#165: Optimism
I think it goes without saying for anybody who reads this feature that I’m a relatively pessimistic person in general. Some might say dour. In my experience, chaos is apt to prevail, and indifference and apathy are likely to win out over positive thinking and virtue. This may explain why I like my super heroes to have a built in sense of optimism to them. I don’t need stories to explain to me how harsh and terrible the world can be—I see enough of that in real life. So I’ve always tended to lean towards characters who display an inherent positivity and hope for the future, whether that be Superman, the Flash, the Fantastic Four, Doctor Who or Space Battleship Yamato.
Consequently, I’m pretty jazzed about this coming July, which is shaping up to be about the most optimistic super hero film season in history, between James Gunn’s SUPERMAN and Matt Shakman’s FANTASTIC 4: FIRST STEPS. And given the state of the world and the overall slide of civilization backwards towards the Dark Ages, I suspect this is something that a lot of people could really use. Hope! A heroic ideal! People with power doing the right thing for ultimately altruistic reasons! I have no idea how well either of these two films may perform—it’s completely possible that they’ll both bomb big time. But I hope not—and either way, I’m looking forward to enjoying them.
In other news, I’m about to make my first cover appearance on a DC publication.
Thanks to Matt Fraction and Steve Lieber, I’m among the attendees at this bout between Jimmy Olsen and a ferocious beastie on the cover to the collected edition of the duo’s truly fun SUPERMAN’S PAL JIMMY OLSEN limited series.
As you can see, I was seated next to Mark Waid right there on the back cover. Mark bet a few bones on the cub reporter, but I figured that the smart money was on the red-skinned demon with the tusks. So you might check out a copy whenit’s released in a few months and see whether or not I came out ahead.
I also received a big package from TwoMorrows with copies of their latest releases of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, BACK ISSUE, COMIC BOOK CREATOR and ALTER EGO, fine publications one and all. TwoMorrows does great work in the world of comic book history, and they’ve had a tough time of it since Diamond distribution declared bankruptcy while owing them a boatload of cash. So I’d ask everybody to take a look around their website and see if there might not be something that catches your attention. I’ve been a regular reader since their inception, and I can attest to the care and quality they put into each and every book and magazine they produce.
And now it’s time for the Peanut Gallery to have its say!
Chris Sutcliffe
I notice that older comics tend to show definitions for things that are not explained in more modern issues: the SHIELD acronym, what the Raft is, what SITREP means, etc.
Is this kind of thing decided as a group -- "we should stop explaining SHIELD because people saw the movie" -- or on a case-by-case basis that eventually aligns across the line?
I think it’s case-by-case, Chris, and even editor by editor. Speaking for myself, I’d tend to clarify abbreviations when the meaning of what is being talked about isn’t immediately clear—such as stating that O*N*E* is the Office of National Emergency in the X-Books. But I don’t know that I’d feel a need to explain SITREP.
Callie
When/why is the choice made to take an adjective out of a title? While there are still plenty of uncannies, amazings, and so on in marvel's roster, I feel like there are a handful of adjectiveless series' over the last few years like Ackerman's Iron Man and Krakoa's X-Men that, at least initially seemed like kinda weird choices to take out that invincible or uncanny or other adjectives. X-Men later justified this with Red, Immortal, and now Exceptional and Uncanny, but I'm wondering why an editor might make that initial choice. Is it just simplicity? Do sales do better on adjectiveless titles?
I think this is simply a matter of trying to differentiate one run from the next, Callie. it certainly isn’t any statement on the quality of the material. Spencer Ackerman’s IRON MAN is no more or less invincible than Gerry Duggan’s was, but calling the book simply IRON MAN helps to distinguish it visually from the earlier era.
Jeff Ryan
NJ Transit is on strike. What would be your preferred superpowered way to get to the office: Quicksilver superspeed, a Krakoa gate, Nightcrawler teleporting, the Fantasticar?
I don’t want to have to work that hard, Jeff, so probably a Krakoan gate would be the best option from among those you list. TARDIS is also an acceptable choice.
Mark Paglia
Last week you mentioned that you don't like giving every background character superpowers, which I 100% agree with. Do you have any similar preferences for changing an existing hero's powers? I'm thinking of my beloved Doug Ramsey's recent upgrade to Revelation, and I'm curious to see how different he will be from Cypher and how his stories change as a result.
