#58: FCBD Hangover

The World Will Expand If You Break Out Of Your Shell And Move Forward

Hello again, everyone! Hope you all had a good Free Comic Book Day yesterday, and that you remembered to pick up a few things and leave a few dollars in your local comic book retailer’s till while you were scooping up the free stuff. Being a retailer these days is a tough, tough business, regardless of even the product that you’re selling, so it’s more important than ever to support your local shop as much as possible.

Speaking of support, I got a second Pledge of Support from a subscriber the other week, somebody else would would put $80.00 in my pocket every year for rolling out one of these Newsletters every week. And that’s terribly flattering, and I appreciate it—I don’t take it lightly. However, I don’t really need the money, at least not yet. But somebody who could use it is The Hero Initiative. They provide support financial and otherwise for members of the comic book community who have fallen on hard times. Trust me, any dollars that you might want to slip to me would do a lot more good in their hands, so really, truly, please give them my cut, all right? Thanks.

So, stuff from the week. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole in watching a bunch of different interviews given over the past year or three by former Marvel EIC and writer Jim Shooter. Jim is a divisive figure, especially for people within the industry—some lionize him, others deplore him. Which is something you can say about just about any comic book creator, but with Shooter that feeling is somehow ramped up to 11. I never worked with him—my one near-miss went pear-shaped early on and wound up never happening. And I’ve certainly been critical of some of the things he did in the past, and maybe even a bit cruel about how I spoke about him. But he remains a fascinating figure to me, and it has to be said that he did a lot to improve the situation at Marvel and throughout the field in his time. And it’s clear that he’s got a love for the medium and the field, even if I find some of the tenets of his approach more dogmatic than I’d like. As with anyone, Jim’s got his biases in perspective. but with that in mind, I find myself attracted to the version of old Marvel that he lays out, even if I’m simultaneously aware that things weren’t always quite so idyllic and wonderful and conflictless as he makes them out to be. If nothing else, he can certainly tell a story—and he’s been polishing some of these anecdotes in interview after interview like a “tight five”, shaving off, I’m sure, a few of the rough edges, the unfortunate bits. Because it’s also true that Jim never tells a story in which he wasn’t the hero—even when he gets something wrong, his heart is still in the right place. But I’m sure that I’m like that as well, so that’s hardly a singular failing. If nothing else, he was the right person at the right time, and his restructuring of Marvel editorial into a multi-office system based on the DC model almost singularly saved that company from ruin. It was completely impossible for the place to be run as it was when one person had been editing the entirety of the much-smaller line a decade earlier.

I also posed the question to the Marvel staff this week about who the platonic ideal of a Marvel artist was for each decade. Which artist was the standard-bearer for how a Marvel comic book should look. This wasn’t about whose work was the best or who was the most prolific, but rather who was considered the perennial look of the Marvel line during each period. This was fairly easy to work out until we got to the last 20 years or so. But the way it broke down was like this:

1960s - Jack Kirby

1970s - John Romita

1980s - John Byrne

1990s - Jim Lee

2000s - David Finch or Steve McNiven

2010s - Stuart Immonen—though Greg Capullo was more that for super hero comics in general.

So of course, we had to do the writers next. This one was a bit more contentious in certain eras.

1960s - Stan Lee

1970s - Roy Thomas (some people argued me on this one, but nobody came up with a better option.)

1980s - Chris Claremont - though Alan Moore was more this for the super hero comics field in general

1990s - Peter David was our consensus, though I do have an affinity for dark horse candidate Rob Liefeld

2000s - Brian Michael Bendis

2010s - Jonathan Hickman

Now, none of this really means anything, or is good for anything. But it served as an interesting thought-exercise, so i figured I’d share it with you.

Next up, Q & A time:

Carlos

Any chance for Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew ) returns to the Avengers in the near future?

Carlos! Hello! Nice to hear from you again—it’s been a while! For those who are unaware, Carlos has been a long-time dedicated super-fan of Jessica Drew, Spider-Woman, and regularly asks about where she might be appearing next. I’m sorry to have to tell you, Carlos, that we don’t have any plans for Spider-Woman in AVENGERS at the moment. But she’s been in SPIDER-MAN during the “End of the Spider-Verse” storyline, and I’m sure that the Spidey office will be doing more with her in the near future.

