A Look Around The Blogs...

[MacNimon]

This thread is intended as a look round the world of comic blogs, featuring articles and links which may be of interest. At no time are items in this thread meant to be taken as my own work, and all articles mentioned will be linked to the appropriate blogs.

We'll start off with this look at how we saw the death of Gwen Stacey here in the UK in this article from 2011, from Steve Does Comics

Super Spider-Man #171, the death of Gwen Stacy

Something very strange happened in the Autumn of 1975. A number of the comics I'd been getting week-in and week-out for several years disappeared without trace from my local newsagents. The Mighty World of Marvel, The Avengers and Spider-Man Comics Weekly all vanished at around the same time. If not for Planet of the Apes, what would I have had to keep me going? Fortunately, within a few months they were all back. But when Spider-Man Comics Weekly returned, it was in a whole new form.

It had been Titanised.

Like that other Marvel UK comic, Spider-Man's weekly mag was now printed sideways. This was good. Thanks to it allowing them to print two pages of artwork side-by side on every physical page, this meant you got twice as many pages for your money.

So what did you get?

You got trauma.

No sooner had the comic reappeared than this happened; Gwen Stacy died.

Now, I managed to miss the issue where she went but I sure as shooting heck had the next one, in which I discovered that in my absence Gwen had bought it. This was terrible. Gwen was blonde. She wore nice boots. She wore an Alice band. How could they kill such a creature? On top of that, by the end of this issue, the Green Goblin was gone too.

To say this was powerful stuff for a twelve year old would be no matter of hyperbole. Seeing Spider-Man clutching the corpse of his long-time girlfriend was quite the most moving thing I'd ever read in my life. This story and the ones that followed, as Peter Parker tried - and sometimes failed - to come to terms with the death of Gwen Stacy had a potency I'd never seen before in a comic and left an impression on me that remains to this day. I still regard the events of the next couple of years on that strip as the greatest era Spider-Man ever had. One that only dissipated when Ross Andru left the mag and Peter Parker graduated.


Two into one will go. The landscape format that showed us a whole new way of looking at comics.

Fortunately there was more. After that Spider-Man classic, the issue gave us a Gene Colan Dr Strange story. I don't remember if I could make sense of the tale at the time but, looking at it now, I don't have a clue what's going on. Dr Strange and Clea are in Dormammu's Dread Dimension but Strange has lost his powers and is having to rely on Clea to do "pagan" magic to achieve something or other. It's a bit of a surprise to discover Dr Strange's normal magic wasn't pagan. Now I'm left not at all sure what kind of magic it was. There's some sort of junkie in it, a man who seems to be Clea's father, Dormammu, Umar and various others and, frankly, I'm left bewildered by it all. It does though end with a giant Dormammu climbing up out of a huge crack in the Earth, ready to perform some evil deeds or other. So, if it leaves you bamboozled, at least it makes you want to read the following issue.

Next we get a centre-spread poster featuring Luke Cage and Mace. Like virtually all artwork produced specially for Marvel's UK comics, it has to be said it's not great.

Nor is the specially produced splash page for the George Tuska Iron Man tale that follows it. Shell-Head's up against The Controller who I think turned up in the pages of Jim Starlin's Captain Marvel. The presence of this tale baffles me. Up until now I was under the impression Marvel UK's Iron Man reprints ended when the comic switched to landscape format. Now I've discovered they didn't. This means I must've read years of Iron Man stories from that point on, with no recall of them at all. Essential Iron Man Vol 3 clearly beckons, as I try to find out what happened in all those tales I've forgotten.

Next it's a Thor adventure as he sets out to tackle Dr Doom after rescuing a protesting girl from a mini-riot. He soon finds out Doom's kidnapped her father in order to get him to build him some missile silos. In the flashback, the girl's clearly aged at least ten years since he was abducted, which implies he's taking an awful long time to build those silos and that Doom blatantly kidnapped the wrong silo scientist. In order to lure Doom out into the open, Don Blake plants a story in the papers that he's developed a cosmetic surgery technique that can cure any disfigurement. This seems rather thoughtless of him, as the hopes of disfigured people the world over will be built up and then cruelly dashed for no good reason. Aww but who cares? It's drawn by John Buscema, so every panel's a thing of simple beauty.