I don’t really mind changing a character’s powers, Mark, though I haven’t always liked every development of this sort with every character. In the case of Doug Ramsey, though, you won’t have long to wait to get a sense of just what he can do, as he’s featured prominently in the upcoming X-MEN #19.
Mike
Does the Marvel office consider the possibility of readers buying a series just to keep a consecutive run going, even if they don’t particularly like the story (ASM for example)? Or is it looked past because it only matters that it sells? I happen to think it’s a small part of the internet complaining.
To me, it’s a relatively binary equation, Mike. It’s no for me to conjecture why somebody might choose to pick up an issue of a given series, and you’re right, there are definitely those fans who feel compelled not to leave holes in their runs. I’ve done that from time to time as well. But if you’re advocating that we should be changing story direction for those people, that’s where you lose me. If they’re going to buy the book either way, whether they like it or hate it, then there isn’t any real motivation to push it more in the direction they would enjoy. We’re making the sale either way, right? We don’t do stories specifically to piss off our readers, but if we’re looking to attract people to a particular title, that’s primarily going to be people who aren’t already following it, right?
Mike Hermanson
Can you talk a bit about the Legion of Super Heroes? I don't collect physical copies of many comics but LSH has a special place in my heart for some reason. What did you like and dislike?
Well, I’m not the biggest Legion of Super-Heroes fan in the world, Mike, so I don’t know that I can necessarily sell their virtues to you. But I think the readers who do love the Legion love it in part because it’s got a wide diversity of characters—there’s somebody for almost any reader to latch on to. Additionally, the futuristic setting tends towards the positive, for all that there’s still danger and adventure to be had, and that can be appealing in much the same way that STAR TREK is appealing. And at certain times, the book has been illustrated by very strong, very progressive artists such as Dave Cockrum or Keith Giffen, so it’s looked excellent and cutting edge as well.
Michael Cross
Any comments or maybe a future series about looking back at Marvel in 1990 and the launches that went on there? Would have been early in your formative years as an editor - and my formative years as a reader. It seems to me that the titles introduced that year - reboots and new characters alike have persisted pretty well long term (with some ups and downs). New Warriors, Darkhawk, Sleepwalker, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ghost Rider. McFarlane's spider-man, Jim Lee's x-men, Liefeld on New Mutants. Anyway feels like a fertile exciting time at Marvel. Maybe nostalgia is just hitting me hard today.
I’m sure that I’ll talk about some of that material from time to time, Michael, but I don’t know that I’ve got a series about it in me. Most of that was happening relatively far away from my office, so while I was a spectator to events, I was often a pretty remote one.
David Lowe
How does Marvel assess the different levels of content and the age groups they're aimed at. For example, I read Sabretooth: The Dead Don't Talk, and it's far more violent and graphic (decapitations, maiming, disembowelling, eye removal, vivisection, etc.) than the Blood Hunt Red Band series, but it's not a Red Band book and it's rated T+ with no warnings. Wolverine and Deadpool books seem to default to Parental Advisory even if they're not always especially graphic. Is the rating set for a title level or for each individual issue?
Our ratings are settled for a series, David, rather than a specific individual issue. So while a particular issue of, say, DEADPOOL, may not be violent or lurid enough to justify the Parental Advisory rating, on the average the expectation is that we’re going to hit those thresholds more often than not.
Christopher Krayer
I feel like you skipped a week of Pimp My Wednesday and are two weeks ahead now. My shop has all these issues coming out not this Wednesday but next, 5/28. Or have I just not noticed after reading for over 120 weeks in a row that you pimp in the future?
You are correct, Christopher, I wound up doubling up on a vey short week by accident, resulting in us being slightly ahead of the curve. So I’ll try to get that adjusted.
Bob Budiansky
Even a broken clock is right two times a day! (When I was Spidey EIC, I set a very low bar for myself, Tom.)
You were right considerably more often than that, Bob, even if I didn’t always think so at the time.
Santiago Porro
I wanted to ask about the Guardians of the Galaxy. Their status is confusing since their title ended last year. Nova and Rocket appear in Phoenix without mention of the team. Hercules is in Avengers Assemble, and again, there's no mention of the Guardians or Noh-varr. Now we're seeing Starlord and Nova in the marketing for Imperial, but no other member of the Guardians... so, I need to ask. Does the team exist anymore? Is there an official decision made about this? Will Imperial give me an answer or is this an editorial choice to assume the team has disbanded since their title was cancelled and no comic is going to address it?
