When I started writing comics, it was to make money for my family. I never intended to become a comic book writer, or any kind of writer, for that matter. I was going to be a scientist. I was going to help beat those damn Commies to the moon, or cure cancer, or something.
I took five years worth of math in four years of high school—algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, trigonometry/analytical geometry and calculus/probability/statistics. I also took six years worth of science—biology 1 and 2, chemistry 1 and 2, and physics 1 and 2. I voluntarily went to summer school one year to take Physics 1. I won the tri-state science fair in ninth grade. I was in the science club. I took four years of a special, after-school extra class (for credit, mind you) called “Biology Research,” which paired science-psycho students like me with University of Pittsburgh researchers to serve as their lab assistants and create/execute a research project of their own. Mine was an iteration of the Hill reaction, photosynthesis in a vat, basically. Does that tell you I wanted to be in the science biz?
P.S., what I learned from my Pitt PhD adviser while being his lab assistant was how to make LSD. I forget, now, and no, I never tried it.
During my freshman year in high school—before I had ever taken even chemistry 1—I participated in a tri-state chemistry contest, the prize being a scholarship, sponsored by the American Chemical Society and various local industry giants like Koppers. I finished in the top ten, against nothing but senior chem 2 students! I was the only freshman there! I was serious. I had been studying chemistry and science in general on my own for years. In fifth grade I wrote a term paper for my accelerated English program on hydrocarbon chemistry. I was lucky to have a pre-med student as a next-door neighbor. In exchange for my playing chess with him, he’d explain chemistry things that daunted me in my reading—mostly things that were over my head math-wise at the time.
However, writing comics, which I started just before ninth grade, cut into my study time a bunch. I never had to open a book to ace chemistry 1 and 2. No surprise that I did less well in the chem contest during my sophomore and junior years, and didn’t even try in my senior year.
Fortunately, I got a scholarship anyway. I aced the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. That’s a story, too. I had been up for over 48 hours, skipping school, trying to make a deadline for Mort. I finished the job in the wee hours of the morning of the day of the NMSQT, a Saturday, and mailed the pages air mail special delivery at the main post office in downtown Pittsburgh, which was open 24-7. Air mail special delivery usually got there the next day, for 55 cents, as I recall—an outrage. There was no FedEx back then. Anyway, by the time I got back from the post office, it was around five AM. Had to be at the school at seven to take the test. I was dying to take a nap—but I knew that if my head hit that pillow, I’d never make it to the test. And, hey, I payed seven dollars to take that test, goddammit! So I stayed up, drank a vat of coffee, walked the mile and a half or so to Bethel Park Senior High School and took the test. I was wired. I was electric. I was intuiting the answers to calculus problems before I’d ever taken calculus. I finished before anyone else and went home and slept like the dead. When the results came in, I had one of the best scores in the state. Sheer, total magic. I’m not that smart.
Anyway, I got scholarship offers, in addition to the NMSQT scholarship, like crazy. Even one from MIT. NYU offered me a chance to be what they called a “University Scholar,” one of only two that year. They would have paid for everything, housing, books, tuition, everything. I could have designed my own curriculum. They would have even given me a “cultural stipend,” money to use to go see Broadway plays and such. Cool.
However….
I had given every dime I’d ever made to my mother. She/we had never paid my taxes. I was in debt to the Feds. A lot.
No scholarship covers that.
So, I would have had to work while going to college to pay my back taxes. I would have had to work anyway, to pay living expenses the scholarship didn’t cover, but, without the tax situation, a flipping burgers job would have sufficed. The tax thing meant I had to have a real job.
Having worked my way through high school, I don’t know…I just wasn’t ready to grind out the writing through another four years. Didn’t think I could make it.
I would stare at blank paper for days…until the fear of not delivering eclipsed the fear of delivering.
Jim
Also. When I started to work for Mort, writing, drawing and creating came easily to me. And it was a joy. And I thought I was accomplishing something for my family. As time went on, after being screamed at countless times that I was an idiot by the Big Important Man in New York, it became harder and harder. I felt like no matter what I put on the paper, it would be wrong, and that Mort would yell at me. I dreaded our Thursday night calls. In fact, it got to the point that when I heard a phone ring anywhere, anytime, even in school, I’d freeze up, white knuckled, fearing that it was Mort, calling to yell at me. It got to the point that I was afraid to make a mark on the paper, because I knew that whatever I put there would be wrong and Mort would scream at me. I would stare at blank paper for days…until the fear of not delivering eclipsed the fear of delivering. Then, I was greased lightning. Our family financial situation never seemed to get better. It got worse. I remember my mother, desperate for a check, coming up to my room, looking at the paper on my lapboard, seeing that it was blank, and crying as she went back downstairs.
So, anyway, writing for Mort through college didn’t seem like an option. I asked Mort if I could maybe have some less taxing office job instead—part-time assistant editor, or whatever. He said no, he needed me as a writer. He needed me?! The retard?!
So—and here’s where I admit that I am the retard Mort claimed I was—I flew to New York—hey, student standby round trip was only $27.50 in those days—then, I called Stan Lee and asked for an interview. Idiot. What if he was out of town, or sick that day? Fool. I called from a pay phone on Madison Avenue. Miraculously, the receptionist put me through. Unheard of. No one got to speak with Stan. Did she sense the desperation in my voice? Whatever. Lucky fool. I told Stan I wrote for DC and wanted to write for Marvel. He said, and I quote, “We don’t like the writing at DC.” I said, and I quote, “I don’t either. The people there call me their ‘Marvel writer,’ and they mean it as an insult.” Stan thought for a few seconds and said, “I’ll give you fifteen minutes.”
I showed up at Marvel’s offices at one PM, as prescribed. I met with Stan. We started talking comics theory. We agreed on everything. He liked me! Hey, Mikey! After three hours of conversation, during which, at one point, Stan jumped up on his thankfully-sturdy coffee table waving a yardstick as if it were a sword (he’ll deny that, but it happened) Stan hired me as an editor. That was the good news. The bad news was that there was no way I could do what he wanted and go to NYU at the same time.
I picked Marvel.
P.S., we’d already beaten the Commies to the moon anyway….
I think I met with Stan on a Wednesday or Thursday. I showed up for work as agreed at Marvel on the following Monday with my suitcase and no idea where I was going to sleep that night. I worked all day, mostly editing a Millie the Model script—and caught a major mistake. Stan, who wrote the book, was very impressed and grateful. Hey, I was a made man on day one.
Somehow, Mort had found out that I had taken a job at Marvel. He called me at my desk that first day and proceeded to scream at me for being an ingrate, “after all I’ve done for you,” retard, imbecile, idiot, blah, blah, blah. Ho-hum.
Sometime around 6:30 PM, I started looking for a place to sleep. I think I ended up in the Y.
I spent three weeks working at Marvel. That would have been at the end of 1969 or maybe early 1970. I loved it. I co-plotted several stories, I edited lots of comics, I learned paste-up, sort of, from the great Ancient One, Morrie Kuramoto, I proofread, I did everything. Marvel had a very small staff.
However, I was eighteen, fresh from Pittsburgh, with only a few dollars in my pocket, desperately in debt to the Feds, without any friends or help. Sure couldn’t count on the family for support. I went over two weeks without eating. No money for food. And I was skinny already. My draft card, which I still have, says I was six-foot-six and 170 pounds at age 18, some months previous. Picture that. I don’t know what I got down to, but I was f**king skeletal. Couldn’t find a place to stay. Couldn’t survive.
Finally, I gave up. I went home to Pittsburgh, where at least, I could sleep in a warm place.
A couple of asides:
In 1966, I had a chance to appear on What’s My Line? For those of you not wicked old, like me, that was a TV game show on which a panel of notable, smart people tried to guess the contestant’s occupation. Who’d guess that a 14-year-old was a writer of Superman and other DC comics? I thought I was a lock to win the maximum prize of $50.
