#42: Spoilers

Good Boys and Girls Should Not Watch!

So I had a little discussion this week with a (reasonable) fan concerning spoilers, and so I thought that the subject is one that’s worth getting into over here a little bit. As a general rule, I don’t like spoilers, for all that I understand how they are sometimes necessary in order to draw an audience to whatever project you’re advertising. I’m in favor of story surprises being story surprises, and so exercising a certain amount of responsibility about what you say about something you’ve seen and how soon you say it just seems like common courtesy. However, I also believe in personal responsibility. And so, for myself, what there’s something that I do not want to be spoiled on, I make it a point to not go to where the spoilers live. I find it just a little bit infuriating when people on social media decry how they’ve been spoiled as to some new film or television show or whatever—sometimes with media that’s been available in the world for quite some time. And my gut-level response always comes down to, “Hey, you chose to be on social media, you knew the risks and what was likely to be in your timeline.” I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect everybody else in the world to alter their behavior just to suit you—especially when the answer is so fundamentally simple. And sure, I know that interacting on social media, especially during these times of lockdown, has taken on a patina of necessity, but it truly isn’t. And if there’s something you’re trying to avoid information about, and you go onto your social media accounts, well, then you’re taking your chances. As a concrete example, I had a bit of the ending to the UK version of THE TRAITORS spoiled for me accidentally a few weeks back. I simply wasn’t expecting it to even be a topic on my feed, overlooking the fact that I have a lot of fans and creators who are based in the UK on that feed. And one of them said something that was slightly spoilery. But that really wasn’t their fault, for all that I gnashed my teeth a little bit when it happened. It was mine, for not thinking things through and rolling the dice. I chose to be there, I got bit, it happens. And so, that lays out my rules of engagement, both for this Newsletter and in general. I’m really not looking to spoil your enjoyment of some bit of media, and I try to be careful about what I say about any of the projects I talk about, whether comics or stuff that gets covered in the Monofocus area or whatever. But what I consider a spoiler and what you consider a spoiler may be different. And so, if you’re worried about it, maybe refrain from checking out the new Newsletter until after you’ve experienced the thing yourself. Be responsible for your own spoiler-avoidance and don’t go to where the spoilers live if it concerns you.

All right, with that out of the way, let’s do this week’s batch of questions from the readers, beginning with Alan Russell

Marvel as I’m sure you are well aware has oodles of characters we rarely see. I loved the old Bill Mumy/Miguel Ferrier character of Comet Man, but he’s been barely seen in decades.

What are the chances of an appearance? He’d be a natural fit for Marvel’s cosmic stuff.

I think the answer to any question regarding whether an obscure character will ever resurface again is going to be given enough time, yes. But there aren’t any plans for Comet Man at the moment that I’m aware of, Alan. Still, Marvel creators do love to plumb the depths of our back-catalog for characters to bring back, refurbish and use again.

Michael Perlman asks:

Seeing the SUPERSNIPE comic reminded me of the Supersnipe comic store I frequented in the 1970s in New York City at 84th and 2nd. I bought my first original comic art at the gallery next door partly owned by George Lucas. Did you ever shop at Supersnipe?

While I’m aware of the SUPERSNIPE store, in the days when it was open, I was way too young to be going into Manhattan. So no, I never shopped there myself.

Retailer Patrick Brower wonders:

As a longtime comic book fan, what do you look for in a comic shop? And do you get a chance to visit any when you travel?

This hasn’t really been an option over the past couple of years, Patrick, as during Covid I haven’t been traveling at all, not even locally. But when travel was possible, I would often try to check out any local comic shops whenever work or recreation took me to new cities. And what I like in a comic shop these days is a good selection, some sense of personality, a great environment, and a helpful-but-unobtrusive staff. I also have a lot of nostalgic love for the sorts of hole-in-the-wall dives that used to be where comic shops, especially second hand back issue dealers, set up. But fortunately, many of those sorts of places are a thing of the past.

