If you read Tom Brevoort's blog or have caught any of my interviews with other Marvel editors, you can get a good grasp as to what goes into putting together a monthly comic--from getting talent to making sure the book looks and reads well and everything in between. But what are the editors who put work on the collected editions? Think it's a cakewalk job because they're working with already finished products? Think again, buster. I spoke with Senior Editor of Special Projects Jeff Youngquist to get some insight on what goes into editing collections, a bit of info on what's coming up (Frank Miller's DD, Champions Classic and Secret Wars, to name a few) and much more.

Agent M: Hiya Jeff. For those not in the know, can you explain what you do for Marvel?
Jeff Youngquist: I'm the Senior Editor of Special Projects, which means, basically, I'm in charge of anything that's not a monthly comic book. Trade paperbacks, hardcovers, digests, Handbooks, Director's Cuts, flip magazines. It's not only reprint material, we do put out some original content like the Handbooks, Marvel Spotlight. Right now we're working on the John Romita Jr. 30th Anniversary Special. But mostly, it's reprint material.
AM: How long have you been heading that office?
Youngquist: I've had a couple different titles, but I've basically been doing the same thing since...wow, a hundred years ago? [Laughs] No, I think I want to say 2002.
AM: And you moved over from editing the monthlies?
Youngquist: I started out working on the website, actually, in 2000. In the fall of 2001, I moved over to Tom Brevoort's office. I was his assistant editor until early 2002.
AM: What were you working on over there?
Youngquist: The Marvel heroes.
AM: I've spoken to Andy Schmidt and he mentioned that at one point assistant editors were given their own books to edit.
Youngquist: It was right before that. Actually, if I'm not mistaken, Andy replaced me in Brevoort's office when I went to trades.
AM: Does anything stick out in your mind as being especially cool from your tenure under Brevoort?
Youngquist: We worked on Avengers/JLA and that was a lot of fun. I wasn't actually credited in any of the issues because they came out so long after I was in the office. There was a lot of lead-time on that book. I remember getting George Pérez reference for that first issue. That was ridiculous. And of course, Tom knows down to the panel what you have to get.
AM: That must make it easy, then.
Youngquist: Yeah. Except finding the book in our library isn't easy. [Laughs]
AM: How did you get your start at Marvel.com?
Youngquist: I was working in newspapers and I was looking for a change. I had my resume up on a couple websites--Monster.com and a few other things. They were looking to bring new people into Marvel to work on the website at that point; people from outside of comics. The Director of New Media at the time happened to see my resume online and sent me an email. I've been a comic book fan my whole life, but he didn't know that.
AM: Do you think your background in newspapers helped you out at all?
Youngquist: Yes and no. Certain aspects of it--meeting deadlines, being creative without a lot of time to spare, certainly.
AM: How does editing collected editions differ from editing the montlies?
Youngquist: We're doing so many different things. If you're editing monthly comic books, it's roughly the same workflow for each book, but because we work on collections, handbooks, Marvel Spotlight and Director's Cuts, it seems like we're dealing with 10 different workflows. And anytime we're assigned a new project that's unlike anything we've done before, we have to figure out how we're gonna get this done. Unfortunately, we don't have enough resources in-house to be able to handle everything ourselves. We often freelance books out. We have designers outside, production people outside.
It's definitely a challenge just figuring out how we're going to do this. "The John Romita 30th Anniversary Special, okay how are we going to do this?" There's no set workflow for that sort of thing. We've got a couple different designers working on it, one in-house, one outside; a couple different people writing it. For that sort of book, I have to hire a freelance proofreader because our proofreading department doesn't have enough staff to handle it.
AM: It's pretty text-heavy.
Youngquist: Yeah. So anything we do, the first thing we have to figure out is "How? What's the workflow on this book?" For the regular trades, it's pretty standard, but we get a lot of curveballs thrown our way. [Laughs]
AM: What's been your favorite project?
Youngquist: Hmm. I was a big fan of the old hardcover encyclopedias we used to do. I think the last one we did was Marvel Knights. That's sort of similar to the Handbooks we're doing now. Those are a lot of fun. Very demanding, but rewarding.
AM: Demanding how?
Youngquist: It's a lot of text, man. [Laughs] A 64 page handbook is a lot of text. [Also] specifically from an artwork standpoint, because we don't commission new artwork. You know, if we're doing a bio on Merlin, we've got to find a full body shot of Merlin to use in the handbook. And that sort of thing isn't always easy. Even if it's a character who's appeared more recently and we have digital files for that issue, the foot might be missing or the hand might be missing. Some characters, we don't have any digital files [of], so we have to scan the printed comic, get it reinked, reconstructed and recolored. Even stuff that's digital, we have to finish sometimes. Just finding all the artwork is probably the most difficult part.
