I bet you’re wondering if there’s some kind of Marvel Editor School or something, just to get the new hires to the House of Ideas up to speed. Sadly, the answer is no. But luckily, Tom Brevoort shares some of the lessons he’s learned from his time there, nonetheless:
STAN DOESN’T LIKE GREEN COVERS. This was one of those notions that became fact over time, propagated mainly by longtime Marvel cover colorist George Roussos. Apparently, at some point in the past, George had done up a color scheme for a cover with a green background, and Stan hadn’t liked it. And based on whatever conversation he and Stan had over it, George walked away with the unshakable belief that Stan had made using a green background verboten. In fact, what Stan wanted was a cover color scheme that worked for that particular cover—but all the way through to the middle of the ’90s it was always a fight to use green on a cover.
The others are equally unusual. Go check them out.
October 10th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
1) REED DOESN’T STRETCH HIS NECK. This one’s been largely abandoned over the last ten years, but it was a guiding principle for Mister Fantastic for decades….would look too undignified.
Ummm, rule number one: broken right in Fantastic Four #19 by Stan and Jack.
December 27th, 2010 at 2:04 am
I don’t know how I ended up opening this page, I was aiming for something thats totally different! Anyways, you’ve got some nice web site there. I cant believe that I read the whole thing. You are doing a great job.