Category: 03 Marvel Comics

Back in 1981 I was writing the Avengers. Hank Pym aka Yellowjacket was married to Janet Van Dyne aka The Wasp and things had not been going well for him for a long time.Before I embarked on the storyline that led to the end of Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne’s marriage, I reread every single appearance of both characters.  His history was largely a litany of failure, always changing guises and switching back and forth from research to hero-ing because he wasn’t succeeding at either.  He was never the Avenger who saved the day at the end and usually the first knocked out or captured.  His most notable “achievement” in the lab was creating Ultron.  Meanwhile, his rich, beautiful wife succeeded in everything she tried.  She was also always flitting around his shoulders, flirting, saying things to prop up his ego.As I was developing the storyline, I discussed the potential pathology of their relationship with a psychologist who happened to be sitting next to me on a five-hour flight.  The story made sense, he thought.  I went ahead with it.  During the time the story was running, I got a great deal of hate mail.  It worried me enough to ask Stan what he thought.  He said he got the same kind of mail in the ‘60’s regarding Peter Parker’s various romantic travails.  He asked me how Avengers sales were doing.  They were in fact, increasing by 10,000 copies per issue.  Stan said that people obviously cared passionately about what was happening to Hank and Janet, as if they were real people.  That’s the key.  And he said, “Don’t worry about the mail.”

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When I showed up at Marvel in January 1976, it was a mess. It was chaos on every level. I showed up at 10:00 AM to be interviewed by Marv Wolfman (as per his request) for an associate editor job, and Marv strolls in at around 11:30. Then he says, “Oh, I forgot; I’ve got to go to lunch now; I’ll be back at 1:30,” and off he goes. I shrugged and went to a coffee shop with the assistants. Meanwhile, the minute I walked in the door–I haven’t got the job, I’m just there to be interviewed–there’s this Bullpen full of people going, “Hey, the new boss is here!” They run over and start handing me stuff to do! I killed time waiting by proofreading a Captain Marvel for them. Once Marv and I finally got together, I got the job. I went home, packed and three days later returned to New York, once again with no idea where I was going to stay that night. So it was back to the “Y.” Sigh.

There was chaos, and everything was late. It was very disorganized, and in fairly short order I’d been to Marvel three times, and had seen three different Editors-In-Chief: Roy, Len, and Marv. As editor in chief, Marv presided over all of us–but the things that seemed to occupy most of his time were arguing and mollifying. That seemed to be the job. On a typical day he might be arguing with an artist who’d “left the pages in a taxi cab” for the third time, mollifying a colorist whose job had been badly separated, arguing with the circulation department about falling sales figures and mollifying the accounting department’s chagrin over a proposed fifty-cent raise for a letterer. 

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The winter of 1975-76 were grim times for comics, for Marvel and especially for comics creators. Sales were falling industrywide, and even Marvel’s were weakening. The major companies all had been forced into cutbacks of their lines, layoffs and belt-tightening. Pay for creative people was abysmal, benefits were few and morale was poor. Marv and Len spoke frequently about getting out of comics and into animation or TV writing. Everybody talked about the “impending death” of the comics industry except me, Roger Stern and a few others. We were regarded as crazy or blind.

Most frightening was the great and growing hostility the creative people felt toward the companies. Many had entered the business as starry-eyed fans. First they were stunned by the rotten conditions. Then their disappointment turned to anger.

Shortly after I arrived, Stan returned. His attention had been on other aspects of Marvel’s business, but now he decided to turn his full attention back to the comics. During my tenure as Archie Goodwin’s associate editor, Stan had got to know me pretty well and, I think, had a good bit of faith in me. Since I was the one who directly oversaw the plots, scripts and art, Stan had come straight to me with his comments about the books. We began meeting once or twice a week to go over the proofs. Stan would critique each issue line by line, panel by panel, just the way Mort used to critique my work–but less brutally. Through these discussions I got the best how-to-create-comics course imaginable. I was amazed at how similar Mort’s and Stan’s theories were about the fundamentals of writing. Often Stan would explain some point of storytelling in the very same words Mort had used. They differed not at all on the principles of the craft.

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