 |
|
|
||||
 |
|
|||||
 |
|
        |
|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
||||
 |
|
|||||
|
|
|||||
 |
|
|||||
 |
 |
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||||
|
|
|||||
|
||||||
 |
|
|
|
INTERVIEW: JOE QUESADA - Part 2 Joe Quesada Interview - Part 0 For the sake of covering your EIC role thus far: the counter X books. Despite being popular books, you announced their cancellation was due to the restructuring of the company and how they were too confusing for new readers to get involved with. So how does that explain the Ultimate line then, isn't it more confusing to have new titles sold beside the regular core titles? No, not with what we have planned. I believe that it would have been if we kept the ancillary X titles going and if we would have kept going with Spidey the way we were. As the new revamped Spidey and X titles begin to roll out, you'll see how much closer our universe actually is to the Ultimate Universe. All we're doing is cleaning it up and getting rid of all the excess garbage. Getting back to the core archetypes of the characters and writing stories about the real world as opposed to the comicbook one. Basically, all the Ultimate U is, is a glimpse at where these characters should have been if we hadn't lost our way. Now before anyone has a heart attack, we're not going to be saying that past continuity didn't happen. The best way to get around the heavy continuity is to just stop mentioning it. Just stop bringing it up and writing stories about it.
Let me say this, there is nothing that they've proposed that I've objected to. I can't comment on how the X line use to be run since I wasn't there. I heard stories but then again you hear a lot of stories about a lot of things in this industry and most of them inaccurate. I really believe in letting creators do what they do best, create. Using my MK experience, there have been times when editorially I haven't agreed with the direction that the talent wanted to go with a book, in those cases what is of the utmost importance is communication. A healthy dialogue usually irons it out and it usually ends up being a compromise for the better. I found while investigating certain broken down relationships with certain creators that the chief cause of the problem almost always turned out to be a miscommunication. A phone call not made, a policy not explained. Who are some of the other creators you'd like to get involved with Marvel? What capacity would you like to see them serve? What about the behind the scenes people, how are you handling things with the editors, the PR people, etc.? I've pretty much gone after everyone. If there's anyone I missed it's strictly because I don't have their number. Still, there are many creators who I would love to have on board, not just for the super hero stuff (because at the end of the day we do way too much of that stuff) but also for the Mature Readers imprint in the future. Keep in mind that I do have a few home run hitters in my back pocket that I haven't announced just yet! Again, creators that move the needle, not just with Spandex but with alternative material and TPBs. I really can't comment on who they are but it's certainly people who haven't done mainstream stuff or gave up on us a while ago. One of your abilities while at Marvel has been the ability to get creators outside the market on comic books, Christopher Golden, Kevin Smith, Bob Gale, etc. Who else have you been focusing on, maybe a Quentin Tarentino Silver Surfer? I would love to get a guy like Tarentino or Manoj Night Shyamalan. I've spoken to John Singleton and Joss Whedon but they're schedules are just tight as all heck. What I always find surprising is how all of the people I approach are die hard Marvel fans. Again, we're making some inroads with other creators that I'm not at liberty to mention just yet. Not all of them from the movie industry either. There's a whole big wide world of Television writers and novelists who are dying to do comic work as soon as time allows them. Why Todd [McFarlane]? Of all people why specifically target Todd [aside from already having just about everyone else working for you that is]? I wasn't asking Todd to work for me. That would have just been plain stupid. I was asking Todd to come back and do something for the industry. Being in the position I'm in now at Marvel I had the ability to try to make this worth Todd's while as best I could. Again, this whole thing was perceived in a number of different ways all of which quite frankly surprised me since it was based on a goof on Saturday Night Live close to 20 years ago. I heard things like it was a publicity stunt, a sales stunt, a way to make Todd look bad, a joke. None of it, absolutely none of it accurate. It was as simple as I put forth, come back and draw, no more ulterior motives than that, there wasn't that much thought put behind it, kids! I offered a Spawn/Spidey crossover, with Kev Smith writing it, a good portion of the money going to charity and