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idk, all the evidence presented here is interesting and relevant. but let's not kid ourselves that any of us can conclude anything beyond conjecture
except Darthfury cos anyone who thinks spider-man should hook up with she hulk must have god on his side
[QUOTE=boots;4789132]idk, all the evidence presented here is interesting and relevant. but let's not kid ourselves that any of us can conclude anything beyond conjecture[/quote]
The issue is that Marvel, and for that matter any media company today, will never be honest and transparent with readers, who they mostly see as suckers of some kind or another. In Pro Wrestling, they would be called marks and smarks. Modern writers and others are likewise asked to sign NDA and so on. In the case of movie production for instance, when Hitchcock died and so on, biographers and others could go through his stuff, all his papers, all the screenplay drafts and all the letters and audio recorded screenwriting discussions he left behind, and get a sense of what was on his mind at a given mind. They found out stuff he kept to himself, stuff he was embarrassed by, what the studios were thinking and so on. In the case of Marvel, and comics writing, we don't really get that. Either we get hagiographic interviews with creators by fans, we get boilerplate by EIC that's part-promo, all hype, not stuff you can really take at face value. So we don't get a real insight into how stuff is done and made. You can argue that people shouldn't have to know how the sausage is being made, I'd argue that every restaurant needs a health inspection.
Obviously if Marvel were like "We want you to stop buying X-Men and buy Avengers" they aren't going to outright tell you. They are going to pretend that this was some cool edgy thing (and Quesada especially promoted a highly regressive attitude of Marvel fans as being like an aging all-male biker gang, a mentality you can see here among some posters), that it was all about telling great stories, or returning the X-Men to the roots or some nosh like that. For instance, Quesada said that he wanted to return the X-Men to its roots as a metaphor for "persecuted minority" but that's not the roots of the X-Men. That was created and developed by Claremont. Read the 05 X-Men and you have a bunch of white kids and their white teacher with a fairly dated idea of liberalism. Like Xavier was even funded by the FBI and the 05 X-Men is basically The mod squad, you know a police group of hippies who hunt other hippies for the man. The original Magneto was a trashy Doom knockoff and the Magneto that people love who is in musical chairs with Doom as Marvel's top villain, was developed by Claremont. So you have to look at the signs and actions and follow-through and draw a conclusion, and make a judgment. It strikes me as incredibly naive to see House of M and think that reducing the number of mutants is anything other than pushing the X-Men down in favor of the Avengers. For one thing, House of M isn't a great story by any stretch...the idea of all mutants losing their powers isn't a direct by-product of the story and concept it tells, which is basically Scarlet Witch having a nervous breakdown, because obviously a troubled woman with mental issues is who you want as a scapegoat for what is an analogue to mass sterilization.
That's why I say the Avengers and Iron man, and Spider-Man's relationship in the MU, which largely was established in that period was an astro-turfed event. Because it's largely the product of three stories that are individually not especially good -- House of M, Civil War, OMD. Of the lot, House of M is the best for the little that it's worth. The only reason these stories are remembered are for editorial stunts that amounted to recklessly riding roughshod over previous characterizations, a pure end-justifies-the-means mindset.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789201]The issue is that Marvel, and for that matter any media company today, will never be honest and transparent with readers, who they mostly see as suckers of some kind or another. In Pro Wrestling, they would be called marks and smarks. Modern writers and others are likewise asked to sign NDA and so on. In the case of movie production for instance, when Hitchcock died and so on, biographers and others could go through his stuff, all his papers, all the screenplay drafts and all the letters and audio recorded screenwriting discussions he left behind, and get a sense of what was on his mind at a given mind. They found out stuff he kept to himself, stuff he was embarrassed by, what the studios were thinking and so on. In the case of Marvel, and comics writing, we don't really get that. Either we get hagiographic interviews with creators by fans, we get boilerplate by EIC that's part-promo, all hype, not stuff you can really take at face value. So we don't get a real insight into how stuff is done and made. You can argue that people shouldn't have to know how the sausage is being made, I'd argue that every restaurant needs a health inspection.
Obviously if Marvel were like "We want you to stop buying X-Men and buy Avengers" they aren't going to outright tell you. They are going to pretend that this was some cool edgy thing (and Quesada especially promoted a highly regressive attitude of Marvel fans as being like an aging all-male biker gang, a mentality you can see here among some posters), that it was all about telling great stories, or returning the X-Men to the roots or some nosh like that. For instance, Quesada said that he wanted to return the X-Men to its roots as a metaphor for "persecuted minority" but that's not the roots of the X-Men. That was created and developed by Claremont. Read the 05 X-Men and you have a bunch of white kids and their white teacher with a fairly dated idea of liberalism. Like Xavier was even funded by the FBI and the 05 X-Men is basically The mod squad, you know a police group of hippies who hunt other hippies for the man. The original Magneto was a trashy Doom knockoff and the Magneto that people love who is in musical chairs with Doom as Marvel's top villain, was developed by Claremont. So you have to look at the signs and actions and follow-through and draw a conclusion, and make a judgment. It strikes me as incredibly naive to see House of M and think that reducing the number of mutants is anything other than pushing the X-Men down in favor of the Avengers. For one thing, House of M isn't a great story by any stretch...the idea of all mutants losing their powers isn't a direct by-product of the story and concept it tells, which is basically Scarlet Witch having a nervous breakdown, because obviously a troubled woman with mental issues is who you want as a scapegoat for what is an analogue to mass sterilization.
That's why I say the Avengers and Iron man, and Spider-Man's relationship in the MU, which largely was established in that period was an astro-turfed event. Because it's largely the product of three stories that are individually not especially good -- House of M, Civil War, OMD. Of the lot, House of M is the best f[I][/I]or the little that it's worth. The only reason these stories are remembered are for editorial stunts that amounted to recklessly riding roughshod over previous characterizations, a pure end-justifies-the-means mindset.[/QUOTE]
sure dude, but you can't know [I]know[/I] that
and nobody has to do anything with any of that info, least of all amateur investigative journalism or its more popular cousin confirmation bias journalism
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4788828]Didn't know about this but Marvel restricting X-Men to such a niche offering still confirms my point that they were shuffled out of the spotlight.