Tom Galloway

'Fraid you misremembered two bits about Adventure #369. First, minorly, Mordru wasn't first defeated by being buried underground, but by being trapped in what amounted to an improvised vacuum chamber vault. No one having told then new member Shady about this, she unknowingly cracked the seal just enough to revive him. When Mordru escaped, only four Legionnaires were in the building; Superboy, Mon-El, Duo Damsel, and Shadow Lass. They promptly got out of Dodge and back to 20th century Smallville and we don't see anything more of the 30th century until the end of next issue. So the other Legionnaires were not annihilated before those four escaped.

At the start of the next issue, Mordru muses to the four escapees that he's taken care of the rest of the Legion. But at the end of it, back in the 30th century, we learn that Dream Girl had a premonition that Mordru would pop back to the 30th century and destroy Legion HQ, presumably with at least a fair number of Legionnaires in it. To counter it, she called in her sister, the White Witch (I believe in her second appearance) and Princess Projectra; the Witch cast a protection spell around HQ and Jeckie cast an illusion that Mordru's attack destroyed it. In an unfortunate final panel, Mon muses "Well I'll be darned! To think of all the trouble *we* had dodging Mordru! How ironic that he was foiled by *three girls*!" Surprisingly, the Witch did not turn him into a toad in response.

Also, related to how scary Superman could appear in the early days, I've wondered how many kids, on first seeing the cover to Action #1 back in 1938, thought he was the bad guy. I mean, superheroes weren't a thing, and this weirdly clothed guy was destroying a car for unknown reasons with people running in terror from him as he does so.

To your last point, Tom, I suspect that the fact that he was attired in bright, primary colors and that his costume resembled that of a circus performer probably made that first image of Superman seem heroic, even if it was destructive. But that’s a good point. There’s a similar idea that sometimes circulates about the cover to AMAZING FANTASY #15, Spider-Man’s first appearance. Given that Spidey’s whole face is masked and that the series had been featuring one-off stories of giant monsters and aliens, how many people thought that the web-slinger was one of the two when seeing that image for the first time? In that case, though, there’s some cover copy to help with the context. And thanks for the correction on that Legion story.

Dave

As a Marvel fanatic, I greatly appreciate the behind-the-scenes insights you're sharing here. A question for you - Whatever happened to Isiah Bradley, Josiah X, and Eli Bradley? Isiah's story in Truth: Red, White and Black has certainly had an MCU-inspired resurgence of late, but the character and their family have been largely absent from any comics for an astoundingly long time. There are rumors (but no sources I could identify) that suggest there are rights issues at play; wondering about your perspective or anything you can share!

They’ve been around here and there—we saw Patriot, for example, in MARVEL COMICS #1000 not a tremendously long time ago, in the Young Avengers page that Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung did. And I’m sure that we’ll see them again at some point in the future, especially should they continue to be featured in streaming shows and the like.

S-shield

Speaking of Spidey, I just noticed your name as Editor on the first issue of the Ryoichi Ikegami Spider-Man manga Marvel translated and released in America in the 90s. What can you tell us about that? How did it come to exist in the first place, and how did you wind up working on the American version?

I’m pretty sure that the genesis of that project came from me. I was familiar with the Spider-Man manga, having bought a few volumes at the Kinokunia bookstore in Manhattan over the years. And I seem to recall us getting notice that the term of the original licensing deal had lapsed, and that all rights to it had reverted back to Marvel. As manga was a growing category, I thought it might be fun and affordable to print the thing in English. As it was black and white, the color separation costs would be minimal. I wound up only putting together six issues or so before the whole project was handed off to other people. Ultimately, though, what I was aiming to get to was collections in the manga size that could be stocked where manga was being distributed. But I was maybe too early, and so none of that material was ever collected after its serialized release. One bit of trivia about that project: Marvel’s current EIC C.B. Cebulski did his first work for the company on that series, translating the material into English alongside his wife.

