Category: 10 Questions / Answers Page 2 of 3

When it seemed that Marvel might get the rights to Superman, John Byrne wrote an eight-page proposed plot for the first issue. My beat-by-beat description of Byrne’s plot yesterday generated a wave of very interesting, very insightful comments, among them these:

Marc Miyake said…

Dear Jim,

Thanks for summarizing Byrne’s plot. I wish you had reviewed it, but maybe it’s best that you didn’t because we readers can then give our own evaluations without being influenced.

I wasn’t terribly fond of much of Byrne’s published revamp, but in some ways I prefer it to this unused plot:

1. The “searing radiation”: This element is confusing and unnecessary. Could Lara have been poisoned by it? Maybe not, since Kal-El wasn’t. Did it mutate them, just as cosmic rays changed the Fantastic Four? Whatever changes affected Lara — if any — obviously weren’t enough to enable her to survive the crash … despite Jor-El’s prediction that the “additional factor […] that will help them [plural!] survive.” Maybe Byrne meant to introduce the “additional factor” in some later issue.

2. Lara dying on Earth. Byrne has mentioned this in an earlier proposal. This serves no purpose I can see other than to differentiate this origin from the classic one in which Jor-El and Lara die as a couple. I recall Byrne saying that Lara’s death would serve a purpose: she’d die from kryptonite and thereby prove that it was fatal. Maybe he came up with that after he turned in this plot.

3. Martha’s “pregnancy”: IIRC, in the published revamp, Martha had a cover story: she was pregnant when the Kents were snowed in (sorry if I got this wrong). No cover story here.

4. Jonathan’s death: In the late 30s version of the origin, the passing of both Kents marks Clark’s manhood. This death just seems random. I guess Martha has to survive to sew Clark’s costume.

5. The raid reminds me of Spider-Man’s origin: in both case, a failure to act led to terrible consequences. Would Byrne’s Superman have been perpetually haunted by this incident? Was this a conscious attempt to Marvelize Superman, to give him a psychological weak point? I don’t like the idea of associating Superman with failure.

6. The subway rescue is large in scale, but not as spectacular as the space plane rescue in the published revamp.

It’s still a decent done-in-one, though. I’m sure I’d have loved Byrne’s art, and the conclusion cracked me up: “Sorry, the caped man says, he’s already given his story to someone else, Clark Kent.” And I’m relieved to see that teenage Clark didn’t become a football star which I’ve long thought was out of character. (Maybe he did off-panel.)

I wonder how readers who have read the New 52 relaunches of the Superman titles would react to this plot.

(…)

October 25, 2011 5:48 PM

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czeskleba commented:
Dave Sim tells the story about Gene Day’s health problems and death here:
http://tinyurl.com/4c8cw75

To summarize… Day came down to Manhattan to do a rush ink job on an issue of Master of Kung Fu. Marvel put him up in a roach-infested hotel, and when he complained he was told he could either stay there or sleep at the Marvel offices. He chose the latter, not realizing the heat would be turned off in the office at night. It was winter, and sleeping in the very cold Marvel offices caused him to develop a kidney infection, which was the beginning of serious health problems that culminated in his tragic death by heart attack.

I haven’t read Moench’s comments, but I would assume he blamed Shooter for the above incident with the infested motel/cold Marvel office (though Shooter was not directly involved in the situation or even aware of it as far as I know). Chronic kidney problems can be a contributory factor in heart disease, so I assume he then blames the situation for ultimately causing Gene’s death.

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ja commented on yesterday’s post:

“I must say it’s very impressive that you’ve saved so many items from your tenure at Marvel, and I assume, the rest of your career.

Is this some sort of an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder-kind of thing, or did you one day make a conscious decision to save everything for posterity?”

Toward the end of my time at Marvel, Marvel’s upper management duo, Galton and Calamari, along with Shelly Feinberg and a few other Cadence bigwigs (as “CMI” — Cadence Management Inc.) had taken Cadence, Marvel’s parent, private and sold the Marvel division to New World Entertainment (NWE).  Throughout the process, as they furthered their quest to cash in and line their own pockets on what we, the comics people had built, they took certain unethical and, I believe, illegal steps.

