News! per Tom Breevoort's Substack

[Digifiend]

The worst one is the new Wasp, honestly. I like Nadia, but she fails as a synergy attempt of the Wasp from the movies, because Hank and Janet being so much younger in the comics means she's younger too, and could only be adopted by Janet instead of being her actual daughter because Janet hadn't met Hank yet 17 years ago (it's only meant to be 15 years since the Fantastic Four's origin, and Wasp debuted after Spider-Man and Hulk) - it was impossible for Janet to have a kid even that age, 16. They had to change her backstory to being the daughter of Hank and his first wife, and her being held by Russia's Red Room all her life after Maria was killed, meaning Hank doesn't know she exists (having been dead in the comics since before she debuted) - in the movies Hank was only estranged from his adult daughter. That change also means she has a different first name - the movie version is called Hope.

[Alex_Of_X]

The worst one is the new Wasp, honestly. I like Nadia, but she fails as a synergy attempt of the Wasp from the movies, because Hank and Janet being so much younger in the comics means she's younger too, and could only be adopted by Janet instead of being her actual daughter because Janet hadn't met Hank yet 17 years ago (it's only meant to be 15 years since the Fantastic Four's origin, and Wasp debuted after Spider-Man and Hulk) - it was impossible for Janet to have a kid even that age, 16. They had to change her backstory to being the daughter of Hank and his first wife, and her being held by Russia's Red Room all her life after Maria was killed, meaning Hank doesn't know she exists (having been dead in the comics since before she debuted) - in the movies Hank was only estranged from his adult daughter. That change also means she has a different first name - the movie version is called Hope.

which is, fun-ish fact, what the russian name Nadia\Nadezhda translates to!

Def a wayward way of synergy, but a fun one nonetheless.

[Frontier]

Not "Brevoort of X" related, but interesting, nonetheless, Tom's accounting of ORIGINAL SIN:

"People had asked a little bit about ORIGINAL SIN when it came up in conversation in the recent past, so i thought I might as well focus on an issue and give you all a quick rundown. This seventh issue was released on August 13, 2014. But the basic idea for what became ORIGINAL SIN had been kicking around for a couple of years by this point. It originated, I think, during a Marvel Editorial Retreat that we were having to talk about the story that would become FEAR ITSELF. FEAR ITSELF was the first big Event we’d done since we’d gone into THE HEROIC AGE, where we paused on yearly Events concerned about the so-called Event Fatigue. The birthing process for FEAR ITSELF was pretty rough, owing to the fact that people at the top weren’t entirely sold on the concept of that project. Even the name FEAR ITSELF was a late-in-the-game compromise, after we had gone through a ridiculous number of alternative suggestions for what the story ought to be called. People were also worried enough about the story and the marketing of same that we screwed ourselves a little bit by revealing most of the major story twists well in advance of when the issues in which those twists happened came out. But I digress. At this particular Retreat, conversation had come around to the concept of FEAR ITSELF, and somebody, I think it was EIC Joe Quesada but he may have just been one of the voices involved, started pitching an alternative idea for the Event, one in which somebody or something would learn devastating secrets about each of the Marvel heroes and use them to upend their lives in interesting ways. I don’t recall who named this notion ORIGINAL SIN, but we had that title during that same Retreat, I believe—and had also determined that things were already too far down the road on FEAR ITSELF to pivot to a completely new concept. So we kept ORIGINAL SIN in our back pocket as something that we would do in the future.