Jeff Ryan

As someone who's seen his fair share of old comics, when you read them, do you prefer them old or new? That is, does a 1960s comics "read" to you better if it's yellowed or browned, its colors are faded and blurry, its printing imperfect? Or do you prefer the crisper modern reconstructions, which is undoubtedly easier and clearer to read but sometimes feel antiseptic?

It all depends, Jeff. As a platonic ideal, I prefer to read any of this material in its original format. But I don’t have any great resistance to any of the other formats that you mention. These days, though, probably my ideal way to read, say, the first 18 issues of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN or FANTASTIC FOUR would be in those colossal editions that Taschen put out in the past year. The paper stock is really nice, the scans and reconstructions from the printed books are good, and the letters pages and some of the ads are included as well. Maybe the only problem with them is their size—which is great on the one hand, as it approximates the size at which those stories were originally drawn. On the other hand, that does make them difficult to read casually.

JV

That Stan Lee letter made me think on how important (to me) it is to have a strong editorial 'face' in comics (and entertainment in general). Stan Lee was obviously the pioneer in the 60s. This fell off in the 70s and had a nice resurgence in the 80s with Shooter (and Mark Gruenwald who was great at communicating with readers).

Again no one really embodied this in the 90s (and sales seems to flounder - for many more reasons than this but I think it contributed to it). Quesada brought this back in a cool way. A great marketing genius with amazing communication skills.

DC had a bit of this in the 80s with Kahn and Giordano but never really mastered it until Didio came along - say what you want about him as an editor but he was enthusiastic and available to fans. James Gunn seems to have fallen into the 'spokesman' role recently.

Do you place any importance on this? I find it also helps in TV (networks used to have a 'face' associated with each channel which has dropped off). Creator owned books also are a better read when there is a writer's or creator's voice in it - letters, behind the scenes, etc..just an interesting effect that I would like your thoughts on.

Well, JV, as this Newsletter ought to prove, I like the idea of interacting and interfacing with the audience as much as possible. Which is why I’ve attempted to do as much as I’ve been able to over the years, whether that was holding weekly chat sessions on AOL back in the day or answering questions at Formspring or writing a weekly column for CBR. That all said, I’m not sure how much of an impact any of that really has on sales, especially these days. Given the way social media has changed the landscape, it seems that many people don’t really want to have a conversation so much as to score imaginary points. So I think it’s nice when we can do it, but it isn’t make-or-break. These days, even Stan Lee would have a tough time performing his shtick and making it work—the audience is just too jaded and cynical to easily get swept up in stuff like that for the most part.

ComicbookDad531

Hi Tom, I love the news letter and I was wondering how different is it putting together a vertical comic like the infinity comics vs the traditional comic book? Are the two totally different animals or are the similar with little differences?

Well, it’s not completely different, Dad, but there are differences in terms of what works and what doesn’t, some of which we’re still figuring out as we produce more and more of these. The fact that panels scroll endlessly upwards impact on how a given image reveals itself that’s different from a static printed page, for instance. There aren’t really pages, so there are no page turns to impact on pacing. And the lettering on the vertical stories is, by necessity, larger than what is used in the books, which means that less copy fits into the same amount of space. So there is a learning curve that the creators and we editors have in terms of figuring out how to make our stories impact in the best, most effective way. But it isn’t an alien process, not really.

Clive Reston

I noticed that you've got a "special thanks" credit on the utterly delightful Avengers three-parter that Katie Cook and Butch Mapa did for IDW's Marvel Action line a few years ago (including the best Paste-Pot Pete story ever). Can you say a bit about that project and your involvement with it?

I don’t really have a whole lot that I can tell you on this one, Clive. I read some material as it was being developed and gave back some notes and reactions on the outlines and/or the scripts and/or the lettered stories. But it wasn’t anything I did a great deal of work on apart from approving what was there. But glad to hear that you enjoyed it.

Mortimer Q. Forbush

Can you give outsiders any sense of the transformation of Marvel's publishing business? I am confused why other publishers publish Marvel comic content when Marvel is already a publisher of comics content.

