Sisyphean
Joe Quesada sits down with Newsarama and talks about his tenure as EiC at Marvel. Let's see what we can spin and how we can twist his words, shall we?
"The honest truth is that I feel that comics have achieved a level of quality and greatness that we have never achieved before and I'm proud to be a small part of this time. I'm not just referring to Marvel, across the board, publishers are beginning to put their best foots forward and that's great for everyone, especially retailers and more importantly our readers."
Now that's something to take credit for! Take a bow, Mr. Quesada! You've certainly earned it. Why were it not for Marvel pushing the envelope, we'd never be treated to such things as Ed Brubaker's run on CATWOMAN, or Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan's DEMO, or Grant Morrison and Chris Weston's THE FILTH. Take a bow because without you, Mr. Quesada, Eric Powell wouldn't have had the gumption to start up THE GOON. STREET ANGEL? All you, man. The manga revolution/invasion? Oh yeah.
Of course, that means you have to take credit for IDENTITY CRISIS, too... Oh, drat, I'm not supposed to talk about that...
"I've had this discussion with someone recently; I feel we're still doing the same amount of experimental stuff that was going on during the early first couple of years. The difference is that moving forward, those things seem less and less radical and more like the normal noises."
Watch as I redefine "experimental" as something roughly analogous to "much more of the same." But let's be clear, most of the things that get NuMarvel talked up weren't actually experimental. I know, you already knew that. They might have been new takes on things, or deliberately provocative and or confrontational (Grant Morrison deconstructing the X-Men according to his reading of Chris Claremont's ur-text, Captain America as an examination of the history of institutional racism, The Rawhide Kid does the same for homosexuality, re-creating the Marvel Universe in a modern and Ultimate incarnation). All of these things might shake up the fan-base (and some of them even rightfully so), but none of them seems experimental. Different, perhaps. Forced into throwing ideas at the wall, possibly. A bold experiment? Nah.
Hey, wait, maybe he's right after all. It really was just more of the same. The emperor has no clothes! All that stuff you were talking up back then, it was nothing special.
And hey kids, more revamps! Woofuckinghoo! But wait, there's a promise of "new universes" in 2005. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Ultimate Kickers, Inc? I knew you were.
DC or Marvel? The eternal debate lingers: "I've always said that the rivalry is a good thing and it needed to be kick started, I think that point has been proven in spades. Who’s the winner of the rivalry, Marvel or DC? Nope, retailers and fans and the comic industry as a whole!"
We all win as companies set up stunt teams to boost their big books to the vaunted number-one spot in the Direct Market! We all win as variant covers get dusted off and creep onto the shelves again (though to be fair, DC started that one.) We all win as the market for comics remains stagnant and we don't pick up new readers. Dude, we're winning! Every single one of us!
Oh, and that "dead is dead" thing? That only counts if the resurrection is your average and wack superhero-coming-back-from-the-dead. But when you get JOSS WHEDON resurrecting the character that started this controversy off, that's a whole 'nuther ball of wax, isn't it? Vive le mort! It boosts our numbers!
And this whole Gwen Stacy brouhaha? All part of the master plan. See, you can successfully plunder the past for new stories! History is indeed written by the winners. And that whole Clone saga thing? It was MUCH more popular than people let on. Readers want more of this, don't you get it? And ORIGIN didn't break Wolverine's character. It made him MORE POPULAR THAN EVER. I mean, just look at how many books he's in this month. "What we did know was that the best way to destroy Wolverine was to tell a terrible Origin story. Origin was green lit and as you can see Wolverine disappeared of the face of the Marvel U."
More on Ms. Stacy's rewriting: "Changing some of the Gwen backstory does little to affect the Peter/Spider-Man world outside of watching Peter grow as a character and the cast grow as people. It changes our way of thinking about Gwen, but she's been deader longer than many of our readers have been alive." Yeah, and it also removes the pall of 'second best' from Mary Jane and proves once and for all that Peter Parker Made The Right Choice in marrying her. And oh yeah, that Green Goblin guy is a total bastard. He so had it coming.
"Entertainment like all art is subjective, no story is for everyone. I see people drop a lot of books very quietly, no letters, no fanfare, they just leave because the books suck. I saw this happen during the late noneties and it almost shut our business down." Well that and the direct market implosion, the loss of newsstand distribution, and oh yes the squandered opportunities of increased mainstream recognition in the late eighties. You can't blame the previous administration for everything, though it's incredibly convenient.
And man, is there a lot of "Gee, I'd love to answer that, but I can't without giving away trade secrets so you'll just have to wait." I seem to remember that being a familiar refrain from Mr. Quesada. And it never grows old, does it?
He does have a good point when he castigates the fanboys for treating the characters more humanely than they do the creators who write and illustrate them. Remember, people: criticize, don't just attack.
When asked about pricing comics above $3/issue, the following comes up: "I think the direct market could survive it but I don't think that we would be able to gain many new readers with that as a regular price point across the board." A hint, Mr. Quesada, you're not getting new readers below that price point, either. But then there doesn't seem to be an effor to get books out beyond the DM. He then goes on to say that Marvel is the only company trying to get books into the kids market. I can only guess that he hasn't been paying attention to DC's efforts in that regard. Yes, Mr. Quesada, Marvel Age should be a bigger story, but it's hard for people to get excited about rewrites of forty year old comics, too, isn't it?
Asked about flooding the market: "See, this goes right back to the point you brought up earlier about Marvel not being able to catch a break. Our nearest competition routinely put out between 20 to 30 more titles into the market a month than we did. That was a third more books than Marvel was producing and that was when the market was really struggling." Of course, we weren't talking about when Marvel was struggling. We're talking about today. And I might point out that DC's offerings (them being the 'nearest competition' referred to) are usually more diverse in genre content and potential appeal (that doesn't mean that there aren't too many Bat-books, there are) than Marvel's. It's not just a title count, but a content count.
Oh yes, that whole 50/50 ULTIMATES variant interor scheme? Marvel changed their minds! They're really thinking about the retailers and the fans. Never mind that they're tying variants to orders of unrelated titles or the ridiculous 65-1 WOLVERINE cover variant, or the Director's Cuts of some of their offerings. Marvel is truly the retailer's friend.
There's more teases after that. I know, you're on the edge of your seat. Really you are.
It's worth reading the whole interview, if only to see how Mr. Quesada is a master of painting Marvel into the role of innovative underdog, and how he just can't win when guys like me spin his words, but manages to make it so that Marvel can't really lose in the marketplace, either. The good stuff is all part of the plan, and the bad stuff, well that's just the market's fault (not entirely untrue, but certainly not the whole story, either.)