Until information appears in a story, Santiago, nothing is “official.” so everything else is simply speculation. But this wouldn’t be the first time that those characters had drifted apart once their current mission had been accomplished.
Ben Morse
Tom, do you think Ben Reilly circa Clone Saga worked for New Warriors in a way Peter could not at the time? Reading it as a kid my sense was definitely Peter was an adult while Ben skewed at most mid-20s.
I don’t know, Ben, maybe? To me, I always felt like Ben was too old for the New Warriors, too—both because he’s meant to be the same age as Peter, and because he’d spent five years living hard on the road. In terms of generations, he seemed like he belonged to a previous generation of heroes than the rest of the Warriors.
Ray Cornwall
there was a point in which Marv Wolfman and George Perez changed the name of the New Teen Titans to the New Titans. When I saw the logo for the New Warriors this week, I thought the “New” was rather small. Was there ever consideration for renaming the team to give it a boost? Maybe not “Warriors” (I’m assuming you’d have some sort of problems there) but something else? Actually, Scarlet Spider and his Amazing Friends might have been a cool name…
We looked into the possibility of changing the name of NEW WARRIORS to simply THE WARRIORS on a couple of occasions, Ray, but the trademark to that title wasn’t available, so it was a non-starter. And calling the book …AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS would have effectively turned the rest of the cast into sidekicks.
Andrew Albrecht
Anything you can tease/share about Jen? I know she’s in imperial and getting her own one shot! Anything on her love life? Her and Jack of Hearts are a great couple in the last two runs by Rainbow Rowell
This is what the comics are for, Andrew! But I don’t know that Jen is going to have a whole lot of time for romance during IMPERIAL.
James Rhodes
Tom, how does Marvel decide which licensed products to promote. Disney has the rights to Indiana Jones, Buffy, and X-Files which have all had comics series in the past. Indiana Jones is the most wanted Marvel omnibus in this year's poll. Does general fan interest drive what series are made or is it a push based on what IP Disney want to promote for upcoming movies/shows?
It’s a complicated thing, James, but it essentially boils down to what properties we think we can do well with and make a profit with in comic book publishing, and which properties we’re successfully able to make a deal to license and adapt. Even if Marvel wanted to do Indiana Jones or Buffy or whatever, we aren’t the only ones who have to be on board both with the idea in general and the specifics of what we might want to do. So you need to have all of the stakeholders’ interests align.
B.L. Blankenship
What comics are you currently reading that you enjoy most, Tom?
That’s a bit of a loaded question, B.L. And I feel like the Monofocus section gives you a pretty good idea of when some comic especially sticks out to me. But I don’t really have a ready-made list.
Pame BC
I just saw Luciano Vecchio's Hellfire Vigil designs, and I was so happy to see he did designs for characters we haven't seen so far in the FTA era, specifically my two favorite mutants (and couple), Rictor and Shatterstar, so I was wondering does this mean they're going to be showing up in the Vigil issue? And if not, any chances they might get to show up in another comic soon?
In terms of the VIGIL, Pame, it’s possible they’ll be in it, but not as big front-and-center characters, sorry, And beyond that, only time will tell.
Money Broke a Nail
What pushes the X-Office to do sustained pushes for certain characters like Magik or Cable, versus say the Monet-s and Synch-s of the world who gained a lot of momentum only to take minimal roles in this current era? In a franchise whose main Black male ironically had to be grabbed from the distant future, is there an effort to develop roles for characters like Third Eye, Bedlam, Gentle, Shola, etc?
I don’t know that I’d characterize our publishing a CABLE limited series and a MAGIK series as a “sustained push”, Money. But in general, I put forward projects that interest or excite me, and that creators have expressed an interest in or have a story for, and that we think will perform well in the marketplace. I don’t know that anybody’s even brought up Third Eye or Shola with me in the course of the last year, but we’ve seen Bedlam in X-MEN and Gentle in STORM. That said, none of those four strike me as being characters who could carry a series as of yet.
Jordan L
When filling out the rosters for new books in the X-line, how does your office keep track of available characters and their current status quo? I'm imagining a giant spreadsheet.
