Tom Brevoort’s current series of blog posts on Comics [He] Messed Up is proving to be fascinating reading, especially as one of the common threads seems to be that letting creators do what they want isn’t necessarily a good thing. But the most interesting one so far was yesterday’s, when Tom talked about the most recent, failed, attempt at an Invaders series, and the context in which it was created:

Now, this was a tumultuous time up at Marvel, a period in which decisions were being made off-the-cuff and on-the-fly an awful lot, and as often as not reversed a few weeks or months later. It was a difficult period in which to know where you stood.

In any case, I selected Chuck [Austen] to take over AVENGERS, and he pitched his initial storyline–he wanted to start with the funeral for Jack of Hearts (who had been killed in Geoff’s last issue), and then bring in a new team of over-the-top violent uberpatriot heroes to pit against the Avengers. So far so good.

However, as a launch incentive, it was decided to make AVENGERS #77 a bargain-priced issue. And because of that, the decision came down that the story in AVENGERS #77 shouldn’t pick up on Geoff’s last issue, but needed to start from square one as an entry point into the book. (This was far from the last change-of-directive that Chuck had to deal with in his short run on the series, which is why I have a lot of sympathy for him, given all of the vocal and vitriolic fan reaction he got about it online. It’s one thing to write a story that people don’t like; it’s another to have wound up with that story due to changes elsewhere.) So the story that Chuck was going to do was largely pushed back to #82, and he came up with some new stuff for #77-#81 (which itself ran into conflicts–but that’s neither here or there for this story.)

At around that same time, Joe Quesada had gone to a convention, where somebody had asked him why Marvel didn’t have a book like DC’s JSA, using the golden age characters. Joe thought about this on the plane ride home, and decided it might be a good idea for us to do a new INVADERS series. And he thought that Chuck’s storyline would be the perfect place to spin them out of AVENGERS for maximum launch potential.

Now, Chuck wasn’t all that interested in writing INVADERS, I don’t think–but he had a friend, Allan Jacobson, whom he’d worked with on KING OF THE HILL. And Allan was gung-ho about doing an INVADERS series. So the deal was that Chuck and Allan would co-write the series, and we made plans to spin the book out of a crossover set to begin in AVENGERS #500 (what would have been #85–we planned to return to the classic numbering at that point.) And Chuck’s new team of characters were transitioned to the New Invaders cast.

Then, the wind changed again. At a creator retreat, the idea for what would eventually become NEW AVENGERS was born, and a move was made to get it into play as quickly and directly as possible. As part of that operation, the crossover plan for AVENGERS #500 and beyond was scuttled, and had to be thrown out to make way for the new “Avengers Disassembled” concept.

Much more at the link. If any publisher ever wants to put out a history of Marvel Comics, I want Tom to write the tell-all on the Quesada period.

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