#19: Mutant Confessions

Plus Special Guest Stars Galore!

Hello once again, everyone! We’ll begin this week’s installment with the cover shown below, which caused a small stir up in the Marvel offices when we came across it.

This issue of MUTANT CONFESSIONS was published in 1952 and is what some dealers like to call a “prototype”; that is, a comic from the pre-Marvel age that uses names and concepts that would later become prominent during the Marvel Age of Comics. While Slim Summers’ behavior here doesn’t quite match up with that of the later Cyclops, he nonetheless bears more than a passing resemblance to the one-eyed hero, as does his girlfriend to Marvel Girl.

Seems like there’s a whole lot more of you out there this week than there was last time, and I’ve clearly worked out the secret to success: if I just mention Chip Zdarsky’s name often enough, he’ll continue to recommend this feature to his loyal audience (did you know he writes BATMAN now?) and they will continue to come over and check this page out. So thanks for the support, Chip! Come again!

Next up, I’ve got a correction to proffer from somebody who would know the score on this account, writer Ed Brubaker:

Hey Tom - Love your newsletter. It's WAAAAAY better than Chip's.

Minor nitpick on your timeline. Selena's Big Score was something Darwyn Cooke did after our Catwoman run, and after the Slam Bradley backups in Detective. He was working on New Frontier and did the Big Score book on the side, if I remember correctly.

Good to hear from you Ed—I miss our time working together, but continue to enjoy your assorted efforts. And you’re right, this newsletter really IS a whole lot better than Chip’s, isn’t it? I’m not surprised that I messed up the timeline on SELINA’S BIG SCORE as I don’t think I wound up buying and reading it until after NEW FRONTIER, so my sense of its place is a little bit skewed. Thanks for setting the record straight!

Continuing with notices from guest contributors, we also got the following message and question from writer Matt Fraction, who is always a delight:

I loved hearing that there was a panel celebrating the life and career of Mark Gruenwald at SDCC this year and wished I could've been there to have seen it. You mentioned today you "came up during the era of Mark Gruenwald" and I know he's got a special place in your heart, career, life -- so i was hoping, for those of us never fortunate enough to meet or work with the guy, to prompt a Mark story or two out of you. What he was like as an editor, mentor, creative thinker, Marvel fan (or, my personal favorite flavor of Mark stories, a prank-puller supreme)? i think about how if David and I always wanted our HAWKEYE to be a love letter and thank you to his work and we were only ever fans, then the people that knew and loved him must share that feeling we have for him a thousand times over.

It’s a bit difficult to encapsulate Mark in just words, I’m afraid. I seem to think you and I have spoken about him on occasion in the past, so some of what I’m going to say here may be a little bit repetitive

When I try to convey the essence of Mark Gruenwald to people who never knew him, the closest equivalent I can conjure up that gets the sense of him across to people is Jim Henson. Like Henson, Mark was creative and thoughtful and sensitive. But also like Henson, he was chaotic and anarchic. As a kid growing up, Mark believed in all of those stories of the Marvel Bullpen being a swinging place where like-minded people gathered to jam and put together comic magazines, even though the reality was far more business-oriented and occasionally nasty than that. Undaunted when he came into the field, he made it his goal to make the place into that fantasy image—and in a lot of ways, he succeeded in doing so. it’s not for nothing that he was considered the heart and soul of the place in those days. He was an unofficial morale officer for the place, and he and Editor in Chief Tom DeFalco would finance office parties on holidays out of their own pockets, stopping all work for several hours so that people could chow down on pizza and be compelled to play ridiculous party games that Mark loved. At the same time, he hosted a weekly class for assistant editors in which he attempted to impart upon them (us) all of the accumulated wisdom about storytelling that he and the rest of the senior staff had worked out over the years. Those meetings were about 20% play, 80% work, but everybody who attended them regularly speaks of them with some fondness.