I know that I spoke with Allan Heinberg about potentially writing ORIGINAL SIN in the aftermath of that meeting—he had been in attendance. But he disagreed fundamentally with some of how Joe Q had laid his ideas out, and so didn’t want to take it on. So the notion laid fallow for a while, with no writer claiming ownership of it and wanting to do it. We also hadn’t worked out anything about how whoever was behind the story was going to learn all of these secrets. At one point, we half-planned to do ORIGINAL SIN in 2012, but then there was a leadership shift and Axel Alonso came in as the EIC—and Axel had been hot to do a different idea, AVENGERS VS X-MEN, for a while. So AVX came next, and ORIGINAL SIN waited some more. There was an aborted attempt to get the storyline moving, but I forget a lot of the details. I only remember that Ed Brubaker and Javier Pulido did a framing sequence in the first MARVEL POINT ONE special that was meant to set up certain elements for it. Possibly I was trying to convince Ed to write the thing, but that clearly didn’t happen. By that point, though, i had figured out that the person who would have access to all of the secret knowledge that we’d need would be the Watcher, and so that framing story involves a pair of shadowy figures making a raid on the Watcher’s home upon the moon during the period when the galactic being communed with the rest of his kind, sharing what he had seen and receiving what they had seen in return.

In any event, after having been one of the real anchormen of AVX along with Brian Bendis, Jason Aaron expressed some interest in taking on the ORIGINAL SIN concept when it came up at our next post-AVX retreat, and that was fine by me. It was Jason who worked out that the story would be a murder mystery surrounding the killing of the Watcher and the theft of his all-seeing eyes. He also came up with the idea that the culprit would be Nick Fury. The elder Fury was becoming something of a problem, both because of his age (with his unbreakable ties to World War II) and the fact that in film and on television, most of the public knew Nick Fury as Samuel L. Jackson. We’d introduced Fury’s more Jackson-aligned son in the aftermath of FEAR ITSELF, and so this looked like a good moment to retire the old soldier permanently, having him go out in a blaze of glory. And it was Jason who conceived of Fury’s secret history as the Man On The Wall, as well as coming up with his predecessor in that role. Mike Deodato was recruited to take on the art duties, and from there our production was smooth as butter, with Deo bringing his A-Game to the visuals.

The toughest bit was in getting the creators of the individual titles who would be tying in to come up with secrets that would be shocking enough and life-changing enough to have the impact we needed. Dan Slott, for example, had to be strong-armed into being a part of things, despite the fact that he instantly came up with a perfect ORIGINAL SIN for ASM: what if somebody else had also been bitten by the spider that empowered Peter Parker? This became Silk, a character who has gone on to be something of a mainstay of the Marvel Universe in the years since."

I think there were only maybe 3-4 good things that came out of Original Sin.

[Digifiend]

I can only think of one - Silk. What else did you have in mind?

[Frontier]

I can only think of one - Silk. What else did you have in mind?

I wouldn't even say Silk, because her original execution and introduction was bad.

The DD and Iron Man/Hulk tie-in's were solid.

[Bruce Wayne]

Original Sin just shows that editorially mandated events especially ones where you have to writer shop for three whole years to get someone in general is just a bad idea. But then OMD should have been all the proof you need not to mention all the editorially dictated Crises at DC.

[Alex_Of_X]

Per the last newsletter (#73):

1) Garth Ennis's GET FURY!, out 2024?

"...GET FURY is a project that it’s easy to push back for other more moment-specific fare, Joseph. We still intend to publish it, and have it earmarked broadly for the first half of 2024. But that supposes that there’ll be space among everything else that we’re doing. So if it doesn’t show, it’s likely for that same reason, that it was the simplest thing to push back when we found ourselves with too many releases in a given month. But it’s still coming."

2) 2024's event will double-ship

"...I’ve mentioned in the past that our 2024 Event series is already being drawn, even though you won’t read it for close to a year. And that’s because it will by necessity ship at a greater-than-monthly frequency in order to give it a shorter overall footprint."

3) Tom the artist?!

"What you see here are costume views, front, back and occasionally side, for different characters in the X-Men line. These drawings were done circa 1992, and were prepared and drawn by me in preparation for the ToyBiz X-Men Action Figure line." (check em out, true believers!)