My editor and boss, Mort Weisinger, nixed the appearance. He said that Superman and the other characters were the stars and that he didn’t want creators, like me, getting “undue attention.” Mort never ran creator credits.
Around that same time, Mort asked me to “create” a new character called Captain Action. I was pleased and honored. After I found out how little latitude I had, I was less pleased. So much was dictated to me! CA had to have Shazam-style mythological powers, an Action Cave, a sidekick, a car, a pet panther, for Pete’s sake, and more. I did the best I could….
But when I saw the art for the two issues I wrote—the first issue by all-time-great Wally Wood and second issue by all-time-great Gil Kane inked by Wood—I was back to being pleased. Ecstatic, in fact. The art was brilliant. And, extra groovy, those two issues had my first splash page credits! Woody lettered in his own credit, as he always did, and also lettered in mine (and Gils’s)! (Note: Woody hated writers, but since I provided layouts with my script, in his mind, that made me an artist! Artists deserved credit!)
Mort didn’t have our names removed—probably because Woody was who he was. You just didn’t mess with Woody.
After I left comics I worked at a paint and plastics plant as a quality control tech (less glamorous than it sounds), at a lumberyard, at a restaurant washing dishes, as a security guard, in a payroll office, in a department store, as a house painter, as a car reconditioner and as a janitor— but, during those days, I also got work doing comics-style advertising concept, writing and illustration. I did work for big clients like U.S. Steel and Levi’s—and made incredible money, when there was work. The trouble was that such work wasn’t steady, hence the parade of low-end jobs to bridge the gaps. I also was manager of a Kentucky Fried Chicken store for a while. In one week of advertising work I made as much money as a year’s worth of any of those other jobs. But, I hated advertising. Once I was asked to come up with a pitch for U.S. Steel Building Products Super-C Steel Joists. First, I had to find out what a joist was. I thought, what am I doing? Selling things that I don’t even know what they are, much less, whether they’re any good or not. Bleh.
JayJay here. Over the years, many questions have been asked about VALIANT, DEFIANT, and various other points of Jim’s history. He never got the chance to write a lot of those stories, but in 2021 he did this extensive interview with Jake Weaver and frankly answered many questions. He also names names, which he was often reluctant to do in the past. Jake has given me permission to share the podcast.
The interview is long, almost four hours. But it covers some subjects and stories that have rarely been shared outside of our limited circle.
Note: There are a few places where Jim skipped around in time telling the stories, so there may be some confusing parts. I understood what he meant since I was there for most of this (we worked together for over 40 years), but if you have questions or want clarification of any points in the interview, ask me in a comment (add the time stamp if it would help) and I will try to answer.
Note from JayJay: The final part of a book proposal Jim wrote in 1998.
Chapter Five: “The Perelman Cometh”
During the Ronald O. Perelman era, Marvel became hugely inflated, much like the Hindenburg.
The comics themselves were mysterious to Perelmanʼs management people—including Galton and the other holdovers. They were strange, gaudy hard-to-read things churned out by odd-looking people downstairs. The managers Perelman filtered in, however, know something about marketing. Realizing that many comics were bought by collectors, they began taking, what to them, was the obvious step of turning Marvel into the Franklin Mint. “Special” issues that every collector had to have came out in a flood. How could a collector not buy several copies of the Ghost Rider issue with the glow-in-the-dark cover? How could they not buy the special hologram cover issues, the gold foil cover issues, the die-cut-embossed-variant-platinum cover issues of Spider-Man, The X-Men, et al?
As Marvelʼs emphasis shifted to marketing gimmicks, it shifted away from creative. Disgruntled creators began bailing out, or being driven out. If you can sell a book by pasting on a hologram at the printer, who cares if the story inside is any good? Who needs high-priced “star” artists?
I happened to meet new Marvel president Terry Stewart at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October of 1992. He told me how well they were doing—two great years in a row. He said he felt like heʼd won the lottery each year. “Youʼre supposed to be the great comics guru,” he said. “What should we do next?” I told him theyʼd used up all the easy shots, done every “event” marketing trick to death, and now, they were going to have to create—publish good books.
He laughed.
Chapter Five will tell the story of greedy-publishing, spectator-pandering, fad marketing driven, over bloating that was the beginning of the end for Marvel.
Chapter Six: “Turning Point”
It seemed as though from the moment Gabelli began his attempt to take over Cadence Industries, my life became a series of setbacks and frustrations. The bitter parting with Marvel, and the disappointing outcome of the auction were just the beginning—many more disasters and disappointments came along before I finally finally arrived at a moment of vindication and success that belongs on the all-time highlight reel.
Warburg Pincus, which had been interested in the Marvel sale invited me to submit a plan for a start-up—then later reneged on promised funding.
I explored buying Harvey Comics, a once-thriving then almost defunct publisher of young kidsʼ comics, like Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost. Harvey was owned by three people who hated each other. After a meeting at their offices with one of them, who insisted that we do our talking in a closet, lest the other two should overhear, I decided that this deal was more grief than I needed.
A consulting gig with Disney, which was supposed to turn into a full time job didnʼt pan out. They thought I was great—but too “controversial.”
While these dead ends were playing out, things were getting grim for me financially. Pursuing Marvel had cost, by my modest standards, a great deal of money, and I hadnʼt been able to get much freelance work due to my pariah-hood.
Finally, I was able to convince a small venture capital company, Triumph Capital, L.P., to fund a start-up comics company. With the same partners whoʼd joined me in my attempt to buy Marvel, J. Winston Fowlkes and Steve Massarsky, I launched Voyager Communications Inc., publishers of comics under the imprint VALIANT. I was confident that we could out-create and out-compete Marvel, the market leader, where creativity had been thrust into the rumble seat since Perelman and his marketing mavens had taken over.
Fowlkes was a retired Time Inc. financial officer—a wealthy man who got involved with my comic book ventures because he found the whole business fascinating, and quite a change from his relatively stodgy Time days. He was the “gray hair” of the group, the experienced financial person that gives lenders and investors comfort and confidence. Massarsky was an entertainment lawyer. Besides the obvious advantages of having a lawyer on board, he had contacts in the film and music industries that I thought might prove useful.
Triumph Capital was essentially a two-person operation—Michael Nugent, an older man, and Melanie Okun, a thirty-year old woman. Before starting Triumph, theyʼd been a successful investment banking team at Bankers Trust Capital. Triumph owned 40% of Voyager, Fowlkes, Massarsky, and I each owned 20%. Nugent, Okun, Fowlkes, Massarsky and I comprised the board.
My joy and excitement about starting Voyager, not to mention having a job, was shortlived. We closed our funding deal with Triumph in November 1989. Just before Christmas, Massarsky informed me that he was sleeping with Melanie.
That worried me. Fowlkes, though, was absolutely appalled by the obvious conflict. He grew even more appalled as Massarsky spent more and more time courting Melanie and less and less time doing his job. Fowlkes finally complained to Nugent, hoping he would do something. He did. He called a board meeting, and with a three-fifths majority—himself, Okun and Massarsky—fired Fowlkes!
I was thunderstruck. Triumphʼs intention was to clawback Fowlkesʼs stock and simply terminate his contract. I took the following stand: either they had to settle with Fowlkes to his satisfaction, or Iʼd quit.
Ultimately, they agreed to a deal by which Fowlkes kept half of his stock, 10% of the company, and would be paid the entire amount due under his three-year employment contract. He was happy with the settlement, and happy to be away from Massarsky and Triumph. I agreed to stay.
