The positives/negatives of each EIC era

[Xalfrea]

I originally posted this question briefly in the Cebulski announcement thread, but am not surprised it got quickly buried.

I've only been a Marvel Comics fan for almost 4 years, and for the longest time I've pretty much known just Axel Alonso as EIC and the name I've seen all over the books I own. I honestly never paid it much mind since I rarely or didn't follow a lot of the controversial news where his name is apparently dragged through the mud. I've heard and am aware of the stories of past EICs, Jim Shooter, Tom DeFalco, the short-lived 5 EICs, Bob Harras, and Joe Quesada, but those were all before my time.

Now however, much like how I'll be experiencing the departure and regeneration of my first Doctor Who actor Peter Capaldi, I'll be experiencing the era if a new EIC. I have never heard of CB Cebulski until now, and while his resume and work within the comics is impressive to say the least, I'm in the dark in this and have no idea what to expect as a still relatively new Marvel Comics reader. At the base level my only hope is that the character I follow, her books, and the author who writes them won't get screwed over. But beyond that I have no idea what to expect.

I think going back to the beginning and learning from the past decades might help. So for those more well-versed in this stuff than I am, what were the positives & negatives of each EIC and their eras that have graced Marvel's long history, from Shooter to Alonso? And what positves/negatives could Cebulski and his era bring to the table?

[Wiccan]

M-Day was Quesada's idea afaik. So...

[gurkle]

I'll start from Jim Shooter, since he really created the modern Marvel structure of an EiC supervising a full staff of editors. (Before that the EiC was the only credited editor on every comic and the company was severely understaffed and under-edited.) Obviously this is just my personal view, and based more on the comics themselves than anything I know of the EiCs as people.

Jim Shooter
Positives: Improved most of the flagship books (Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thor). Improved the overall quality and consistency of the line.
Negatives: Fewer weird, risky books. Imposed a lot of arbitrary writing rules and demanded a rather clunky, exposition-heavy house writing style.

Tom DeFalco
Positives: Managed to keep tight continuity even as Marvel was putting out a much larger number of comics. Balanced the line between EDGY EXTREME '90s stuff and more traditional Marvel comics.
Negatives: Let the comics be too influenced by the speculator boom and marketing demands. Let the non-X-Men side of the line deteriorate in quality. Allowed too many editors to hire each other (including him) to write their comics.

Bob Harras
Positives: Improved the non-X side of the line, finally restoring Avengers to a flagship book with the 1998 relaunch.
Negatives: Let the X-books deteriorate badly and the Spider-Man books even worse.

Joe Quesada
Positives: Allowed distinctive writers to write books their own way. Showed a willingness to accept a greater diversity of writing styles, e.g. letting retro, continuity-heavy books exist alongside Bendis-style books.
Negatives: Too much in love with big, publicity-grabbing status quo changes, and not concerned enough about how they might damage characters in the long run.

Axel Alonso
Positives: Greenlit more Marvel books that challenged the traditional notion of what a superhero comic could be, like Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel and Vision. Willing to tolerate a wider variety of art styles than superhero comics usually do.
Negatives: Too many obvious cash-grabbing events, too few good traditional bread-and-butter superhero comics.

[Xalfrea]

Interesting, thanks. Very fascinating to see how things work when it comes to the EICs.

A lot of the stuff of the EICs I'm mostly aware of through SFDebris's Rise and Fall of the Comic Empire series, which touched upon Shooter to Harras and briefly Quesada.

[DJ1107]

Was Alonso also the one who basically had the mentality of "No publicity is bad publicity or was that mostly Tom Brevoort doing? Cause I can't imagine any EoC was ok with a lot of the **** that happened over the last year with certain headlines or decision.

[Huntsman Spider]

I'll start from Jim Shooter, since he really created the modern Marvel structure of an EiC supervising a full staff of editors. (Before that the EiC was the only credited editor on every comic and the company was severely understaffed and under-edited.) Obviously this is just my personal view, and based more on the comics themselves than anything I know of the EiCs as people.

Jim Shooter
Positives: Improved most of the flagship books (Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thor). Improved the overall quality and consistency of the line.
Negatives: Fewer weird, risky books. Imposed a lot of arbitrary writing rules and demanded a rather clunky, exposition-heavy house writing style.

Tom DeFalco
Positives: Managed to keep tight continuity even as Marvel was putting out a much larger number of comics. Balanced the line between EDGY EXTREME '90s stuff and more traditional Marvel comics.
Negatives: Let the comics be too influenced by the speculator boom and marketing demands. Let the non-X-Men side of the line deteriorate in quality. Allowed too many editors to hire each other (including him) to write their comics.

Bob Harras
Positives: Improved the non-X side of the line, finally restoring Avengers to a flagship book with the 1998 relaunch.
Negatives: Let the X-books deteriorate badly and the Spider-Man books even worse.

Joe Quesada
Positives: Allowed distinctive writers to write books their own way. Showed a willingness to accept a greater diversity of writing styles, e.g. letting retro, continuity-heavy books exist alongside Bendis-style books.
Negatives: Too much in love with big, publicity-grabbing status quo changes, and not concerned enough about how they might damage characters in the long run.

Axel Alonso
Positives: Greenlit more Marvel books that challenged the traditional notion of what a superhero comic could be, like Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel and Vision. Willing to tolerate a wider variety of art styles than superhero comics usually do.
Negatives: Too many obvious cash-grabbing events, too few good traditional bread-and-butter superhero comics.

That sounds like a pretty good summary of the EICs and their virtues and failings. If I could sum it up even further from there, it sounds like a lot of the problems with the EICs that weren't Jim Shooter boiled down to an inability, if not unwillingness, to check certain problematic elements or forces within the ranks that led to a decline in overall quality of the comics.

[Buried Alien]

I feel that Shooter's immediate predecessor, Archie Goodwin, deserves some recognition at operating a pretty tight ship at Marvel during the late 1970s. The Goodwin era might be my favorite Marvel era.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)