The X-Men not having a major cartoon series in the 2010s is definitely neglectful because it has had proven success on that front for two decades. The 90s had the Fox X-Men, the 2000s had X-Men Evolution (which is my favorite) and X-Men Evolution introduced X23 who became the emotional center of LOGAN. Both of them lasted for five and four seasons respectively. [I][U]Wolverine and the X-Men[/U][/I] which adapted parts of Morrison's run went into production before the Disney-Marvel buyout and deal was signed for broadcasting the first season so by the time it came for a second season, Disney simply canceled it. The same thing happened to Weisman's Spectacular Spider-Man where the Disney-Marvel purchase led to the animation rights being renegotiated and so on, and that axed Weisman's show.[/QUOTE]
So they didn’t get media support in the 2010s? How does that support the idea of a boycott by Marvel in the 2000s? It looks like you’ve made your conclusion already and are working backwards from there. Hell you even took an example of some X-Men miniseries that were made and said it proves they were trying to sideline them.
It's not like the Avengers were getting some major push either. They had one series like Wolverine and the X-Men that also got axed when Disney bought Marvel. They got another show after the first Avengers movie ended up being the third highest grossing movie ever but that came after the success of the films, not before. So in conclusion, there was no major 'push' to make the Avengers bigger. That came after Kevin Feige turned the team into a cultural phenomena worldwide. Marvel beefing up the Avengers books in the 2000s isn't astro-turfing anymore than them trying to push FF again in recent years.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789201]The issue is that Marvel, and for that matter any media company today, will never be honest and transparent with readers, who they mostly see as suckers of some kind or another. In Pro Wrestling, they would be called marks and smarks. Modern writers and others are likewise asked to sign NDA and so on. In the case of movie production for instance, when Hitchcock died and so on, biographers and others could go through his stuff, all his papers, all the screenplay drafts and all the letters and audio recorded screenwriting discussions he left behind, and get a sense of what was on his mind at a given mind. They found out stuff he kept to himself, stuff he was embarrassed by, what the studios were thinking and so on. In the case of Marvel, and comics writing, we don't really get that. Either we get hagiographic interviews with creators by fans, we get boilerplate by EIC that's part-promo, all hype, not stuff you can really take at face value. So we don't get a real insight into how stuff is done and made. You can argue that people shouldn't have to know how the sausage is being made, I'd argue that every restaurant needs a health inspection.
Obviously if Marvel were like "We want you to stop buying X-Men and buy Avengers" they aren't going to outright tell you. They are going to pretend that this was some cool edgy thing (and Quesada especially promoted a highly regressive attitude of Marvel fans as being like an aging all-male biker gang, a mentality you can see here among some posters), that it was all about telling great stories, or returning the X-Men to the roots or some nosh like that. For instance, Quesada said that he wanted to return the X-Men to its roots as a metaphor for "persecuted minority" but that's not the roots of the X-Men. That was created and developed by Claremont. Read the 05 X-Men and you have a bunch of white kids and their white teacher with a fairly dated idea of liberalism. Like Xavier was even funded by the FBI and the 05 X-Men is basically The mod squad, you know a police group of hippies who hunt other hippies for the man. The original Magneto was a trashy Doom knockoff and the Magneto that people love who is in musical chairs with Doom as Marvel's top villain, was developed by Claremont. So you have to look at the signs and actions and follow-through and draw a conclusion, and make a judgment. It strikes me as incredibly naive to see House of M and think that reducing the number of mutants is anything other than pushing the X-Men down in favor of the Avengers. For one thing, House of M isn't a great story by any stretch...the idea of all mutants losing their powers isn't a direct by-product of the story and concept it tells, which is basically Scarlet Witch having a nervous breakdown, because obviously a troubled woman with mental issues is who you want as a scapegoat for what is an analogue to mass sterilization.
That's why I say the Avengers and Iron man, and Spider-Man's relationship in the MU, which largely was established in that period was an astro-turfed event. Because it's largely the product of three stories that are individually not especially good -- House of M, Civil War, OMD. Of the lot, House of M is the best for the little that it's worth. The only reason these stories are remembered are for editorial stunts that amounted to recklessly riding roughshod over previous characterizations, a pure end-justifies-the-means mindset.[/QUOTE]
According to you, Marvel's masterplan was to tell bad stories whose sole purpose was to force readers to love Avengers, Iron Man and Spider-Man more than The X-Men.
And this masterplan was hatched in the early 00's because Marvel knew, years before Marvel Studios was even a thing, that one day it would be a thing and not only would it be a thing but it would defy all expectations and succeed beyond anyone's wildest dreams and that an Avengers movie would eventually happen.
So, of course, CW had to lay the groundwork for all this years ahead of time. Marvel had to scheme to prepare readers to love The Avengers - even though The Avengers was actually already a big deal long before CW - an established cornerstone of the Marvel line with a venerated history behind it - so they really didn't have to pump them up at all. But no, ok, they had to do it anyway because of...reasons. But wait, they didn't even try to tell a good story because CW was only about convincing readers The Avengers were cool. It wasn't about a story at all, it was about carrying out an underlying agenda.
Ummm...yeah.
You know, as fans we don't get to know the inner workings of publishers and we don't know all the nitty gritty details of how stories were conceived - at least not until many, many years have past, at least. And even then, history can prove to be a bit fuzzy. Years go by and participants don't always agree on the fine details as they look back on them and so on and so forth. So there is always more behind the creation of comics than we know. However, that doesn't mean that fans should try and fill in the blanks with their own baseless speculation, projecting motivation onto creative personnel, fabricating their own imaginary timeline of events, and attributing questionable meaning to the slightest scraps of information.