I stayed because I reasoned that, though Nugent and Okun were vipers, most venture capital people are vipers; though Massarsky had proven to be a self-serving, doubledealing scumbag—he was a lawyer after all—that they needed me. I was the creative guy. The success of the venture depended upon me, therefore, they couldnʼt do anything too bad to me without cutting their own throats. Besides, all they wanted was money. If I could make Voyager successful, and I knew I could, theyʼd want to exit.
Maybe I could buy them out.
There were other reasons, too—I needed the job. Furthermore, Iʼd hired a number of my friends to work there, including several whoʼd given up other jobs, and they needed the jobs. Committing to work for me, The Great Satan, had pretty much gotten them blackballed elsewhere. Perhaps most importantly, I needed a victory. I was tired of being a pariah. This was a chance, however tainted and soured, to redeem myself.
Chapter Six tells the story of VALIANT, how we overcame incredible odds, not the least of which were my corrupt partners, to emerge as a phenomenal success. We would gain over 11% of the then-robust market and be on our way to a fiscal year with an EBIT over $18 million from publishing alone, on approximately $38 million of sales. Marvelʼs gross was higher, but its publishing profit was substantially lower. We were a force to be reckoned with, and growing stronger. Supplanting Marvel as the industry leader was a thinkable goal.
At the Diamond Comic Distributorʼs 1992 Retailer Convention, VALIANT was voted Best Publisher, and I was given the Diamond “Gemmie” lifetime achievement award. As I walked up on-stage in front of 3,000 retailers, plus representatives of every major publisher and product manufacturer for the comics market, I got a sustained standing ovation.
These same people would have thrown rotten vegetables only a year previous.
The quality and innovativeness of our creative work at VALIANT, and our success had in fact, redeemed me. How could I be a bad guy if my comics were so good? I was on top of the world. It was one of the best moments of my life.
I should have known it couldnʼt last. In the shadows, Super Villains were scheming…
Chapter Seven: “By a Friend Betrayed”
Well, Iʼd once considered Massarsky a friend…
My theory that Triumph and Massarsky couldnʼt get rid of me because I was the creative guy, upon whom success depended was accurate up to a point. The point came once Iʼd created a universe of characters that were successful, pre-tax profit was rolling in over the gunwales at a rate of $2 million a month, and the entity could be sold for an astronomical sum. That would have been June of 1992.
First, I was told that Triumph wanted us to sell a controlling interest to Allen & Company. Melanie Okunʼs brother, Glen Okun worked there, and had assembled a group of investors including Michael Ovitz, Wayne Heuzinga, David Lazarus, Herbert Allen and himself who were willing to pay $9 million for a controlling interest. With their substantial influence, the story went, the company could be built up with toy deals, film deals and distribution through the Blockbuster chain, then sold to, say, MCA Universal for megabucks.
Terms of the deal included Glen Okun replacing me as CEO. I was given a ten-year employment contract with a two year non-compete, specifying no appreciable increase in salary, no title, no duties and having 100% clawbacks of my (much diluted) stock, should I “fail to engender good morale,” or “fail to report to, of fail to obey “Massarskyʼs brother-in-law (by now, he and Melanie were married).
They needed my consent, I went through what is known as a “cramdown,” for a week.
Ultimately, I wouldnʼt agree to this nightmare scenario. I knew that wouldnʼt stop them, but I thought it better to force them to get rid of me now, as opposed to letting them do so at their convenience later.
I was summoned to a board meeting at 9:00 AM one morning near the end of June and summarily fired. I was told not to go to the office. Two armed guards were there to deny me entrance.
Meanwhile, at Voyagerʼs Seventh Avenue office, my secretary, and several of the people most loyal to me were being fired as well. They were escorted out and their personal items were dumped on the sidewalk outside.
My assistant, Bob Layton, my sales manager John Hartz and our best artist, Barry Windsor-Smith stayed, their loyalty purchased for several million dollars in stock each.
The spin control to consumers and the comics community in general was easy. Massarsky and company simply dredged up the old Marvel slime—Iʼd been a megalomaniac, I tried to kill a really great deal with Allen & Company because Iʼd lose some power, and besides, other people actually did all the creating—I just stole credit for their work, etc., etc. It was an easy sell, since us leopards canʼt really ever change our spots. I was a pariah again overnight.
Since I could no longer prevent it, Massarsky, Okun, and Nugent went through with the Allen & Company deal. Roughly a year later, Voyager was sold to Acclaim Entertainment for $65 million. Enrique Senior at Allen & Company later told me, when I met him at a meeting with Savoy Pictures, on whose board he served, theyʼd had serious discussions with other parties at much higher prices, but those parties had backed away because the creative guy—me—was gone. Even the price Acclaim paid, he thought, was too much.
He turned out to be right. My “hot air balloon theory” kept Voyager prosperous for a while after I was gone, but sales eventually began to fall, then collapsed. A few weeks ago (April 1998), Acclaim Comics, nee Voyager, went under.
Chapter Seven tells the tale of one of the nastiest examples of financial predation Iʼve ever heard of. Forbes Magazine found it appalling enough to publish a feature article about my experience entitled “How Not to Start a Company: What Do You do When Your Partner Tells You Heʼs Sleeping with the Venture Capitalist who Backed Your Business?”
Chapter Eight: “Man on a Rampage”
After Massarsky, his wife and her partner got rid of me, first they sued me, then they forced an arbitration in an attempt to recapture my shares. They had the best lawyers that the vast sums of money Iʼd made them could buy, plus they were willing to lie under oath and falsify documents. I had the best lawyer no money could buy and truth on my side.
Hereʼs a maxim for you: the best lawyers win. Ask O.J. My arbitration award for the 25% of Voyager I owned was about enough to pay my legal costs. Truth doesnʼt seem to count for much. The arbitrator himself caught their side in lies and contradictions several times, but, in the end decided to value the company on the day I was fired—which would be like valuing the Jim Hensonʼs company on the day before the Muppets TV show aired—and to use the Allen & Company “offer” (made by Massarskyʼs brotherin-law) as the value. They later sold voyager for $65 million.
Welcome to America.
I knew, though, that I could do it again. I set out to raise money. Again.The success of Voyager made it fairly easy, despite the fact that Massarsky and company had reprised the Shooter-is-a-monster legend. I had half a dozen offers to fund my new company. Over Patricof and others, I chose The River Group, which also owned a trading card company, figuring that the synergies between comics and cards would be useful. This time I insisted upon and got majority and control. In February of 1993, I founded Enlightened Entertainment Partners, L.P., capitalized at $4.5 million, which would publish comics under the appropriate imprint DEFIANT.
The first property I created was “Plasm,” a sci-fi world where everything, and I mean everything including the world itself, was alive.
Within a month, I presented the Plasm concept to Jill Barad and her boys toysʼ staff at Mattel, and walked away with a three million dollar guarantee against royalties deal for an action figure line. They anticipated $10-50 million in sales the first year.
Pre-launch publicity for the comics, a trading card set being produced by my partners and the toys began.
Then, Marvel sued us for trademark infringement. It seemed they had a character called “Plasmer” registered in the U.K. “with intent to use” by their British publishing division. We tried to settle. At their lawyersʼ behest, we changed our name to “Warriors of Plasm,” and thought it done with. But, they never returned the signed agreement, let us launch our first product, a trading card set and sued us, despite our agreement.
Similarities in comics names are common. DC has “Wonder Woman,” “Power Girl” and “Hellblazer.” Marvel has “Wonder Man,” “Power Man” and “Hellrazor.” One has a “Guardians of the Galaxy” and one has a “Guardians of the Universe,” but I forget which is which and who has what. Which is the point.
The judge, Michael B. Mukasy (who also tied the World Trade Center bomber case) got the point, and found in our favor—emphatically. His opinion was practically a scathing denunciation of Marvel. Defending ourselves took six months and cost us $300,000, however, and the Mattel deal, which was put on hold pending the outcome of the suite, and canceled once weʼd missed out launch window. Talk about a Pyrhic victory.