Possibly the most impressive comic shop that I’ve been to in recent years—and I have no idea whether it’s still there or not, although I hope that it is—was UP UP AND AWAY in Ohio, which I visited in 2016. It looked unassuming from the outside, but the store was massive, and set up almost like a museum. The place was beautiful, the layout immaculate, they carried a wide assortment of product, maintained a separate reading area for young readers, and decorated with props and original art, including several floor-to-ceiling recreations of classic comic book covers made entirely out of Legos. It was awesome.

And yes, after speaking with the owner I did send the store an official No-Prize upon my return to the office, which I presume also went up on display. Seriously, when I retire, this place is where I want to live.

Next, Larry Boxshall asks:

I’m wondering in your time as an editor, how close (if ever) has Marvel come to pushing the reset button and restarting the MU? I used to work at a comic store around the the time of the Ultimate Universe beginning and there were rumors back then the regular MU was going to stop.

Really only once, Larry, assuming that you discount things such as the Heroes Reborn deal in the mid-1990s, which, had it gone well, was likely to have led to outsourcing all of the Marvel titles to other companies, thus disintegrating the cohesive Marvel Universe. But yes, there was a point around 2003 when Bill Jemas was toying with just ultimizing the entire line. I’ve got a memo from those days around here somewhere that outlines his thinking. I’ll see if I can’t dig that up for a future Behind The Scenes segment. Apart from that, though, there really hasn’t been any genuine push to reset or restart the Marvel Universe. As opposed to DC, who have pretty much wrecked up their continuity beyond salvaging at this point through constant rebooting, we haven’t really seen a need to do so.

Brett Murphy wonders:

I'm currently reading the Onslaught omnibus and reliving my mid-90s Marvel life. The omnibus is a beast and has a huge amount of content - I can't help but wonder what the Bullpen/editorial was like trying to organize the Onslaught event. It didn't have the more modern structure of a 5-7 issue limited series to anchor the story with some spin-off minis and tie-in issues but instead spread a pretty singular narrative across so, so many books in the line comprising dozens and dozens of creators. What was it like trying to coordinate such a massive event across such disparate books as Incredible Hulk, X-Man, and (one of my favorite oft-forgotten books) the Phil Urich-starring Green Goblin? Was it even more complex given that four of the books would be handed over to the Heroes Reborn reboot immediately following only to (I'd assume knowingly) be returned to the main line in a big Heroes Return launch?

Most of that coordination was handled by EIC Bob Harras and the X-MEN editorial office, including Mark Powers and Jason Liebig I believe. The story was really an outgrowth of developments in the core X-series with the advancing of Onslaught, so it made sense for them to control and oversee the spine of the crossover, including the two bookend chapters. Structurally, it was very much like AGE OF APOCALYPSE, where the main narrative was largely handled in the titles featuring characters who were going to be directly impacted, while books such as AMAZING SPIDER-MAN or GREEN GOBLIN had looser tie-ins requiring relatively little coordination. And the X-MEN line had been dealing with a relatively tight cross-continuity for several years by that point, so all of the principles involved were pretty comfortable with how to do it. I was somewhat at a distance from the core, and it didn’t seem like an onerous process to me especially, while it was a somewhat distasteful one. And that’s because your assumption is incorrect. When ONSLAUGHT was being prepared, and even for months afterward, there was no guarantee that any of the HEROES REBORN characters would ever be coming back to Marvel editorial proper. In fact, the opposite was much more likely, as I mentioned an answer or two ago. Things worked out that way, but they very easily could have gone in the opposite direction—in fact, that’s probably where the smart money would have been placed.