We finish off with a Thing/Black Widow team-up that I assume comes from the pages of Marvel Two-In-One. Much as I love the Thing - and the Black Widow - I'm not convinced Two-In-One was always the greatest comic Marvel produced, and this tale does little to change that. The story's pretty silly, with the Widow at one point whipping off her top to reveal she has the parts for a disruptor cannon attached to her back, hidden in a strip of fake skin. Let's own up, we've all done it. Meanwhile, the Thing spends half the story hauling in a three mile long stretch of cable to stop a bomb going off. As well as the somewhat lame story, the art looks terrible. Either Klaus Janson's inking doesn't suit Bob Brown's pencils or Janson's habitually lavish use of ink suffers unduly from being shrunk to half normal size.

So, was the landscape format a good thing?

Of course it was.

As said before, the great thing about it was you got twice as much story for your money. Where else would you get an entire 20 page Spider-Man story, plus seven to nine pages each of Dr Strange, Iron Man, Thor and the Thing, and a double-page pin-up, all for 9 pence? The downside isn't really the small size of the artwork. Apart from the Thing story, it really doesn't suffer. The main downside is the small size of the letters page which only has room for two letters. As it's clear from one of those letters that the comic's only recently switched to the new format, it would've been nice to see more room for fan reaction to the switch.

[MacNimon]

Of course, Gwen Stacey was actually killed in the cliffhanger ending of the previous weeks installment...

Reading this back in 1976, what a shocker this was for us regular readers...at the age of 11, it was the first time I had ever encountered a comic death, and it was one of those shocking moments which stays with you forever. Personally, I was stunned and couldn't believe what I was reading...this wasn't like the odd bad guy or villain getting bumped off, it was a major character who we had grown up with for the previous few years and it felt so real.

Unlike nowadays when comic deaths make a mockery of the concept. When someone dies, you know they'll be back a year or two down the line...

[MacNimon]

Today, we look at Jim Shooter's blog. It hasn't been updated in a while, but he featured some really interesting inside info on the world of comics from the 1980s, from his own viewpoint. For the benefit of anyone not familiar with the name, Jim Shooter was Editor-In-Chief of Marvel comics in the 1980s and to this day remains a controversial figure in the industry...loved by some,hated by others.

Here Jim tells us just how close Marvel were to publishing DC's characters...

Friday, August 26, 2011

SUPERMAN – First Marvel Issue!

Sometime in February, 1984, my secretary (it was okay to say “secretary” in those days) the wonderful Lynn Cohen told me that Bill Sarnoff was on the phone. Not his secretary, Bill Sarnoff himself, holding for me.

Great Scott!

Bill Sarnoff was the Big Cheese, I forget his exact title, of the publishing arm of Warner Communications. Among the operations under his purview was DC Comics.

Bill introduced himself, as if that was necessary. What he wanted to talk about was licensing the publishing rights for all DC characters to Marvel Comics.

Holy hegemony, Billman!

Bill said, more or less, that Marvel seemed to be able to turn a substantial profit on publishing comics, as opposed to DC, which consistently lost money, a lot of money, and had for a long time. On the other hand, LCA (Licensing Corporation of America), Warner’s licensing arm did very well with the DC properties, while Marvel “didn’t seem to do much licensing.”

I guess the few million a year we made from licensing, mostly from Spider-Man, seemed paltry to him, what with the fortune that just their big four, Superman, Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman brought in.

I told him I thought Marvel would be very interested, and that I would discuss it with Marvel’s President, Jim Galton.

So, I did. I told Galton about my conversation with Sarnoff. Galton said he’d give Sarnoff a call.

The next day, I went upstairs, poked my head into Galton’s office and asked whether he’d called Sarnoff and, if so, how that went?

Galton said he told Sarnoff we weren’t interested.

I was stunned. Why not?!