4) The toyetic origin of NEW WAYS TO DIE

"One of the main ideas that led to the creation of NEW WAYS TO DIE came from (Editor) Stephen Wacker himself. He’d had conversations with somebody in Marvel’s action figure division, likely Jesse Falcon though I don’t know that with any certainty. Whoever it was, this person told Steve about how hot they were for new characters who were spins on already great-selling toys, and Steve came away from this conversation wanting to do a thing he called White Venom. To whit, a Reverse-Flash style version of Venom who would be predominantly white-costumed with a black spider-insignia."

4.5) Slott on White Venom

"Until this story. Slott really hated the name White Venom—he kept joking that it sounded like an alcoholic beverage." Lol, lmao

https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/73-drinking

[Digifiend]

I don't think he ever stopped hating that name. After all, it ended up being called Anti-Venom instead,

[Alex_Of_X]

Sorry for the skipped week, gang, yours truly was moving

Per the last newsletters (#74-75):

1) Tom, the once-and-future FF editor

"...I will continue to edit FANTASTIC FOUR once this switchover happens. That was one of the first things that Dan Buckley made clear as we spoke—I might not have tried to keep it otherwise. But I took it as a show of respect and I really appreciated the gesture."

2) Good news for the Ryan North-heads

"...Ryan North...he and I had a conversation at the top of the week about potentially switching up the running order of some upcoming stories. We settled the question before Ryan wrote the script to issue #18, which he turned in before the end of the week. The issue that’s in stores this Wednesday, for the record, is #11, so that’s how far ahead we are in that case.."

3) Tom's super-duper secret X-Manifesto!

The author of the Spider-man manifesto in the wake of One More Day, Tom was asked if he'd write one for the X-line.

"I did write up such a document, Julian, but of course you’re not going to be able to see it any time soon, if ever. Maybe we’ll print it in a collected edition at some point, but that’ll be well after these books have all launched out into the world—and that’s still many, many months in the future. And as I said in my initial posts about this changing situation, I really am not going to be talking about any of this until we’re a whole lot closer, out of respect for what the current creative and editorial teams are doing. They’re the ones you should still be focusing on for the time being." this fan's fingers r crossed!

4) Rick Remender, peeved by Jane-Thor?

"Writer Rick Remender had a daunting task ahead of him when he took over the book from Ed Brubaker, who had helmed it for the previous eight years or so..in this issue (#24) Sam Wilson proves his mettle, setting up the development that was revealed a month later, wherein Steve passed Sam his shield and the identity of Captain America. Rick had been building to this moment for a decent amount of time in his run, and he was, I think, a little bit frustrated that right before this happened, Jason Aaron had Thor replaced by a mysterious woman who turned out to be Jane Foster. Rick felt, rightly or wrongly, like Jason’s story had stolen the wind from his sails and made the Sam story a bit redundant. But even if that’s true, the value in what Rick brought to this run is now clearer than ever, as Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson has followed suit in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and taken up Steve Rogers’ mantle as Captain America.."

Don't worry Mr. Remender. I saw your Chanel boots.

https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/74-odds-and-ends
https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/75-coverage

[Bruce Wayne]

I think that (along with the Inhumans push) probably did have real world consequences in that Remender left the book and Marvel after six issues.

[Frontier]

Brevoort still wanted FF, huh? If he could have it.

I guess Remender kind of kicked off the wave of replacement stories even if he didn't intend for it. And ironically Sam and Jane had that weird romance going on even though Sam was dating Misty at the time.

[Alex_Of_X]

I think that (along with the Inhumans push) probably did have real world consequences in that Remender left the book and Marvel after six issues.

Read his Secret Wars tie-in mini Hail Hydra to find a creator D-O-N-E with big 2 comics. That ending left me floored the first time I read it

Brevoort still wanted FF, huh? If he could have it.

I guess Remender kind of kicked off the wave of replacement stories even if he didn't intend for it. And ironically Sam and Jane had that weird romance going on even though Sam was dating Misty at the time.