Yes, I know reality can be humdrum at times. It's unfortunate but I think it's best we try to stick to it.
Reality:
We know that OMD was done for the mercenary purpose of removing the Spider-marriage. There is no subterfuge about that.
Reality:
Mutants had proliferated during Morrison's run and HoM was a means to scale that back and put mutants' back against the wall again.
Reality:
Civil War was conceived as an event with an irresistible hook - what if the heroes of the MU went to war with each other?
NOT REALITY:
Marvel conceives of stories with the purpose of making readers abandon one set of character in favor of another.
...The above statements may all seem rather plain but, hey, that's reality for you. Good thing we have comics to take us out of it, right?
[QUOTE=Prof. Warren;4789383]According to you, Marvel's masterplan was to tell bad stories whose sole purpose was to force readers to love Avengers, Iron Man and Spider-Man more than The X-Men. [/quote]
Marvel's masterplan was to tell [B][I][U]successful stories[/U][/I][/B] that emphasized and centered on the Avengers and Iron Man. Stories don't have to be good to be successful you know.
[quote]And this masterplan was hatched in the early 00's because Marvel knew, years before Marvel Studios was even a thing, that one day it would be a thing [/quote]
In the same way Roger Stern wrote [I]Revenge of the Green Goblin[/I] around 1999-2000 to lay groundwork for the Goblin centered Spider-Man 1 that came out in 2002, two years later.
In the same way Dazzler was promoted largely as a setup for a movie that never got made.
In that same way, Marvel thought that they needed to promote properties whose rights they entirely owned in the comics, in anticipation for building their own studios.
[quote]and not only would it be a thing but it would defy all expectations[/quote]
I explicitly said that nobody knew that Iron Man 1 would be successful. That was a true thing, one which people genuinely liked largely for the actor. If Iron Man 1 failed, then the comics would have backtracked heavily from the push, in the same way that the recent benching of the Inhumans was a response to the failure of that TV show. Had that TV Show done well that might have actually made the Inhumans replacing X-Men thing happen, and who knows if HoX/PoX gets the greenlight then.
Comics is very much about contingency. And especially the big-event line-wide crossover and titles like Civil War and House of M which are meant to change not just one story but alter the entire continuity across multiple titles. Smaller titles like Fraction's Hawkeye that isn't going to be affected one way or another aside from getting canceled or extended.
[quote]Mutants had proliferated during Morrison's run and HoM was a means to scale that back and put mutants' back against the wall again. [/quote]
A statement made by someone who's either
A) Not read Morrison's Run.
B) Read it very badly or briefly.
And in any case, Joe Quesada was EIC during New X-Men. He was the one who brought Grant Morrison, easily the most prestigious talent to work at Marvel since Frank Miller left. If he had problems with Morrison's run, it was his job as editor to make it known at the time. The reason he didn't, and probably the reason he let JMS write the Spider-Marriage so well and for so long, is that he obviously didn't think he had enough sway to put forth his agenda into the stories, as well as coming up with a plan to do it.
[url]https://web.archive.org/web/20070415151629/http://www.newsarama.com/JoeFridays/JoeFridays21.html[/url]
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4785981]But the movie seems to come down on him saying "below my pay grade" was right.[/QUOTE]
In the movie, it's pretty explicit that Tony underestimates the Vulture.
[QUOTE=Mister Mets;4789635]In the movie, it's pretty explicit that Tony underestimates the Vulture.[/QUOTE]
Not at all. Take a look at Tony's final lines with Peter.
[quote][quote]
Tony Stark: Sorry I took your suit. You had it coming. Actually, it turns out it was...the perfect tough-love moment that you needed. To urge you on, right? Wouldn't you think? Don't you think?
Peter: I guess.
Tony Stark: Let's just say it was.
Peter: Mr. Stark, I really...
Tony: You screwed the pooch hard, bigtime. But then you did the right thing. Took the dog to the free clinic, you raised the hybrid puppies...All right, not my best analogy. I was wrong about you. I think, with a little more mentoring...you could be a real asset to the team.[/quote]
[url]https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=spider-man-homecoming[/url]
[/quote]
Tony doesn't say "You were right about Toomes, I should have kept a closer eye. Robbed my own ship under my nose and would have gotten away with it if not for you. My mind's been elsewhere, ever since the Chitauri came through that wormhole".
That one line, obviously once it's revised and written better by a pro, would have been enough. It would explain what was on Tony's mind. Instead, he says that it was Peter's fault that this mess happened and that what Tony was wrong about was thinking that mistake was all there was to Peter.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789581]Marvel's masterplan was to tell [B][I][U]successful stories[/U][/I][/B] that emphasized and centered on the Avengers and Iron Man. Stories don't have to be good to be successful you know.[/QUOTE]
That evades your main point that the goal of these stories was primarily to make The Avengers and Iron Man more popular than The X-Men.
Kind of a stupid goal for a company to have, don't you think?
"Let's run down some of our best selling characters and hope that we can get readers to switch their allegiance to these other characters!"
Isn't it much more likely, and what we see Marvel do all the time, is that they try to elevate all their characters and to make every corner of their universe seem vital?
Telling a great Avengers story doesn't mean that the goal to to not tell great X-Men stories as well.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789581]In the same way Roger Stern wrote [I]Revenge of the Green Goblin[/I] around 1999-2000 to lay groundwork for the Goblin centered Spider-Man 1 that came out in 2002, two years later.[/QUOTE]
This seems like something that you're simply assuming, not an actual fact.
Setting up the return of the Green Goblin would not need two years of lead time.
But at least there's the air of plausibility to it in that, given the lengthy pre-production period on SM 1, that Marvel could have known Sony's plans and prepared.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789581]In the same way Dazzler was promoted largely as a setup for a movie that never got made.[/QUOTE]
But at the time, the movie seemed likely to be imminent.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789581]In that same way, Marvel thought that they needed to promote properties whose rights they entirely owned in the comics, in anticipation for building their own studios.[/QUOTE]
None of this would account for Marvel having a grand scheme many years before Marvel Studios existed to bury some characters and promote other characters above them - all in anticipation of movies that had yet to be imagined by a then non-existent studio. That's what we would call a stretch.
