I've been thinking a lot about the idea of IP going "back to basics". There's hundreds of comics about the 90s X-Men (for example) living at the school battling Magneto. Not to mention a ton of adaptations playing with the same idea. Do you see value in stories that reinforce the classic paradigm for these pieces of IP?
I think the bigger question I'm asking is where should Marvel Comics be looking? Backwards or always into something new and different?
I look at the MCU adapting stories and characters from the last decade and wonder how editorial views their role in reloading their story arsenal vs doing another story where Spider-Man is worried about the fall out of the Clone Saga.
Question on 'genre' comics - any particular non superhero genre you enjoy and/or think Marvel should explore?
I love the sword and sorcery genre - I think Marvel's recent handling of the Conan franchise was fun - amazing reprints, new stories in the Hyborian age and some Marvel team ups.
Ed Brubaker's crime focused comics are also some of my favs these days.
Your mention of working remotely and how it's allowed you to catch up on sleep reminded me of how, back when he was head writer/head editor/head everything, Stan Lee convinced Martin Goodman to let him work from home one day a week so he could actually write the comics Marvel was publishing. After a while, Stan asked if he could up that number to two. Martin said yes. Then Stan decided to push his luck and ask for a third day off. If I'm remembering right, he got it, which leads to an actual question: is that the sort of hybrid home/work schedule you see Marvel eventually resuming? Maybe first one day a week in the office, then two, then three, etc.? Like Stan, people have proven they can get a lot of work done from home, and a happy employee is a productive employee.
Thanks, as always, for answering so many of these questions, Tom. Had a question around how writers actually wind up on some of the more popular Marvel titles…
So when it comes to new creative runs for books like the Avengers or Amazing Spider-Man, does Marvel first reach out to its existing writers to solicit pitches? Or does it just ask specific writers for pitches or treatments against an existing idea from editors and go from there? Or a mix of both? Just figured for something like Avengers or ASM, there’s probably more demand for a longer story-telling plan than other titles. But maybe I’m wrong there.
Stories about Stories? Like Spencer's run on Amazing Spider-Man being all about One More Day? With smaller Stories rehashing Kravens Last Hunt? Never read so much exposition in my life! Sheesh what a waste! How that went on for years is puzzling. Not a question. Just a related comment from a paying customer. 😉
Question - Do you think being an editor, working behind the scenes so long, has altered your own taste in comics? I imagine this might not be easy to answer since your tastes would change over time anyway even if you weren't in the business, so it might be difficult to separate what's just the passage of time and what's born of the behind-the-scenes perspective. But are there, for example, certain things you now appreciate more because you realize how hard they are to achieve for creators?
Happy New Year!! Thanks again for everything, I’m excited to keep reading this newsletter into 2023! I enjoy your thoughts, perspective, and the fun side of comics that you highlight in your blog posts. :)
When I saw "WandaVision" episode 8 I thought that was as close as I'd seen the MCU come to one of those Thomas/Gruenwald type comic stories that is intended to clear up past continuity. It wasn't quite the same thing, because they were trying to flesh out the backstory of the character rather than clear up contradictions, but it was taking the few facts the movies had given us about Wanda up to that point and trying to tie it together, like explaining how she and her brother survived two things that killed everyone else. The ending where Agatha reveals that her power was chaos magic all along seemed like a shout-out to that Avengers issue you did.
That Avengers run, with all its continuity repair, like the issue of "Avengers Forever" that is just the Space Phantom explaining away seeming discrepancies in past comics, was what finally got me interested in Marvel comics after unsuccessful attempts to crack the code. So it's not -- and you didn't say it was -- necessarily off-putting to new readers. The idea of a crazy Captain America from the '50s is an effective idea even if it originated in Roy Thomas wanting to explain how those '50s comics could be in continuity. But when it doesn't work it's like we're reading a handbook entry with (slightly) less text.
Entirely unrelated to comics question! I was watching the Project A-Ko bluray and there was a special feature about an unreleased CDRom game. At the end of the feature, the original credits for it came up and I was shocked to see your name as a co-writer on the game! Is this truly you? And if so, how the heck did that happen??
Hey Tom - love the newsletter! I can’t remember if you’ve addressed this before but I was wondering about the editor in chief role. Is that something you’ve ever wanted to tackle? What have your relationships with the various people who have held that position at Marvel been like while you’ve been there?
Thank you for answering my Silver Surfer question a few weeks ago! Here's another one, if you'll forgive me: do you have a sense of how abrupt the decision to cancel the original Silver Surfer series was? I know that Herb Trimpe was supposed to start drawing the series with #19; do you have any idea if Trimpe drew anything beyond the cover of #18? (It's always seemed odd that the series ended with a full-on cliffhanger, since I don't think Marvel had done that before! And I get the sense--you may know differently--that creators tended to work pretty far ahead of print deadlines in those days.)
Happy Sunday Tom!