Bleeding us and wasting our time was Marvelʼs real goal. After all, the last company Iʼd started had taken ten or so points of market share out of their hide. What better way to squelch my new venture then to burden it with expensive litigation. It worked. We were crippled coming out of the gate.
Our first comic book issue was published in August 1993. That month is notable in another way, too—itʼs the month the Great Collapse of the Industry started.
The industry had been enjoying a boom driven by speculators and collectors for several years. Following Marvelʼs lead, virtually every company was producing “collectible,” special issues with wild abandon. DC published the “Death of Superman” issue, which collectors bought by the case, certain that it would skyrocket in value. Fourteen million copies were sold, Marvel published a new X-Men issue #1—collectors love #1 issues—and sold eight million copies. It got so that virtually every issue from every company (except mine) was a “special,” with a birth, death, wedding, costume change, team break-up, team re-formation, hologram, foil cover, premium insert or other trumped-up event that collectors might think noteworthy enough to buy extras.
The boom was false prosperity. For some reason in August of ʻ93, the collectors all got wise at once to the fact that if 14 million copies of an issue have been squirreled away by collectors its greatest value is as bird cage liner—and it will never be worth big money until 13,999,999 birds have dumped on it.
Chapter Eight tells the sad story of DEFIANT, thwarted at every turn. In a collapsing market where nearly a hundred of the six thousand or so comics retailers extant were going under every week, where nearly every comics titleʼs sales were falling precipitously,
DEFIANT couldnʼt survive.
We had two last chances. I got a call from Bob Shea and Michael Lynn of New Line Cinema, who wanted to buy an interest in DEFIANT for its characters, and as a development engine. They were willing to make an investment which would have been, I think, enough to see us through the worst of the collapse and perhaps position us to lead a turnaround in the market. I wanted to maintain my ownership, but got them together with my financing partners. A deal was put on the table that would let New Line step into The River Groupʼs shoes as my backers, tripling their investment in about a year, and still leaving them with 10% of the company.
They turned it down! I tried to point out to them that the Good Ship DEFIANT was sinking… Enter Savoy Pictures. I got a call from Victor Kaufman who expressed the same interest as Lynn and Shea had. They made The River Group an even better offer.
Strangely enough, Allen & Company was deeply involved with Savoy, and I found myself negotiating with Enrique Senior of Allen & Company, who was on Savoyʼs board, and would be on DEFIANTʼs board if the deal went through. Enrique had been involved with the VALIANT deal, seemed to know exactly what had been done to me, and was okay with that. He had an “itʼs just business” attitude about it—and the deal currently under consideration—that was both chilling and fascinating. Though he was professional, dispassionate and utterly uninterested in the human side of these occurrences— as opposed to the numbers—I think that in some small way he thought it suitable that I, a “creative guy,” who had been burned badly on one deal would benefit from another. However, four months later, The River Group was still haggling over $80,000 for their legal costs, holding up our $11 million deal. Savoy gave up on them.
DEFIANT ran out of money and closed its doors at the end of August 1995.
Chapter Nine: “The Web of the Snyder,” or “Along Came a Snyder”
I was starting to suspect that I sucked at picking partners. Massarsky, Triumph, and The River Group all belong on the tenth level of Hell as far as Iʼm concerned.
Finally, though, I found a good one—television and film producer Lorne Michaels. My association with Michaels was good—the fact that it led to an association with Dick Snyder was not.
Michaelsʼ interest in comics was similar to Lynnʼs, Sheaʼs, and Kaumanʼs. Michaels and the president of his Broadway Video Entertainment, Eric Ellenbogen, saw the comic book business as a development platform for television and film properties. After DEFIANT closed, Ellenbogen hired several of my former creative employees, and eventually hired me as well to undertake development of a licensed property they controlled. He was sufficiently impressed with our efforts to offer to fund another comic company start up for me, and so Broadway Comics was born.
Ellenbogen was aware of the sorry state of the comics market in early 1995, but wasnʼt concerned about our selling huge numbers of comics. His intent was that we create and develop useable properties; that we attract great talent and become “Idea Central.” All he asked was that we not lose too much money until television and movie exploitation started paying the bills.
Things went along pretty well for a while—until Lorne Michaelsʼ company sold Broadway Video Entertainment, including us, to Golden Books Family Entertainment, which was run by Dick Snyder of Simon and Shuster fame.
It was the second time I experienced a cramdown. Among the terms of the fifty-fifty partnership I had with BVE were provisions that, in the event of a sale, entitled me to opt to buy BVE out, to approve certain conditions or the sale, or in some circumstances, to refuse to go along. Iʼve never talked to Lorne Michaels about this, and Iʼd like to think that he didnʼt know how his lieutenants went about it. It was ugly.
Broadway Video, Inc., BVEʼs parent company was run by president John Engleman. Engleman apparently decided that rather than risk complications from me, heʼd deliberately keep me in the dark about the deal until the last minute—a violation of our agreement—an attempt to arrange things so that I had no choice but to play ball.
Chapter Nine tells the tale of Englemanʼs evil, and how, to keep my people from being summarily tossed out on the street, (for several it would have been the second time), I had to go along.
It also tells of what happened to my battered little band of creative crazies once we were in the web of the Snyder.
Chapter Ten: “When Titans Clash”
In 1992, when I told then-Marvel president Terry Stewart that marketing gimmicks would eventually fail, and that eventually theyʼd have to get back to the business of creating new things, new ideas and better entertainment, he laughed.
A year later, with the blush quickly fading from the marketing-gimmicks dandelion, they tried creating something. The trouble was that, during their Franklin Mint period, theyʼd pretty much lost or driven away their creative heavyweights.
What the remaining flyweights came up with was “Marvel 2099”—a group of new titles set a century in the future featuring “future versions” of the standard Marvel characters. Maybe if the concept had been very well executed, it might have been more than derivative trash, but the concept was merely, well…executed.
Among the other big ideas the downstairs dregs came up with was a Spider-Man storyline wherein it was revealed that it hasnʼt really been Spider-Man having all those adventures for the last couple off hundred issues, it was a clone. The real Spider-Man had been off somewhere afflicted by amnesia.
Fans didnʼt like this idea at all. Eventually, the writers were ordered to write their way out of the storyline and Marvel actually apologized for it—but not before publishing more than a yearʼs worth of the lamest, most convoluted, tedious stories imaginable.
Almost unbelievably, down the hall, another editor launched a storyline for Iron Man based on the idea that several hundred issues ago heʼd been replaced by a “Life Model Decoy,” that is, an android duplicate.
The joke around the industry was that Marvel, which had called itself “The House of Ideas” since the early sixties had become “The House of Idea.”
It seemed that no thought was too stupid for Marvel. Anything that crossed the alleged mind of an editor might find its way into print. No one was, or is to this day, running the asylum. No one is there to reject bad ideas or encourage good ones.
The trouble was that no one upstairs at Marvel, no one with any real power, read or understood
the comics. Since I was drummed out, there has been no one who is both an upstairs executive and a downstairs creative person. A great divide exists…
Terry Stewart once told me that he know some of his editorial people were good and some werenʼt, but neither he nor his publishing executives were capable of sorting them out.
Sales started to plummet in August of 1993, and have kept falling ever since. The comics market and the trading card market are closely related, so it wasnʼt just the comics collapsing. Marvelʼs Fleer and Skybox units fell as well.
A source close to Perelman told me that Perelman knew heʼd built a house of cards with acquisitions like Panini, Skybox and Fleer, but intended to sell Marvel to Sony or another entertainment giant while it was at its peak. The collapse came too soon and too suddenly, though. I think the wretched failure of their creative effort—the word “effort” seems wrong somehow—was what triggered the avalanche.