AM: Even moreso than the actual text, background, fact-checking, etc.?
Youngquist: Yeah, we've got a good group working on the bios. The Handbook writers have been working with us since the very first Handbook we did, which was X-Men. [That was] probably May 2004, around the time Astonishing X-Men started. That group of writers has been together the whole time, more or less. They pretty much package that stuff for us. They do all the writing, as a group proofread the bios and fact-check them.
It's interesting. If they're going to write a bio on Professor X, the person who's going to write that bio will read every appearance of Professor X. They don't rely on past bios. They reread all the material, write their bio and then they check the old Handbook to make sure there wasn't any new information revealed in that bio that they should put in.
So it's a very demanding process on their end. And for us, too. They basically handle the text with input and feedback from us. We take it from there. Once we get the text in, it's a matter of finding all the artwork, laying out the book. Then the proofing process we go through once the book is laid out is pretty intensive, too.
AM: That's hardcore.
Youngquist: Yeah. And we do that every month. Sometimes twice a month!
AM: In comparison, are the collected edtions a lot easier?
Youngquist: They're not easy. I was thinking about this the other day: When I first started in the department, we were doing like six books a month and now we're doing 30 books a month. Every trade seemed so difficult and we didn't know how to do a book.
When I came in, the previous group that had been working on these books was basically let go. It was a bunch of us in there just trying to figure out, "How do you make a trade paperback?" [Laughs] We figured that out. It used to be that every book was very difficult. Certainly comparatively, the trades are the easiest part of what we do, althought they're not easy. But it's all relative. Compared to a Handbook, yeah, a trade paperback is pretty easy. The classic trade paperbacks are a lot more difficult.
AM: Why?
Youngquist: You've got to find the materials first. Our film is warehoused in Sparta, Illinois by a company called Jerron Quality Color. They're also our primary scanning and recoloring vendor. At one point, Marvel housed its own film, but it's moved around a couple times and it ended up with them. Which actually works well, because if we're doing Invaders Classic volume 1, say, and we need to have the film scanned for Invaders #1-#10, they can just go to their warehouse, pull the film and scan it.
You have to get the film scanned, first of all. Usually we just get the black plate scanned and we recolor the issues digitally to match the original comics. It's the same color palette and color values, but done digitally. You can get all four color plates scanned, but because of the technology used back in the day to color books, if you get the four color plates scanned and combine them into a TIFF and you try to print your trade paperback using modern printing techniques and the kind of paper we use nowadays, it looks horrible. [Laughs] It's basically like a kid did a bad job on a coloring book and colored outside the lines. The separates are terrible. We get everything, almost everything, recolored digitally. That's the easy part. That's if they have the film. Because Marvel's film archive has moved around so many times, we don't always have the film.
In that case, we'll have to have an issue reconstructed for a collection, which entails scanning a printed copy of the comic and sending it to a freelancer who digitally blows out the color and then reconstructs the line art either digitally or by hand. We have one guy who does it by hand. But that's a very expensive and time-consuming process. The first thing you hope for when doing a classic collection is that we have film. That makes it a lot easier.
Then there's a lot of color proofing that goes on to make sure it matches the original. We don't always have the issues in our library, so we've got to buy them or find someone who's willing to loan them to us, usually Ralph Macchio. He has every comic book ever. [Laughs] Or in some cases, he doesn't even have it and it has to go to one of the Handbook writers and if they have the issues, we'll send them the files to help us proof or they'll send us scans. But just assembling all the materials for a classic collection is difficult.
Primarily Mark Beazley, he's one of my Associate Editors, he handles all--or most--of the classic collections. Jen Grünwald, my other Associate Editor, handles the trades of current material. They both do an excellent job, but they both have their specialties. Mike Short, our Assistant Editor, handles the Flip Magazines, Director’s Cuts, Sketchbooks, etc.--and supports all our other efforts.
AM: Do you have a preference in what's collected--'70s books, Kirby stuff, etc.?Youngquist: I guess anything I collected when I was younger.
