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All The Rage: ATR Update III: Poaching, Preaching and Plotting

Poached Eds

Joe Quesada announced in the press conference that he'd be expanding Marvel's editorial staff. Word is a number will be coming from DC.

This gets a Rage Value of 9 out of 10

The Industry View You've All Been Waiting For

That's right, what do I think about all this. Let's leave the Bob Harras thing for aside, there's all sorts of nasty rumours about the situation which I'm looking into. For now, Joe Quesada is Marvel's Editor-In-Chief.

Well for a start he's got a great relationship with much of the creative industry. Not all, but much. And if he improves certain aspects of the relationship between Marvel and creators, we could see a flock of interesting people returning.

Wizard love him. They really love him. He should look forward to a lot of publicity from these guys and a honeymoon period that could last for a long time. Look for Marvel books to get a higher profile in that mag (if such a thing is possible).

Joe and Jimmy won Marvel awards. Jo and Jimmy got me reading Marvel books again. Tom Brevoort stated that he wouldn't have commissioned the Inhumans series… it was a hit and won an Eisner. And to see work like Sentry and Black Panther come into being at Marvel is a sign of greater things to come.

Joe is also down with the fans. He posts to Usenet, he goes to the message boards. This means two things, people will hate him for what he does and love him for what he does. Things will become more personal. But at least
they'll have the opportunity to love him, people seemed to just hate Bob Harras from afar.

Joe has the opportunity to make things different. Diversify. Expand. He's not so tied into the super hero mentality which gives some room for experimentation. The potential is huge, and if he can persuade Bill, Frank and Ike to go along with it, he could change the comics industry as we know it to one we can be really proud of.

Joe and Jimmy surprised us all with work by Jenkins, Ellis, Dillon, Morrison and more. So how about talking to Seth, Chester Brown, Chris Ware, Dave McKinnon, Terry Wiley, Mark Stafford…

I'd love to see Joe start a book programme with a good backlist. Keep TPBs in print. Get them into bookstores, racked in genre, not just in the graphic novel section. Put Black Panther TPBs into political thriller, Avataars into fantasy.

I'd also bet that if Joe gave Alan Moore his creator –owned rights to previous work-for-hire agreements, apologise for the Miracleman / Marvelman fiasco, for reprinting those Doctor Who stories and the X-Men James Jaspers fiasco and you might just find he'll work for Marvel again.

Give Spider-Man to Grant Morrison and let him make it the number one selling book in the industry. And give Priest something fun to work with – maybe a book that doesn't have to have black leads in order to justify him being the writer. Although the Boogie Knights project did sound like fun…

But basically Joe? Keep doing what you've been doing for the last two years. It's worked so far…

Joe's just been given a big toy box. He's got some great friends he can invite round to play with them. Earlier on rec.arts.comics.misc, Joe asked "in the immortal words of
John Belushi in Animal House "Are you with me!?"" We're with you Joe. Go make Marvel fun again. Just, please, restrain from doing a super-powered baseball comic, hmm?

This gets a Rage Value of 10 out of 10. It's true, I tell you, I really believe me.

Youngblood And Guts

Pmstopper1 asked Kurt Busiek on rec.arts.comics.misc about the recent Previews solicitations from Awesome. "Kurt, I know you've stated that you've got nothing to do with the revamp of Youngblood and that if anything Liefeld is using your old scripts for the proposed Year One mini that never came out but do you know that you're actually solicited in Previews as the writer of the book? He's given you full writer's credit and to think he's not even doing the art in the book. Some guy named Eric Walker is pencilling. Have you been informed of this yet?"

Kurt responded "Well, that's just classy as hell, isn't it? The most they've got from me is three plots. No scripts." And as to being informed, he replied "Nope."

Jimmy Jay from Awesome was on hand to post a response from Rob Liefeld. "Kurt Busiek wrote 3 brilliant plots for Youngblood Year One that have been waiting patiently for the appropriate talent to emerge and illustrate the
title. Kurt has been informed that we were going to move forward with this project since the spring of 99. Both myself and the project editor contacted Kurt several times over the past year to ask him to script the project and Kurt told us his schedule was full and that he would be unavailable to work with us on it. At one point he also suggested that if we waited until after Gorilla launched that he would have been open to, but by no means committed to, giving the project further consideration. We waited and he informed us that he could not script over his plots and Kurt politely told us he understood that we needed to move forward and we set out to find someone who could finish the job. Kurt's plots are terrific, filled with intrigue and conspiracy sure to appeal to fans of his work on Avengers and Astro City. Kurt's story densely weighs in at 90 total pages, which brings each of the 3 volumes in the series as 30 page oversized books. It was written right after MARVELS and we are anxious to finally publish the work."

Okay, not actually addressing the point of wrongly soliciting the work, but at least it was polite and professional. Then, oh dear.

"Busiek's glib attitude towards the project is in keeping with his attempts to distance himself from a project that he cashed checks for a long time ago. He has also stressed to me and others that he does not want to have
other projects competing with his struggling Gorilla titles. The plots require minimal omissions of a few IMAGE Characters such as LYNCH and WYNN. Kurt himself suggested that they are easy to replace with other government
operatives to further the story."

"As for someone else scripting over Busiek's plots, this is not a new practice for him, in fact it is one that he is utilizing on the upcoming DEFENDERS title."

Busiek replied to a variety of points, saying "Absolutely. I don't blame you a bit for moving forward, and I encouraged you to. Soliciting the book as written by me, however, when they're plotted by me and scripted by someone else — that's the part I have a problem with. I sure hope you'll credit the guy who finishes the job."

As to the Defenders situation, Busiek replied "Not quite, since Erik has plot input and I've got script input on DEFENDERS. But certainly I've worked that way before. The publisher didn't try to pass it off as solo work by me,
though."

"What a bad man I am, not wanting to be solicited as the writer of a project I'm not actually scripting. How glib of me. And heck, I'm already seven years distanced from those plots — how much further can I get?"

"But since Rob's been so nice as to insult me while using my name to sell his books, let me respond. Every time someone at Awesome has called and asked me to do work for the company, I've said I'm too busy at the moment
(which is true), but that maybe in the future, things'll be different. Which was also true, at the time."

"Let me amend that. Never again, Rob. Whatever mileage you're getting out of soliciting me as the sole writer for this project, when you know it's not true — and when that was the one request I made of your editor when he
talked to me about the project, that I not be credited as anything more than plotter – had better be enough. It's the last you get."

"After all, the only other thing I wrote for you — a full plot and ten pages of full script for a 48-page YOUNGBLOOD graphic album — I never got paid for, so you've got no right to use it."

In another reply to someone asking if that plot or script could be made available to the net, Kurt said "No plans for that at present — but who knows, maybe someday. I've just checked, and I've still got it all, along with the last communication there ever was on the project — a fax I sent asking if the artist was ever going to get a page rate, since Extreme wasn't returning phone calls by then. Eventually, I'd like to arrange to put up a number of never-released projects, like the outline to the full VICTORY and SILVER STAR stories, and the WHAT IF…? 'Captain America Had Never Joined The Avengers' outline I did that I was pretty proud of.

Rob then responded "never again. so be it. go with god."

"In regards to a Youngblood graphic novel, is this the matter that you and Jeph Loeb discussed a while back? I was under the impression that it was a Youngblood Year One issue and that it had been settled. I am not aware of a graphic novel that you wrote. 48 pages, WOW ! I will definitely have a look into this one."

I just love it when people air their dirty laundry in public. It makes my job so much easier…

This gets a Rage Value of 7 out of 10

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