to drop on Disney+. And it was a great, very nostalgic lunch in which a broad array of topics were discussed and a bunch of former Marvel creators and editors and staff members came up. And, walking away from it, while I had a good time, I couldn’t help but wonder to myself: I’m as tight with any of these people as the various folks who came up in conversation today. What must they be saying about me when I’m not present at the table? I can’t possibly be the exception, the one person among so many others that nobody can find fault with or who hasn’t starred in an embarrassing story or exchange. It’s a question to which I don’t think I’d ever want an answer—no joy lies in that direction. But it did make me feel a hair unsettled for the rest of the afternoon.
So the answer to how to get more responses to this Newsletter every week seems to be to put a question to you folks. Message received. Got a lot of wild suggestions for possible Marvel and DC crossovers, most of which wouldn’t pass the “is this likely to sell?” test, but interesting all the same. Thanks to everybody who shared their thoughts. There were one or two ideas buried in there that actually do seem like they could be viable, so you never know in the months and years ahead.
David Brazier
Is there any run of comics you would like to see as an Epic Edition that hasn’t been published?
Not that I can think of, David, not that hasn’t already been collected in some form. And if there was, as I’ve said in the past, I’m situated in a place where I stand a better-than-average chance of being able to make it come about. Possibly the answer is something like Jack Kirby’s 2001; A SPACE ODYSSEY series from the 1970s. But even there, in a world where we’re doing ROM and MICRONAUTS collections and so forth, the fact that we don’t own the rights to reprint those stories might not be a forever proposition.
Thom Dunn
Seeing that issue of Miracleman on the spinner rack got me thinking — are we *ever* going to see another new issue of MM? It's been over a year now since the last one was released (which, iirc, was one of if not the first one that hadn't already been worked on in some form in the late 1900s). I understand that Neil Gaiman might be persona non gratis these days as well, which could further complicate things. Still, as excited as I was to see the story continue, I suppose that a further delay caused yet-another behind-the-scenes legal clusterfuck would in some ways pay homage to the comics' legacy.
At the moment, Thom, nothing particular is going on with Miracleman. Should that change in the future, you’ll no doubt hear about it.
Seastar
I wanted to ask about your big Giant Size X-Men announcement. Details probably will be more forthcoming later, but do you see it as an opportunity to change X-Men history or recontextualize it?
A bunch of people showed up this week worried that we were going to somehow be overturning huge swaths of X-Men history in this series. To which I can only tell you, Seastar: does that genuinely sound like something I’d do? It’s perfectly fine to be a little bit uneasy about the announcement, but I wouldn’t worry about the sky falling until you start to feel it hit. That project is about celebrating the past, not burying it.
Neon Frost
Do you have a costume design for a character you edited for that you played a big part in? What about one you ended up nixing?
Well, Neon, very much in the public eye at the moment is Sam Wilson’s costume as Captain America, which I was involved with crafting for the comics and which the television and films have followed relatively closely. The actual design was done by the late Carlos Pacheco, but I gave him comments and suggestions back on a few iterations until we got it to where we wanted to be. I’m trying to think of a costume design that I nixed, but the problem is that once I’ve nixed it, it never gets used, so it’s swiftly forgotten about. So nothing readily comes to mind.
Jeff Ryan
Let's talk lettering. Were there any standout pages/issues you can think of where the letterer was the stealth MVP, placing dozens of word balloons in unobstructive places while giving the reader a gentle steady flow from panel to panel?
Honestly, Jeff, this sort of thing happens quite often, so I don’t know that I have a specific instance that I can point you at. But our VC letterers, in particular Joe Caramagna, tend to handle this effortlessly every month.
Ryan
do you think Marvel could plausibly do a line of teaching copies for the handful of comics, like Testament, that might be considered for that sort of use? Perhaps using an academic publisher?
We’ve explored projects along these lines in the past, Ryan, but the financials haven’t always worked out to guarantee a long-term publishing plan.