At the moment, the rosters are pretty well decided, Jordan, but I do have a large master spreadsheet of all mutants that was compiled for my by the Handbook Research Team, so I’ll consult that from time to time when there’s a question. Typically, though, different creators express an interest in a character, and then it’s a question of whether that character fits the story in question and whether they’re in play already in some other circumstance in some other project.
TD Mollusk
You’ve written many times about why some ancillary books are or are not involved in larger crossovers. But how do you decide when a “big” story should *not* lead to larger crossovers?
For example, Kurt Busiek & co’s Kang Dynasty in AVENGERS (v3) should have had worldwide impact, but was essentially siloed off in this single title; even the solo Avengers books didn’t tie into that year+ storyline. Another example could be Rick Remender’s UNCANNY AVENGERS; while the Red Skull plot and Havok’s unity speech created ripples beyond the book, the cataclysmic events of the Apocalypse Twins/Kang plots did not.
I like both stories as they are and don’t necessarily think crossovers or casual references in other books would improve them. It just struck me as odd that some huge stories seem to live alone and others interact with the larger comic line.
In cases where a big story doesn’t lead to a crossover across the line, TD, that typically tends to indicate that there isn’t a strong desire for it to among the leadership. And speaking for myself, I don’t think “Kang Dynasty” would have been improved by having dozens of books all attempt to operate under Kang’s crushing rule for six months. Not every big story needs to impact on every title.
Neil Cohen
As a long-time editor on the Avengers, what did you think of Jim Shooter's runs on the book? I just got the Epic Collection of his second run, and remember when the issues came out it wasn't as good as his first one (I started buying with issue 158). But looking back at his first run, he had the trope of the overpowered villain either defeating themselves (Graviton, Korvac) or the Avengers lucking out (Nefaria, Ultron) though the stories were good.
I thought Jim’s first run was really terrific, Neil, and I was woefully disappointed by his second run, which wound up doing some lasting damage.
branden
I understand that she's currently being featured in West Coast Avengers, but seeing that Firestar is going to be at the Vigil has me curious - might we see more of her in the X-Sphere in the future?
And speaking of the vigil, is it going to be used similarly to the Hellfire Galas of the past, and hint at upcoming storylines for the line?
I’d be open to using Firestar more in the X-line if the opportunity arose, branden, but at the moment she’s being actively featured in WEST COAST AVENGERS, and there are dozens of other characters in the X-World that I could use instead. And yes, we’ll definitely see some hints towards events to come in the VIGIL, although that isn’t really its primary purpose.
Plymouth
1 thing that bothered me a lot about Krakoa was that sometimes people and relationships went a certain way and sometimes people didn't take the time to explain the why. Rogue and Gambit's relationship on Krakoa I didn't think was always taken seriously by the writers, so I want to say thanks to Gail Simone for writing them amazing and to you for picking her. Through her writing, I understand what they see in each other and why they work. I think another pairing that could use some of that is Cyclops and the Phoenix. I don't think Krakoa did a good job picking up on where things left off between them when they finally reunited again. Is that a relationship we can expect to see get some of that focus?
I think that most character relationships are dynamic, Plymouth, which means that they aren’t always going to be treated in exactly the same way. In the case of Scott and Jean, as somebody pointed out in the comments, there’s a pretty key story about them featured in GIANT-SIZE DARK PHOENIX SAGA #1 in a few weeks. It’s an extremely stripped down version of my “grand unifying theory” concerning those characters’ relationships, so on that level it’s the key to everything, at least while I’m editing the line.
Seastar
Merle and New Orleans have really come to life in your new X-Men books. Can we expect those locations and bases of operations to stick around? I think there's something really nice about giving X-Men teams their own territories and niches. Also, you once said that Magneto's old volcano base was a suggestion you had for the Jed MacKay X-Men team. Can I ask what drew you to that idea?
I can’t speak for what will happen after me, Seastar, but for the foreseeable future, we’re going to be sticking around Merle and New Orleans. In terms of that old Magneto base, I wanted that particular group of X-Men to be a strike team, effectively mutant first responders, so setting them up in a base where they could live and train and hone their skills as a unit seemed to be a decent idea. And I read that story back when I was buying the book, so I was familiar with it as a cool location that hadn’t been tapped in recent memory.
bic2
Was killing off Mary Jane ever considered as a way to resolve the problems with Spider-Man's status quo?