At first, Marvel management blamed their collapsing sales on their distributors, and bought the third largest comics distributor, Heroes World Comics and Cards, in order to get control into their hands, and out of the hands of “incompetents.”
What a disaster! Within three years, Heroes World was defunct, one of its principals, wanted for embezzling, was a fugitive, and Marvel was begging for distribution.
The shrinking market had left only one distributor alive, Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc., which is partially owned by DC Comics. Given a choice of one, Marvel signed up. They still donʼt get it at Marvel. Iʼve spoken to top Marvel execs who, to this day blame the collapse of the comics on competition from video games, inexplicable “cycles,” that govern such things, or platitudes like “kids donʼt read anymore.” As if anyone could read some of that drivel…
They donʼt understand that the comic book business is a relationship marketing business. It has more in common with the single malt Scotch business than with other publishing or the collectibleʼs business—and the first step toward building the relationship with the audience—the all important, very personal love between a fan and, say, the XMen—is good creative work.
As Marvel foundered, Carl Icahn and other holders of Marvel bonds including High River L.P. and Westgate International L.P. began to move to usurp Perelmanʼs control of Marvel.
The first major shot fired in the war was when Marvel declared bankruptcy, entering Chapter 11 on December 27, 1996, “in order to complete… reorganization without bondholder consent.”
The financial and courtroom battles between Perelmanʼs forces and Icahnʼs forces over the rotting remains of Marvel was well chronicled in the press. I have a virtually complete set of clippings from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Crainʼs, Barrons and other publications buttressed with information I garnered from a friend on Icahnʼs board, and several meetings with Scott Sassa, Bill Bevins and other sources close to the fighting.
What isnʼt covered in those articles is the collateral damage from the fighting, the stories of the people in and around the business whose lives and livelihoods have been damaged.
A lot of them are people close to me. From the biggest retailers in the country, who are watching twenty-plus years of their efforts to build their business crumble to dust as Marvel takes the industry down with it, to artists, writers and production people who donʼt quite understand whatʼs going on, but wish it would stop.
Chapter Ten, which will be the longest and meatiest chapter (probably divided into several sections), tells their stories as well as the story of the war of fortunes.
In early Marvel Comics, when Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby would depict titans like the Hulk and the Avengers clashing, the battle would always wind up in an “abandoned warehouse district” where “miraculously” no one was hurt by the sweeping devastation they caused. Perelman and Icahnʼs clash, however, has harmed plenty of innocent victims.
Every week or so I hear from George Roussos, a staff colorist at Marvel. George is pushing eighty with a bulldozer, and has been in comics all his life. Heʼs seen it all. He canʼt believe what heʼs seeing now. Itʼs sad to watch something once great, once vibrant and alive die—especially if youʼre inside it at the time.
While Marvel languished in bankruptcy for nearly a year, Judge Hellen Balick kept hoping that Icahn, Perelman and the principals of Toy Biz, Inc. could work things out. Toy Biz is a company partially owned by Marvel and much embroiled in the dispute.
Finally, in August of 1997, Judge Balick retired, and the case fell into the hands of Judge Roderik McElvie, who wasted no time appointing a Trustee, ex-judge John Gibbons. Gibbons set out expeditiously to settle the Marvel mess by selling it all or in pieces to the highest bidder. A “document room” was set up at his law firm, Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione.
With the help of investment bankers from McFarland Dewey & Co., I put together a management team including former top-tier ABC/Cap Cities execs Bruce Maggin and Brian Healy, and gained the interest of Perry Capital Investments, Inc.
We went to the Gibbons, Del Deo law offices in Newark in late January of 1998 to examine the possibilities. There werenʼt any. Marvel is so inextricably tied to Toy Biz by an outrageous license for all toy categories, for all Marvel properties, in perpetuity, with no royalty, that it really isnʼt worth much—except to Toy Biz, which has an offer pending.
We left disappointed—then came up with the idea of buying both Toy Biz and Marvel, which would render moot the license, and also effectively end the snowstorm of lawsuits flying between Toy Biz and Marvel—a nasty passel of contingent liabilities.
For that we needed a toy company partner on our team, someone who could effectively run Toy Biz, and to whom Toy Biz and the Marvel license would be an asset. I called CEO Jill Barad at Mattel. Her president of Corporate Operations, Ned Mansour called me back. Yes, they were interested. We arranged a meeting.
That proved to be a dead end, for the time being at least. After a cursory look at the situation Mattel backed away.
We learned, however, that should Toy Biz succeed in acquiring Marvel, one of the conditions required to gain the secured creditorsʼ approval of their offer was that the combined entity be offered for sale immediately after the acquisition closed. The creditors who would own over 40% of “Newco,” as part of the deal, wanted at least an attempt to be made to turn their stake into cash.
So, why not wait, let Toy Biz suffer through uniting the two companies, and perhaps make a bid for Newco?
Weʼre in wait-and-see mode.
Meanwhile, Icahn and his group turned up again with another offer of $475 million in cash. Meanwhile, theyʼre also suing to assert control they say they should have over Toy Bizʼs board, under terms of Marvelʼs deal with Toy Biz. Toy Biz is firing back, and the whole mess drags on and on, and every day the industry dies a little more.
Chapter Eleven tells why breaking up is so very hard to do when Super Villains are involved.
Epilogue: “The Final Chapter?
Is it all over for the industry, no matter what the outcome of the greatest Super Villain mine-is-bigger-than-yours contest in many a moon? Many people seem to think so.
Total industry volume continues to shrink month by month, comics retailers are going under daily and no oneʼs making money. There is a critical mass level—a level below which too few stores are selling too few copies to sustain themselves, and justify publication of the remaining comics titles (down from around seven hundred a month to slightly over two hundred a month). The fact is that the industry is already below critical mass level.
People are hanging in there, staying this crazy business because they love it. Therein, lies the hope. Theyʼre clinging by their fingernails, hoping that Marvel will be resurrected and lead a new wave of growth, or that something will happen to turn things around. As long as they believe itʼs possible, it in fact is.
The last time the industry nearly tanked, in 1978, we fought our way out of oblivion with a combination of intensified creativity and a revolution in distribution.
Marketing comics over the world wide web seems to be emerging as the new distribution—but distribution is useless without a good product to sell.
Whoever finally captures Marvel has the chance to resurrect the industry by cleaning house, bringing in talent and once again, producing a quality product. People still love comics. Ink and paper are not dead (though Iʼve been hearing about their imminent demise since the sixties). Itʼs still a powerful medium, and it still has a place.
Many people have suggested that the long-awaited Jim Cameron Spider-Man movies, if it ever comes, may re-ignite interest in comics. Yes, but again, only if the comics are good. The Batman movies didnʼt do much on a sustained basis to sell the Batman comics, because the comics were and are pathetic.
Itʼs going to take excellent creative, and since no one else is stepping into the industry leaderʼs role, I think itʼs going to take Marvel to make it happen.
Itʼs time for heroics. Will the Super Villains succeed in crushing the life out of this hapless industry? Or will it get one last chance?
Weʼll know soon. Thereʼs not much time for more cliffhangers—weʼre turning to the final page, right now.
Note from JayJay: Part 2 of a book proposal Jim wrote.
Chapter One: “Days of Future Past”
People have been using sequences of pictures in combination with written or spoken words to tell stories since Paleolithic painters chronicled hunting expeditions on cave wall. It wasnʼt until the late nineteenth century, however, that the medium of comics began to develop in earnest, when American newspapers and magazines started carrying single panel cartoons and comic strips.
The first comics were drawn from one fixed point of view, as if the scenes shown were taking place on a stage, and the readers were seeing them from an orchestra seat. Cartoonists soon realized, though, that angles could be varied, close ups could be used to convey emotion, medium-depth shots to show action and long shots to introduce locales.