Iioo
now that some time has passed, do you think it was a mistake to make G.O.D.S #1 oversized?
No, not really, Iioo. And in fact, I think that the series would have been received far more poorly had we tried to chop that first issue down into smaller chunks. You needed that space in order to meet and understand the characters and the world.
Ben Morse
When did the idea of being a comic book editor first click for you, Tom? Not “I want to work in comics,” but specifically the understanding of editors and that could be a path in outside of writing, drawing, etc.
It was probably my internship that did that, Ben. Before that, I had wanted to make comics but expected to be drawing them and possibly writing them. My vision of my future involved working some regular job and making comics of my own devising on a self-publishing model in my free time, at least until something happened that might allow me to enter the field professionally. But when I did my Marvel internship, it was clear almost from the jump that I possessed all of the necessary skills to do an entry level editorial job and that I was well-suited for one.
Adrian Doran
has Marvel Comics ever planned to fill in what happens to him in the journey to return the stones? There’s at least 6 stories there, plus one about his decision to “retire” - sounds like an interesting miniseries at least. Or is that considered a story for the movie division to tell?
Got it in one, Adrian. The question of what happened to Chris Evans’ Captain America during the end of AVENGERS: ENDGAME is a Studios question, and the people there will be the ones to answer it, assuming that there’s any further answer to ever be had.
David Berlanga
I picked up Fantastic Four 1 & 2, the Lee/Kirby reprint facsimiles at my LCS. They look great, and it's a fair price point. I notice issue #3 is out in March. Could this be the start of reprinting everything Stan Lee worked on with Kirby, Ditko, etc?
Probably not, David. As we’ve been doing, we’ll likely continue to reissue facsimiles of certain books when there’s an interest in them. But I don’t know that the audience is necessarily going to turn out for a random Ant-Man issue from 1962, as they would need to were we to go all-in on replicating everything. Still, most of that material is already available in one format or another.
David Lowe
Wouldn't it be better to have maybe only ten solid monthly mutant titles from proven and successful creators (plus some promising up-and-comers, of course) that sell like gangbusters because they're all top quality must-read titles instead of twice as many lower quality quota fillers? The law of diminishing returns is a real thing, as is the fact that you can't please all the people all the time, so perhaps we shouldn't be trying to serve every niche and preference with a throw it at the wall approach.
Here’s the thing, David: when I was just a reader, there were only four X-Men titles being published every month. And the consensus then was very much what you say here: it was too much, the quality suffered, why couldn’t you just go back to having only one book and make that one really good? The reason that there are so many titles in any line, not just X-Men, is that there’s an audience hungry for them. You can see it by just how many fans write to ask about their favorite mutant who isn’t presently being featured anywhere (or not being covered to the extent they’d want them to be.) And it’s not like I have a big block of quality and we slice it up for the number of books. If we had ten titles as you suggest, I would guess that the complaint would still be exactly the same (as would the sales.)
Mullet man
Hi Tom, do you know anything about this strange bootleg FF comic? https://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/comments/1iwnwdh/from_which_issue_of_fantastic_four_does_this/
Not really, Mullet. But it looks like a new story made by swiping art from previous FANTASTIC FOUR stories produced by assorted different artists, which was sometimes done in the overseas markets back then (either with permission from Marvel or without.)
Daniel C. Parmenter
The post-King Gasoline Alley by Dick Moores was the one I read growing up in the Boston Herald and while it's quite different from King's take, it was also pretty great IMO. Moores was a terrific writer and artist who could deftly balance both the lighthearted and more serious sides of the strip. A real highlight was the Rover storyline (issued by Blackthorne as a standalone book in 1985) which is honestly, one of the best runs of a continuity strip I think I've ever read. I later came to appreciate the breadth and scope of King's GA and its considerable graphic achievements, but I'll always have a soft spot for Moores' take on it.
I saw the Moores version of GASOLINE ALLEY in the newspaper growing up as well, Dan, but I was never attracted to it. It felt like a relic from some other, earlier time to me, even in the 1970s. So I’ll have to seek out that collection that you speak about and judge it for myself—I didn’t become interested in the strip until I found a substantial run on King’s original version from back in the 1920s.