Not really, bic2, no. And I’d say because making Peter Parker a widower would make him seem even older than being married, which was the exact opposite of what everybody was trying to achieve. Of course, there was that period during Howard Mackie’s era when MJ was presumed dead in an airplane crash for a long stretch, which was kind of like that.
Patrick Cabahug
since Jean Grey is the Phoenix, and The Phoenix is Jean Grey. Since that is the case. During the Phoenix and the Dark Phoenix Saga, would that mean Jean Grey was in two places at once, one as the Phoenix force and one in the Cocoon?
Was she in both places, Patrick? Which is to say, how do you know that cocoon was even there before the Avengers discovered it? Since that Jean ended up revealed as just as much a vessel for the Phoenix as the one that died on the moon, I’d say that all of the backstory provided in that story is suspect at best.
Dean Spencer
Tom, give some context to the strike. They are doing it for better pay and conditions. Yes it effects everyday people, but that is the only way to get the message across.
I'm a firefighter who is part of a union. We can't strike as transit workers can, we have to fight really hard to keep our pay and safety precautions in place and we stand with the transit workers to do the same. The better deal they get, the better for the public too. Included are protections for the trains to be better maintained and inspected so that commuters will have safe and hassle free travel.
Look at the FAA, do you want to be on a plane leaving Newark at the moment? Don't be naive or will fully ignorant. Unions are how all workers received any reasonable pay and protections whether they are in one or not.
Dean, you clearly have a strong point of view on this, which is certainly your right. and I didn’t say anything one way or the other concerning whether the strike was good or bad. I simply indicated that the strike was going to cause my already stressful month to become even more stressful—which it certainly did. But I wasn’t really casting any aspersions on Unions.
Off The Wall
What you see here is a page from CAPTAIN AMERICA #38 done by Steve Epting and Mike Perkins and given to me as a gift by Perkins, who remains one of the nicest individuals in comics. It’s framed in the hallway along the wall of artwork that I’ve got up there, as it has been since we moved into this house.
On The Spinner Rack
So what does another turn reveal presenting itself on our spinner rack? This time the top slot is taken up by SUPERMAN #400, for my money the best single issue of SUPERMAN ever published. Underneath that is MARVEL FANFARE #4 with Paul Smith’s first X-Men art job, an issue of SUB-MARINER featuring Doctor Doom (it was always a big deal during my youth when Doom would show up in some other hero’s mag) and a late issue of KAMANDI in which creator Jack Kirby was reduced to functioning as art robot on a Gerry Conway story. Then an issue of DC COMICS PRESENTS with an Ambush Bug appearance—remarkable that DC hasn’t done more with him of late, especially given the popularity of the not-dissimilar Deadpool—the issue of PETER PARKER, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN that was illustrated by Fred Hembeck, and an issue of DAREDEVIL from the Ann Nocenti/John Romita Jr era. Underneath that is MAGE #2, then an issue of DOUBLE DRAGON, and finally COUNT DUCKULA #15 which was written by me.
And over on the ego rack, the top spot is taken up by the Director’s Cut version of AVENGERS #500 with its full-foil cover (explaining why it’s so dark in this image.) Underneath that we see an issue of AVENGERS PRIME followed by an AVENGERS issue during the “Red Zone” story arc. Next is an issue of CAGE!, then the first issue of UNCANNY AVENGERS by Gerry Duggan and Ryan Stegman. After that is an issue of AVENGERS FOREVER, an issue of the underrated WEIRDWORLD series by Jason Aaron and Mike Del Mundo, and the issue of THE TWELVE for which I own the original cover painting. Down there at the bottom is the first issue of MARVEL SUPER-HEROES MEGAZINE, a favorite reprint series, and the IRON LANTERN Amalgam issue.
Behind the Curtain
This time out, we’ve got a fan letter that was written and drawn by future fan cartoonish Fred Hembeck on October 22, 1977 extolling the virtues of Jim Shooter’s first run as writer of the Avengers. Fred wrote a lot of illustrated letters such as this one at the time, and they’re what first got him noticed at the Big Two companies. He’d eventually start doing a regular strip for the Comic Buyers Guide which led to assignments for both DC and Marvel producing similar material. I’ve been a big fan of his work almost from the beginning.