AM: What did you collect?
Youngquist: Like the first Essential X-Factor. I remember when those books first came out and that was great. We're doing the Essential Handbooks now. Those are great, too. I remember buying those Handbooks at the newsstand at the mall or 7-11.
AM: Those were great. Book of the Dead was my favorite.
Youngquist: Yeah. Of course, you look at the Book of the Dead now, and everyone in it is alive. [Laughs] So, yeah, anything I collected I like a lot more.
AM: Are there any books you really want to see collected that hasn't been done yet?
Youngquist: We've collected so much stuff! [Laughs] We're always finding new things to collect, but nothing really stands out in my mind as, "Oh, we missed an opportunity here, we've got to do this." Certainly there are things I want to get to and it seems like we have plans for all of them.
AM: Like what?
Youngquist: We did the Complete Age of Apocalypse and now we're thinking of doing the Complete Onslaught. We're looking at doing a couple Secret Wars hardcovers, like a Secret Wars Omnibus and a Secret Wars II Omnibus. But that's all stuff down the road. I thought the New X-Men Omnibus was great.
Mark Beazley is working on the Daredevil by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson Omnibus. We're going to do a companion to that which will have Born Again and Man Without Fear and a couple other things. And after that, it looks like we're going to do an Elektra by Frank Miller Omnibus.
AM: The Omnibus books are great. The quality is really high, the coloring and everything. Especially on the Uncanny X-Men Omnibus.
Youngquist: Yeah. If you compare the Uncanny X-Men Omnibus to even the Uncanny X-Men Masterworks, it blows it away. We had everything redone. Starting with just the line art, we found better film and had all that scanned. We recolored everything. When we do the Omnibuses, we really take the opportunity to improve the material.
The Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus which Cory Sedlmeier is working on--that stuff's awesome. Amazing Fantasy #15 [with] the film we found for that, if you compare it to the printings we've been doing of that issue it's like night and day. Especially on the first page. The little Spider-Man figure in the corner, if you look at the reprints we've done, it's all muddy. You can't make out any of the details. If you look at the new line art we found, it's perfect. Cory and Mark Beazley, when they work on those classic books, Masterworks and the Omnibuses, oftentimes they'll come into posession of original artwork. They'll find a collector who has Amazing Spider-Man #122, the whole thing. We'll have the peson get us photocopies or bring in the boards and we'll scan them. The line art you get from the original artwork is even better than the line art you get from good film.
We're doing the Premiere Classic hardcover of Spider-Man: Death of the Stacys which includes the death of Gwen Stacy and the death of Captain Stacy. We came across original artwork for a lot of those issues. The reprints we've done of the Captain Stacy issues have been terrible. [Laughs] Them film we've had for that has been horrendous.
A lot of the times we do classic collections, we don't always use film. Sometimes we use what are called Stats. It's the equivalent of black plate film. They shoot a stat of the page so they would have it for their archive. Sometimes they would shoot the stat before the page was finished. So you'll get a scan of the page and Spider-Man will have no web or so-and-so character will have no glasses. [Laughs] You have to reconstruct all that. Those are some of the little things.
AM: That sounds like fun.
Youngquist: If you catch it. [Laughs] It's hard to catch some of that stuff. "What's wrong with this page?" You're looking at it and you can't quite put your finger on it.
AM: I was so excited and a bit taken aback when I first saw that the Infinity War trade was coming. Are there any books coming down the pike that you think will really surprise people?
Youngquist: I think a lot of people have been asking for a Roger Stern book for a long time. We're working on one of those now. That's coming out in April. A lot of Spider-Man stuff. We're doing Spider-Man: Saga of Sandman, like the best of Sandman. We're doing a Venom book, The Birth of Venom, which has all the Macfarlane stuff plus a lot of other things.
Every year we've got to come up with ideas for however many classic books. It was originally five classic books a month. That's 60 classic books [each year], Essentials, Masterworks, etc. First you come up with these idea and it seems so abstract and then you do the research, write the solicit and before you know it you're getting the pages in. We're working on Alpha Flight Classic, which a lot of people have been asking for--the Byrne stuff. We just finished up Champions Classic volume two. We're working on a Ghost Rider team-up book. It's neat to see these things take shape.
AM: And outside of your corner of Marvel, what's got you excited right now?
Youngquist: Obviously Civil War. The stuff they're doing in X-Men and Uncanny X-Men is really good. They've improved those books a lot. I enjoyed Beyond, which just finished up.