Mark had actually grown up a DC fan, which isn’t all that surprising given his later work on SQUADRON SUPREME. He liked the Marvel books, but deep down, he was more of a DC guy, so it’s kind of a shame that he never got to do much work over there. (He did get to mastermind the Marvel/DC crossover with his old former assistant editor Mike Carlin in 1994, though.) As a writer, his tastes and instincts were honed largely through a DC lens in terms of what he liked in his super heroes. It’s no real surprise that he tended to gravitate towards characters who possessed some manner of definable moral center. His attempts to write Wolverine or the Punisher always felt strained, because those sorts of personalities were not really in Mark’s vernacular. But give him a Captain America or a Quasar and watch him go! Mark was also of the generation who were looking for more realism in their super hero stories, and this led him to a minor obsession with continuity—not just in keeping stories and appearances straight (although there was always plenty of that) but also in terms of understanding how and why things worked in this fictional world, of attempting to quantify and regiment everything. This is why he was such a natural fit to be the mastermind behind THE OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE. Mark was the only person who cared deeply enough about the subject matter to devote the insane amount of manhours necessary to research, write and assemble every issue each month (Mark and his assistants would often work over an entire weekend to get an issue ready for print, remaining in the Marvel offices well beyond what was allowed and bathing in the President’s private bathroom)

And yes, Mark was an inveterate prank-puller, at a time when such behavior was much less likely to get one arrested than it is today. His target was often his boss and longtime editorial office-mate Tom DeFalco. So yes, after having read Penn & Teller’s HOW TO PLAY IN TRAFFIC, he did once sneak a cardboard cut-out in the shape of a gun and covered in aluminum foil into the lining of Tom’s suitcase as the two were heading off to a convention together. And yes, he did once break into Tom’s hotel room and tape all of the EIC’s clothes to the wall outside of the hotel window. And yes, he did once circulate fliers with Tom’s room number to fans, complete with instructions for them to drop in any time day or night. And so forth. But for all that these gags were disruptive, Mark wasn’t really mean-spirited with them. He wasn’t looking to hurt anybody, he was simply trying to make life more colorful and enjoyable for people.

One year in the 1990s, when he was read to cut his hair, he worked out an elaborate performance piece with Marvel assistant editor Glenn Herdling, in which Glenn was to pretend to have cut off Mark’s ponytail while Gruenwald was asleep, and Mark was going to be furious upon awakening and thereafter fire him in front of the whole staff (we were on an editorial retreat at the time.) The prank didn’t really come off 100%, largely because Mark couldn’t convincingly pretend to be angry. But Herdling kept the ponytail, and as of a few years ago, still had it—the greatest concentration of Gruenwald matter still in existence.

I can also share this video with everybody. It’s a sketch from CHEAP LAFFS, the cable-access television show that Mark and Mike Carlin and Elliot Brown filmed 8 episodes of back in the mid-1980s. I think it gives a good sense of Mark’s personality and the manner in which his mind worked—that juxtaposition of silliness and serious-mindedness that he evidenced. Oh, and that is the old Marvel offices at 387 Park Avenue South that the guys throw a dummy out of at the end of the sketch towards the street ten stories below. It’s a miracle that no passers-by were killed as they were filming this stuff.

And finally, reader Paul Huyter had a question that’s a little bit easier to tackle:

Not sure if you have any insights into whether or not Marvel would ever be interested in pursuing limited licensing of old properties like ROM, Godzilla, Micronauts, Shogun Warriors, etc. in order to produce omnibus reprints of these titles.... I’m thinking there is very little interest in doing so.

We’ve done things like this in the past at times when it’s made sense—the ESSENTIAL GODZILLA black and white collection, for example. But it is a lot of effort, and often for relatively small return, so there really does have to be a compelling reason for us to go to the effort. It’s a lot trickier, as you’d imagine, than issuing Omnibuses of work that we still have full title to. By that same token, there is certainly some nostalgia attached to MICRONAUTS and ROM and a few of the others that you named, so I’d never rule it out completely.

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Behind the Curtain

.Kind of a special item to share with you this week.