Does Marvel publish comics that are prompted by outside media? Of course. We wouldn't be getting a Taskmaster comic if not for Black Widow.
Plans for film and TV obviously influence decisions in the publishing line - but not a decade or so out. To say that somehow CW was initiated because of outside media plans years and years down the line that, at the time, were not even actual plans yet rather than just accepting the simple, uncomplicated reality that CW had a great pitch that excited the room and that's why it happened, is just ridiculous. You're trying so hard to connect dots that aren't even there. And to what end?
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789581]I explicitly said that nobody knew that Iron Man 1 would be successful. That was a true thing, one which people genuinely liked largely for the actor. If Iron Man 1 failed, then the comics would have backtracked heavily from the push, in the same way that the recent benching of the Inhumans was a response to the failure of that TV show. Had that TV Show done well that might have actually made the Inhumans replacing X-Men thing happen, and who knows if HoX/PoX gets the greenlight then.[/QUOTE]
You're living in a world of what ifs. And buying into paranoid speculation along the way. "If the Inhumans took off, would the X-Men have even existed anymore?"
And regarding the success of failure of Iron Man, you're neglecting to remind us that you think OMD would have been undone had IM 1 not been a hit.
Again, trying to connect dots that just don't exist.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789581]Comics is very much about contingency. And especially the big-event line-wide crossover and titles like Civil War and House of M which are meant to change not just one story but alter the entire continuity across multiple titles. Smaller titles like Fraction's Hawkeye that isn't going to be affected one way or another aside from getting canceled or extended.[/QUOTE]
Yes, comics are all about contingency. And also about course correction. If a story isn't working, plans change.
You never know ahead of time how the readership is going to respond.
All of which makes the idea that Marvel is a master manipulator of the audience's taste all the more laughable. Marvel - or any publisher, for that matter - only wishes they could just tell the audience what to like or what to buy. Ultimately, the market decides what works and what doesn't. Marvel can push whatever property they want but if the interest isn't there, if the stories aren't being well-received, it's all empty effort. The stories have to work, the ideas have to be there, and that's what Marvel's focus is on.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789581]A statement made by someone who's either
A) Not read Morrison's Run.
B) Read it very badly or briefly.[/QUOTE]
I read it just fine, even though it's been awhile.
As I recall, the destruction of Genosha aside, mutants were doing ok under Morrison's watch.
And I certainly seem to remember many new mutants being introduced as students.
It was not a time when we saw less mutants arrive, that's for sure.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789581]And in any case, Joe Quesada was EIC during New X-Men. He was the one who brought Grant Morrison, easily the most prestigious talent to work at Marvel since Frank Miller left. If he had problems with Morrison's run, it was his job as editor to make it known at the time.[/QUOTE]
Quesada wanting to make a change from Morrison's run is not the same as him having problems with it.
He likely was very happy with Morrison's run as a set of stories.
But he also had his own ideas of how mutants should be handled and, eventually, saw a way to put that into effect.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789581]The reason he didn't, and probably the reason he let JMS write the Spider-Marriage so well and for so long, is that he obviously didn't think he had enough sway to put forth his agenda into the stories, as well as coming up with a plan to do it.
[url]https://web.archive.org/web/20070415151629/http://www.newsarama.com/JoeFridays/JoeFridays21.html[/url][/QUOTE]
Thanks for the link. It only disproves your points. How you can read Quesada's well-reasoned explanation for why House of M happened, his rationale for reducing the number of mutants in the MU and his belief, as curator of these characters at the time, that this was a way to cut away some of the weeds that had sprung up in the X-garden over the years and make the X-corner of the MU healthier in the long run and cry "sabotage!" speaks to a basic lack of understanding and a desire, above all else, to cling to conspiracy theories.
You can see where Quesada was going with HoM and, on the surface, it sounds like a solid plan. HoM, as a story, I think was fine. And the era that followed it was not without some positives, but I think it just didn't work the way they had hoped. This happens. It's not a deliberate act of running down a property, it's simply that not all creative decisions pan out and once you've gotten yourself in a hole, getting out is not always easy.
Until Hickman came along, I think that no one was really sure what the next big leap for the X-Men should be but it wasn't for lack of trying.
Quesada talks about his worry that making mutants into a majority would undo their outsider appeal and I see his logic.
However, Hickman had the brilliant idea to embrace the ascendancy of mutants and make that the linchpin of this new era.
Sometimes you just don't know until the right idea comes along what the next step should be. It wasn't until this new Hickman era that I understood that the X-Men operates differently than other Marvel properties. It's unique in that nostalgia and pining for the past is death to the mutants in a way that it isn't to FF, Spider-Man and others.
But creativity and telling stories is not a science. It's instinctual.
Bad ideas and good ideas come from the same place and it's not always clear which is which until those ideas are executed.
Making a creative misstep is not proof of a deliberate desire to fu*k things up.
[QUOTE=Hybrid;4786290]Yeah, I will agree that the MCU had a big part in elevating the Avengers to what they were, annoyingly so at times, while the seeds were in place beforehand over film rights with New Avengers/House of M/Civil War that put them at the center. I've shared my gripes before that I don't like Marvel filtered exclusively through the Avengers because they're too big for that, and it doesn't work like using Justice League for DC. For the longest time, the Fantastic Four were the most popular team in-universe, while the X-Men was/still is the best selling team. The Avengers were a dumping ground for various characters who couldn't hold a title, not some kind of prestige. The X-Men really were outperforming the Avengers on all fronts, with more ongoings, splinter teams, minis and spin-offs than the Avengers had at that same rate. That's why it feels wrong when someone says something like "The Avengers are the core of Marvel and the X-Men exist outside of it", which feels ignorant. Marvel didn't pair the two super often because the X-Men were above the Avengers, and when they did they treated the Avengers as second stringers in the big crossover (see Onslaught).