Five from the Fans: Five questions pulled straight from the Marvel.com message boards.

Is there any possibility of reprinting Marvel's old romance and "teen" comics? (Something more substantial than the Marvel Romance trade, with consecutive issues.) - Distress
Youngquist: There's always the possibility, but we don't have any plans in the works.

What happened to Marvel Milestones? Is there no market for a monthly reprint book? - Distress
Youngquist: We're replacing the Milestones with some other things of the same nature, but not branded under the Milestones imprint. I think the John Romita Jr. book is taking the place of a Milestone. Off the top of my head, Marvel Illustrated Jungle Book is something we're working on and that's taking the place of a Milestone.
We're going to continue to do reprints of that sort, just not called Marvel Milestones. [Vice President of Sales & Publishing] David Gabriel could better get into the sales reasons. That sort of thing isn't going away, we're just not branding them Milestones.

Some of the trades and hardcovers of older material have the original title pages of the comics edited, removing the story title and credits. Why must you do that? -Distress
Youngquist: Almost always when we do a classic book, we include everything. I know in the past when they'd do books, they'd edit out subplot pages and remove the title or credits from issues. By and large, almost without exception, when we do classic books, we reprint the issue as it appeared originally. We leave in the original credits, titles, next issue blurbs. If there are mistakes in the originals in terms of coloring or text, we usually leave those in.
It's been our policy, for the last few years at least, to do an archival reprint. If you're reprinting Champions #1, you reprint it as it oringally was, you don't try to fix it. I know in the past, they did that sort of thing. We do take out the credits of the current material when it's the same creative team for every issue and we can easily just remove the credits from the lettering.
But for the classic material, we really go out of our way to make it an archival reprint and not change anything. There've been a couple cases where we've only run a few pages from an issue where that was all that was germaine to the book, but we really don't even like to do that. We llike to run the whole issue, the cover and everything that was inside.

Will the New Mutants Classic series continue? All the way up to #75 at least, please? - Distress
Youngquist: We're working on volume 2 right now. We're supposed to get the proofs from the printer any day. We plan to keep going with that. We don't have a set schedule or anything, but we don't have any plans not to.

Any chance the old Marvel magazines will be reprinted? - Anonymous
Lazer: We've actually reprinted a lot of that stuff, especially the horror magazines in the Essential Tomb of Dracula books. I think some of it was in the Essential Monster of Frankenstein and Essential Tales of the Zombie. We're planning to do Essential Rampaging Hulk and some of those Rampaging Hulk issues were reprinted in Essential Moon Knight. We've reprinted a lof the stuff in those magazines and we continue to look for opportunities to do that sort of thing.

Until my cover’s blown…
Agent M -Your Spy inside the House of Ideas