Galton said—and this is prima facie evidence of the fact that he missed Comic Books 101 in publishing school—since DC books weren’t selling, “those characters must not be any good.”

Great Krypton!

Trying not to sound too crazed, I explained that they were great characters and that the DC editorial people were, frankly, doing a pretty poor job with them. And that we could do better. A lot better.

I talked him into calling Sarnoff back and telling him we’d give it some thought.

I left his office with instructions to put together a business plan and present it to Joe Calamari, Executive V.P. of Business Affairs.

It took me about three days to put together a presentable plan.

The first part of the business plan was the publishing plan. I decided that we should launch with seven titles and build from there, if all went well. The titles were:

SUPERMAN
BATMAN
WONDER WOMAN
GREEN LANTERN
TEEN TITANS
JUSTICE LEAGUE
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES

I projected that we would sell 39 million copies the first two years generating a pre-tax profit (gross revenues less cost of goods sold, royalties, staff, SG&A, etc.) of roughly $3,500,000.

That was huge money for a comic book publisher in 1984.

That was with just the original seven titles—no expansion of the line—though if we were doing that well, obviously, we’d add titles. Slowly and carefully, if I had anything to say about it.

I anticipated adding one editor, two assistants and one production person to start.

I presented the plan to Joe Calamari, as ordered. Here’s my cover memo:




Calamari enthusiastically endorsed my plan.

Galton was still skeptical. He thought my projections were crazy high. He sent the plan to the circulation department to review.

Somebody leaked. Rumors spread.

My first clue was when John Byrne showed up in my office one day with his cover for…


It wasn’t a sketch. It was a cover. Might even have been inked, I forget. I don’t have a copy of the thing, but I’ll bet Byrne still has the original. Somebody should ask him to display it on his site if he hasn’t already.

He had a story worked out, too, as I recall. He reallyreallyreally wanted to do Superman.

I think I remember Byrne telling me once that he had watched the first Superman movie over 1,100 times.

Anyway….

When the circulation department said they had completed their analysis of my plan, Galton called a meeting to discuss it. Besides Galton and me, Ed Shukin, V.P. of Circulation and Direct Sales Manager Carol Kalish were present. I don’t think Calamari was there. V.P. of Finance Barry Kaplan might have been.

Galton asked what Shukin’s take on my numbers was. Shukin said the numbers were “ridiculous.” Galton sort of smirked at me.

“We’ll do more than DOUBLE these numbers,” Shukin said.

Oh, my stars and garters!

And so, negotiations with Sarnoff began in earnest. I was a spectator at that point. The suits took over.

However….

Very soon thereafter, First Comics launched a lawsuit against Marvel Comics and others, alleging anti-trust violations, among other things.

One test of anti-competitive market dominance is market share of 70% or more. At that time Marvel held a nearly 70% share, 69-point-something. DC was around 18%.

I think it’s safe to say that when you’re being sued under anti-trust laws, it’s a bad time to devour your largest competitor.

On the other hand, there is the “we-have-a-clue-and-they-don’t” or “superior acumen” defense. We considered arguing that defense and pressing on with the deal.

But, no. Ultimately, the suits and lawyers decided to play it safe and backed away from the DC deal.

Jeepers!

P.S. First’s suit was nonsense. They alleged that we had flooded the market. Our actual increase in releases published during the “flood” year from the year before? Six. Six issues, not series. They alleged that we had used our dominance to fix prices with World Color Press to inflate their costs. In discovery, it came out that we were paying more than they were! (And that news made Galton and the print production people very peeved!) Etc.

Anyway….

I’ll write more about the First suit someday. Enough about that for now.

Net result, no SUPERMAN –First Marvel Issue! Too bad. It would have been fun.

[llllllll]

Interesting stuff about Marvel publishing DC characters. I had no idea Marvel were so big compared to DC, is that still the case today? I wonder what Marvel writers would have made of Superman et al? From the little I've read of this era, Marvel certainly seem to have the better writers, their characters seem to be better fleshed out and more rounded, wereas DC tend to focus only on the superhero rather than the men (sorry, people) behind the masks.