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the Avengers, but I feel they get overblown for a variety of reasons. Hickman's run was so great because it had so many different elements not associated with the Avengers, and was practically a continuation of his Fantastic Four run.[/QUOTE]
The big thing with the Avengers is that it's the franchise that can take in characters from all over. For a long time, Marvel didn't take advantage of this for reasons that had nothing to do with what made sense in-universe and were more about internal politics (IE- keeping the Avengers separate from the X-Men of Fantastic Four lines.)
This predated the bias against the X-Men and Fantastic Four in later years. Even with recent changes, the Avengers is going to be the line that can take in Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four characters better than others.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789640]Not at all. Take a look at Tony's final lines with Peter.
Tony doesn't say "You were right about Toomes, I should have kept a closer eye. Robbed my own ship under my nose and would have gotten away with it if not for you. My mind's been elsewhere, ever since the Chitauri came through that wormhole".
That one line, obviously once it's revised and written better by a pro, would have been enough. It would explain what was on Tony's mind. Instead, he says that it was Peter's fault that this mess happened and that what Tony was wrong about was thinking that mistake was all there was to Peter.[/QUOTE]
It fits Tony's character that he's not acknowledging underestimating a villain who would have won if not for Spider-Man.
[QUOTE=Mister Mets;4789650]It fits Tony's character that he's not acknowledging underestimating a villain who would have won if not for Spider-Man.[/QUOTE]
Exactly. No way Tony's ego allows for that.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4788063]Quesada passed a moratorium on creating new mutants after House of M. I gave a link to that. I have born the burden of proof and successfully given testimonies showing that X-Men as a continuity was editorially fenced in. You have all offered no retort or reproof to that. I
So you might well say they that Quesada is being factually false when he gave that moratorium. Might as well say, as some here are, that Chris Claremont is being factually false.
And the proof is also there when you compare stuff before and after. Pre-2004 Quesada didn't always have such views.
-- Like he got Grant Morrison, one of the biggest names in comics to work on New X-Men, which was the main Marvel title that he was interested in. This was when he just took over EIC.
-- Quesada and Bill Jemas worked with Paul Jenkins to create Origin which gave Logan a name. The impetus for that was that Fox was making Wolverine the star of the movies and they wanted to deal with his origins, since "having a vague past he'll never know" is fine for a Han Solo-type supporting character but not when you are making that guy your lead to follow.
-- Likewise when the X-Men Evolution cartoon introduced X23, Wolverine's legacy character, Quesada incorporated that into the comics. He also co-wrote the Marvel origin and made her, a teenage girl in the original cartoon into a Latina prostitute (Because that's how you get people to read comics, make a character intended for young girls as their version of the badass lone-wolf archetype into a sex worker, such is the wisdom of Joey Q).
-- Joss Whedon likewise signed on to do Astonishing X-Men.
Before Quesada treated X-Men respectfully as a major brand and title worthy of respect as an EIC. And he played ball with Fox and other licensees. Then after 2004, there was a definite change. And the reason was definitely Marvel Corporate deciding to focus on licenses they fully own, and Quesada as EIC had to deliver that.
The set-up for that was well established before in the comics as a prep. This really isn't anything new.
--For example, [I]Revenge of the Green Goblin[/I], plotted by Roger Stern and written by Paul Jenkins. Stern admitted in a podcast that was a commission to do a Goblin story because he was going to appear in Spider-Man 1 and there needed to be a book that reminded comics readers at the time why Goblin was so scary, insane, and dangerous. That came out in 2000, two years before Spider-Man 1 (2002).
-- Dazzler was set up as a promotion for the movie that never got made.
I mean they have done this before, it's standard practice. Why are people thinking that somehow pure motives exist in the case of Iron Man and the Avengers?
The main thing that the movies changed was validate ideas and sentiments they already had allowing them to fully go ahead. Had IM-1 failed, all that buildup would have been rolled back at once. Civil War status-quo and House of M would have been undone right away.[/QUOTE]
With the Green Goblin story, you may be thinking about Peter Parker Spider-Man #44-47, a second Jenkins penned Green Goblin story that came out at the same time as the film.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4787614]So we must always take EIC decisions at face value and not look at them as corporate officers, which is what they are? We must live in a happy dreamland never-fantasy that pretends that comics run aren't affected at a corporate level? Quesada openly said there was a moratorium to creating new mutants ([url]https://icv2.com/articles/comics/view/7670/no-more-mutants[/url]). He said he wanted mutants to be like it was in the '60s, i.e. when it was a failing Marvel title and got sent into reprints. I don't know why people are pretending this isn't the kick to the curb that was.
That doesn't explain why the House of M status-quo was maintained and extended. You are making it sound like this was an event that came and went. It wasn't until Disney bought Fox that they moved past this. Hickman openly said multiple times that his run was intended to make X-Men the center of the Marvel Universe as it was before.
Grant Morrison's run opened with the Genocide of Genosha, Whedon's run had a mutant cure...so the survival of mutantdom was by no means not a running theme before. it was indeed far moreso than post-House of M.
The mutant corner is no more unwieldy than any other corner of the MU. Spider-Man is an unwieldy corner of the Marvel Universe on account of Clone Saga, and OMD, and unlike the case of X-Men where stuff like Summers' Brothers, Madelyne Pryor, and other elements eventually got addressed and resolved...that hasn't happened in the case of the Spider-Man.
Interesting that you are insulting a man who is arguably the most influential writer for Marvel after Stan Lee stepped down. Obviously Claremont has no insight into how the industry works, has no experience to make judgment calls about things, does not speak from a store of experience.
An undertaking like a comics company creating a movie studio and producing their own movie is not something that is planned or put into motion overnight, and not done without a significant amount of groundwork. That article explicitly said that the idea came in 2003, well before Bendis came on New Avengers.