quite frankly something that we could try to advertise outside the comics medium. Let's face it, even if Marvel, through its best efforts, couldn't get it promoted outside the market, do you think Todd would have had the same trouble? Someone would have gotten it out there. Now, to be brutally honest, I don't have a great big desire to draw Spawn, it's nothing that's burning inside of me, ya dig? Kev felt the same way, but we were both big fans of Todd's art and would have done the book if Todd had said "Let's go!" The challenged originated from a conversation I had with a pal of mine as we talked about different things, a number of things, that if put together could really help the industry move uphill, the challenge was just one part of it. But we figured if you did enough of these little things, maybe we could move the needle. I even spoke to Todd about it. He called me up out of the blue (I hadn't heard from the guy in nearly 4 years) just to ask me what I thought of the industry now that I was the new EIC and if I felt there was any hope. I mentioned the fact that the first letter was going to appear in Wizard in about 3 weeks and we both sort of had a chuckle over it and then it sort of got glazed over by some other thing he wanted to talk about. Little did I know that Todd had already taken a couple of public swipes at me in fan press that hadn't seen print yet. Still, it was fine because I like Todd a lot and in my mind it's all in fun. That's the other thing that surprised me, the challenge was very serious but all with a nudge and a wink. Still, many people took this as some sort of moral outrage, like I wasn't allowed to poke fun at Todd, the ultimate Jokester, jeeze like I wasn't aloud to joke around at all. I don't know, maybe it's just a New York thing, we call it busting someone's chops. The challenge had two goals that it set out to achieve. One was to get Todd to draw a big exposure book that would also help a wonderful new charitable foundation and hopefully the comics biz, that failed. The second was to get the fans talking and maybe having a bit of fun with comics again, that worked wonderfully. I think that the majority of the comic buying public got a hoot out of it and for a short moment maybe it felt like things could be fun again. Ah well, I'm taking my $1100 that I originally offered Todd and giving it straight to the ACTOR fund. Were you at all surprised by Todd's response? I expected him to simply say he was too busy, and I don't at all doubt that, but he seemed to be really putting you down. I wasn't surprised at all. I had heard through the grapevine, before I issued the challenge, that Todd was really timid about coming back and drawing, that maybe he felt his chops weren't what they once were. To be honest, if I had refrained from drawing as long as he had, I might be afraid too. Now I can't verify that or even say that that was his reasoning, but I can't help but feel that it had something to do with it. Whatever the reasons, it just didn't happen and as far as insults are concerned, I don't think Todd was that bad. Quite frankly, he could have done worse and like I said, I felt it was all done in that "busting chops" frame of mind. What I guess was a bit disconcerting was that the bravado that Todd used to exhibit in his public releases seemed to be gone. He use to be a sly mofo and even in my conversation with him he seemed sort of down on the industry which seemed unlike him. Speaking of putting you down, Rob Liefeld, who's gone so far as to refer to your appointment to EIC as the Quesada regime. Why would Marvel continue to give him work anyway? How do you handle situations like these? What's for me to handle? Rob has publicly stated how he feels and there is really very little that I can do about it. Why does Rob get work? Well, in my mind, he gets it from any editor that feels that he's submitted an idea worth publishing. It's that simple, just like any other creator we hire. Unlike what Rob has said in public, there is no decree from above saying that he's not allowed to work at Marvel. If he has an idea worth publishing, then we'll take a look at it. It's very easy to slam Rob. He's a wide open target as even your question makes evident, but he's just a creator like the many we work with and he's treated no differently than any of them. If he felt he was being treated unfairly or was being short changed then he should have picked up the phone and called me and we would have sorted out any problem if an actual problem existed. Rob's grievances on the Internet were the first and only place I heard such complaints. I don't know about you, but if my boss really didn't pay me I wouldn't go blabbing about it on the net before I tried talking to him or her about it first. NOTE: Another big name creator, John Byrne has also taken steps to publicly criticize Joe - Joe wishes John the best of luck. Of all your decisions so far, what has gotten you the most positive reactions, and what has given you the most flak?