I'm speaking not only of the IDW Marvel Action line that Clive Reston asked about, but also books like the prestige Fantastic Four: Full Circle by Abrams. Or the Panel-by-Panel books that Abrams does. The news item that made me think about this subject most recently was learning that Fantagraphics is reprinting Marvel's Atlas-era comics. But I'm also thinking about the Artist Editions that IDW did, or the various Penguin Classics Marvel reprint series as well as original content like Scholastic creating Miles Morales: Shock Waves graphic novel and Viz creating a manga Deadpool: Samurai.

It's hard to shake the feeling that Marvel is farming out a core part of its business and as a longtime reader whose primary attachment is to its printed comic material, that gives me… feelings? I'm sure this must sound very silly. Can you offer some perspective?

Well, I think you’re worrying here a bit about nothing, Mortimer. None of the things that you mentioned are really a part of our core business in the first place. And while I can’t get into the specifics of why each individual deal was done, in general such arrangements are made in instances where the partners have something to offer to Marvel that’s of value to the organization—whether that’s distribution reach, or a specific expertise in a given area, or even different fiscal needs. Abrams, for example, was more readily able to monetize FANTASTIC FOUR: FULL CIRCLE in the way that Alex wanted to see it produced than we could have. But I edited the story content exactly the same way that I would do with any other issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, so it wasn’t something that was happening outside of Marvel’s oversight or system. Most of these efforts are designed to help extend Marvel’s reach in some fashion—it’s cool, for instance, to have classic Marvel stories collected by Penguin Classics. That gives them a certain feeling of legitimacy as genuine works worthy of consideration, and not just throwaway junk literature from the 1960s. But none of this is meant as a step towards replacing a centralized publishing operation.

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Behind the Curtain

Here’s another lost cover, from the days of SECRET WARS in 2015. This piece by Gabriele Dell’otto was intended as a variant cover for the WEIRDWORLD series done by Jason Aaron and Mike Del Mundo. It’s a really beautiful piece, a homage to the cover of CONAN THE BARBARIAN #1. And that’s where the trouble came from. Because Marvel’s legal department was aware that, at the time, we didn’t have any rights to any Conan material, and so they were concerned that publishing a homage to that cover, even though it was a cover that had been published by Marvel some 45 years previous, might lead to a lawsuit. And so this cover was spiked. I looked around for someplace to use it during the several years when Marvel had a new deal in place with Conan Properties, but it both wasn’t a huge priority and it simply wasn’t easy to locate a circumstance where an Arkon cover would be appropriate for a book. So the moment passed again.

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Pimp My Wednesday

Only a smattering of releases this time out, so your wallet can recover from Free Comic Book Day a bit.

I AM IRON MAN #3 by Murewa Ayodele and Dotun Akande is another stand-alone story, this one set during the 1980s (or however long ago the 1980s were in Marvel time) and featuring some crazy samurai action as well as a lot of heart. Like the preceding two issues, it’s an Iron Man story that’s very singular; nothing quite like it has ever been done before. Hopefully, people have been digging these celebratory tales in honor of Shellhead’s 60th Anniversary.

And Assistant Editor Martin Biro has released COSMIC GHOST RIDER #3 out into the world, written by Stephanie Phillips and illustrated by Guiu Vilanova. And as you can see, it guest-stars Jane Foster, Valkyrie, so there’s something!

And in AVENGERS UNLIMITED in our vertical format, the team-up of the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy continues as War Machine and Drax the Destroyer find themselves as an unlikely tag team against the space-faring Blood Brothers. It’s written by David Pepose and drawn by Ze Carlos.

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A Comic Book On Sale 15 Years Ago Today, May 7, 2008