However big the Avengers might have been before, it's hard to deny that in terms of influence, sales, and actual lasting continuity impact...Bendis' New Avengers and Millar's Civil War marked the most glorious chapter in its history. Whether it's better or not, is a separate thing. GO back and read Avengers #300. A major milestone issue. IT was a tie-in comic to X-Men's Inferno crossover. A milestone issue of a supposed flagship title dedicated to an X-Men crossover isn't a great marker of prestige.
In the words of Ed Piskor, author of X-Men Grand Design (one of the best Marvel comics of the last decade), "I don't want to live in a world centered around the Avengers rather than the X-Men, why join the navy when you can be a pirate".
I mean part of this thread is about Spider-Man's status in the Marvel Universe and the sub-discussion is about Spider-Man being more tied to teams since 2000 which everyone agrees is when it really started. Stuff like Spider-Man and Tony Stark, Spider-Man becoming part of Avengers Tower, Spider-Man joining the Future Foundation. And one thing is wondering how those decisions factored in changes to Spider-Man's continuity.[/QUOTE]
There's a distinction between taking a CEO's explanations at face value all the time, and deciding that his explanation is clearly and obviously false.
There is merit to the argument that mutants weren't special circa 2004, and would be more special if there was a smaller number. There is also merit to the argument that making someone a mutant removes the need to explain how someone got super powers, a common element of origin stories.
But this predated the Iron Man film, and Disney's subsequent purchase of Marvel by several years, and those predated Perlmutter's increased push to limit what Marvel comics is doing with the Fantastic Four and X-Men, and the push for the Inhumans as an alternate franchise (a push that was ultimately unsuccessful because you can't force these things.)
[QUOTE=Prof. Warren;4789646]That evades your main point that the goal of these stories was primarily to make The Avengers and Iron Man more popular than The X-Men. [/quote]
The point as in most of the stuff in Quesada's time at EIC was put the end-goal over any other consideration. Make the Avengers great again but do that without any organic demand from readers and genuine interest. So they had to astro-turf it by means of stunts and events.
[quote]Kind of a stupid goal for a company to have, don't you think?[/quote]
Not so. Carny stunts like this can and do work. People have a hard time accepting that.
[quote]Isn't it much more likely, and what we see Marvel do all the time, is that they try to elevate all their characters and to make every corner of their universe seem vital? [/quote]
That was EIC Jim Shooter you are talking about. Joe Quesada had a specific idea of how the marvel universe should be and went about imposing it, regardless of the means it took to get there. Quesada put ends over means. He didn't care about the quality of a story as long as the story's end made the continuity what he wanted it to be.
In Shooter's era you had a great run on Avengers under Roger Stern, and a great run on X-Men by Claremont, and a great run on FF by Byrne. The Avengers didn't outsell X-men in that time (nor did anyone else). The better written Avengers runs (Stern, Busiek and others you mentioned before) didn't have success in a competitive marketplace without someone putting the thumb on the scales. That's what Quesada did, and no one can say that he didn't put the thumbs on the scales because he absolutely did.
[quote]This seems like something that you're simply assuming, not an actual fact. [/quote]
[url]https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9zcGlkZXJtYW5jcmF3bHNwYWNlLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL2ZlZWQueG1s&episode=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGlkZXJtYW5jcmF3bHNwYWNlLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0L1BvZGNhc3QzN0p1bmUyMDA4Lm1wMw&hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwiGnvDAtY3nAhUsrlkKHS8wCC4QjrkEegQIARAE&ep=6[/url]
Here's Roger Stern confirming it. He says it at starting 24:00 minute time stamp, in response to a question, just drag the timer at bottom there.
[quote]None of this would account for Marvel having a grand scheme [/quote]
It's not a grand scheme. "Focus attention on characters whose rights we haven't licensed" is a one sentence directive.
The main focus of David Maisel was that the characters whose rights they still had all went on to become Avengers, so they had enough material to do an Avengers movie. The post-credits scene of Iron Man 1 didn't come out of nowhere you know. I mean initially the plans for Iron Man 1 (which also had a long development and production, especially since Favreau shot it without a complete script) also included ideas to include props from Sony's Spider-Man movies like Doctor Octopus' arms to tie it in with Raimi's movies (he hadn't yet walked out of Spider-Man 4 at the time). Thanks to the first wave of marvel movies, the general public was familiar with Spider-Man and X-men or Wolverine. But less so with Iron Man and the Avengers and having Spider-Man and Wolverine show up helped with that.
Having comics where Spider-Man and Tony Stark hung out, which again I have to reiterate was never a thing before. They had no interaction or connection whatsoever. It totally came out of left field. Even David Michelinie who wrote IM's defining run never once brought elements of that or had important crossovers with Tony and Peter in his run on ASM, even if it would have been totally organic for him to have done so. Likewise, Wolverine's always been the X-Man for people who don't like X-Men so he could be safely kept and moved around different teams adding value to Avengers without making it an X-Men story. You can like Wolverine without liking the X-Men whereas you can't necessarily like the X-Men by liking only Wolverine.
[quote]many years before Marvel Studios existed to bury some characters and promote other characters above them - all in anticipation of movies that had yet to be imagined by a then non-existent studio.[/quote]
Before that studio had to come into existence, they needed to get the money for it, they needed to get interest and excitement. It's a huge commitment.
[quote]Plans for film and TV obviously influence decisions in the publishing line - but not a decade or so out.[/quote]
If your plan is making a movie studio, then definitely you need to think of the really long game.
[quote]You're living in a world of what ifs. And buying into paranoid speculation along the way. "If the Inhumans took off, would the X-Men have even existed anymore?" [/quote]
I said specifically HoX/PoX might not have gotten the greenlight and Hickman not gotten the license he had. Hickman's HoX/PoX was obviously made possible by the plan and announcement of the Disney/Fox buyout.