Matt had a follow-up to a question he asked last week:

Ah, so you mean "stories that are ONLY about previous stories". That makes sense to me, but I definitely don't think that's what Jemas intended when he came up with the term, since he cited several examples in Marville ( https://imgur.com/a/dZpQoFJ ) of storylines he objected to that clearly don't meet that description (and the kind which you guys do pretty regularly even these days). He also spiked story elements that various writers proposed that were about more than simply previous stories. The one in particular I remember is that he refused to allow Peter David in an issue of Captain Marvel to refer to Rick Jones' past killing of the dictator of Trans Sabal. The story was not *about* that previous story, but about the ramifications of such a moral quandary. This may sound harsh, but I think that decision reflected someone overstepping their expertise; he didn't have the kind of creative track record to warrant that level of micro-managing. And I'm pretty certain Avengers Forever would NEVER have come out under Jemas.

Well, we’re talking about how we use the term today, not really how it originated. One of the real difficulties of working at Marvel during the Jemas regime was “mission creep”, where clear goals and objectives would begin to shift on the fly to accommodate whatever Bill’s thinking was that day. In the piece you link to, he’s virtually indicating that any story that he doesn’t care for constituted being “stories about stories”, which wasn’t accurate. However, I do have to take issue with your final point. Bill was absolutely within his power and his authority to insist on whatever directives that he wanted to—he was the President and Publisher of Marvel at the time, and “overstepping his expertise” or not, the buck stopped with him. As a fan, you can feel about it however you like, of course, but as a professional, I can’t find fault with Bill laying out his vision for what the line should be like (though I can certainly fault him for the mission creep that developed.)

And finally, one last question from Jason Holtzman:

My newest question/comment is inspired by some of my recent reading, as I picked up “The Death of Captain Stacy” epic collection grouping together some of the early-ish Spidey tales.

I didn’t think it was really possible, but my eyes may now be able to roll even harder when I hear somebody complain about comics going “woke.” It surprised me how many ideas that would be deemed progressive today showed up in some of the books; such as taking on racist politicians, combating air pollution, and even working to better the rights of prisoners. These different themes were nice bits of added depth that help make the stories all the more enjoyable.

That being said, one the themes that started to appear in the later issues of the collection (once Roy Thomas took over writing duties and Stan was officially credited as “editor), was the decline or print news/media because of TV. This leads to Jameson complaining about paying his workers too much, his disdain for television, etc. That being said, was Jameson’s character as an editor occasionally used by writers to poke fun at their boss Stan, or perhaps by Stan himself to jokingly voice his concerns? The work related troubles of Jameson and Stan (aside from hating Spider-Man) seem like they would be pretty similar, and I just wonder if this was a way for creators to peel back the curtain a little bit in their work.

A couple things here, Jason. Much like Bill Jemas’ “mission drift”, while it might have meant something specific once, I tend to think that “woke” has come to be just an easy label that people can throw against anything they don’t happen to like, without it having much intrinsic meaning in and of itself. I know that I tend to tune out criticism that leads with it as a matter of course (in the same way I do with anybody who mentions SJWs) On Jameson, it’s no real secret that Steve Ditko in particular would often position him as something of a commentary on Stan’s ways, even when Stan was the one dialoguing the final product. So it’s no real surprise that later creators might springboard from that as well. Stan himself said that he was hoping to be able to play Jameson in the SPIDER-MAN movie had it been made in the 1990s—I think that was a pipe dream either way, but Stan himself recognized the connection and seemed fine with it.

---

Behind the Curtain

SPIDER-GIRL was a real underdog success story, a title whose dedicated fan base literally saved it from cancellation again and again. For a book that was only supposed to last for 12 issues to run for in excess of 130 is a pretty amazing feat, and it was all due to the SPIDER-GIRL faithful being both proactive and smart about how they attempted to keep the series off the chopping block.

What you see above is an unused cover for what was intended to be one of the many final issues in the course of the run—this one was intended as #60. It went unused, as did the plot for that issue, once the series’ life was extended—and I’ve already told the story about needing to call writer Tom DeFalco up on April 1st and convince him that our needing another plot wasn’t some cruel April Fool’s Day hoax. The cover was penciled by Ron Frenz and inked by Pat Olliffe, the two artists who together drew something like 99% of the run. And it was a take-off of the cover to WHAT IF #105, the story which had introduced Spider-Girl as a one-off character. I hung onto it for years, figuring that eventually we’d get to the actual final issue, where it could be used. By the time that actually happened, the book was being edited by other folks in my area, and enough time had passed that a new version of the piece was commissioned for AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #30, the last regular issue of the run.