Where do you see the industry going in the near future, with your own changes and the focus from the X-MEN and SPIDER-MAN movies you'll be getting heavy attention from various media. The trick then, how to use that media to your advantage? We're hoping that we can buck the trend of movies lately that haven't effected comic sales. I think the first Batman movie may have been the only one that was truly well prepared for and that shops felt a budge. I'm really hoping that by loading ourselves for bear that the Spidey movie and X-Men 2 will really make a difference for us and retailers. I want to see all the books become as clear as possible and as entertaining as they can be to the hard core fan and John and Jane Q. Public as well. That's the first step, next will be how we market and distribute our product at the time of these releases. We have plans in the works but nothing that I can say right now without getting myself in hot water. I think it's become fairly evident to anyone who picks up a newspaper how Marvel has made quite the concerted effort to get info about our books into the mass media. From USA Today to the New York Post, we've been everywhere! I believe that everything is cyclical, Mark Millar has a great theory about this you should ask him, I firmly believe that we are beginning the up swing of a 10 year growth cycle. Let's see if Mr. Nostrodamus Millar is right! Plans have already been made in regards to the Spidey promo that will coincide with the movie release correct? Loosely. We have to be a bit careful with timing since the movie had already been delayed by 6 months. Marvel has announced it will be getting more involved with getting their product available outside the strict comic market, making an increase of focus on the magazine stands and grocery stores. How does this process work? You're actually buying shelf space? Will Marvel go back to the days where what you don't sell you can return? Well, we have the magazine incentive which will be expanding as the year goes on. We've purchased mainstream space on newsstands and will be aggressively purchasing more as we develop more magazines. We've altered some of the books that you might normally see on newsstand, you might start to see some Marvel Knights stuff there. We also have more main stream incentives that I'm not at liberty to discuss just yet but let me just say that we received confirmation of an agreement that will be putting millions, that's right millions, of free comics into the hands of kids! That to me is big news, quite possibly the biggest news I've heard. Since your appointment to EIC what new focus has been put on Marvel's financial troubles, and what steps have been taken to rectifying those troubles? Marvel's financial troubles are pretty public and because of SEC regulations I'm not allowed to comment on them. This isn't a bad thing, just a legal issue that I can get in a lot of trouble for because Marvel is a public company. What I can say is that you can't believe everything you read on the net as the most recent Marvel Italia/Awesome rumor has proven. Weren't we supposed to run out of money for publishing December 1, 2000? Heck wasn't the company supposed to go under and stop publishing years ago? You can see where this is going. The collectibility issue. Reminiscent of the 'Boom and Bust' period. Sure it'll probably mean higher pre-orders eventually, but will Marvel be able to maintain those highs? I'm not sure if I understand the question. If you're asking about our new overprinting policy, we still are overprinting, just not in the huge numbers that we use to. We're still assuming risk, but we're a company who is still licking it's fiscal wounds. We have to be much more conservative with the way that we spend our money. Plus if you look at the way that the word collectible was used by Bill Jemas, we aren't talking about gilding the turd here. We're not going back to that Franklin Mint attitude of enhancing crap and pretending it's worth something. All we're doing and saying is that we now have the best creators jumping onto the best characters, we're providing you with the best material that the comic industry will be producing in the upcoming months and years, we've signed up the best artist on the planet, we're expanding into alternate formats and we're not going to overprint until our noses bleed because we're also going to go back to press with compilations in a very big way! If you end up with a book that's worth something, god bless, it's worth something because people desire it for reading purposes not the foil that's on the cover. I can't tell you how many deals we've started to turn down from licensees who want to produce alternate cover material of our current product. The dollar amount would stagger you but we see this as short term thinking. Now that the new overprinting policy has been in place for a while - how has reaction been? On the monetary side and on the retailer side? Retailers will never tell you it is successful, but the numbers don't lie. We had an incredible May and every month shows more and more growth! You still produce a number of Dyanmic Forces variant covers, signed variants, incentive variants, Limited Edition Lithographs. Do you not consider that "gilding the turd"? The 1 in 4 white variant cover of Ultimate Spider-Man #1 is worth a ton of money, how is that not a collectible? Check and see how many DF variants you can find for current product. We've stopped doing them. DF still does signed books but no variants. Lithos and such aren't my concern, I'm not in the litho business. There's the matter of Diamond Comics Distributors offering to buy $5000 worth of Ultimate X-Men #1's to make them available for re-order to retailers. Marvel decided not to take the money. That doesn't make a lot of financial sense, can you explain it? Or have these been reserved as incentives to encourage subscription services? BINGO! And also the man power and time that it would take to go back to press for $5000 worth of product isn't worth it.