This is a page of Bill Everett original artwork to the very first Sub-Mariner story, from MARVEL COMICS #1 in 1939. It is the oldest surviving piece of Marvel artwork in existence, and it would be very hard to beat in those terms since it’s from the first comic Marvel ever published. Everett was easily the most skilled artist working within that initial offering, and his work only got better over the years. Sadly, he passed away in 1973—but his work continues to live on. This page was drawn on duo-shade board, which is what is responsible for the greytones you see on it. Duo-shade paper was a special type of board that contained two separate dot screens of varying intensities embedded within the paper. By applying a developing fluid, you could make either tone visible in certain areas, thus enabling artists to add greys to their otherwise black and white work. Everett mostly used it in this initial story to help convey an underwater world, though on this page the tones merely function as an accent. He gave up using the duo-shade board after two stories, both because it tended to print like mud (the early printing of comics, particularly at Marvel, was really crude) and because the board was expensive. Far more affordable to do the work on regular Bristol board like everyone else.

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Pimp My Wednesday

Another pretty sizable week’s worth of new releases. Never let it be said that the Brevoort editorial office isn’t working hard for your happiness!

This is a cover that I really love, both for the absurdity of it and the pitch-perfect execution of the idea. We did a Weird War story and then a Samurai story, so now it’s time for AVENGERS to take on a Wild West tale with the introduction of Reno Phoenix and the Starbrand Kid, both of whom were glimpsed a few months back in AVENGERS #50. It’s by series regulars Jason Aaron and Javier Garron—I talk about Jason a lot (since he’s currently writing so much for me) so it’s worth spending a moment on Garron here. He’s not only a hard-working artist but also one of the nicest and chattiest people in comics. A page from Javier comes in with a little story, typically about what he did that day, what he might have watched on TV or at the movies, what the weather is like. He’s downright affable, and he’s leaving his all on the page on this series.

I long for the days when there were decent comic book news sites, as there really isn’t anywhere to get a solid sense of the reaction to a project anymore. Oh, you can look at the sites there are, the reviews that are really just blog posts, and the social media chatter. But in most instances, it’s all a random fog that doesn’t tell you much of anything. So AXE: JUDGMENT DAY #1 came out a week or two back, and consequently I honestly have no real idea what the reaction to it has been like—whether people are into it, hate it, are ignoring it, whatever. Which isn’t something that keeps me up at nights or anything, but it is nice to be able to get a sense of the reaction. Anyway, this is the second issue, where the trajectory of the storyline takes a major turn. It’s written by Kieron Gillen and illustrated by new parent Valerio Schiti. I don’t really love the way this cover came together, honestly. The illustration by Mark Brooks is fine, but there wasn’t really a good place for the logo. We wound up shrinking it down and jamming in at the upper left, which gets the job done, but feels like a bit of an afterthought to me. Wish we’d been able to find a better solution.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Jason Aaron’s Marvel street, the saga that is PUNISHER continues to rock on, with a bit of a minor game-changer issue as well. Look at the lushness of that forest as depicted by series artist Jesus Saiz, who is absolutely killing it on this book. I’d worked with Jesus on other things before, but it was Marvel talent coordinator Rickey Purdin who suggested Jesus for this assignment, and it really worked out better than anybody might have imagined. And I say all of this without any slight to the other regular artist Paul Azaceta, who once again handles all of the flashbacks to Frank’s days growing up in this issue and provides them with a gritty and almost stifling reality. I know that there are some who don’t like this project just on general principles, but I have to say that I’m happy with the way it’s coming together. Also, having each issue run for 30 pages at a shot is a huge help in getting a lot of story and a lot of visual impact into every issue.

When we first began working on this cover, I didn’t intend to put the logo for the series onto it this way. That was entirely the inspiration of Carlos Lao, one of Marvel’s undersung Bullpen designers who is usually the person who assembles the covers for my office. Carlos has been working with me long enough to have an instinctive understanding as to what I’m likely to like or not, and he’s also ambitious enough to try some crazy and complicated things without even asking about it first. These are all things I love about him, to be sure. Anyway, this cover for SAVAGE AVENGERS #4 spoils the big reveal that we made at the end of issue #3: the Deathlok who has been pursuing Conan and our assorted heroes through time and space was built from the dead body of Miles Morales. But which Miles Morales, and from where? And how did he die? For those answers, you’ll need to crack this beautiful cover and experience for yourself the saga contained inside. It’s again the work of David Pepose and Carlos Magno, and it’s as crazy and unrelenting as the previous three installments.