A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date
CAPTAIN AMERICA #6 came out on May 25 2005 and was the issue where we first revealed what we were doing: that the mysterious Winter Soldier who had been a shadowy antagonist throughout the initial run of issues might actually be cap’s long-thought-perished partner Bucky Barnes. This was a controversial thing to do, bringing Bucky back, and it’s down to the skills of writer Ed Brubaker and artists Steve Epting and Michael Lark that we were able to pull it off. But I can remember, just before this issue dropped, getting a call from Ed in which he was having pre-show jitters, half-convinced that angry fans were going to string him up for daring to tamper with this legend. As things turned out, that isn’t how things went down, and this run became an often-reprinted classic and the inspiration for transitioning the character into live action. But it very easily could have gone the other way.
Another Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date
On that same date, May 25, 2005, FANTASTIC FOUR #527 also hit the stands featuring the beginning of a relatively short-lived run by writer J. Michael Straczynski and artist Mike McKone that’s been a bit lost to time. In part, I expect that’s due to JMS hitting a wall partway through the book’s CIVIL WAR tie-ins where he couldn’t justify the characters’ choices to himself and so had to recuse himself from the series, leaving the run without a definitive conclusion. But this opening six-parter, in which the military seeks out Reed Richards’ assistance in attempting to duplicate the cosmic accident that gave the Fantastic Four their powers, is really quite good. Fresh from working on the TEEN TITANS revival, McKone delivered some very classic, very inviting artwork, balancing deftly between JMS’s more comedic beats and the darker more serious moments.
Another Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date
Here comes trouble! STEVE ROGERS: CAPTAIN AMERICA came out on May 25, 2016, marking the first time that Rogers picked up the identity of the Living Legend of World War II in a couple of years. But of course, all anybody remembers about this first issue is its final pages, in which the rejuvenated Rogers reveals that something is very wrong with him, as he reveals that he’s an operative working for Hydra. If we were over-concerned about bringing back Bucky, we were perhaps under-concerned about the impact that this moment was going to have when it hit. We knew it was going to cause controversy, that was pretty much the whole point. But fans went crazy, and not even just fans—this moment became the center of that culture wars, with any number of bad actors pointing at it as evidence of some manner of moral decay that had infected the entire industry. Thing were serious enough that I received death threats for allowing this to happen—I had to cancel an appearance at that year’s Baltimore Comic Con due to a threat that was sent from the Baltimore area and that the police we consulted considered a legitimate threat and not just some blowhard spouting off. Fun times! The person who got hit the hardest was probably writer Nick Spencer, and most of those who were angry didn’t want to hear that this was the first move in a carefully-constructed storyline that was going to play out over the next 18 months or so. It was a big, brassy story—maybe too big at certain points—and one that Nick almost lost control of at one point or another. But ultimately, we were able to keep the whole thing together long enough to land the plane in a mostly-satisfying way in the SECRET EMPIRE crossover that came the following year. Lost in the crowd a little bit, but probably thankful for it in this instance, was artist Jesus Saiz, who turned in some seriously great artwork on this issue and those that followed.
The New Warriors Chronicles
Following the past couple of issues, NEW WARRIORS #63 has far less of a story to tell about it. It was the first issue of the series to feature the Scarlet Spider as a member of the team. I seem to recall that Spidey EIC Bob Budiansky was unhappy with this cover—he felt that the Scarlet Spider ought to have been front-and-center, and he probably had a point from a sales perspective. But at the time, all concerned on the team were worried about the series losing its identity and becoming a strange appendage on the Spider-Man titles, and so we kept trying to have it both ways, featuring the Scarlet Spider but not at the expense of our regular cast of characters. I can’t say that this was smart per se, but especially once this dalliance with the Spidey-verse had run its course, it did wind up serving us well, so there’s that.
This issue is pretty packed with small developments. We begin to learn more about Helix, the transforming character we’d introduced during MAXIMUM CLONAGE intending for him to become a new member of the group in time. This is also the issue where Rina Patel finally links up with the Warriors proper, and delivers her warning concerning Speedball’s impending demise. she wouldn’t join the team officially for another issue or two, but her trajectory was now set. And we see the Scarlet Spider begin to make eyes at Angelica Jones, who reminds him of Mary Jane Watson, an infatuation that never turned up in any other Ben Reilly stories apart from our NEW WARRIORS issues.