Of course, this being SPIDER-GIRL, there was a SPIDER-GIRL: THE END one-shot released immediately after this, to close out the concept completely. So even this wasn’t really the last SPIDER-GIRL issue.

---

Pimp My Wednesday

Hey, it’s 2023 already, can you believe it? Anyway, here’s what four color goodness your local comic book retailer will have waiting for you this Wednesday.

I tell you, this AVENGERS ASSEMBLE storyline feels like it’s going by in the wink of an eye. Here we are, already at the midway point in AVENGERS FOREVER #13, Chapter Five. As in previous issues, here Jason Aaron and Aaron Kuder pull together all of the disparate characters and threads from across the entirety of Jason’s five-year AVENGERS run, for a massive blowout adventure. This time out, the Goddesses of Thunder hit the battlefield in memorable fashion!

Elsewhere, in the flooded world of tomorrow, an aged Namor’s quest for his old ally and enemy the original Human Torch has reached its objective. But can Namor convince the Torch to assist him in saving the dwindling population of human beings that are left after a cataclysmic event that has caused the sea level to rise worldwide? Creators Christopher Cantwell and Pasqual Ferry have the answer here, in NAMOR, THE SUB-MARINER: CONQUERED SHORES #4.

And in PUNISHER #9, it’s time for the final showdown between the Fist of the Beast and the God of War as the newly-empowered Frank Castle and Ares go at it mano-a-mano. It’s another intense issue courtesy of Jason Aaron, Jesus Saiz and Paul Azaceta. I’m not sure why that pull-quote is printing so chunky on this image—on the actual cover, it’s crisp and readable. But there’s only so much I’m going to futz with it here.

And over on the MARVEL UNLIMITED service, things begin to heat up for the Avengers in Chapter Four of “Key To A Mystery” by Jim Zub and Caio Majado, where revelations are had and we learn just what exactly Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are facing.

---

A Comic Book On Sale 20 Years Ago Today, January 15, 2003

The only other series from the era of SPIDER-GIRL that can boast of a track record equally good is THUNDERBOLTS. But the first iteration of that series reached its final issue twenty years ago today.

I think it will come as no surprise that THUNDERBOLTS was a series that Marvel President Bill Jemas didn’t like. It didn’t fit his vision for the kinds of comics that Marvel ought to be doing. And yet, it was successful enough for long enough that he didn’t want to simply cancel it. Rather, his intention was to retool it, to turn it into something else entirely, something more to his liking. To that end, the book was moved to an editorial office other than mine following issue #66. This was during an aggressive plan to have the series double-shipping for an extended span of time, with two regular artists and two parallel plotlines. This all started to fall apart almost immediately after the book left my hands. The good news is that new editor Andrew Lis, with the blessing of Bill and Joe Quesada, gave writer Fabian Nicieza time to wrap up his ongoing storyline by issue #75. Though, to my eye, not a whole lot of effort was put into those issues editorially, and a bevy of different artists were pulled in to draw those concluding issues. Afterwards—and maybe I should be talking about this all next month, but it’s all part-and-parcel—with issue #76 the series would have a new cast, a new creative team and a new concept. To Lis’ credit, he stonewalled Bill on opening issue #76 the way that Bill wanted to: in Jemas’ concept, the first page would feature two kids reading THUNDERBOLTS #75, and talking about how awful and lame it was. They’d discard the comic in the gutter, where it would wash down the street, passing by our new lead character Daniel Axum. In any case, the new version of the book wasn’t a bad concept in and of itself, but it wasn’t THUNDERBOLTS, and the fan base let Marvel know it in spades. Sales tanked instantly, and the series ended its run six issues later, with #81. A short while later, after Bill had left Marvel, Joe Q came to me and told me that I could bring THUNDERBOLTS back, however I wanted to—and so we mounted what would become known as NEW THUNDERBOLTS with Fabian and artist Tom Grummett. (We started with an AVENGERS/THUNDERBOLTS limited series that ran for six issues which was co-written by Fabian and Kurt Busiek. In my mind, it represented issues #76-81 of the “actual” THUNDERBOLTS run.) And the series ran a good long time thereafter, going through several changes of creative team along the way. But for all that anybody knew, this was the last issue there’d ever be of THUNDERBOLTS as the book it had been.