Bambi
May you share how much influence someone in your role may have over Marvel Unlimited? For some context below:
In response to the everlasting Betsy/Kwannon conversation -- I can see how it may be difficult to recommend reading material to both new and old fans with how Marvel Unlimited organizes information about Betsy, Kwannon, and Psylocke as a whole.
Betsy's profile only labels her as Captain Britain without making any mention of her time as Psylocke or as an X-Man. Her listed issues only include Excalibur (Vol. 4) and forward. Kwannon's profile only includes 3 issues spread across the Krakoa era. Then there is a vague "Psylocke" profile that seems to conflate both characters and includes almost all of Betsy's history as Psylocke and Kwannon's present time as Psylocke (Krakoa and forward into From the Ashes).
I don’t oversee any of that, Bambi, but I can always reach out to the folks that do if there’s something that I think needs to be corrected. But I can understand their confusion—the history of Psylocke is a bit of a mess.
Will
Reading through some back issues and I think I may have found the earliest example of the (now staple) extra-textual recap/credits page in Savage She-Hulk #3, where it takes the form of a full page in-universe newspaper. Curious if you know any earlier examples, or have any insights here or there about them
Creators have been doing this sort of thing going all the way back to the start of the field, Will. For example, Will Eisner did this sort of thing in a bunch of places, notably in his long running newspaper insert THE SPIRIT. And MAD, back when it was a comic book before becoming a magazine also did similar stuff.
STILES
can the events that take place in "Astonishing X-Men Infinity Comic" affect or impact the plot of the physical books? I mean, the latest issue of Astonishing had some very interesting revelations about Cassandra Nova and 3K. Can we expect any hints of that in Jed Mackay's X-Men in the future?
Yes, of course they can, Stiles. It’s a part of the X-Line, after all, and produced by us. (In particular, editor Darren Shan.)
Patrick Cabahug
Okay, I am confused right without spoiling anything. How does the upcoming Dark Phoenix might have subtle effect on Stephanie Philips Phoenix run? According to Grok AI the Dark Phoenix mega issue is set in 616 Universe. Seeing the preview panels it looks like
Well, if Grok AI said it, then it must be true, eh, Patrick? Anyway, here you’re looking at some preview art out of context and getting worried about what it might mean. And the thing that will tell you that is the story itself, not some speculative article that somebody else who is similarly panicked wrote about it.
Malachi Wells
Machine Man turned up in the new Red Hulk mini, so I'd like to ask whether he is currently treated as one or two characters.
Marvel Comics #1001 (2019) on which you were the editor had a single-page story which established pretty conclusively that Peter Spalding who died in Iron Man Annual #11 was an impostor and also implied heavily (but did not state directly) that the trenchcoat-wearing Machine Man from Marvel Zombies 3 etc. was the same to the original.
Was that a deliberate retcon to separate the Nextwave-influenced incarnation of the character from the 2001, Kirby creation, or was that more of a tongue-in-cheek reference meant to be left open for interpretation by the fans? To put it otherwise, are writers/editors who use Machine man supposed to be keeping track of which version they are using?
Machine Man is one single character, Malachi. Unless, of course, somebody in the Marvel Universe builds another similar robot, as was done with X-52.
Ben Morse
Tom, totally at your discretion to run if you wish, but wanted to share with you *my* dream Marvel/DC crossover, which was brought to life by Scott Kolins back in 2007 as my going away present from the Wizard staff.
Thanks for sharing this, Ben! Not much more to say here apart from that. Scott does a pretty good classic Nova.
Bryan Stratton
The absence of the classic MASTER OF KUNG FU from Marvel’s digital and print channels is a real loss, especially considering what a creative high point it represented during its era. I know that the entire run was reprinted once in Omnibus format, and the Epic Collection got through half of it, but for most collectors, there’s no above-board way to read this series for a reasonable price.