But the bulk of the story centers around Firestar in a more active fashion. In recent issue, Angelica has become aware of the potential fact that her microwave-based powers may be having a damaging effect both on her own genetics and also those around here. This was a plot thread that continued all the way into the character’s appearances as a member of the Avengers years later, where Kurt Busiek finally dealt with the problem by adding some curative technology into her costume. But here, she consults with medical specialists for a diagnosis, which puts her on site when another new villain comes calling. This was Genecide, a character who was dedicated to genetic perfection and who had control of her own genetic makeup. With her cohorts in Eugenix, she was dedicated to improving the gene pool by wiping out those whose DNA was negatively compromised in some way, a form of genetic cleansing. Honestly, she had a pretty good concept behind her, and revisiting this story makes me want to bring her back in the X-Titles at some point, where she’d definitely fit in.
Anyway, the big end beat of the issue is the arrival of perennial Warriors antagonists Psionex—only this time, these quirky misfits are being led by Night Thrasher and Rage. Having been ousted from the Warriors, and having lost is own series, Dwayne wound up starting over by transforming the Warriors’ misguided adversaries into his new footsoldiers. This seemed like a pretty cool way to keep Thrash and Rage in the orbit of the series without overturning what we’d been doing so far.
I seem to recall that we’d had the basic structure of this issue worked out even before the notion of the Scarlet Spider joining the group had been suggested, and that we produced a number of pages for this issue before #62, as we were forced to wait until MAXIMUM CLONAGE’s conclusion could be worked out and finalized before plotting our pick-up of Ben and the Warriors. More than anything, this is why the story focuses on Firestar instead of our Scarlet newcomer—we didn’t have the full lay-of-the-land yet, and had to keep moving ahead.
I came across this scan of the original art to Patrick Zircher’s cover to this issue online while refamiliarizing myself with this issue, so I thought I’d share it in all its glory. As you can see, Zircher added border notes concerning how to handle certain aspects of the image in color, some of which we followed and others we didn’t.
Monofocus
This week has mostly been dedicated to watching and reading stuff that I’ve already spoken about, so there’s only one new entry that I can talk about.
I had a good time watching this video that analyzes and compares the released version of SUPERMAN II, credited to director Richard Lester, with the unfinished version of the film that had been shot by SUPERMAN THE MOVIE director Richard Donner. I haven’t revisited SUPERMAN II in a very long time, so this was like reconnecting with an old friend. I can vividly recall my Mom taking myself and buddy Israel Litwack to Patchogue for my birthday in 1981 to see SUPERMAN II and both of us being very gung-ho about it. In particular, I remember Litwack and I talking about how the third movie should feature Brainiac and effectively boil down to “Superman vs. Star Wars”. Anyway, while it was the more popular film in the moment, time hasn’t been quite so kind to SUPERMAN II, and it’s rightfully been eclipsed by the more nuanced approach taken by Donner in the first film. And there’s some amazing material that he shot for his version of the movie, most of which eventually saw the light of day in the “Donner Cut” released at the time that SUPERMAN RETURNS was about to drop in theaters. There’s a really good version of this film waiting for somebody to cut it together from the two approaches, but at this point, who would even care? But if nothing else, watching this video got me more excited for the impending approach of James Gunn’s take on the character, which feels like i spiritually draws from a similar ethos.
Posted at TomBrevoort.com
Yesterday, I wrote about the first half of the DOCTOR WHO season finale.
Five years ago, I exchanged correspondence with novelist Glen David Gold about FANTASTIC FOUR #1
And ten years ago, I wrote about Gil Kane’s favorite Great Cover that he worked on.
I’m once again thinking about ways in which I might change up what we’ve been doing here at this feature, so if anybody has any requests for the kinds of things that you’d be interested in seeing more of, those opinions would be very welcome. (And if there’s stuff in these Newsletters that you absolutely can’t stand, I’d like to know about that, too.)
All right, we’ll see you next time then! Hat’s All, Folks!
Tom B
I’ve just learned that Peter David has passed away. Rest in peace to a true legend of the industry and one of the great writers of the last several decades.
Has the potential of Miles Morales, Kamala Khan and Sam Alexander as a superhero trio ever been discussed at Marvel? Not just during ANAD Avengers and Champions books, but out on their own à la Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends?