Continuing with our sequence on BAD COMICS I WROTE, today the spotlight turns towards the first ongoing series I ever helmed as a writer, SECRET DEFENDERS.
SECRET DEFENDERS was started during the height of the comics boom in the early 90s, and had a pretty simple idea behind it: rather than contrieving a reason why Dr. Strange, the Hulk, Namor and the Silver Surfer would continue to hang out together and fight evil as a unit when they're all misanthropoes who can't really stand one another, the set-up would be that, when Strange detected a situation that required handling, he'd assemble a hand-picked team of specialists for the job from around the Marvel Universe. This would allow the writer to bring in both popular characters, fan favorites and obscure guys, while still maintaining an overall spine to the series.
But it didn't work out all that well. For whatever reason, there were some missteps right out of the gate, and while the first issues sold incredibly well, the numbers tapered off pretty directly. Atop that, the folks editing DR STRANGE were about to radically reinvent that character, which precluded him from remaining on as the backbone of SECRET DEFENDERS. One arc was done with Thanos as the guy who pulled a team together for a given mission, and then the reins were handed to me.
For whatever reason, the editor (probably in consultation with Ralph Macchio, since this feels like the sort of thing that Ralph might have suggested) decided that he wanted to replace Dr. Strange as the book's anchor with Dr. Druid. Additionally, there was a desire to create a core of one or two other characters who'd remain constant from issue to issue, so as to develop a "home team" of sorts around whom the guest stars could flow, and who could carry on their own subplots and character development from issue to issue.
Some time before this, in the pages of CAPTAIN AMERICA, Mark Gruenwald had hooked Dr. Druid up with a crew of four heroes to form Shock Troop. I didn't love most of those characters, but one of them, Shadowoman, was vague enough in terms of what had been established about her that I felt I could reinvent her to be interesting to me--and she was attired in a derivative of the classic Spider-Woman costume, so she looked familiar and vintage at he very least. And then I built a new guy, Cadaver, to round out the core trio.
SECRET DEFENDERS was well in the scheduling hole when I took it on--I wrote the first three plots in three weeks, one a week, in order to try to get caught up. This meant that there were rotating artists right out of the gate. To make things crazier, after there were four issues or so in production, the book switched editors--and the new editor disagreed with the direction the outgoing editor was headed in. He didn't care for Dr. Druid, and wanted to write him out of the book--so immediately after introducing him and the situation, I had to start back-pedaling and figuring out a way to write him back out.
Crazy times.
The specific issue I've chosen to highlight, #20, suffered from an extreme case of editorial in-fighting. On this arc, we told our editor which characters we wanted to use in the course of the arc--in this case, Venom and the Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman--and he proceeded to write up solicitation copy and commission covers. What he didn't do was run this past the Spider-Man editor of the era, who found out that we were using Venom when the sales catalogue was printed. He decided--either because of this or not--that Venom was appearaing in too many other places that month, and that the character would be unavailable for use in SECRET DEFENDERS that month. The two editors went back and forth on this for a day or so, and I even spoke to the Spidey editor directly, asking his indulgence and guaranteeing that we wouldn't do anything to louse Venom up--but to no avail.
So Venom had to come out of the story. However, to make matters worse, since the book had been solicited with Venom, if he wasn't in the issue, that would make the book returnable (which means that the direct market comic shops who'd ordered it could return any unsold copies for credit, which cuts directly into the profit margin and is to be avoided whenever possible.) This led to me having to not only excise Venom from the core of the story, but to have to write a preposterous sequence in which Venom sees what's going on, swings down to join in, and then gets shooed off immediately within a page. One of the dumbest sequences I ever had to do.
Editorial lesson here: keep your house in order, and make sure that people who need to know what you're doing know what you're doing. And, on the other side of the fence, when somebody screws up, don't be a dick about it.
More later.
Tom B
This is the second of these books I own -- thanks for nothing, Brevoort. : )
I always thought Shadowoman was interesting, though I only saw a couple issues with her (and it could have just been because she had Jessica Drew's costume and this was during SW1's 20-year hiatus). What ever happened to her? Maybe she's the star of Civil War: The Return? : ) Or Slott's new book?
Posted by motteditor on 2006-11-08 19:49:36
Good grief! It seems like most of what you do as an editor is guided by the mandate "don't be a screwup like all those editors were when I wrote." Talk about pressure!
Some time, I would like to hear the story of why you traded in the scripts for the editor chair. That seems like it would be interesting.
Posted by bigdaddyhub2 on 2006-11-09 01:39:52
secret defenders personnally that's why I had choose your blog, I see it as a perpetual call for creaters to manifest, here is an exemple of one of the best concept in the Marvel Universe : some may think as an attempt to deal with DC " Legions of Super-Heroes", don't take care about it, this is a way to make ideal stories with ideal combinations of characters that you just only dream to see assemble;plus : this is a way I think, not to be a slave as for the publishing deadends:some characters are good together and this is cool stories: fine, maybe will we see them later in others situations, but in the time there's another creative stuff working on another stories with another characters and take a look at it too.
Posted by notapotatoe on 2006-11-09 05:07:18
hmmmmmmmm sonds like the pre-illumati
Posted by tarhaun on 2006-11-09 16:41:02
I have an inexplicable interest in this series, and guessed you'd cover it this week.
Given your love of the Jessica Drew-style costume Shadowoman wore, why did you wind up trading in that look for her Sepulcre design?
At the time of cancellation, was the new character Joshua Pryce being set up as a recurring cast member?
What impact did Ellis' Druid have on the later issues and how Druid was written out?
Questions only I am curious about.
MH
Posted by mhprime on 2006-11-09 20:13:32
I actually really liked Secret Defenders as a concept. I do have all the issues.
However, the Thanos issues made no sense in the overall arc of the series, though Dr. Druid made things more interesting (but then he vanished for no reason only to reappear at the end). The whole series never really came together, as though it were serving half a dozen different masters.
And now I know the rest of the story thanks to Tom B. Suddenly, the series makes a lot more sense (in a meta-fictional way - as fiction it's still a mess).
Posted by RabidWolfe on 2006-11-12 20:36:39
original script or art for this issue Dear Mr Brevoort
as a very big fan of Venom I would like to know, whether you do have the original script for this issue or some pages of the oringinally planned art left? It would be very nice of you to email it to me and make a fan happy.
Thank you very much in advance.
Martinitolove@yahoo.de
Posted by martinitolove on 2006-12-06 07:39:13
I know Nothing Yea im new at all this Comic book stuff i just started collecting comics im only a teenager so yea
Posted by RagMan // on 2007-01-07 21:24:39
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About this blog: 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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