I know that the sticking point is the licensing agreement with the Sax Rohmer estate for Fu Manchu and other associated characters. But assuming that Marvel is never willing to meet the price that they’re asking, is there anything that could be done with the originals to skirt this? Or are the issues themselves co-owned by Marvel and the Rohmer family estate? Would replacing every mention of “Fu Manchu” with the retconned “Zheng Zu” do the trick?
I’m not wild about reprints modifying the source material, but it’s not like that isn’t already standard practice, whether it’s to remove language that is no longer acceptable or just correct production mistakes present in the original material.
I tell you, Bryan, if the only way that this material can be reprinted is to do so in such an overhauled manner, then what is it that we’d even be saving at that point? So no, I don’t think that there’s any way to simply change all of the references to something else. Once you start down that rabbit hole, where do you even stop? Certainly Shang Chi’s coloration and those of other Asian characters in those stories is offensive in a way we wouldn’t do today. And there are references to other actors and other fictional characters that might also need to be adjusted. At that point, you might as well just make some new comics, so much of that vintage material are you reworking and updating and messing around with.
Off The Wall
What you see here is a page by cartoonist Tom Beland from his really great series TRUE STORY, SWEAR TO GOD, which ran as a black and white title for twenty-something issues across two runs. I really liked this strip, and so when I met Tom when he did a signing at what was then my regular comic shop in Manhattan, Jim Hanley’s Universe, I invited him to pitch projects to Marvel. He wound up writing a bunch of different things for us over the years. And at some point, he gave me this page as a gift.
On The Spinner Rack
Got some very old and very formative comic books showing up on my spinner rack this week. beginning at the top, that coverless book is my original copy of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #121 from 1975, the first issue of my subscription. You can still see where it had been folded in half for mailing. Below that is a copy of FLASH 100-PAGE SUPER-SPECTACULAR #DC-22, which was the first Flash comic I ever bought. Underneath that is my original now-coverless copy of FLASH #226 which I bought at a candy store in 1974. These coverless books I’ve replaced and upgraded over the years, but these original copies still hold some nostalgic pull for me. Below that is a post-Fourth World Jack Kirby issue of MISTER MIRACLE from when the series was retooled into a somewhat-lackluster typical super hero book. Beneath that is the second issue of the revived GREEN LANTERN CO-STARING GREEN ARROW from around 1976. Underneath that is the SUPERMAN issue of the tribute to editor Julie Schwartz project, which includes a great story by Stan Lee and Darwyn Cooke. Under that is a random issue of SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP, then an issue of FANTASTIC FORCE that I wrote back in the 1990s. And at the bottom, we have the first issue of the WOLVERINE limited series—I think this copy was left over from when I traded books through Marvel.com to get a copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #1—and an issue of Karl and Barbara Kesel’s great HAWK & DOVE series.
I Buy Crap
I love Superman, and especially particular iterations of the Man of Steel. So when McFarlane Toys announced that they would be doing a figure based on the classic 1941 Fleisher Studios SUPERMAN animated shorts, I was ready then and there to order one. The figure is maybe a bit too lantern-jawed for my tastes, but otherwise it’s a good encapsulation of that Joe Shuster-style version from those long-ago cartoons. His cape might be a hair long as well. You can judge for yourself by taking a look here.
Behind the Curtain
What you see here is a copy of a memo that I wrote to Stan Lee back in 1991 asking him to provide an introduction to what would be the 20th volume of the Marvel Masterworks line, reprinting in this case the earliest Iron Man stories. (Today, we’re closing in on there being almost 300 volumes in this line.) And yes, I id have to ask Don Heck to completely recreate an entire story that he’d originally done in 1964 for this book. I can remember him reminiscing about how he drew the original while his family was vacationing on Fire Island during that summer. Since that time, though, we’ve located the missing reproduction materials for that story, and so my rebuild hasn’t been used in decades.