Superior Spidey was first with a bullet!

[Digifiend]

Brevoort still wanted FF, huh? If he could have it.

I guess Remender kind of kicked off the wave of replacement stories even if he didn't intend for it. And ironically Sam and Jane had that weird romance going on even though Sam was dating Misty at the time.

Wasn't Sam the only active Avenger who knew Jane's secret identity? Very few heroes ever found out who she was. Of course, that also means Sam knew Jane was terminally ill (she did die, Odin had to resurrect her, resetting her body to before she became Thor but still requiring her to do the chemo without becoming Thor again to avoid it proving terminal again). He was never serious with her like he was with Misty.

[Alex_Of_X]

Per the last newsletters (#76):

1) Heroes Reborn Spider-Man/X-Men?

"...Of course, back during the mid-1990s when Marvel’s owners had done a deal to outsource FANTASTIC FOUR, AVENGERS, CAPTAIN AMERICA and IRON MAN to Wildstorm and Extreme Studios, there were plans afoot to do the same with pretty much the entire line. Had that happened, the cohesiveness of the Marvel Universe would have been shattered as different properties likely would have wound up in disparate hands. That wouldn’t have been a reboot per se, but it would have created a very changed landscape. Fortunately, cooler heads ultimately prevailed in that instance and so Heroes Reborn became merely a year-long tributary in the Marvel river."

2) Ultimate...Everything!

"...There was also some loose talk about possibly Ultimate-izing the entire Marvel line towards the very end of Bill Jemas’ tenure as President(2004), but it was near enough to the end that it was never really acted upon."

Imagine Ultimate X-23/X-Statix lmao

3) Bill Jemas's perfect cover is...

"...over time Bill Jemas developed a number of unrealistically narrow parameters for how covers should be done. Not only was he a proponent of the notion that the cover didn’t need to reflect the story on the inside of the issue, but past a certain point he only wanted covers that featured a single character, even on team titles such as AVENGERS, X-MEN or FANTASTIC FOUR. And ideally, that character would be a woman, and ideally, she’d be bending over something."

4) Bob Harras killed UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN

"The final issue of UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN, #25, was released on September 10, 1997, some twenty-six years ago. The thing about it is that, while it was being worked on, it wasn’t intended to be the last issue at all. Originally, the plan was for the book to continue onward, and while Kurt Busiek was going to be stepping off of the series due to an influx of other work, including THUNDERBOLTS, AVENGERS and IRON MAN, we had lined up Roger Stern to be his successor. The idea was that at this point, the series would move ahead into Peter Parker’s college years, which is where it was initially going to be set in the first place. Roger even co-plotted this final issue so as to make the hand-off nice and smooth (and to relieve some pressure on Kurt.) But alas, it was not to be. These weren’t great days for Marvel, the company was under bankruptcy protection and new leadership was coming and going on a rotating door basis. Bob Harras had become the sole Editor in Chief, and he had no particular fondness for UNTOLD TALES as a series.

...Harras was rightly more concerned with looking forward, at charting out where the Marvel heroes and their stories should go next. And so at some point relatively late in the game, despite the fact that its sales figures were still profitable, even at the 99 cent price point, Bob cancelled the series with this 25th issue.

You’re never happy when a book that you’re working on goes under, and this was no exception—UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN was really my breakout title as an editor, the book that put me on the map and started to get people both in the wider world and within Marvel to pay attention to what I was doing. But while I would have liked to have done more with Roger, who was always good to work with, I can’t really say that this was the worst place to bring the series to its end."

https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/76-gum-gum-gatling

[Mister Mets]

It legitimately hurts to learn that they were considering a third year of Untold Tales of Spider-Man with Peter in college written by Roger Stern, best writer since Stan Lee.

Especially considering the other comics at the time, and what was coming with the Mackie/ Byrne relaunch.