A new week brings a new creative team and a new storyline to AVENGERS UNLIMITED, and so welcome Jeremy Adams and Stefano Raffaele to the stage. They bring you a short two-part adventure starring Hawkeye in which the ace archer finds himself transported to an alien world thanks to the wish of a youngster with a problem. I believe this is Jeremy’s first Marvel assignment, though he’s been regularly writing FLASH for DC for more than a year at this point. And Stefano worked on a HAWKEYE series I edited almost twenty years ago, so he’s got some familiarity with the character. My intention on the AVENGERS UNLIMITED track is to mix up longer tales with shorter stories spotlighting a wide variety of characters and storytelling styles. I see the whole endeavor as a laboratory where we can try some things. So this is the first tentative evidence of that.

And finally, a book that isn’t quite one of “mine” in the same way but which I worked as story editor on, Alex Ross’s FANTASTIC FOUR graphic novel FULL CIRCLE is making its way into stores, I’m told. Published by Abrams as the first of their MARVEL ARTS line of releases, the project was actually shepherded by Charlie Kochman, an editor with a string of strong projects to his name. It also represents the first time that Alex is responsible for the entire work—he wrote and scripted the story as well as illustrating it and designing the package. So it’s a special release for him. It isn’t every day that a new full-length Alex Ross project comes to your store shelves. Consequently, this one is worth a look.

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A Comic Book On Sale 30 Years Ago Today, August 7, 1992

As with YOUNGBLOOD #1 a few weeks back, there really is only one choice in terms of releases on this date from the past that we should focus on.

Jim Lee was arguably the most popular of the artists who left Marvel in 1992 to form their own company, Image—it’s really a toss-up between him and Todd McFarlane, with Rob Liefeld as a secure #3. If nothing else, Jim was at the helm of the best-selling series in comics, X-MEN, when he left. So interest was high concerning what he would do as a part of this new venture. As the Image titles first started to come out, each one seemed to raise the bar in some way, in particular as regarded coloring and printing as well as stylistic approach. The advent of Image was incredibly exciting for fans of the era—you could liken it to being there when the Beatles hit America. Like his fellows, Jim produced an initial title that wasn’t all that far removed from what he’d been previously working on, at least on the surface. WILDC.A.T.S was a super hero science fiction adventure series revolving around a far-off alien war whose outlier forces had reached Earth. The titular WildC.A.T.s (which somehow stood for Covert Action Teams—yeah, it’s not a great acronym) were largely either members of or descended from the inhabitants of the planet Kherub, and thus possessed of otherworldly powers. The team included Jacob Marlowe, Void, Spartan, Warblade, Maul, Voodoo, Zealot and the human Grifter. Their enemies were the Daemonites (which was a pretty great name, actually) Jim worked alongside his friend Brandon Choi to develop the storyline, and brought along his simpatico inker Scott Williams to give the book that classic Jim Lee X-MEN feel. It was all very operatic and sweeping in the manner of a Chris Claremont book, but also somehow not quite as well focused. That was balanced out by how sharp the art looked, though. The series ran for a good long while, often helmed by a series of guest writers such as Alan Moore, and eventually generated an animated series that lasted for a season. When Jim sold his WILDSTORM operation to DC, the WildC.A.T.s characters were incorporated into the larger DC Universe—which should have been a good thing, as they provide DC with a sort of character they didn’t have a whole lot of. But somehow, the attempts at integration didn’t go smoothly (almost like a transplant patient’s body rejecting the new organ, somehow.), and the characters and their situation were rebooted time and again along with the rest of the DCU. If I was working over there, I’d be looking for new and better ways to bring them to prominence in that line, they represent a ton of untapped potential.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