---

A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

IRON MAN #64 was the middle chapter in a crossover storyline that started in the pages of THOR and wrapped up in an issue of AVENGERS. It was also the one and only time over the many years I worked together with artist Alan Davis when the pair of us had a full-blown screaming match at one another. So let’s tell that story, hey? This issue was released at a tumultuous time for the mainline Marvel Universe, a period in which the new Ultimate Universe was getting the lion’s share of love and attention and resources. So I was having to work harder to keep the core MU books afloat—doing this small crossover story was one way to help build some excitement and leverage some sales, hopefully. In THOR, writer Dan Jurgens and I had killed Odin and had Thor inherit the All-Father’s position as Lord of Asgard as well as a modicum of his power. In issues just prior to this. Thor had moved Asgard to the skies above Earth, intending to use his new position benevolently to help the people of Midgard. So the idea here was to manufacture a storyline that would focus on the Avengers’ “Big Three” and put them at odds with one another. The writers of each series worked in tandem to craft the overall story, with Dan working alongside IRON MAN author Mike Grell and AVENGERS writer Geoff Johns. The gist of the story is that a downtrodden citizen of a small nation that bordered Latveria would offer up a prayer to Thor to intercede on his and his people’s behalf. Thor would indeed respond, but the situation in the region was so volatile that this set off alarm bells among the world powers. Iron Man would be dispatched to try to talk Thor down from unilaterally liberating the country—and when that didn’t work, to engage him directly in a “Thorbuster” armor crafted in the image of the Asgardian Destroyer. Ultimately, Doom would get involved—he was pulling the strings behind-the-scenes so that he could step in and annex the nation himself. Ultimately, Captain America would arrive to step in-between his two battling buddies and get them to set aside their differences and work together to achieve a desirable outcome. As an additional way of making this story special, I arranged for Alan Davis to draw all three chapters of it, and he did a great three-part connecting cover image that ran across the three titles. Unfortunately, we in my office have nicknamed Alan “the closed book”, in that he tends to be stoic and tight-lipped about things that are bothering him until they reach a boiling point and he suddenly and unexpectedly explodes. And that’s just what happened here. We had solicited the crossover, the THOR issue was done, Alan was working on the IRON MAN issue—when he suddenly and out of the blue called me up and told me that he couldn’t finish the rest of the story, and that he was therefore quitting. And I hit the roof. I told him that he’d agreed to do it all, that we’d banked our advertising and promotion on his involvement, and that if he was a true professional, he’d do what he committed to. The two of us went back and forth at one another for awhile at peak volume. Eventually, though, after talking it all through, I was able to get to the heart of the problem, and it was something small: most of the action of the three issues takes place in this village, and in the way that Jurgens and Grell has described the place in their scripts, Alan couldn’t work out the geography of the place, and it was stymieing his ability to work out the action. Now, the particular aspects of what he was talking about weren’t plot-specific—literally, he could have made just about any choice and it wouldn’t really have mattered. But it was critically important to Alan, and he didn’t want any sort of “whatever you want” sort of a solution here. He’d been asked to redraw pages in the past in situations like this, and he hated the thought of ever having to do so. And so, in order to get past this roadblock, I wound up calling up Geoff Johns and asking for a favor. I outlined the situation to him and asked him to give Alan a call and to work out the specifics of Alan’s difficulties with the layout of the village. This way, it would be a writer, the writer of the final chapter, who was okaying what Alan was to draw. (This was far from the only time I wound up throwing Geoff into the lion’s den during our run on AVENGERS.) Geoff did so, he and Alan agreed on a course of action, Alan completed the rest of the assignment without incident, the books all came out on time, and Alan and I maintained a friendly working relationship thereafter. So it all worked out.