I'm not big on alternate reality comics. DC seems to have done those to death and then some. If someone has a great concept of course we'll listen but I'm not actively looking for any of those types of stories. We do have a great concept for an alternate kind of thing but it's so creator specific that you may only see one or two of these a year, which in my mind is cool because that keeps them special. O-Kay so you're not one for alternate reality titles, but might the mature line find itself running some more what if...? Style projects? One of the advantages of writing alternate reality books was the ability to tell interesting stories without having to worry about the ramifications of a serious plot change or spotlighted character dying [and staying dead]. Yes, it's possible that that Mature Readers imprint might be able to do that but we will be visiting every case very closely because we want to make sure that the books are as clear as can be. X-Men New York Stories. What happened? Really? Basically at the end of the day we had an idea for a strong character driven mature X book that touched on some sensitive subjects that we wouldn't be able to address in the regular books. We worked with Brian extensively on this and at the end of the day we felt it wasn't what we were looking for. It's really as simple as that. Projects come and go like this all the time. NYX will be revisited in the future. And how about the creator owned line? How will the line differ from the mature line? Creator back end participation will be the most obvious difference. How do you feel about peoples comments on you "stealing" talent and personnel away from companies like DC? Just because you're building a better company for Marvel does that mean you should be privy to criticism for providing new employees with better opportunities? Well let's look at the list. Axel Alonso was actively looking for a new job, that's how I know to offer him a position. Stuart Moore had quit DC a year prior. Bob Greenberger, same story. Mark Millar and Frank Quietly were freelancers looking for an exclusive deal, we showed them a better mouse trap and won the lottery. Everyone else is a freelancer. So I just don't get the criticism? It's not like we threw tons of money at these people. We were competitive and then threw in a some creative freedom, great characters and opportunities and less corporate BS. That's what made the difference. Now a while back I asked you the question "Since you'll be creating a non
code line of titles, why not just be rid of the code entirely? Certainly the editors are intelligent enough to be able to tell what is and isn't within reason." To which you replied: There are some retailors, that for fear of the authorities or the moral right busting their stores, refuse to carry books without the code. So for now, we still need to provide the code." So what was the real catalyst which lead to the rumoured phasing out of the code and how has reaction been since the announcement - from creators, retailers and the general public alike? Speaking for myself, congratulations. The inconsistencies are frustrating and scaring me at the same time. It's been two months since you've asked that original question so I've been learning more and more about this EIC gig and I just feel that internally we can establish a system of our own that we will be able to police better. Also in terms of the code - exactly how much money could be saved by disassociating yourselves from them? Thousands. Continued... Joe Quesada Interview - Part 0
All characters, titles, images mentioned or shown are copyright
|
One of the great things that's happened to Marvel with you around is the number of quality creators being drawn to the company. For instance, Grant Morrison and Joe Casey on X-MEN. I know some of their plans involve making the titles a lot sexier, exactly how much creative freedom will they have to pursue their storylines?
This is a tough one. Every decision is both loved and hated and I'm a firm believer in: if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. In my heart of hearts I have a feeling of what's right for these books and characters, I may be wrong, but if I don't follow those instincts then I would be doing myself and the fans that have faith in me a disservice. I guess the most positive thing I can say that I've done is that everything we seem to be doing at Marvel is being met with a strong reaction one way or another. There are no dispassionate fans when it comes to Marvel and what we're doing, so that alone tells me that we're touching a nerve and quite possibly doing things right. I also realize that satisfied fans will very rarely go on the Internet to vent or take the time and energy to write a letter, basically because they're cool and happy with the way things are. It's the disgruntled fans that will always be the most vocal, but it's like that in any field. Still, it's been really surprising the amount of great, positive mail we have been getting, really fantastic! 
Will Marvel be making more alternate reality titles and might they fall within the non-code line?