THANOS QUEST #2 saw print on August 7, 1990 and is best remembered as the lead-in to THE INFINITY GAUNTLET, the crossover series that brought the Mad Titan Thanos back to prominence within the Marvel Universe after several years of being dead, and whose story formed the source material for the last two AVENGERS films. In the story, over the course of two squarebound issues, writer Jim Starlin and artist Ron Lim show how Thanos gathers together the six Infinity Stones from their current possessors through strength, cunning, skill and guile. Ultimately, uniting them all on the back of his glove, he becomes all-powerful. But none of that has anything to do with me. What does is the first person narration captions that run throughout the issue. At this time at Marvel, there was only one computer in the editorial offices, hard as that maybe is to believe today. And stepping foot in the place, while I was no expert with it, I was better versed at using it than pretty much anybody else who was here. Thus it was that it fell to me to typeset the assorted computer balloons in DEATHLOK using a program and a font that Dwayne McDuffie had put together. Editor Craig Anderson wanted a similar look for this Thanos narration—he wanted to differentiate it from ordinary narration as well as Thanos’ speech balloons. And so I was paid a $25.00 -per-page lettering fee to typeset all of the captions in these two issues. It’s a credit that absolutely nobody apart from myself remembers at this point, and there’s really no reason to. But the money came in handy that year, so I was glad for the small bit of lettering work, the only time I was ever paid freelance for that discipline.

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Another Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

The fiftieth issue of SPIDER-GIRL saw print on August 7, 2002 and was supposed to have been the final issue of the series. This wasn’t the first time that SPIDER-GIRL had been slated for cancellation—the series was only supposed to run for 12 issues initially, but the sales and the fervent work of a group of hardcore SPIDER-GIRL fan activists kept the book alive time and again after it was pronounced dead. It would run for something like 130 issues all told, including a title change to SPECTACULAR SPIDER-GIRL at one point and a wrap-up as SPIDER-GIRL: THE END. That’s a hell of an achievement on the part of the creative team, writer Tom DeFalco and artists Pat Olliffe (at first) and Ron Frenz (who took over after Pat—and who had drawn the initial WHAT IF story that introduced the character.) The series was about May “Mayday” Parker, the daughter of Peter and Mary Jane Parker who had grown up and developed spider-powers of her own. It was a classic flip on the Spider-Man formula: where Spidey was motivated by guilt and a desire to prevent people from dying, Mayday was driven by a sense of accomplishment, that when she took action, people lived. My first issue as editor was, I believe, #37, and I wound up handing it over at a certain point to a number of other younger editors who worked in my group, most notably Molly Lazer who became a strong advocate for the series and its creative team. But all of that was still to come at this point. Part of what made the series successful was the fact that it tried to operate on a single issue model,. Which is to say that, while there were certainly storylines that ran for multiple issues as subplots, the team approach each release as a single entity. (Tom would even close out every issue with THE END…FOR NOW, regardless of whether it was a cliffhanger or a conclusion.) In any event, the decision had been made that SPIDER-GIRL #50 would be the end for the title, and so everything was designed to be wrapped up in this extra-sized finale. I believe this was the instance where the reprieve came in the form of a letter from a little girl who spoke about reading the book with her comic book fan father every month. This among other factors melted the heart of Marvel President Bill Jemas just a little bit, and he gave the book a stay of execution. It turned out later that, when Marvel reached out to the family of the little girl to try to get them involved in promotional activities, the little girl in question was still in her crib, and the letter had actually been penned by her father. But either way, it had done its job. Unfortunately, the timing of that job was poorly timed. See, we got word that the book would be continuing on April 1st—and because we hadn’t been in production on new issues for some time, the schedule for #51 and beyond was extremely tight. It must have been a busy day as well, because I had my assistant editor Marc Sumerak reach out to DeFalco with the news. The problem was, DeFalco didn’t believe it—he figured that it must be an April Fool’s prank and that he was going to get stuck writing up a plot for which there’d be no series. (All those years of Mark Gruenwald pranks had stayed with Tom.) Things only got worse when Ralph Macchio had occasion to speak with Tom on some other business, and he confirmed that SPIDER-GIRL was not cancelled and that a plot for the next issue would be needed rapidly. Tom had known Ralph for years and the two were good friends—but he also knew that Ralph was very comfortable with winding people up and running a scam, so he figured that this was just more proof that the whole thing was just a gag. No matter who reached out to him. DeFalco simply would not be convinced. Eventually, around 7:00 that evening, I had finally dug myself out of whatever I had been involved with enough to reach out to Tom myself. And the conversation went something like this: “Tom, I know that you have heard this from others. It is now 7:00 in the evening. I would like to be home with my family, or literally anywhere else in the world right now. This is not a prank. This is not a dream. SPIDER-GIRL is definitely and definitively uncancelled, and I do need a plot from you for the next issue immediately. This will still be the case tomorrow, and I would be happy to call you then and reiterate this. But right now, what I need you to do is to start figuring out what the story is.” Tom got the message at this point, and started working that out (it really would have been incredible if the whole thing HAD been a prank at this point.) As things turned out, I wound up running an inventory story that I had commissioned as part of Marvel’s policy back then to avoid late-shipping books in issue #51 to buy the team some time—and that ended up being the one issue in the entire run that Tom didn’t write and that either Pat or Ron didn’t draw. Which is unfortunate (and cheesed off some SPIDER-GIRL fans at the time, even though I think the fill-in is a nice piece of work) but that’s the way it goes sometimes. SPIDER-GIRL continued on through issue #60, at which point it was cancelled again—but that’s another story.