Pimp My Wednesday
It’s the week that our first month-long crossover throughout the X-Line, X-MANHUNT, gets underway! And due to the need to ship seven chapters across four weeks, we’re starting out with not one, not two, but three installments right off the bat! It’s been a long time since I put together what we internally call a 1-2-3-4 crossover that runs across issues of ongoing titles, and it presents some very specific challenges. So let’s see how well I and my fellow X-editors did.
Gail Simone and Javier Garron kick things off in UNCANNY X-MEN #11, in which Xavier receives a mysterious message and lights out for parts unknown. But there’s more to his situation that a simple escape, and that means that his assorted students of old are all going to swiftly need to be on his trail.
In Part Two in NYX #9 by Collin Kelley, Jackson Lanzing and Francesco Mortarino, Charles’ first stop is Manhattan, where he’s in search of an item that he needs to complete his self-appointed mission. Unfortunately, ONE WORLD UNDER DOOM makes reacquiring that item a bit challenging—which is why the Professor turns to the mutants of NYX for assistance.
And by Part Three in STORM #6, Xavier has made his way to Atlanta, where he petitions Storm for sanctuary and assistance. But will Ororo, now a member of the Avengers, give him aid and shelter? And will her decision change once other mutants turn up, looking to take Xavier back into custody? Murewa Ayodele and Luciano Vecchio lay it all out here.
And a minor aside: I love our logo banner with the tiny Xavier racing from left to right across the issues of the storyline. It was put together by Jay Bowen of the Bullpen, who did a great job with it. I think I shared this previously, but here’s a fun trailer for the storyline that pulls most of its assets from these three issues.
A Comic Book On Sale 30 Years Ago Today, March 2, 1995
STRAY BULLETS #1 came out thirty years ago, which is a bit hard to believe. Creator David Lapham has only just risen to some prominence as the artist on Valiant’s teen team series HARBINGER a short time beforehand, and this series was a marked change from the mainstream super hero fare he’d been producing before. STRAY BULLETS was a crime series, similar in its way to Frank Miller’s SIN CITY, which tells a series of tales set at various points across a broad span of time, and which together create a tapestry effect whereby we learn more about the individual players in those stories and get to see them from multiple angles. It’s pretty great, whether read as single issues or in collected form. Lapham and his wife delivered this book soup-to-nuts, self-publishing it for much of its existence.
A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #7 first came out on March 2, 2016, nine years ago, which is a bit hard to believe. It featured the first appearance of Riri Williams. a character who would go on to appear in the WAKANDA FOREVER film and wo will be the star of the upcoming IRONHEART television series. She was created by the series team, Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato, though it was Joe Quesada who came up with the Ironheart name. In retrospect, I have to confess that I feel like the need to do CIVIL WAR II at this time did some harm to the IRON MAN series, both in the short-term in that launch artist David Marquez moved over to that project and because of where tony Stark ended up at the end of the story. But at least we were lucky enough to have put Riri into place ahead of time, so that we had a way to keep the book going even without Tony for the time being. This particular issue went through three printings as fans became interested in Riri and the fact that she was likely to become an important player in the Marvel Universe.
A Comic I Maybe Worked On A Tiny Bit That Came Out On This Date
REN & STIMPY #6 came out on March 2, 1993 and marked the first full-length story written by Dan Slott to feature Spider-Man. (Dan had written the character for a few panels in a NEW WARRIORS back-up prior to this.) It was a surprisingly successful issue that perfectly channels the spirit of the anarchic cartoon series while still capturing much of what makes the wall-crawler a great character. Now, I wasn’t the editor of REN & STIMPY, but then as now, I was somebody that Dan would bounce his story ideas off of and who would give him suggestions. Sometimes, those suggestions came down to, “Don’t do that.” In this instance, I don’t recall anything specific that I might have contributed to this story, but I certainly gave Slott feedback on it as he was coming up with it and scripting it.