I was senior enough that all I had to do was keep my mouth shut, help them sell my troops down the river and I would have been handsomely rewarded. One executive on a lower level than I ended up with a $3 million payoff. Mine would have been bigger, if I had merely cooperated.  

I chose instead to become a “labor leader.”  As the pension plan was cashed out, benefits were withdrawn, health coverage was diminished, etc., all done to fatten cash flow to increase the value of CMI’s sale-price multiple, I resisted. They even tried to retroactively eliminate the royalty plan. That battle I won — by threatening a class action lawsuit. At the top of my lungs.
 

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JayJay here. Jim wrote the following in response to a comment from yesterday, but I wanted to post it here since it applies to more than just that specific comment.

Jeff wrote:
“For over 30 years, I have read numerous “Jim Shooter screwed me” stories in various interviews from, usually, The Comics Journal, plus other fanzines of the day…”

Jim answered:
“…numerous “Jim Shooter screwed me” stories….

I’ve read a few such interviews and been told about others. I’m always interested in exactly what constituted the screwing. Did I steal their money? Sleep with their wives? Give their kids drugs?  What was the crime?

Other than a few over-the-top examples, notably the Doug Moench interview in which he accused me of being responsible for Gene Day’s death, as far as I can tell, these are generally the crimes alleged:

     1)  I gave the creator in question direction. That is, I told him or her what to do, or refused to allow something he or she wanted to do.

     2)  I wasn’t warm and fuzzy enough. I didn’t sugar coat things enough. I was “mean.”

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Michael Netzer left the following comment on The Coming of ROM: A Knight’s Tale:

Dear Jim,

You remain one of the more gracious people in the comics world. Your sense of fairness and goodwill towards creators have inscribed memories of one of the more engaging and steadfast people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with.

Those were strange days indeed. And though the strangeness seems to still haunt from time to time, it channels a little more succinctly these days. Certainly drawing that Rom cover the way I did was not really intended as anything against you or Marvel, but rather brought about by other things happening around me. I appreciate that you understood that back then and let me know so.

Still, looking back on it all, it’s not clear that it could have been different, or should have been, considering the cards dealt. I suppose something about embracing extreme states when they impose themselves, is part of all of our development, each in our own way. That you can sum it up today, also with a few positive words, is an uplifting indication that it wasn’t all for naught. Much appreciated, sir.

Tue: Alan Weiss was pretty close to Neal also around that time but he never went to extremes such as this. I told the story about this cover in an article some 6 years ago <http://bit.ly/keN5y9>, which shows just how out of the box things were for me in that period.

Interesting that this should come up now because I haven’t done anything like that with art since then… at least until recently. In that I’m still on the periphery of the industry and have some thoughts about some of the goings on, I found myself burning one of my drawings last week in order to make a somewhat lighthearted statement about DC’s handling of Superman in Action 900. Here’s the video. <http://bit.ly/lrNEA0> Links in its info lead to the entire story behind it. But like I said, the entire affair is also channeled towards a more succinct benefit <http://bit.ly/iozgYf> from the incident. 

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“T” commented on Legion of Super Heroes Overview, Part 3:

“Wow, Jim, I’m sorry to hear about all the trouble you had while on Legion of Super-Heroes. I get the feeling Mark Waid probably went through something similar when he returned to The Flash. His LoSH run doesn’t read like it went through too much editorial interference, but I bet it was a little disconcerting when Justice League of America brought back the original incarnation of the team, instead of using Mark and Barry Kitson created.

Anyway, great overview. You had a lot of good ideas and it’s a shame not all of them made it into print. I’ll be honest, though, I’m a little confused by the rationale for Invisible Kid becoming Stealth? How did his attraction to Gazelle convince IK that he was a woman stuck in a man’s body? Maybe I missed something…

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