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Author’s Correction: My summary for Thunderbolts #99 was in fact referring to issue #98. But #99 was a truckload of bad too, trust me. No build up to the “shocking conclusion” of #100 at all, just more of the T-Bolts debating the merits of murdering one of their own. At least there wasn’t discussion of filleting Captain Photon and hanging bits off of their costumes. And you people think I’m making that kind of sicko crap up! Read #98, and then go see your priest. We join my new column already in progress¦

I don’t get it. OK, I don’t get a lot of things, but in this case I’m talking about comic editors and quality control. Unlike only a very few people in this country, I have to work for a living. Money doesn’t grow on trees, though I’m sure Congress has probably financed studies to see if that can be done. Until I can plant a few Ben Franklin saplings in the yard, I gotta wear a collared shirt and khaki pants 5 days a week. I am NOT a collared shirt and khaki pants kind of guy. I’m a Stewie from “Family Guy” T-Shirt and 1989 Zubaz tiger-striped NY Giants sweatpants kind of guy. I have bills like most of you folks, and I have a sadly small amount of discretionary income to spend on hobbies. So as I wade through mediocrity in the hopes of finding something truly great, I‘m beginning to notice more than just the writer and artist credits on the covers. I notice that for more or less $3 a pop I’m getting sadly uninspired stories, words spelled wrong or missing altogether, and just all-around poor quality. Sure they’re on better paper than they were in the grand old days of Stan and Jack. But I’d go back to newspaper quality stock and cheaper cover prices if it meant getting books that didn’t blow my suspension of disbelief in the middle of page 6 because a word is spelled wrong or a sentence is so grammatically jarring that I find myself pondering my own English education instead of the fantasy world I was breezing through on page 5. For the effort I put in every day at work to scrounge up $3 I should reasonably expect a consistent, quality product.

So today I look at the Editors, the men and women who sit in what is essentially the Producer’s Chair for every comic made (the director being the writer, who I would think has most of the say in what he wants in each panel or shot–feel free to disagree with this analogy, Daron does). And I look at how a certain team of them pump out a surprisingly uneven stack of comics on a monthly basis.

But first, let’s establish a few things: I don’t know any editors working for and comic company. I don’t have a huge network of contacts in the field so I don’t really have anyone I can call or email and say, “Hey Mr. or Ms. Creator Dude-Chick! How’s life? Whatcha working’ on? And what exactly does your editor do?” So some of this–maybe a lot of this–is based on admittedly quick research and my own gut feeling. I have no problem following up on this if any editors out there want to chime in.

Alrighty then. All set? Hmmm…naw. I still don’t have a base to work from. I need to know what they do. So let’s do that crazy thing the kids are doing across the nation–Let’s Google!

What the Hell do editors do? (SEARCH) CLICK!

Well here’s a start: Popimage.com!

Mr. Marc Deering interviewed editors Bob Schreck and Dan Raspler of DC and Tim Truman, longtime artist of great comics such as Scout and Grimjack–one of my all time faves! The interview is a bit dated–I’m not even sure, admittedly, if Scheck and Raspler are still with DC, but I think the basic answer to my question is solid. You can read it for yourselves, but the gist of it is: an editor should know proper English (spelling, grammar), understand the nuances of the medium (telling a story with both words and pictures), keep track of continuity elements within the story, keep everyone on the same page (professionally if not literally), and get the book out on time with due diligence in the areas of advertising and ordering.

OK. I’ll buy that.

But that point of view is somewhat one-sided. All those guys are DC guys–even Tim Truman has done some JLA Elseworlds stuff for them. And I want to talk more specifically about a team from Marvel. How about those guys and gals?

In a strange bit of coincidence I find my answer at a place called, of all things, Supermanhomepage.com.

This piece is written by a current Marvel assistant editor named Michael George O’Connor. He used to write for that Superman fan site. See? There’s hope for me yet! Mr. O’Connor works on Amazing Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Wolverine, Book of Lost Souls, Underworld, Fury: Peacemaker, Marvel Knights Fantastic Four That’s just FOUR now, bub.), Ares, X-Statix Presents: Dead Girl, Supreme Power: Hyperion, and X-Men Unlimited. I don’t read all of those, but of the ones I have, I’d say he and his editorial teammates do a pretty solid job. I haven’t noticed anything terribly amiss on Hyperion, Amazing, Wolvie or Underworld. His piece is much more recent and very much worth the read. As you’ll see, Mr. O’Connor discusses the mysterious assistant editor position, which I sum up as the guy who does most of the work. The Editors set the project in motion, but the Assistant Editors keep the trains running on time.

Well, that seems to jive with what the DC boys said. So what in the world is going on with Team Brevoort?

Team Brevoort is Editor Tom Brevoort, Associate Editor Andy Schmidt, and as Spider Jerusalem might call them, Filthy Assistants Molly Lazer and Aubrey Sitterson. These folks are EVERYWHERE. Seriously. I don’t buy everything Marvel puts out, but just by grabbing the last few weeks of Marvel off my stack I find them attached to She Hulk, Spider-Woman: Origin, Captain America, Young Avengers, The Sentry, Iron Man–the one that actually comes out regularly (Inevitable), The Thing, Books of Doom, Ms. Marvel, X-Factor, New Avengers and, oh yeah, Thunderbolts. This begs a question already–why X-Factor? I thought there was some semblance of grouping amongst editorial teams? I thought there was the X-Team, the Avengers Team, the Spider Team, the Max/Knights Team and the Fantastic Four/Everything Else Team. But our man O’Connor works on Max, Knights, X and Spider books. The Brevoort squad is perhaps more focused by that comparison. But maybe the days of thematic grouping passed me by and I didn’t notice until now.

What about the sheer numbers here? Just the ones I’ve listed total 23 books between Team Brevoort and The O’Connor Bunch. I wonder if there’s just too much for these folks to handle? 23 books and more all the time for what, 6 to 7 people? Do they have time to catch Bendis’ spelling and typos? Do they read the scripts from Fabian Nicieza at all or do they trust him to turn in something decent because his New Warriors so many years ago had its moments? Is there time to double or triple check the proofs before they go to press? Is there time to get a final copy from the first printing before they get to Diamond and check them one more time to make sure the printing company hasn’t flubbed something up? That’s a good 10-15 writers (figuring Ed Brubaker, Dan Slott and B.M. Bendis at the very least are writing multiple titles), and easily 30-40 artists counting the inkers. And I’m not counting the letterers or colorists. That’s a lot of roles and egos to handle. Hell, Bendis alone is a lot of roles and egos to handle. I’m not sure what the Associate Editor position Andy Schmidt holds involves that’s different than the Senior Editor and the Filthy Assistants, but all four should be well and truly overworked managing so many creative and honestly egotistical people, to say nothing of O’Conno’s workload. And by honestly egotistical, I mean that everyone has some kind of ego, certain buttons that are easily pressed, and their handlers have to work with that to get quality production out of them. It’s the same at my day job and it’s not easy.

But what is easy is clicking on the spellchecker button at the top of the word processing document. I don’t care if the writer doesn’t use a Microsoft product or not, I’m 99.9% sure that EVERY writing program for every writing discipline has a spellchecker. And I see it more than I should–words that aren’t. It didn’t fly in 2nd grade grammar, it shouldn’t fly in professional fiction. Unless your Dr. Seuss and you’ve got a scenario where a word that isn’t makes perfect sense. The last time I checked, Bendis isn’t Dr. Seuss and the Dr. Seuss is in fact dead. Hopefully he’s working with Bob Ross on that painted version of “Marvin K. Mooney Would You Please Go Now?” that I always hoped to see. Heck, I’d settle for a small print of a Yellow-Bellied Sneetch leaning up against a Happy Little Tree. What the Hell was I talking about? Ah yes, bad spelling. Hey, I’m a great speller. But I’m a horrible typist. So I use the spellchecker and I double-check anything that it doesn’t know. Words like “Zubaz.” In the most recent Powers, not actually edited by Team Brevoort, Bendis has a guy doing some crappy open-mic bit. And in one word balloon he has the word “advertisement” spelled wrong. Twice! C’mon man! What is wrong with spell checking? I’m sure many a pitch by a wide-eyed hopeful writer has been discarded by O’Connor, Brevoort, Raspler, and everybody else in the industry just because of a misplaced vowel somewhere that caught their eye.

Quality control in terms of story elements, in my obviously less-than-humble opinion, is lacking. I’ve gone on and on about the lack of quality in Thunderbolts. The story is so weak it stretches my ability to suspend my disbelief beyond the breaking point. The sources I’ve mentioned above would indicate that the germ of the story comes from Editorial, and the writer fleshes it out. I’m sure that’s not always the case. I’m also sure that Editorial has squashed stories for a variety of reasons. I interviewed Chris Claremont some years ago, and you might be surprised by this, but he was a very gracious and generous interview subject. In the course of our discussion, he revealed one of the key reasons he left Marvel to try his hand at Sovereign 7, and Editorial hassles were a big part of that. Was it necessary? I can’t say, I didn’t hear the other side. But there are cases such as Claremont’s, such as a certain story Alan Moore wrote in Swamp Thing, and many others where Editorial (or higher powers) stepped in and said, “No, we’re not going to do that story.” Juggling egos, as I’ve said, is a difficult thing, but sometimes a creator might need to get smacked on the nose with a rolled up copy of Thunderbolts #100 and told, “No! Bad!” Sure, nobody wants to have that happen, but a wake up call isn’t the worst thing a creator can experience. I’d say having nothing to write because your book got cancelled after you drove it right into the wall would be much worse.

I also find story elements and art direction lacking a bit in New Avengers. In #15, the story opens with a fight between Klaw and Ms. Marvel. Klaw manipulates sound. The script for this scene mentions how loud the battle was. But there’s not a sound effect anywhere. Nothing. As far as I can figure, it was a silent film moment. The blasts have no accompanying “SHHRAAKK!” The impacts elicit nary a grunt. I believe it’s the write’s job to indicate the use of a sound effect, but the edito’s job to see that it’s in the script so the artist (or letterer?) knows to include it. Where’s Walt Simonson when I need him? The man can draw a sound effect like nobody else.

Later on there’s a dialogue between Cap and Ms. Marvel. Every time “House of M” is mentioned, there’s a red line drawn through the words. Are we to understand that it never happened? But then how do they know about the event to even be talking about it? And why was the phrase not marked through in red in the third panel? I spend too much time pondering this and no longer feeling like the fly on the wall eavesdropping on these two superheroes lives. And even though it’s extremely nitpicky, what is up with the pose the Director of SHIELD is striking in the Command Center early on in New Avengers #16? Hans on hips, back at an impossible angle, either she’s breaking into a rendition of Madonna’s “Vogue” or McNiven wanted to give a sneaky shout-out to Rob Liefield. As an editor, when that page comes in I’d have to ask for an explanation for that. She’s directing SHIELD, not a rave. Like I said, nitpicky. But again, my eyes saw that, rolled up and around in my head, and I was pretty much done. That and the needless parade of splash pages to show the new antagonist’s arrival. There could have perhaps actually been some Avengers in their own book if an editor could persuade Bendis that the same bit of storytelling could be done in a neat, concise 2 pages using just a few panels. But then, he gets paid to write half of Marvel, so what do I know about pacing, right? Nothing, to tell the truth, but much like modern art I know what feels right to me and that wasn’t it.

However, none of this explains why Team Brevoort is responsible for the best book Marvel puts out: Captain America. The Brubaker run has rejuvenated the flag-waving Avenger to a level not seen since Waid and Garney. Dan Slott’s excellent She-Hulk and The Thing are also created under the hopefully watchful eyes of Team Brevoort. I can’t recall seeing a single misspelling in Cap or She-Hulk. I’ve no issues with Peter David’s work on X-Factor (though at this point I question any decision to utilize Ryan Sook in any way beyond cover artist). Even Spider-Woman: Origin, which includes Bendis in it’s writing credits, has been pleasantly clean of those road-bumps that plague Powers and New Avengers.

I don’t know who to point the finger at, honestly, but at the end of the day Team Brevoort’s names are printed in the credits. They’re telling me they’ve been involved in the process and approve what I’m holding in my hand. They’re saying, by having their names attached to the book, that it’s OK to trust them, to give them $3 and they’ll give me 10-20 minutes of escapist entertainment.

I believe these guys and gals in Editorial need to take a step back. It’s a cliché but it’s appropriate–sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. I believe that Team Brevoort and the rest of the overworked staffs across the industry find themselves too close to the process. They see books in pieces, assembling a few of pages on Captain America before lunch, and putting the wraps on The Sentry mini afterwards.

I don’t know if there’s time to sit back, read the scripts, call or send messages to creators with corrections or new ideas, get the scripts re-written, read them again and then get them to the art teams, letterers, colorists and the printer in a scant 30-odd days. But maybe there should be time. I’ve felt for a long time that there’s no reason any character has a title each week. It’s overkill. Is it another buck for Marvel or DC every week by virtue of non-discriminating Bat-readers, Super-collectors, X-loyalists, and Spider-fans buying each title no matter the quality? Absolutely.

I would suggest that it’s something of a paradox. The publishers think the fans want all these titles because the fans buy all of them. But if the fans were more quality-minded, if they spoke up with their wallets by NOT buying sub-par books, maybe the publishers would cut back a little, create fewer titles but of greater quality, and actually sell the same or greater volume of issues. And if they’re bringing in the same bucks with less dead-weight titles, maybe they could branch off a little more, create titles for characters who haven’t had one before, or not for a long while, or best of all, bring back the original graphic novel. I’d gladly earmark the $12 I’d save by not having to buy two more Batman books and two more Spidey books for a quality original graphic novel, like the Death of Captain Marvel or Emperor Doom, or Dr. Strange and Dr Doom: Triumph and Torment.

Readers want to be wowed. People want to stand around the shop and talk about how great a title is, not how bad they are. Well, most readers anyway. Hell, I want to stand around the shop and wave Thunderbolts in people’s faces and say, “Hey my friends! Did you see Thunderbolts last week? Man that was awesome! That was Cosmic Odyssey awesome! That was Kraven’s Last Hunt awesome!” Maybe someday. Maybe Ed Brubaker will somehow find the time to write the entire Marvel Universe. Maybe I’ll quit being so nitpicky. Well, no, I won’t. I read the Bat-books in trade format when they do an arc that interests me, and I seldom if ever see anything that distracts me from the story. The only thing I can recall was Larry Hama’s Mr. Freeze issues from No Man’s Land. That might be a whole other rant, right there.

By and large, Team Brevoort does a good job. Michael G. O’Connor, Mike Marts, and all the other guys and gals at Marvel’s editorial offices do too. I’m older, better educated and more cynical than I was when I started this hobby in the 70s. I’ll keep reading these Mother-annoying pamphlets as long as they keep printing them. Just please, folks, remember that failures in quality control will eventually turn people off. You don’t keep playing that Lionel Richie record if it skips. You don’t keep sitting through Michael Crichton’s “Timeline” once it’s apparent how bad it is. Three bucks a pop adds up pretty quick, and for that kind of investment I expect to be entertained without interruptions from the pages themselves.

Consider this an open invitation for anyone in the creative process to put their two cents in. I’d love to hear from editors at any level from any company. Writers, letterers, anyone who wants to have a say on the topic of quality control within the creative process, drop me a note and I’ll print it here. Don’t feel like I’m asking you to be on the defensive, I’m not. I’m asking you to enlighten me. The sites I found, the articles I’ve read, they’ve painted the broad strokes. Help me understand the nuances. Because I’m not the only one who feels as I do. Pull back the curtain and show us just a little of the machinery.

The Powers letter column in #17 includes some musings from Brian Bendis himself, and he closes with, “Trust me, nothing beats comics or the people that make them.” I do trust you, Brian. And Tom, Andy, Molly, Aubrey, Michael–all of you (except maybe Fabian). I trust that you want to do the best job you can. For all my complaining I believe you are doing the best job you can. I hope it can get better still. I hope there’s still room for improvement. I hope that Nicieza doesn’t take over Captain America whenever Brubaker moves on.

Welcome to my nightmare.