Thus, the choice of shots and the sequence of shots could relieve the words of much of the burden of exposition. The result was the evolution of an entirely new way of conveying ideas—a fusion of word-bites with information-rich images to form highcontent, easily assimilated info-packets that could be presented alone or in a sequential stream.
Comics quickly gained acceptance as a legitimate medium all around the world—except in the United States. Elsewhere, the comics medium is used to convey entertainment and information of all kinds to all ages. Here, in its birthplace, the comics medium has been stigmatized as a rather lowbrow amusement for children thatʼs probably bad for them. Comic books, especially, have always suffered from, and largely lived up to their reputation as junk for kids (and somewhat pathetic adults).
The first American comic books, published in the 1920ʼs, were reprints of newspaper strips, often use as giveaway premiums by soap companies and movie houses. Comic books were generally published by small, fast-buck publishers who thought they were cashing in on a fad. When, in the mid-1930ʼs, comic booksʼ popularity had failed to fade, some publishers began publishing original material—but kept their schlock mentality.
In his book The Great Comic Book Heroes, Jules Feiffer, who like many talented people started out in the comic book business, tells of virtual sweatshop conditions—of comic book creators working in cramped bullpens, sleeping on the floor, living on cigarettes and coffee and cranking out pages. Often, two artists would work on the same page at once, one drawing upside down. Writers churned out scripts page by page as the artists were drawing them. Creators often used pseudonyms to avoid having their real names sullied by association with comic books. For instance, Stan Lee, the creative force behind Marvel Comics, was born Stanley Leiber, a name he hoped to save for when he wrote the Great American Novel, or for when he broke into writing newspaper comics, which, by comparison, were respectable.
Artists and writers often had to hound publishers for payment. Many publishers simply flew by night.
The tawdry history of the business, rife with low self-esteem, greed and cheesiness, set the stage for disaster. Somehow, though, comic books survived wartime paper shortages, investigation by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, and a steep decline in available retail outlets. Not only did the business stubbornly refuse to die—a testament to the innate vitality of the medium—but three times in my lifetime it enjoyed tremendous boom periods and nearly established itself as a major, mainstream, legitimate medium.
That may be hard to imagine for many people—but consider that Japan, with one third the population of the U.S., buys three times as many comic books at price points that are relatively higher. There are Japanese comics devoted to such diverse things as romance, knitting and tennis. There are cute “funny animal” comics for young children and pornographic comics for adults—often bound together in the same volume, oddly enough.
Success isnʼt limited to Japan. Scandinavia has the highest per capita consumption of comics in the world, and throughout Europe, the variety of comics, and the respect given comics as a medium is amazing.
Chapter One will briefly explain the history of comic books in America—how they earned their status as third class citizens of the arts, how the industry self-destructively avoided big-time success and how it became ideal prey for financial predators and Super Villains.
Itʼs a litany of short-sightedness, stupidity and greed, leading to the near- moribund state of the business now. Itʼs tragic, really. We couldʼa been a contenda.
Chapter Two: “What Price Power”
In 1983, corporate raider Mario Gabelli began buying up shares of Cadence Industries, Inc., setting off a bitterly contested battle for control against chairman Shelly Feinberg and the board of directors. The real prize was Marvel Comics, a division of Cadence. Shelly and his henchweasels had made Marvel a division, rather than a subsidiary, like every other Cadence unit, so that Marvelʼs earnings could be buried under Cadenceʼs bloated corporate overhead. With the crown jewel carefully hidden, Shelly planned to deliberately depress the stock/price, take Cadence private for a relative pittance, then sell off the pieces—especially Marvel—at their true worth. Gabelli, however, had seen through Shellyʼs scheme and was trying to usurp it.
Chapter two tells the tale of Marvelʼs rise from the brink of oblivion in the late 1970ʼs to prosperity in the 80ʼs, and of the Super Villain war it touched off. Downstairs on the creative floor we were saving the company! Saving the industry! Building the foundation for the future—the companyʼs and ours! Upstairs, the top cheeses were planning to use the opportunity we were presenting them to make themselves richer with reckless disregard for how we might suffer in the short term, or how the company and our future might be damaged in the long term. Too bad for them that Marvelʼs prosperity was so well publicized. Too bad for them that a sharp cookie like Gabelli could make some reasonable estimates, do some simple math and deduce that Marvel was worth more than three times the market cap of Cadence.
Too bad for us downstairs, too. Pressure from upstairs to publish more with less money and fewer people to fund Feinbergʼs expensive defense against Gabelli was intense. We succeeded because I managed to squeeze more work out of an already overworked staff (which did nothing for my popularity). We created new series, came up with a bunch of promotional one-shots and invented new ways to repackage old material. We put millions more in the war chest. It was the best of times and the worst of times—we were marching from victory to victory, but it was a double-time forced march.
Comics creators, not normally the most well-balanced of humans, become even weirder under pressure. The relieve stress in strange ways—and I began to believe that my main jobs were inmate control and suicide watch.
When the Shelly/Gabelli war for control began, I was cheerfully unenlightened about such things, but I got a battlefield education.
As it all unfolded, because I was among the top five Marvel execs, I was privy to a lot of the machinations of the Feinberg gang. I was their fair-haired boy, after all, the one filling the coffers and pulling profitable publishing miracles out of my butt daily—a loyal lieutenant to be well rewarded after victory had been achieved.
I also was among the rank and file workers every day. They didnʼt understand what was going on, and for the most part didnʼt want to. They preferred to keep their heads in the sand and hope that everything would come out all right, or, perhaps, that I would look after their—our—interests. I saw the effects the takeover war was having on them, and it became increasingly clear to me that no one upstairs—unless I was there, attending a staff meeting—gave a damn about them or their future. As my stupendous naiveté slowly wore away, and I understood that what I thought was doing my job well was actually serving the selfish interests of a few greedy bastards.
Then, rather suddenly, it was over. Feinberg and his partners in Cadence Management, Inc. bought off Gabelli and succeeded in taking Cadence private at a cost of $27 million. Shareholders received $17 per share. In a fairly short time, CMI succeeded in selling Marvel to New World Pictures for $46.5 million, and the rest of the Cadence companies for $30 or so million more. The way I see it, the shareholders were bilked by the board of directors to the tune of $50 million. And my troops? Just when I thought the crisis had passed and things couldnʼt get worse, they did.
Chapter Two will tell the story of the first big battle for Marvel, of the downstairs crazies who suffered through it, and my own consciousness-raising.
Chapter Three: “New World Aʼborninʼ”
In late 1986, two years after taking Cadence Industries, Inc. private, Shelly Feinberg and his henchweasels sold the Marvel Comics division to New World Pictures. A string of potential buyers prior to New World had been scared off by Feinbergʼs strange negotiating style, which entailed starting with outrageous demands, haggling endlessly and then, at the eleventh hour, reneging on what had finally been agreed to and, in Richard Bernsteinʼs words, demanding “a nickel more.”
New World was the ideal suitor—awash in junk-bond money, on an acquisition binge, eager to close a deal before the end of 1986 to avoid adverse tax-law changes effective January 1, 1987. New World was run by Larry Kuppin and Harry Sloane, two entertainment lawyers who had bought Roger Cormanʼs B-movie company, and Bob Rehme, a former marketing exec. They did only a cursory due diligence on Marvel and the deal seemed to be zooming along until, in mid-November, something threatened to derail it.
I quit.
Iʼd become increasingly at odds with the top management during the nearly two years of the Gabelli war and the nearly two years of Marvelʼs being on the block—three-plus years during which Shelly Feinberg, Marvelʼs president, Jim Galton and their ilk had become increasingly self-serving at the expense of my troops and our future. You might expect owners to be short-sighted and niggardly while a companyʼs on the block, but Shelly and company were out to set a new record. The pressure on me and my troops had been tremendous, and worst, Iʼd become aware that Marvel hadnʼt been paying creators incentives they were due.
