Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, mark waid, marvel, Marvel Comics

The Other Side Of Mark Waid Vs. Jason Liebig, Fourteen Years On (UPDATE)

From the year 2000, in an interview with Mark Waid,

But for every Tom Brevoort, there's a bunch of guys who said, and this is an exact quote from a Marvel editor, and this is the thing that drove me off the brink: "We see writer-driven comics as an experiment that's failed." Well, first off, I'm not sure that it was ever an experiment. I don't know that Stan Lee when he was creating Spider-Man and the Hulk was thinking about writer-driven comics as an experiment, and secondly, you know, they were never writer-driven. How did they fail? You kept telling me what you wanted me to do and you never let me drive the car, so don't blame me when we got in a wreck.

From my All The Rage in 2001,

I was told that it was Jason Liebig who made the quote oft-referred to by Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid when setting up Gorilla Comics, reported as "We see writer-driven comics as an experiment that's failed" and has been a target of attacks within the industry as a result. Ironic then, that he's the fellow responsible for giving Warren Ellis the Counter-X gig.

Mark Waid responded to our questions as to whether Jason Liebig was the individual alleged to have made the "experiment" comment. He replied "It's his skin-crawling quote, yes, and it was spoken more than once to more than one writer."

But on the Bleeding Cool message boards, it was time for Jason Liebig to finally have his say.

Ah, that old chestnut. While I was an editor, I believe Mark invoked the "writer driven comics are an experiment that has failed" quote, attributed to a then-unnamed editor, as the impetus for Gorilla comics. At the time, I wondered who would ever state such a silly thing. And eventually, I would learn that it was allegedly MY quote.

Of course, I couldn't believe that I'd ever say that… because it certainly was nothing I ever thought – and my decisions as an editor reflected my belief that I'd never thought it. But when I saw the things Mark was saying about me, because of this alleged quote – I called him – and left voice mails asking him what was up. I called Mark three times. He never called back. I just wanted him to know that whoever told him I said that was either mistaken or full of it. It'd have been easy enough to settle, because I never thought it and am reasonably certain I never said it.

So, I never sneered anything to Mark directly or indirectly for that matter. I like Mark – I think he's a swell guy, a committed creator and a great talent. But someone apparently sneered an alleged quote to Mark in my stead, and unfortunately Mark took their word for it. Which I guess is okay, I suppose, taking third hand quotes as writ fact.

But when Mark proceeded to wish my death in print because of said quote without having the decency of asking me if it was true, or returning my calls when I was reaching out to him to ask why he thought I ever said that? Well… that's kind of awful.

All said, however, it did make for a great motivational quote, even if I never said it. When your mis-quote or made-up quote is responsible for launching a comic book company, that's cool, right?

And if you want to discover why he was fired from Marvel way back when, time to turn to All The Rage again… and this is what he's up to these days.

It's not the only such story that the subject of which has claimed as an invention…

[UPDATE]

Liebig has, however added, in the Bleeding Cool forums, that Waid did take an opportunity to apologize when they met in person a few years ago, and Liebig's reasons for responding on the issue when it resurfaced aren't exactly vendetta-driven:

I saw Mark at SDCC a few years ago (my first visit to the Con in a decade). Saw Mark and walked up to say hello – I don't think he recognized me at first, so I introduced myself.

He offered an apology for "some of the awful things" he said about me. And I accepted as I thought it awfully nice to hear, after having that stuff said so long before. So, I don't want anyone to pile onto Mark – I was just tired of having such an awful quote attributed to me for so long.

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