I've been thinking a lot about the idea of IP going "back to basics". There's hundreds of comics about the 90s X-Men (for example) living at the school battling Magneto. Not to mention a ton of adaptations playing with the same idea. Do you see value in stories that reinforce the classic paradigm for these pieces of IP?
I think the bigger question I'm asking is where should Marvel Comics be looking? Backwards or always into something new and different?
I look at the MCU adapting stories and characters from the last decade and wonder how editorial views their role in reloading their story arsenal vs doing another story where Spider-Man is worried about the fall out of the Clone Saga.
Thanks
Happy New year Tom!
Question on 'genre' comics - any particular non superhero genre you enjoy and/or think Marvel should explore?
I love the sword and sorcery genre - I think Marvel's recent handling of the Conan franchise was fun - amazing reprints, new stories in the Hyborian age and some Marvel team ups.
Ed Brubaker's crime focused comics are also some of my favs these days.
Your mention of working remotely and how it's allowed you to catch up on sleep reminded me of how, back when he was head writer/head editor/head everything, Stan Lee convinced Martin Goodman to let him work from home one day a week so he could actually write the comics Marvel was publishing. After a while, Stan asked if he could up that number to two. Martin said yes. Then Stan decided to push his luck and ask for a third day off. If I'm remembering right, he got it, which leads to an actual question: is that the sort of hybrid home/work schedule you see Marvel eventually resuming? Maybe first one day a week in the office, then two, then three, etc.? Like Stan, people have proven they can get a lot of work done from home, and a happy employee is a productive employee.
Thanks, as always, for answering so many of these questions, Tom. Had a question around how writers actually wind up on some of the more popular Marvel titles…
So when it comes to new creative runs for books like the Avengers or Amazing Spider-Man, does Marvel first reach out to its existing writers to solicit pitches? Or does it just ask specific writers for pitches or treatments against an existing idea from editors and go from there? Or a mix of both? Just figured for something like Avengers or ASM, there’s probably more demand for a longer story-telling plan than other titles. But maybe I’m wrong there.
Stories about Stories? Like Spencer's run on Amazing Spider-Man being all about One More Day? With smaller Stories rehashing Kravens Last Hunt? Never read so much exposition in my life! Sheesh what a waste! How that went on for years is puzzling. Not a question. Just a related comment from a paying customer. 😉
Thanks for the answer, Tom.
Question - Do you think being an editor, working behind the scenes so long, has altered your own taste in comics? I imagine this might not be easy to answer since your tastes would change over time anyway even if you weren't in the business, so it might be difficult to separate what's just the passage of time and what's born of the behind-the-scenes perspective. But are there, for example, certain things you now appreciate more because you realize how hard they are to achieve for creators?
Happy New Year!! Thanks again for everything, I’m excited to keep reading this newsletter into 2023! I enjoy your thoughts, perspective, and the fun side of comics that you highlight in your blog posts. :)
When I saw "WandaVision" episode 8 I thought that was as close as I'd seen the MCU come to one of those Thomas/Gruenwald type comic stories that is intended to clear up past continuity. It wasn't quite the same thing, because they were trying to flesh out the backstory of the character rather than clear up contradictions, but it was taking the few facts the movies had given us about Wanda up to that point and trying to tie it together, like explaining how she and her brother survived two things that killed everyone else. The ending where Agatha reveals that her power was chaos magic all along seemed like a shout-out to that Avengers issue you did.
That Avengers run, with all its continuity repair, like the issue of "Avengers Forever" that is just the Space Phantom explaining away seeming discrepancies in past comics, was what finally got me interested in Marvel comics after unsuccessful attempts to crack the code. So it's not -- and you didn't say it was -- necessarily off-putting to new readers. The idea of a crazy Captain America from the '50s is an effective idea even if it originated in Roy Thomas wanting to explain how those '50s comics could be in continuity. But when it doesn't work it's like we're reading a handbook entry with (slightly) less text.
Entirely unrelated to comics question! I was watching the Project A-Ko bluray and there was a special feature about an unreleased CDRom game. At the end of the feature, the original credits for it came up and I was shocked to see your name as a co-writer on the game! Is this truly you? And if so, how the heck did that happen??
Hey Tom - love the newsletter! I can’t remember if you’ve addressed this before but I was wondering about the editor in chief role. Is that something you’ve ever wanted to tackle? What have your relationships with the various people who have held that position at Marvel been like while you’ve been there?
Thanks!
Thank you for answering my Silver Surfer question a few weeks ago! Here's another one, if you'll forgive me: do you have a sense of how abrupt the decision to cancel the original Silver Surfer series was? I know that Herb Trimpe was supposed to start drawing the series with #19; do you have any idea if Trimpe drew anything beyond the cover of #18? (It's always seemed odd that the series ended with a full-on cliffhanger, since I don't think Marvel had done that before! And I get the sense--you may know differently--that creators tended to work pretty far ahead of print deadlines in those days.)