I discovered this after a trip to Europe to visit international publishing licensees, where Iʼd seen foreign editions of many of our contract artistsʼ works in print, that Iʼd been unaware of. I checked when I got back to see if weʼd paid those artists royalties they were due. No. “Why pay them?” the CFO told me, “theyʼll never know about those books.”
Furthermore, he told me that his orders were to “delay or not pay” any money owned to artists that he could.
My first instinct was to let the artists in question know what Marvel was doing to them. But then what? Theyʼd quit en masse, and the better ones would be received with hugs and kisses at DC Comics. That seemed drastic—scattering the team Iʼd worked so hard to build.
I decided to do everything I could to fight for justice, and if I couldnʼt get Galton to come around, then Iʼd quit. And then Iʼd tell the artists…
Once, Iʼd been CMIʼs fair-haired boy. But as the situation deteriorated, I became enemy number one. One of the moments that iced it was probably the time I stood in the intersection between Galtonʼs office, the corporate counselʼs office and the CFOʼs office screaming at the top of my lungs that if the artist and writer whoʼd created the Hobgoblin didnʼt get their $26,000 royalty for the Mattel action figure, that I was going to go to go to the Daily News with the story and launch a class action suit on behalf of the artists.
They were paid. Grudgingly.
After a number of such screaming matches over things like their idea of retroactively eliminating incentives, cutting benefits to creators and other charming ideas for saving money, it had become war between us. They must have felt very vulnerable, because none of them had ever even opened a comic book, and therefore they were extremely dependent upon me and my knowledge of the business. Executive V.P. Joe Calamari (no kidding!) once told me that they couldnʼt get rid of me because I was the only one who could tell them who could replace me.
In an attempt to fix that, they had begun to groom an ambitious young woman from the sales department, Carol Kalish, to become their new comics guru.
Still, though, at the eleventh hour of the pending New World transaction, they thought they needed me.
When Galton got my resignation letter, he called me to his office and literally begged me to stay. What did I want? he asked.
If my resignation had been a ploy, it would have been genius. A less naivé person, at this point would have called in his lawyer and had crafted a lovely contract with a splendid golden parachute. Not me.
I told Galton I wanted my people paid. He swore that the moment the deal closed, heʼd see to it. New World intended to keep Galton and several others of the owners in position as management. He couldnʼt do it now, he said, because it would be difficult to explain to New World why they were suddenly paying out all this money theyʼd never admitted owing, but after the closing, heʼd be able to engineer it.
I believed him. Yes, that is world-record, stupidity, but I had a reason. Galton had always been short-sighted and greedy, even when he didnʼt have to be. That wasnʼt so bad—Iʼd learned to work with it—by simply couching everything I ever asked of him in terms of how it would make Marvel money fast. You can work with greedy people if you know how to approach them. Other then that, heʼd always been honest, even a standup guy upon occasion. I trusted him. Stupid me.
On the morning of January 5, 1987, the deal closed. After heʼd signed, putting four or five million dollars into his personal pocket, Galton returned to his office to find me waiting for him. I had a list of artists who were owed money from foreign sales, toy royalties and other incentives. I told him it was time to settle up.
He said exactly, “Fuck you.”
Restraining the urge to toss this nasty little man out his eleventh floor window, I returned to my office to write another resignation letter.
I changed my mind, though, and wrote instead a letter to Kuppin, Sloane and Rehme telling them what they needed to know about Galton and company.
Kuppin and Sloane were very concerned. They had Rehme look into it. He quickly discovered that I was right. Then, he allowed Galton to fire me. Then, to preempt my going to the media with my story, they quickly paid all the overdue incentives—including $3,500 to me that I didnʼt know they owned me!
At my exit interview with Rehme, he said that they couldnʼt really keep me and fire, essentially, all the rest of top management. How would that look to their investors, especially since theyʼd just bought this company?
Amazingly, after spending twelve years of my life helping to build Marvel from a disaster to a winner, all I felt walking out that day was relief.
Chapter Three will tell the tale of how Marvel fell into the hands of the three stooges, Kuppin, Sloane and Rehme, and why that was bad.
Chapter Four: “If This Be My Destiny”
When I left, the Marvel editorial staff and freelances threw a “Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead” party. During my three-plus year war with top management, Iʼd been systematically undercut and vilified to my own troops. The same people who in 1982 would have followed me to the gates of Hell were convinced that everything that was wrong in their lives and everything that was wrong in the industry, was my fault.
Marvel faltered only a little after I left—not enough to please me—but running a comic book company is like piloting a hot air balloon. Turn up the heat and itʼll be a little while before you start to rise. Turn down the heat and youʼll coast along for a while before slowly starting to descend. It takes a while to build consumer loyalty, and it takes a while for it to erode.
I kept track of Marvel and New Worldʼs fortunes in the trades out of curiosity. What I saw in print, combined with my insider knowledge make it clear that Marvelʼs sales were slowly fading and New World was losing about a million dollars a day.
Hmm.
I figured that, at that rate, New World had under a year before their junk bond money ran out. I also figured that no one there was likely to turn it around.
New World did make some money, though, by speculating in the stock market. The three stooges were well enough connected to acquire insider information about several buy-outs in a row, most notably Murdockʼs purchase of MacMillan Books. By buying up McMillan stock just before Murdockʼs takeover attempt became publicly known, which made the stock price soar, then selling to Murdock, New World made a quick $18 million profit.
Several other similar scenarios worked in New Worldʼs favor. Buoyed by these successes, they were very heavily invested in the market when Black Monday—October, 1987 rolled around.
That did it.
At that point, having taken a near fatal beating on Wall Street, theyʼd have to sell something to stay alive, I thought. They only thing they had that was easily detachable and worth anything was Marvel.
Chapter Four tells the story of my first attempt to buy Marvel Comics and oust the Philistines.
Itʼs a story of highs and lows, a year of blood, sweat and smears. It involves intrigues, double dealings, betrayals, confrontations and trick maneuvers. Among the cast of characters were Chase, N.A., Bankers Trust, Warburg Pincus, Boston Ventures, The McFadden Group, Baker McKenzie, Weslay, Odyssey Partners, Ernst and Whinney, and more.
It ended with an eleventh hour deal hastily knit together among my management group, our advisor and senior lender, Chase N.A., and Shenkman Capital. We made a final round bid of $81 million. Ours was the only bid. We won. Shenkman signed a letter of agreement. For one glorious week, we thought weʼd done it.
Then, one morning, a small article in the Wall Street Journal announced that insider, Ronald O. Perelmanʼs Andrews Group had bought Marvel Comics for $82.5 million— enabled by an escape hatch in our letter of agreement with Kidder Peabody (who conducted the sale) and the fact that our armʼs length bid had set a value. Weʼd been used as a stalking horse.
Later, I had a meeting with Andrews Groupʼs CEO, Bill Bevins—an interview, actually.
They were considering hiring me as part of their management team. During our discussion, I found out that they would probably have one-upped any reasonable bid. Ours had been a hopeless quest.
Ultimately, Bevins didnʼt offer me a job at Marvel, though he seemed convinced that Iʼd do a good job. Though Bevins told me that their assessment of the current Marvel management, Jim Galton and cronies, was that if they all drowned in the East River one day, itʼd be a month before anyone at Marvel noticed they were gone, he planned to keep them while slowly filtering in their own people, to create the illusion of stability needed to facilitate their plans to take Marvel public in a year or so. There was no way I was going to quietly “filter in,” and that ended that.
So much for Marvel. At least, thatʼs what I thought at the time.