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Monofocus

Didn’t do a whole lot of sampling this past week as the new releases that I’ve been following hit a perfect pattern for the moment, one which prevented a whole lot of exploration. On Mondays, my viewing time would be dedicated to BETTER CALL SAUL (and I’ll typically pick up the previous evening’s edition of LAST WEEK TONIGHT as well), Tuesday brings a new episode of ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING, Wednesday and Thursday provide episodes of EXTRAORDINARY ATTORNEY WOO, and Friday wraps things up with FOR ALL MANKIND. Perfect. I’ve also tended to pick up that week’s episode of THE ORVILLE on Friday as well, and the odd PAPER GIRLS episode whenever there’s been time. Many of these shows are wrapping up their runs in another week or two, so this pattern won’t stick—but at the moment, it makes for a nice, easy pattern. And there’s some new stuff on the horizon.

In the world of print, I’ve been working my way through Brian Doherty’s history of the underground comix movement, DIRTY PICTURES. I have a smattering of knowledge about the undergrounds, but there’s always more to learn, and Doherty lays out the tale against the events in each practitioner’s lives in a way that gives a sense of context to what they worked on and how the whole scene came about. I love being able to expand my knowledge of the field in this way, and so I’m enjoying the experience, even if most undergrounds don’t really do all that much for me. I can admire the sensibility and the goal without loving the actual material in a lot of cases.

I did start one thing this week, and that’s the same thing that everybody seems to be watching, THE SANDMAN. I haven’t revisited the original comics in many years, but my impression of the first episode is that it’s a very faithful adaptation of the source material. Which is no wonder, given Neil Gaiman’s close involvement with the production. But I feel like the secret weapon here (and admittedly, I’m a little bit biased) is my friend Allan Heinberg, who is serving as the showrunner and main writer on the series. Allan is one of those people who has consistently done high-quality work but whose efforts have often been credited more to the people around him. that’s certainly the case with the first WONDER WOMAN movie in my opinion. Allan seems to be largely okay with this, so I’m not out to start a fight on his behalf (and I’m in no way saying that Neil or David Goyer are taking any undue credit for the show either. But I am saying that the continued presence of Allan on the series makes me confident in its execution—if there were problems, if it wasn’t working, then he would be out of there. Allan is also his own worst critic, which can make him a tough audience for his own work. In any case, based on the initial reaction to the show, people largely seem to like it and be happy with it, so I’ll enjoy experiencing the remaining episodes—though I likely won’t do more than one a day. I don’t really have that sort of binge-gene in me except in very rare instances.

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So that brings us to the end of another adventure, thanks for stopping by!

Oh, and, of course, you got me, that cover to “MUTANT CONFESSIONS” that I ran at the start of this entry (which seems so very long ago now, doesn’t it? ) was bogus, crudely doctored by me to make it seem a bit more remarkable than it actually was. It isn’t a prototype at all.

In reality, it was this cover to ACTUAL CONFESSIONS #14 that was published in 1952. But the cover artwork by Carmine Infantino and the “Summer Romance” title struck such a chord with me that I had to go ahead and work it up into an actual pastiche, despite my meager skills with the programs involved. A Mark Gruenwald-like prank to bring the whole episode to a holistic conclusion.

More soon!

Tom B