This launch issue of INVINCIBLE IRON MAN is the point at which I stopped editing the series and handed it off to other hands, in this case editor Warren Simons. I’d shepherded the series for the previous five or six years with only middling results—the one bright spot being the Warren Ellis and Adi Granov Extremis storyline, and that was plagued with publishing delays. At the time, IRON MAN had become IRON MAN: DIRECTOR OF S.H.I.E.L.D. following the events of CIVIL WAR, and the book was being written by the father and son team of Daniel and Charlie Knauf. It was a solid book, but it wasn’t selling super-great, and with an Iron Man film slated to open shortly, there was a desire to give the series a kick into the stratosphere. This is where writer Matt Fraction came in. He knew about the desire for a new take on the armored Avenger and he also knew a bit about what was going to be coming up in the aftermath of SECRET INVASION—that Norman Osborn would wind up replacing Tony Stark as the world’s Top Cop—and so he came to the next Marvel creative retreat with a pitch for the series in his back pocket. He pitched it enthusiastically in the room—it was the crux of what would wind up becoming the twelve-part World’s Most Wanted arc in the series, and it won him the assignment. Matt had bene working with Warren on projects such as THE ORDER, and felt comfortable with him, so he asked me if I’d mind handing the series over to Warren to edit, and I acquiesced. I was only involved with the decision to pair Matt up with artist Salvador Larroca tangentially, but it was again part of an effort to put some real artistic assets into the series, as Salva was both prolific and commercial. He had almost done IRON MAN for me a couple of years before, when John Jackson Miller was writing the series, but things just didn’t come together. In any event, two things happened that impacted on the final issues of the previous series. The first was that, because of when SECRET INVASION was scheduled to end, this new iteration of IRON MAN wouldn’t be able to launch until after the IRON MAN film had opened. That was a bad idea all around, so the decision was to have it begin earlier, even though DIRECTOR OF S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t yet run its course. Accordingly, Matt and Warren needed to come up with a new opening arc for their run, which became the story that introduced Zeke Stane, the son of Ezekiel Stane, who was the villain of the film. But this meant that, for a number of months, there were two IRON MAN books overlapping, one of which was clearly in “garbage time.” The second thing that happened is, for reasons that I don’t recall, there was suddenly a need to do an additional four issues of DIRECTOR OF S.H.I.E.L.D. for some reason. Possibly this was due to some budgetary need, possibly it was part of a desire to have a lot of Iron Man product available when the film was coming out, I honestly don’t remember all these years later. But by this point the Knaufs had finished off their story and were out of the picture. I wound up handing the whole mess over to Nicole Boose to deal with, and she commissioned a new four-part story from Stuart Moore to run out the clock. In any event, these changes were all ultimately for the best, as together, Fraction and Salva produced what was the most consistently successful IRON MAN run of the decade. This was the series that really propelled Fraction into the upper echelon of Marvel writers of the era, the breakout hit that he needed to get readers and retailers to recognize him and his work. And this issue went on sale five days after that first Iron Man movie opened, which put it in the sweet spot in terms of drafting off of the appeal and success of the movie.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

I hadn’t realized until I did the research for this week’s Newsletter that this other Iron Man project also came out that same day, May 7, 2008, five days after the film opened. Which is amazing to me now, given what this series was. But really good planning. IRON MAN: VIVA LAS VEGAS was a four issue Marvel Knights limited series written by Iron Man director (and Happy Hogan himself) Jon Favreau and illustrated by Adi Granov. The two had met while working on the movie—Favreau’s take had been visually influenced by that Extremis storyline that Adi had done, and so he called Adi in to do designs and conceptual work for the film. And at a certain point, once the movie was locked but hadn’t yet been released, Adi pitched Favreau on the idea of the two of them collaborating on an Iron Man comic book series. In those days before a Marvel Cinematic Universe existed, it was intended to take place within the continuity of the film, which is why it used a variation of the movie’s armor. The two came up with a storyline that would involve Fin Fang Foom, a creature that they didn’t think they’d ever be able to depict in live action on film—which shows you just where the expectation level was set in those early movie days. Unfortunately, IRON MAN: VIVIA LAS VEGAS ran into some speed bumps, and in the end, only two issues wound up seeing print. Part of the problem was that, for all that he worked diligently on it, Adi still wasn’t the fastest artist in the world, so it took him a long while to complete an issue. But more crucially, this first issue came out to a tepid if not hostile reaction from the fans, at least the ones online. At the same time, the film was getting rave reviews and was a colossal hit, plans were being hatched for a sequel that Favreau would helm, and at the end of the day, doing the comic stopped being fun for him. So it was never finished—he had more important things to be doing with his time. But as such, it’s something of a black mark on my otherwise-perfect record, an unfinished symphony that will never be completed. Occasionally, somebody brings up the idea of completing it, but the moment has passed—and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has grown in all sorts of different directions since then, to the point where I’m sure that it would no longer fit any longer. It’s day is over—because it wasn’t completed, it’s also never been reprinted, which is a shame, because Adi did some great work on it.