Next week: $UPER VILLAINS Part 3, The thrilling conclusion
About the time I started working at Marvel in 1984 there was a storm gathering. A few of Marvel’s top freelancers had been coming to Jim with copies of comics from other countries in hand that they had not been paid royalties for. Jim tried to look into it and was put off several times. These were some of Marvel’s biggest names on some top-selling books. In 1985 the X-Men team went on a “world tour” and saw copies of foreign reprints first hand. Heck, they were signing books they hadn’t gotten paid royalties on. Researching the problem, Jim found out that things were worse than he thought. Marvel wasn’t paying royalties on toys, either. Finally he cornered the Chief Financial Officer but he was informed that it would cost more to figure the foreign and toy royalties than they were worth so Marvel wasn’t going to bother. Jim pointed out that Marvel was contractually obligated. The CFO didn’t care.
In the following months Jim went over the CFO’s head to the president of the company. Then he went to the board of Cadence. What he did not know at the time was that Cadence Industries was already trying to sell Marvel and was doing every penny-pinching thing they could to make the bottom line look attractive to buyers. So he got nowhere. At one point Jim threatened to resign and the president of Marvel asked him to stay. Jim said a condition of him staying was that his people be paid. The president promised to do it. Then Cadence sold the company and the delays made sense. But the president refused to honor his promise.
So Jim took his appeal to the new owners, New World Pictures. He brought up the problem very early on to the new owners and they promised to look into it and fix it. Time dragged by with no results.
Here was Jim’s dilemma throughout this situation: he knew Marvel was screwing over his people but if he told them what was happening they would walk. As time went on Jim was under increasing pressure to explain why people weren’t being paid and he couldn’t tell them. An executive of a company has a contractual and fiduciary responsibility to protect the company they work for. He was a vice president of Marvel at this time. Telling the freelancers, even some whom he considered long-time friends, would absolutely harm the company. He just couldn’t do it.
As his friend and coworker, I was in Jim’s confidence at the time and I saw first hand how much the situation tore him up. I often wished I had a solution to offer, but I’m no business person. All I could do was listen and trust him to handle it. I had noticed for a while that a few of the editors and some freelancers were increasingly dissatisfied and vocal about their complaints around the office. It was worrying. A group of them confronted Jim at one point to air their grievances.
Jim couldn’t take it any more. He met with New World management and threatened them with a class-action lawsuit. We spoke about it the night before that meeting and he said it was going to be the biggest gamble of his life. He hoped his value to the company might win out, but it didn’t. He rolled the dice and lost. They fired him almost immediately.
Ironically, Marvel was forced to start paying royalties and incentives because they assumed the secret was out. But Jim didn’t retaliate. He still felt a responsibility to the company he helped make successful. He wanted Marvel to prosper, even without him, and he wouldn’t do or say anything to hurt them. He also later attempted to buy Marvel, but that’s a story for another day.
After Jim was ousted, we heard that a few editors he had disagreements with organized a Ding Dong the Witch is Dead party. Coworkers who thought they could do his job and employees who thought they knew their jobs better than Jim did spread the fiction that THEY got Jim fired because they disagreed with him. It was expedient for Marvel’s management to let them think that. It got the blame off of the real scumbags. Some of Jim’s former coworkers were so aggrieved that when staffers packed up his office they systematically broke the glass on every piece of framed art, before packing it up, and made sure to damage anything fragile just to make sure Jim would know it was intentional. That’s what a nasty few hateful people there were. It wasn’t everyone at Marvel, and it wasn’t even a majority of the staff. But a few bad guys can poison a work environment.
I’m sure people familiar with corporate business have wondered about the implausible fiction of the “Jim Shooter had disagreements with a few editors and freelancers that led to him being fired” story that was widely circulated. A few disgruntled employees are not a valid reason for a company to fire a top executive with a long history of producing for them. Jim may have been reckless in doing what he did, but he felt he had no choice.
This post won’t go viral. It was a long time ago. And as Mark Twain is supposed to have said, “A lie will travel around the whole world before the truth gets its boots on.” Jim had long ago learned the painful lesson that you can’t control what other people do; you can only control how you react to it. And he always took what he called “the high road”.
As to why Jim didn’t write this story himself on the blog, I can only speculate. I suggested it, and he said he didn’t want to. He didn’t explain why. But in 1998 he had a book deal from a major publisher and was writing a book about his history with the business side of the comics industry. I will be posting excerpts from his $uper Villains book proposal starting next week.
Gary Friedrich sued Marvel over rights to Ghost Rider. Gary lost. Marvel sued Gary for unauthorized exploitation of their trademarked Ghost Rider property. Gary lost. He is obliged to pay Marvel $17,000.
The web is a-Blaze with controversy about the above. Lots of people, including many notable comic book creators, have weighed in with their thoughts and theories.
Most of them have a flawed understanding of intellectual property law, work-made-for-hire and the circumstances of Gary’s services to Marvel way back in the 1970’s.There has been discussion, for instance, about whether or not the W4H acknowledgement on the backs of the checks Gary received for his services back then specified certain rights, or whether or not Gary crossed out certain parts, and what those things might mean.
I wrote what’s below and I can’t take any more time today….
First, Untold Tales
A few stories I promised to tell:
An Ad-venture and an “Expensive” Lesson
I lived in Pittsburgh in the early 1970’s, and sometimes I worked freelance for Pittsburgh-based Lando-Bishopric Advertising, usually on the U.S. Steel account. At various times, I served as a concept creator, copywriter, designer and illustrator. Yes, illustrator. I’m not as practiced, fast and facile as most good comic book artists, but give me lots of reference and all week to make one illo and I do okay.
Sorry. It’s taking longer than I thought to put the reference together for that post, which is about the essential natures of classic characters.
Coming soon.
Clean Up on Aisle WW
In my review of New 52 Wonder Woman #1-4, I complained about Wonder Woman head butting a centaur. Seemed to me that would hurt her as much as the centaur. Several commenters insisted that the head butt is a legitimate hand-to-hand (head-to-head?) combat tactic.
I suppose that if you slammed the hardest part of your head into the squishier, more breakable parts of someone else’s, the nose and mouth, for instance, they will be hurt worse than you so I concede the point. But, don’t you just hate it when you get those nasty tooth shards stuck in your forehead?
Sorry it’s been so long between posts. Harsh reality sometimes asserts and fun has to wait.
Now This
In an answer to a comment regarding “What Has Gone Before and a Modest Proposal” I said this:
In any other medium besides comics, the person who has and reasonably develops the original idea is the creator. Usually the writer. Ask 1,000 people who created Star Wars. George Lucas, not the army of designers, artists, even re-writers who participated. Ask 1,000 people who created Jurassic Park. Michael Crichton, not the designers and filmmakers who developed the visuals, or even David Koepp who wrote the shooting script for the film. In comics, however, even a work-for-hire artist following a design made by the writer, a description given by the writer or instructions from the editor is given co-credit as creator. Does anyone else think this is unusual?
That sparked some debate, people weighing in on who deserves creator credit and under what conditions. And that’s fine. It’s an interesting topic. However, I suspect that some people thought I was asserting that the writer should get credit as creator. Nope. I said:
Note, everyone, that I’m not offering a position, here, I’m just asking questions.
Mark Waid wrote this scene, which I showed as an example of an out-of-character use of Aunt May for the purpose of a shocker:
I had no idea that Mark had written that scene, not that it would have mattered. I’m an equal opportunity complainer. Anyone may find him or herself honked at here.
Here’s where I went wrong: I judged the scene against Aunt May’s character as it was when I was at Marvel. The Aunt May I knew of was a very old-fashioned woman, the epitome of propriety, who no more would have had sex out of wedlock than my Victorian-era Grandma, who was born in 1888. But, I’ve been told that Aunt May became a little more of a modern Golden Girl subsequently, and that the scene is not out of character for her. Okay.