---

Monofocus

The big story this week was last Sunday’s incredibly strong and brutal MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM: THE WITCH FROM MERCURY finale, which managed to exceed all expectations in terms of going remarkably dark. Given how upbeat and lively the series has been up till nowt, it’s apt to have given some viewers whiplash. It was brutal, but a terrific episode that paid off extremely well and left things in a wonderfully precarious position going into the show’s three-month hiatus. As I’ve mentioned before, now that the broadcast run has finished, Bandai has been dropping a new subtitled episode on their official GUNDAM channel on YouTube every week. This week, we’re up to Episode 3, which you can view here. I’ve been a regular GUNDAM viewer going back to around 1983, and this is my favorite iteration of the series in years and years. I love it to bits.

Also, with Chris Chibnall’s era as showrunner having drawn to a close and Russell T. Davies and a team made up of many of the same faces who first resurrected the series back in 2005 on board, I’ve taken to revisiting the first season of the resurrected DOCTOR WHO in preparation for the upcoming new seasons. I’ve seen these episodes many times over the years, though not in a long while. And while they’re certainly showing their age in terms of cinematography and effects footage (which isn’t a real problem, as DOCTOR WHO looking a hair dodgy is just part of its charm for me) I had forgotten how confident and rock-solid that initial season was. In particular, Christopher Eccleston is the forgotten man when it comes to the revived DOCTOR WHO. I remember him being a bit divisive at the time—he wasn’t as overtly eccentric or colorful as most of the classic Doctors from the old show—but he is an absolute delight in the role, at once commanding, haunted, playful, funny, silly, bombastic and kind. And he’s exactly the sort of Doctor you were going to need in order to sell the series to an audience that had no built-in connection or fondness for it. At the same time, Billie Piper is great as Rose, and Davies is especially canny in how he structures this initial season, subverting expectations a bunch of times along the way. The moment when the Doctor brings Rose back what they think is only a few minutes later but turns out to be a year that she’s been gone is incredibly clever, and drives home the idea that there’s going to be unintended consequences of traveling with the Doctor, as well as establishing that Rose has people in her orbit back in Earth whose lives continue on even in her absence. It really is a masterful reinvention of an old series, a template to be used as a pattern for anybody else who might be attempting something similar. And it does charge me up for Russell’s return in November.

And also, Peacock dropped its version of THE TRAITORS, the reality game show that I watched previously in both the UK and Australian versions. And to say it’s exactly the same show only scratches the surface of it. They clearly filmed the American version and the UK version back-to-back, as both use the same Scottish castle as their home base, and both play out identical challenges with identical props. The only real difference is that, rather than a diverse cast of players from all across the United Kingdom, the US version is filled with previous Reality television stars, as well as just a handful of civilians. This tends to make the show seem somehow a bit seedier, as all of these Reality celebrities are playing in what can only be described as the trashiest way possible. Mind you, I’ve only watched the first episode so far, and I’ll certainly stick around for the remainder of the series, but I already find it a lot more irritating than either of its predecessors. There are a number of people on the show that I’d like to drop a truck onto.

---

Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I elaborated on my Twitter analysis of why this cover is almost criminally inept.

And five years ago, I wrote about this issue of THE FLASH about a young would-be cartoonist whose imagination creates a new villain that clobbers the Scarlet Speedster.

---

As always, thanks for stopping by, have a great Sunday (or whatever day it is when you read this) and I’ll see you again in a short while!

Tom B