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Reader Questions 3
2008-04-03 08:53:49
One more day of questions from the floor:
>I was wondering about Bobby Drake's power loss (and power return) just after House of M. Do you know if that was always planned as a fake-out? Or did someone come up with a story idea for him at the last minute, causing a quick turnaround?
Posted by tech knight on 2008-03-28 02:55:44>
That was an instance where there was coordination, but not to a terribly effective result. When we were compiling the list of characters who'd be depowered during M-Day, we decided as a group that this needed to be an event that touched upon the core of the X-Men to have any resonance at all--otherwise, it'd just be hordes of second-rate characters who lost their mutant abilities. After some brief discussion, we settled on Iceman, and the X-Guys of the period indicated that this might give them an avenue into some stories. However, as the time drew closer, somebody in the X-Camp (the editor, one of the writers, somebody) began to get cold feet about doing this permanently to a founding X-Man. And so, after a bit of back-and-forth, we resolved that we were already committed to the scene in HOUSE OF M #8, but that there was enough ambiguity in what was transpiring that it might allow for this to have been a "sympathetic" reaction on the part of Iceman. Yeah, I don't entirely buy it myself either, but sometimes that's the way these things go. And I can certainly understand the X-Editor not wanting to kibosh one of his team's founding members in a crossover book he wasn't even directly working on.
>A few posts ago, a commenter named motteditor asked a question I found very interesting:
"Tom, can you talk about why characters from those minis seem to fade into obscurity while others (Hood, the irredeemable Ant-Man, Agents of Atlas etc.) seem to continue on in other titles? Just writers' choice? I'm struck, for example, by Ultra Girl, who labored in obscurity for like a decade after her three-issue mini before suddenly re-emerging in AI and NWv.4. Is that just because Slott, for example, likes her or is there ever anything deeper to the process?"
I too would like to know why some characters are brought back by other writers, while others with lots of potential -like Livewires, or Sean McKeever's short tease of a "Positron" story in Amazing Fantasy 15- are never touched again. It's not for lack of things to do with them- for instance, Livewires could guest-star in any of the million stories about going against SHIELD or government agencies, and Positron would be a perfect fit for the Runaways!
So to reiterate the question, what does it take for a character to get noticed by other writers?
Posted by MoriartyL on 2008-03-28 03:50:25>
I think it takes the character being noticed by other writers who want to use them--simple as that, no more and no less. In the examples you or motteditor cite, those particular characters were brought back onto the canvas because the writers in question wanted to use them. Dan Slott put the idea of Ultra Girl being in the Initiative on teh table because he remembered that limited series from a decade ago, Bendis found The Hood while looking over Brian K Vaughan's back-catalogue of work, not even realizing that I'd suggested to Dwayne McDuffie that the Hood might be a good candidate to use in BEYOND! a few months earlier. But you can't make a writer spontaneously love an obscure character, any more than you can do the same thing to the readership. And coercing a writer to use a character that doesnt' click with them isn't going to do that character any good--if Dwayne hadn't found something in The Hood appealing, we would have left him out of BEYOND! (and he would have appeared in NEW AVENGERS anyway, since Brian didn't realize when he suggested picking him up that he'd been used again so recently.) So if there's a writer who liked LIVEWIRES or "Positron" and has a story that they'd fit into well, they'll likely turn up again.
>1> What weight does marketing have in editorial? Do they interfere a lot in your work for fear that you might "ruin the franchise"?
Posted by baxtos on 2008-03-28 04:46:20>
I think that most people have an imprecise picture of just what marketing does, and what their responsibilities aer, and so it's easy to think of them as evil suit-wearing guys who are out to destroy everything good and worthwhile in comics. (And in some periods, they may have been just that way.) But at least at Marvel right now, the Sales and Marketing Department works hand-in-hand with editorial, each team managing their own side of the equation. So nobody in marketing says, "Hey, you must do this story!" or demand a certain villain or whatnot. What they will do when appropriate is pass along the feedback they're hearing from the retail community (and, by extension, the readership), and they may make suggestions for what they feel could improve sales or generate a response from the marketplace. But those suggestions are just that: suggestions. Sometimes we act on them, sometimes we don't, and sometimes they start a chain of events that results in something far different from what they were suggesting in teh first place. But editorial doesn't work for Sales and Marketing--it's a completely separate area.
