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Rick Remender On Taking A Break From Marvel For Now

Published Tue, 30 Jun 2015 08:00:40 -0500

When we ran a bunch of Marvel October listings as part of #MarvelOctober, a number of people noticed that Rick Remender no longer had any books listed. Rick posted on his website an editorial that will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Black Science, saying,

It's an unseasonably cold June morning in Los Angeles as I drink my third cup of coffee and prepare for the self-inflicted anxiety attack. The caffeinated monkey on my back is another symptom of working too much, for too many years. My rocket fuel of choice propels me headlong into a frenzy of typing up fantasy and adventure and chicanery before drop-ping me down into the sad alleyways of the inevitable crash, low productivity, and more boiling beige. Cutting back on my journey to brown town is next on a long list of things that need to happen for my sanity, but, and most importantly, cutting back on the reason that sweet brown horse is needed to pull me through the mud each day; too much work and not enough time with my family as we go through some health issues. Leading me to today's news. After eight years with the company, I've decided to take a break from my work at Marvel Comics. I feel it an urgent necessity to focus on my family and my creator-owned endeav-ors. Marvel enabled me to provide for my family as it grew, as my two children appeared into the world, and for that I am indebted and eternally grateful. They offered me their biggest flagship titles, they paid me well, and allowed me to sleep knowing my family could afford a doctor visit should one be needed, and this was not the case for most of my adult life. Most of my life was spent in self-imposed abject poverty, quitting one lucrative job after another, to produce my own creator-owned comics in a market that didn't seem to want such things. But that has changed. People want a wide variety of comics now. So, with your support, I'm going to chase that dream down and eat his sweet, sweet brains. When I was 25, against the advice of everyone in my life, I left my first profitable job, then in animation, to do creator-owned comics. I wrote myself a letter to convince myself that, "the unknown road holds better treasure, and even if it doesn't, you have to be true to yourself, to five independent or die and see what you can do on your own." I reread that letter a few weeks ago and it helped soothe my fears. If I'd stayed in that job, or any of the in-house jobs I've left since it, I'd have never created the things that make me most fulfilled in my career. So, for the next year, I'm only going to do work that the artists and I own. Putting my ass on the line along with my partners, and try for the dream one more time. To get back to doing what feeds my soul. To be around for my family during some trying times and spend my work hours making comics with the people I want to, the exact way we want to make them, and owning and controlling the fruits of our labor. I've dedicated my life to making comics. I love it. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stop doing it. You fine people make that possible by investing in the characters and stories we create. It sounds flat and insincere for some reason, but it's not. Thank you for caring about these stories so I can keep collaborating with these amazing people to cook them up. Here's to a year of creator-owned comics, Rick

I understand that Rick was originally to be the writer on one of the X-Men titles with editor Mike Marts before the situation changed.

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