[quote]And regarding the success of failure of Iron Man, you're neglecting to remind us that you think OMD would have been undone had IM 1 not been a hit. [/quote]
If IM1 had failed, Marvel Comics itself would have gone into tailspin. They went "all in" on that movie mortgaging rights and merchandizing to get the capital to make that movie (if you want a small-scale version of how that works, see the Eddie Murphy movie Dolemite is My Name, where Murphy's character invests in a movie by hocking the royalty rights to his comedy records). So OMD would have been the least of anyone's concerns. That might have made Marvel less bullish about enforcing OMD than they are after they have success.
[quote]All of which makes the idea that Marvel is a master manipulator of the audience's taste all the more laughable.[/quote]
Because people are only familiar with long-term plans which fail, not plans that work. In the case of centering the MU around the Avengers and so on. That was a case where it did work out how they wished. The plan which failed was Inhumans.
The basic long-term goal was focus on properties whose rights they own, which was a simple general wish and aim. The big risk was the IM-1 movie. But stuff like using event titles with catchy concept and marketing to sell an idea over is something that had a proven track record from well before. So it wasn't too complicated a thing.
Stuff beyond that, though wasn't part of it. The real unexpected element include stuff like Disney buying them out because of the success of IM-1 and the fact that the audiences were interested in the Avengers team-up promised there. That was the unexpected thing. I mean Disney buying Marvel means that it has a permanent corporate home which it never did before. Stuff like Kevin Feige gaining power over Perlmutter was also unexpected.
[quote]As I recall, the destruction of Genosha aside, mutants were doing ok under Morrison's watch. [/quote]
There were stories of mutant drugs causing an epidemic that killed mutants, there were targeted killings and hate crimes by U-Men, and even the Xavier's Institute's very own Columbine, and the final issue set in the future, has mutants hunted down by a sentient virus-god who has possessed Beast. To be honest, I read Morrison's run when it came out and found it fairly violent and depressing at the time, as well as the Ultimate X-Men comics, and I avoided X-Men comics at the time preferring the X-Men Evolution cartoon instead. I re-read it in trade later. But this idea that Morrison's run was some sunny and bright time has no foundation. The Evolution cartoon was the sunny take. And it introduced the big new character of X23, and Quesada himself wrote her backstory as a prostitute when she entered 616.
Anyone who says mutants were doing ok under Morrison's watch has obviously not read enough to form an opinion on it.
[quote]Quesada wanting to make a change from Morrison's run is not the same as him having problems with it. [/quote]
If he complains about developments in Morrison's run which happened in his watch then it is hypocritical for him to have done so. Morrison worked with Marvel and was playing ball and he also wanted to do stuff that X-men fans liked. So for instance Emma Frost was not part of his original plan, but he found out she was popular with some fans and had recently turned sympathetic, so he read that and liked it and incorporated it and Morrison's Emma has ultimately become a fixture of the titles. The reason for Emma having a diamond form is that Morrison couldn't use Colossus so he introduced the secondary mutation element. All Quesada had to do was tell him, "use existing mutants don't create new ones" and he would have accepted.
It was in Marvel's interest to encourage Morrison because then they can boast of having characters created by Grant Morrison.
[quote]Thanks for the link. [/quote]
Don't mention it.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789201]The issue is that Marvel, and for that matter any media company today, will never be honest and transparent with readers, who they mostly see as suckers of some kind or another. In Pro Wrestling, they would be called marks and smarks. Modern writers and others are likewise asked to sign NDA and so on. In the case of movie production for instance, when Hitchcock died and so on, biographers and others could go through his stuff, all his papers, all the screenplay drafts and all the letters and audio recorded screenwriting discussions he left behind, and get a sense of what was on his mind at a given mind. They found out stuff he kept to himself, stuff he was embarrassed by, what the studios were thinking and so on. In the case of Marvel, and comics writing, we don't really get that. Either we get hagiographic interviews with creators by fans, we get boilerplate by EIC that's part-promo, all hype, not stuff you can really take at face value. So we don't get a real insight into how stuff is done and made. You can argue that people shouldn't have to know how the sausage is being made, I'd argue that every restaurant needs a health inspection.
Obviously if Marvel were like "We want you to stop buying X-Men and buy Avengers" they aren't going to outright tell you. They are going to pretend that this was some cool edgy thing (and Quesada especially promoted a highly regressive attitude of Marvel fans as being like an aging all-male biker gang, a mentality you can see here among some posters), that it was all about telling great stories, or returning the X-Men to the roots or some nosh like that. For instance, Quesada said that he wanted to return the X-Men to its roots as a metaphor for "persecuted minority" but that's not the roots of the X-Men. That was created and developed by Claremont. Read the 05 X-Men and you have a bunch of white kids and their white teacher with a fairly dated idea of liberalism. Like Xavier was even funded by the FBI and the 05 X-Men is basically The mod squad, you know a police group of hippies who hunt other hippies for the man. The original Magneto was a trashy Doom knockoff and the Magneto that people love who is in musical chairs with Doom as Marvel's top villain, was developed by Claremont. So you have to look at the signs and actions and follow-through and draw a conclusion, and make a judgment. It strikes me as incredibly naive to see House of M and think that reducing the number of mutants is anything other than pushing the X-Men down in favor of the Avengers. For one thing, House of M isn't a great story by any stretch...the idea of all mutants losing their powers isn't a direct by-product of the story and concept it tells, which is basically Scarlet Witch having a nervous breakdown, because obviously a troubled woman with mental issues is who you want as a scapegoat for what is an analogue to mass sterilization.
That's why I say the Avengers and Iron man, and Spider-Man's relationship in the MU, which largely was established in that period was an astro-turfed event. Because it's largely the product of three stories that are individually not especially good -- House of M, Civil War, OMD. Of the lot, House of M is the best for the little that it's worth. The only reason these stories are remembered are for editorial stunts that amounted to recklessly riding roughshod over previous characterizations, a pure end-justifies-the-means mindset.[/QUOTE]This is a small industry and a lot of stuff comes out, so if Joe Quesada had decided to kneecap the X-Men in a mini-series in 2005, wouldn't it be public knowledge at this point even with NDAs?