>2> Have you ever met Steve Ditko? Do you have any interesting stories about him?
Posted by baxtos on 2008-03-28 04:46:20>
I've met Steve once or twice in passing in the offices back during the '90s, when he was still doing the occasional job for Marvel. But I don't really have any personal interesting stories about him to share, I'm afraid--nothing along the lines of the wonderful documentary that BBC personality Jonathan Ross filmed some months ago. And the only indirect brush I had with Steve happened a decade or so ago. At the time, Ralph Macchio had taken over the Spider-Man titles, and he was hoping to get Steve and Stan Lee to reunite on a Special. Ralph had worked with Ditko in the past, so he felt like he had as good a chance of making this happen as anyone. So Ralph reached out to Steve, and they had a series of discussions about the character and what story they could possibly tell. Steve indicated that maybe there might be a story to tell that took place during Spidey's final summer vacation from High School. (In Steve's opinion, it was allowable for Spidey to be a screw-up when he was still young and learning and developing as a person, but once he graduated High School and entered College, it was unseemly for him to be so down-and-out.) So things were inching forward. Now, at the time, my office was still publishing UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN, so when Ralph sent Steve some current Spidey copies over, he included some recent issues of that series, figuring that Steve should know about it if he was going to do another story set in that period. But Steve, learning that there were other creators already working in that period, decided to turn the project down ("I didn't realize we had collaborators!") and instead Stan went on to do the SPIDER-MAN/DAREDEVIL: TO THE DEATH Special with John Romita Sr. instead. So in my small way, I helped prevent that "Beatles reunion" from happening.
More later.
Tom B
"...So in my small way, I helped prevent that "Beatles reunion" from happening."
So Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure was your penance?
Posted by mhprime on 2008-04-03 09:58:47
Wow...
Interesting Ditko story!
I wonder if he'd ever be interested in a "What If?" story where he gets to say who the Green Goblin was (not Norman) and what Spidey's life would have been like. Let him draw & plot or write the whole thing. That would be kinda cool.
Posted by pmpknface on 2008-04-03 11:14:39
'One more day of...'
YOU'RE GREAT, Tom, really...
Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-04-03 11:36:50
but I tend to vetoing your argument about editoring and sales, I think the staff perfectly realize that it's better to focus on stories in four or five episodes, and more... than trash your brain to find a new vilain each month;exagerating it concludes to cross-overs like 'Secret Invasion ' who, few years earlier, had only taken one or three episodes.
As a reader I prefer one mini-serie about the Defenders, then after that with the Rangers ( I had read something about that in Newsrama ) than up and down ongoing.
Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-04-03 11:51:02
GET DITKO !
Wow, thanks for answering both my questions it's really appreciated!
Now, that Ditko story was kinda heartbreaking, damn! So close! Don't you think in a way, it still has to happen? I mean both original creators are still alive but won't be here forever so in the spirit of FF the lost adventure don't you think you should move hell & earth and have a SM : the last/lost adventure by Lee & Ditko???? Before the opportunity is forever gone ? I'm pretty sure it would be a big deal for a whole lot of people! I would certainly be for me.
Posted by baxtos on 2008-04-04 15:47:37
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Ramblings and musings from the mind of Tom Brevoort. "It won’t be clean. It won’t be fun. It mostly won’t be coherent."
 | About the author:
Tom Brevoort is Executive Editor for Marvel Comics, and oversees such titles as New Avengers, Civil War, and Fantastic Four. |
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