In yesterday's post Marvel Don't Care About Comic Shops or Customers there are points that need to be made.
"Tom Brevoort does not visit comic shops" now here we could to a plus and minus argument. Firstly, Brevoort is the lousiest editor that has existed at any comic company. I have known a few who really could not tie up their own shoe laces and some who out of their total stupidity have angered me to the point that I wanted to leave the meeting quickly.
I once sat in a Marvel UK editor's office and he looked at some artwork I had and told me: "Yes. This shows everything is there" so I asked what he meant and was told: "Artists don't draw the anatomy" which I thought meant they were bad at drawing the human figure but he continued. "The human body has a skeleton and there are muscles on top of that so when they draw someone that should all be there. Yeah, I will admit that confused me a bit and made no sense but I casually remarked (to be polite) "Yes. A few might do well studying Leonard's anatomy drawings" I was being a bit sarcastic (I'm told that I can be a tad sarcastic at times) but the casual response of "He's vastly over rated I wouldn't even say he was a good artist". We are talking about Leonardo de Vinci - who painted the Mona Lisa amongst others. amateur obviously.
I was showed a wooden cabinet full of drawers and told he gets lots of poor art submissions from "all over the place" and he even showed me some of the art work when he opened one of the drawers to prove his point. There was some absolutely gorgeous artwork. Well laid out and looking at some of it made me want to retire there and then (1990s). One artist I noted the name of Carlos Pacheco. Amateur apparently.
This...man..this...moron then looked at some of my work and muttered "I prefer the six panel layout or the panels arrangement suggested by Marvel (he showed me a photocopy on his wall from How to Draw Comics The Marvel Way) at the same time bad-mouthing two regular artists I knew were (supposedly) his pals. Johnny Asshead needed putting in his place so I told him that I saw what he meant and then looked at the pages in front of us (the How To page he had taken off the wall) and I said I was unsure of the margin space and spaces between panels. For 10 minutes by his office clock he used a ruler to measure the spaces from the edge of the paper to the panel line then the space4s between all the panels and gave me his opinion.
Now, he was looking at an A4 photocopy and NOT an actual pre-print size sheet. He had no idea.
He then told me all of the comics he had been in charge of and how each had failed due to "the idiots buying comics". The man was not willing to admit that he was incapable of editing a comic and (so I was told) the poor scripts and artwork was to blame for the failures. I am no longer commenting and the (alleged) incident of me holding a Marvel UK editor out of an open window or whether it was this moron. Unfortunately, he was pals with the editor-in-chief at Marvel UK so his job was safe.
I could recount several such incidents from the UK and it is one reason why these people even screwed up during the black and white comics explosion. I also used to have phone conversations with editors in the United States and during one I pointed out that a proposed title needed something to pull in readers and I was told: "We are not talking people with much brain -they are reading comics!" Yes, and I was writing and putting together comics that he was supposed to be editing.
Another editor, during a 0300hrs phone call (it was later in the U.S.) was referring to fans buying a book and I suggested adding a certain twist to the story that ought to get the readers thinking a story was going one direction until the twist was presented. "Look" he said and sounded bored to boot, "the readers are a bunch of live at home in momma's basement masturbating to porn -they don't have that kind of brain power" and that ended that conversation.
I once wrote an "adult" comic series which was reprinted as a trade paperback several times and has had millions of readers. Anyone who is a regular will know the series and I am not promoting it for illegal downloaders. However, Larry Pike, who had edited Wally Woods Cannon comic told me that my book was well thought out and written and had a solid story which made it extremely rare in that genre. Here is the thing; if you write a comic then someone is going to be spending money to buy the comic and as a writer you owe it to that person to produce something that is not what the editor called "Just a wank rag for meatheads". That is at the basic level. The artist should also be thinking this and the editor should be thinking the same. Is the book delivering escapism, fun and adventure and making it worth the $/£ that the fan is spending.
People say that I over-stress the importance of whether a book I publish is worth the money the buyer is shelling out. That is my job. I used to sell a lot of small press comics/mags that way because if I just wanted to publish for myself I would have and none would have been for sale. But if I was going to sell then I was not going to just say "sod it" and put out any rubbish I could.
If you publish a book then you want people to buy it and that means having to talk to people who do buy and if they do not want to talk you play around until you coax them into talking. This is why Marvel Comics beat DC hands down for decades. Stan Lee realised the importance of the person buying the comic and entertaining them so that they would come back for more. He spoke to fans and attended cons and went out of his way to listen to what was being said. That is why Marvel and Disney clung on to him because one personal appearance or meet and greet with Stan was better than any video promo.
Roy Thomas understood all of this. Jim Shooter understood all of this. Tom Brevoort has difficulty understanding the toilet paper wrapper. A book has a bad writer or poor quality artist (does not matter as long as they are gay, trans or black trans or fit into one of the other boxes that these morons tick) or no real continuity let alone editing and "the fans are a buncha morons!" Pick any Avengers comic from the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s and you have a good solid story with characterisation and action. A great read. 1990s things go wrong (and I've been reading The Avengers since the mid 1960s so I am not simply flapping my sitting cushions). It was a team book and that is what drew in readers but these days if the Avengers actually appear in the title it is as cameos while the main purpose seems to be to promote TV series and movies of the MCU and NOT the characters of the Marvel Comic Universe.
Brevoort and others do not like fans. Do not like the comics just the prestige of the job title and more importantly the pay cheque. Why do any work when the people in the Disney corporation do not check? Take the money until you crash that 747 into the ground. DC I just totally gave up on as their idea of creativity is constant rebooting (because it made money in the 1980s with Crisis on Infinite Earths). Why pay creators who know their jobs, such as Chris Claremont to not write for anyone else? Biggest "WTF are you utter morons??!!" in the comic business. People ask why creators such as John Byrne will not go back to Marvel and I think it is obvious.
So Brevoort is not the only editor to take this attitude. It has moved away from the professionals who know their jobs a show respect to the fan base (it actually took DC a while to realise why so many were Marvel fans).
The bottom line is that if you cannot get people to buy your books then you have no business and no business means no money to pay you. If Brevoort was a real working editor then he would have no time to visit comic shops (or choose the next silly hat to wear). That an editor does not visit a comic shop regularly is not a good argument.
Brevoort does not edit comics so he has no excuse...but his own cowardice means that person-to-person he could not face criticism to his face. Easier on social media because he can type away without consequence and block anyone who asks an awkward question.
The comics business has always had shady dealers and second, third and even fifth account books. Editors started becoming far more shady once the fans got into those jobs; artwork going missing, under paying creators and a lot more. However, even those ex-editors who have rebooted their history to become "comic legends" knew that they had to produce comics that sold and had buyers coming back each week.
Back in the 1980s I met people at the Westminster Comic Marts who were over from Canada, the United States and even someone from Australia and they had heard that Martin Lock, publisher of then Harrier Comics was at these marts. I pointed him out on occasion and one thing I later heard was that these people talked with Lock and Lock with them and even though they had not intended to -they bought more comics off him.
It is a case of respect the reader. Produce a good comic.
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