More recently, my wife Jes took the opportunity to immortalize the break-out character from that long-ago story, Otto Flippa, Incan God of Ties, as a piece of pottery. Otto was the result of artist Mike Kazaleh challenging Slott with something strange—in this case, this visual scattered in among a montage of different friends and family that Spider-Man thinks about needing to save as he struggles to lift a heavy object that’s fallen atop him—and Dan rose to that challenge spectacularly. In many ways, Otto Flippa, Incan God of Ties may be the very best line that he’s ever written.
The New Warriors Chronicles
At the time that we began working on NIGHT THRASHER #20, writer Kurt Busiek let me know that he was going to be leaving the series. He’d taken it on several months earlier, during a time when, despite the enormous success of MARVELS, he was still having difficulty lining up writing projects. But now, he had more work than he could handle and something had to give. And Kurt didn’t really have any strong attachment to writing NIGHT THRASHER—it was simply an open gig that he could get and show what he could do on a mainstream super hero title. So he let me know that after co-writing this two-parter with Steve Mattsson, he’d be taking his leave.
I knew at this point that NIGHT THRASHER was on its last legs, and wasn’t long for this world if something wasn’t done quickly. But I was also still juggling the other books in this line, along with Trading Card work and additional projects, so there wasn’t a whole lot of spare bandwidth—or at least that’s what it felt like at that moment. So I just did the easy thing: I had Mattsson pitch me to take over the series solo. I don’t remember much about his pitch at all, only that it was shaky around the edges. But it was good enough for me to give the green light to. Which strikes me today as a serious dereliction of the Editor’s duty. It was up to me to keep the series going and i simply did the easiest thing. Today, I yell at younger editors for doing that.
It was all for nothing anyway. As we were working on this issue, the word came down that NIGHT THRASHER was being axed and that #21 would be the final issue. My assistant Glenn Greenberg added a mysterious sign-off to the letters page of this issue about an announcement about the book’s future to be revealed in the next issue, so we definitely knew about the cancellation by the time that we sent this issue to print.
This was a fun two-parter to go out on, and it played into Kurt’s idea of characterizing Night Thrasher and Rage as being like Batman and Robin, except that Robin can lift a city bus. The artwork was done by Dario Carrasco, who had previously filled in over on NOVA. Dario had been one of prior editor Rob Tokar’s discoveries, and he was enthusiastic and game for anything. But his actual drawing ability was still developing and with the number of titles decreasing, I didn’t really have many places where I could use him. This two-parter was I think the last thing he did for me.
Monofocus
This past week, I finally got to take in the fourth MY HERO ACADEMIA film, YOU’RE NEXT. And it was…all right. It’s a side-story to the manga featuring a new villain and a new story—in this case, a newcomer who declares himself to be the successor to All-Might and who in no way embodies his spirit. The animation quality was good, but the story itself was a little bit thin, and many of the regular MHA players were reduced to mere bit players in favor of an assortment of new characters, none of whom really connected with me. It’s been a bit of a curve of diminishing returns on the MHA films since the first one, with each successive attempt producing a slightly weaker result. It’s still a franchise that I advocate that anybody who wants to tell super hero stories watch and absorb the lessons of. This outing is merely a lesser venture.
Posted at TomBrevoort.com
Yesterday, I wrote about this issue of UNCANNY X-MEN which introduced Alpha Flight.
Five years ago, I reposted a piece on this map of the 1992 Marvel Bullpen
And ten years ago, I wrote about this not-so-great cover
The turnout last time makes me wish that I had another question that I could put to you, but I’m afraid that I don’t. So you’re on your own this week in terms of what you might wan to ask about, sorry.
Hat’s All, Folks!
Tom B
“According to Grok AI”…my god.
Hey Tom. Over in the Spider-Man arena on Reddit, there is a recurring idea that the success of the new Ultimate Spider-Man (with a married Peter Parker) is an indication that the regular 616 Peter's marriage to MJ should be reinstated, and that it is a fault of the editor(s) over there for not recognizing that and thus reaping similar sales success. I don't necessarily agree, but wondered about your thoughts about how the one book's success affects the other.