Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, marvel, MVL

The Marvelcution List 2011

Published Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:07:48 -0500

Last updated Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:34:49 -0500

The Comics Beat, CBR and Bleeding Cool have been reporting a series of dismissals at Marvel Comics, as cost-cutting becomes the big new Marvel event.

Talking to numerous Marvel sources, this seems to be the current list of very recent dismissals, though you'll find more from before, here, as well as a look as to why this is happening, that's received further corroboration from the same Marvel sources since publication.

Editorial:

Jody LeHeup

Alejandro Arbona

Rachel Pinnelas

Production:

Taylor Esposito

Scott "Scummy" "Pondscum" Elmer

Damien Lucchese

Jerry Kalinowski

There are also two people from the trade paperback collections department and two off-site compositors who work on digital conversion.

The dismissal of Elmer seems to have incensed more than any, consider very much the life and soul of the party, and for some the very reason to go to work.

Just to give you an idea of what is at stake here, this is how Alejandro described his work recently;

"I work on roughly a dozen comics at any given time, spread out across all the stages of development. I have a couple that are just story ideas, pitches or outlines I'm hashing out with writers right now, another handful that are being scripted and I'm assembling creative teams and starting to schedule, a few more that are being drawn and coming up on the horizon, and about six or eight active projects, the comics that are hitting deadlines and going to the printer and coming out in shops. Right now those active ones include Invincible Iron Man, Iron Man 2.0, Red Skull, Supreme Power, and two tie-ins to the "Spider-Island" story in Amazing Spider-Man, Spider Island: Cloak & Dagger and Spider Island: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu."

Multiply that by ten to thirteen people.

Two Marvel-associated people are doing what they can to help. Matt Fraction is ensuring that Alejandro stays as editor in a freelance capacity on his creator owned Icon title Casonova, published by Marvel. And ex-Marvel marketing guy Jim McCann continues to employ Damien Lucchese on design and production on his Image book Mind The Gap. They are encouraging other creators to find use for these, and the other dismissed staffers.

There has been an intimation however that those editorial staff seen as working freelance on other comics, even those Icon books published by Marvel, have been chosen for dismissal, when certain cuts had to be made.

Of course, this is just the beginning. I'm told that there are more cuts to come and that Marvel Digital will bear the brunt. While the division that runs the website, the forums, the videos, the news content doesn't make a profit, its branding value is considerable. Nevertheless, it won't impact on sales immediately, so they are the next to join Marvelcution 2011.

I've been through redundancy myself, it's a horrible experience for those who suffer it and those who are ordered to dispense it, often to people they count as their friends.

Thoughts and prayers, people, thoughts and prayers. And jobs is you have any going – I understand a number of comics publishers are looking at the highly trained talent pool that's suddenly been made available to them.

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