I had also forgotten that, as a part of the promotion for SECRET INVASION, we did unannounced Skrull variant versions of a number of our covers this month. So there’s also this Skrull edition of IRON MAN: VIVA LAS VEGAS #1 out there. But no #3 or #4.

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Monofocus

After watching psychological illusionist Derren Brown’s latest special SHOWMAN last week, I wound up hunting down something of a rarity in his canon, a video called THE DEVIL’S PICTUREBOOK. It was produced right at the beginning of Brown’s career on television, and was intended for a select audience. It’s an instructional video for other aspiring magicians, demonstrating and explaining how he performs a number of his routines. At this time, Brown had mostly made his living as a close-up card mechanic, so much of what he walks through here are card tricks of one sort or another. But he has begun by this point to branch out into more mind reading and psychological effect material, and so he also unveils the secrets of a number of those pieces. and it’s mesmerizing stuff. As somebody who has a good smattering of knowledge about how magic is performed, I can typically intuit at least one way that a given trick might be performed. But it’s frankly astounding to see how much work, how many complex movements and slights and misdirects Brown is doing, especially at the points where it seems as though he’s not doing anything at all. The bust-out-laughing moment for me was when brown was explaining a particularly perplexing mind reading effect, and indicating some of the ways in which he might have pulled it off—all before revealing that he’d discarded all of those methods and instead had employed the most Occam’s Razor sort of direct approach instead, even though it was markedly more dangerous and apt to be revealed if something went wrong. I can’t really say more thought ruining the tricks, which I’m not about to do, of course. But if anything, I found it entertaining and it increased my admiration for Brown’s variety of skills.

Elsewhere, on Amazon Prime, THE MARVELOUS MRS MAISEL righted itself with a knock-out sixth episode that fast forwarded the narrative to the 1980s and a Friar’s Club roast for hyper-successful agent Susie Meyerson. In fact, this episode was so good, and so all-encompassing and so conclusive that I legitimately thought it was the series finale. But after doing some quick research, I discovered that there are yet three more episodes to go. Which seems ill-considered to me. This installment answered pretty much every question one might have about the show: what happenings to all of the characters, does Midge ever make it to the top and what does it cost her, how do all of the character relationships turn out, and etc. It’s immensely satisfying, but it doesn’t leave a whole lot more for another three episodes to do. In comic book terms, it’s like MIRACLEMAN #16. Yes, a clever Neil Gaiman-esque writer can find a way to do a MIRACLEMAN #17, but on a certain level, it just doesn’t feel necessary; the story is over. I suppose the next three weeks will tell the tale.

And in literary matters, such as they are, I just cracked the latest release from Jim Beard’s Becky Books imprint which publishes collections of essays on a subject from the popular culture of the 1970s and 1980s. Past volumes have focused on G.I. Joe, the gothic soap opera DARK SHADOWS and the spate of Japanese television shows that were translated and adapted for broadcast in the U.S. This latest release, D20 OR DIE, as the title indicates, is about Dungeons & Dragons and other table-top roll-playing games of the era. Now, I was never really a player of such games, though I sort of wanted to be. But I was just too introverted, at least at first, too much a loner and a misanthrope, and I didn’t have a circle of similarly-minded friends to get up any sort of game with. But that didn’t stop me from going over the rulebooks time and time again and even creating some makeshift sessions with my younger brother Ken. Anyway, like the earlier volumes, this one is made up of a series of essays from a variety of authors relating their experiences relating to the playing of such games. So it’s wall-to-wall nostalgia, especially for somebody like myself who grew up in that era. And STRANGER THINGS has put that all back into the pop culture conversation a little bit, so it’s a fun thing to revisit.

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I shared another Roy Thomas memo, this one concerning Roy’s ideas for a crossover series that could follow CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.

And five years ago, I wrote about the second issue of E-MAN as reprinted by Modern Comics.

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More fun and games to be had next week! So see you then!

Tom B