DC couldn't keep it quiet that Tom King was fired from [I]Batman[/I].
The more people who know a secret, and the longer it lasts, the greater the certainty that someone will mention something in a way that will be spread online.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4789726]The point as in most of the stuff in Quesada's time at EIC was put the end-goal over any other consideration. Make the Avengers great again but do that without any organic demand from readers and genuine interest. So they had to astro-turf it by means of stunts and events.
Not so. Carny stunts like this can and do work. People have a hard time accepting that.
That was EIC Jim Shooter you are talking about. Joe Quesada had a specific idea of how the marvel universe should be and went about imposing it, regardless of the means it took to get there. Quesada put ends over means. He didn't care about the quality of a story as long as the story's end made the continuity what he wanted it to be.
In Shooter's era you had a great run on Avengers under Roger Stern, and a great run on X-Men by Claremont, and a great run on FF by Byrne. The Avengers didn't outsell X-men in that time (nor did anyone else). The better written Avengers runs (Stern, Busiek and others you mentioned before) didn't have success in a competitive marketplace without someone putting the thumb on the scales. That's what Quesada did.
[url]https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9zcGlkZXJtYW5jcmF3bHNwYWNlLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL2ZlZWQueG1s&episode=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGlkZXJtYW5jcmF3bHNwYWNlLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0L1BvZGNhc3QzN0p1bmUyMDA4Lm1wMw&hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwiGnvDAtY3nAhUsrlkKHS8wCC4QjrkEegQIARAE&ep=6[/url]
Here's Roger Stern confirming it. He says it at starting 24:00 minute time stamp, in response to a question, just drag the timer at bottom there.
It's not a grand scheme. "Focus attention on characters whose rights we haven't licensed" is a one sentence directive.
The main focus of David Maisel was that the characters whose rights they still had all went on to become Avengers, so they had enough material to do an Avengers movie. The post-credits scene of Iron Man 1 didn't come out of nowhere you know. I mean initially the plans for Iron Man 1 (which also had a long development and production, especially since Favreau shot it without a complete script) also included ideas to include props from Sony's Spider-Man movies like Doctor Octopus' arms to tie it in with Raimi's movies (he hadn't yet walked out of Spider-Man 4 at the time). Thanks to the first wave of marvel movies, the general public was familiar with Spider-Man and X-men or Wolverine. But less so with Iron Man and the Avengers and having Spider-Man and Wolverine show up helped with that.
Having comics where Spider-Man and Tony Stark hung out, which again I have to reiterate was never a thing before. They had no interaction or connection whatsoever. It totally came out of left field. Even David Michelinie who wrote IM's defining run never once brought elements of that or had important crossovers with Tony and Peter in his run on ASM, even if it would have been totally organic for him to have done so. Likewise, Wolverine's always been the X-Man for people who don't like X-Men so he could be safely kept and moved around different teams adding value to Avengers without making it an X-Men story. You can like Wolverine without liking the X-Men whereas you can't necessarily like the X-Men by liking only Wolverine.
[/QUOTE]New Avengers was an unambiguous hit, so it was a decision by Quesada that worked out well.
Readers had been wanting top Marvel characters on the Avengers for a long time.
Granted, the reader demand thing can be a tough standard because readers aren't going to know in advance what's an unexpected hit. Nor will their interests always coincide with what's best in the long-term.
The separation of the various franchises wasn't an organic story-driven decision; it was more about internal politics, and the difficulty of getting editors to okay character crossovers. It wasn't something that had to be a permanent fixture, especially with the internet making complex crossovers and projects easier to handle.
With your Roger Stern interview, he says that it made sense to promote the Green Goblin prior to the movie, but he said the main reason for the mini-series was that they wanted the return of an A-list villain after a long absence to be splashy. He didn't have any internal knowledge that they were promoting the Green Goblin with Spider-Man the movie in mind.
[QUOTE=Mister Mets;4789737]With your Roger Stern interview, he says that it made sense to promote the Green Goblin prior to the movie, but he said the main reason for the mini-series was that they wanted the return of an A-list villain after a long absence to be splashy. He didn't have any internal knowledge that they were promoting the Green Goblin with Spider-Man the movie in mind.[/QUOTE]
Stern says specifically at the start that "I am sure" about the movie inspiring the miniseries and the editors commission, but obviously the aim was still to do a good story and make it work. And he approached it that way like a true pro. I said this before but let me reiterate that just because something is marketing driven doesn't mean it's bad. SW'84 was driven by a need to sell toys but Shooter and Zeck still told a great story.
Revenge of the Green Goblin is very low on continuity, it vaguely alludes to Gathering of Five and it alludes to MJ's "fake death" and Harry's real death, but otherwise it's a standalone tale of Norman torturing Peter and gaslighting him to drive him mad. That reflects the editorial interest in reintroducing Green Goblin to a wide public. Likewise giving Goblin a characterization that made sense outside the salvage of the Clone Saga that necessitated his resurrection. Why does Goblin obsess over Peter because no matter how many horrible things he undergoes he never gives in to the darkness. This characterization is also there in the movie where obviously Norman doesn't kill Gwen (or for that matter MJ) and Sam Raimi never had any intention of taking the story there. So there needed to be a core to the character that doesn't have to do with "I killed your girlfriend" which was the previous defining thing he had. So in the movie, Goblin's interest and plan is to corrupt Spider-Man, drive him to despair, out of some obsessive sadistic fixation.
Even the Red Goblin in Go Down Swinging, Slott still uses Stern's take. Like that big fight at Times' Square, the Red Goblin can't understand why no matter how many friends and loved ones he hurt, Peter never broke and then he sees Peter saving people at Times' Square and groks that he just has to kill as many people as possible and raise the body count out of his desire to punish Peter for wanting to save everyone ("no one dies").