Smack talk is not the same as insults. The marketing department has no idea that any of that stuff is happening. Two competitors talking about the horrible things they’re going to do to each other is just good fun.

Jason – All the same, if you’re an entertainment company, and your most frequently used sales pitch is the fact that your stuff is selling, then no matter who you are, I’m going to be inclined to believe that you’re creatively bankrupt.

I wouldn’t have a problem with Tom giving DC some ribbing for the quality of some of its stories – except, you know, from a standpoint of the pot calling the kettle black – but when your best “jab” basically boils down to, “You should like us because we’re popular,” I’m going to feel like actively avoiding you instead.

Sales =/= good stories.

See also: The 1990s.

I disagree, Kirk. Sales me exactly one thing: People like our stuff; they like it so much that they’re willing to give us money for it.

If a basketball player says, “We’re gonna beat the other team by 30 points,” that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love the game. It just means he expects to win. So I don’t see any evidence of creative bankruptcy in a little good natured ribbing about who is on top.

“I can’t remember a time previous when “market share” had become such a hangup with Marvel to the point that their two highest profile, and best known editorial faces are bringing it up.”

Is that because it wasn’t there before, or because the editors weren’t writing blogs 20 years ago?

Reading all this crap from Brevoort every week makes me ill. He should move out of his mom’s basement into the real world and stop being so *itchy.

I think their talking that way about market share because they’ve already pulled ahead, they have an event that is huge and will ship on time, and it’s going to be the biggest selling thing by leaps and bounds. New Avengers has been a pretty regular number one in field of top tens owned by marvel for many months straight. That audience is dying for Secret Invasion, the payoff to conspiracies that date back to the start of this best selling book (no matter what the bendis-haters say about it). Add in the event audience that exists out there, and the thing is going to be big, with lots of high selling tie-ins and no delays in the main title, thanks to Yu. I love JG Jones, and am really excited to see him doing interiors again, but, from what I’ve heard about time table for the series, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be entirely on time, even with the one month gap that’s already been planned. The market share is already in Marvel’s favor, and has been for a bit, but I think the projections show Marvel pulling way ahead, and they are happy to brag about it. Hate all you want, but it doesn’t mean the books aren’t any good.

I used to think the extreme Marvel fans were aggressive. Didio invites Brevoort on stage and all TommyB can do is go back to his little blog to make cheap shots. Even his compliments are backhanded. “They were a bunch of RELATIVELY-NICE individuals.” Unlike the sweet natured higher-ups at Marvel, who he counts at peers, who have verbal meltdowns online or trash the competition everywhere from introductions to books, online, in magazine interviews, or at cons. The only thing worse than a sore loser is a sore winner. JoeyQ, and now his sidekick TommyB, always talks about how he wants the friendly rivalry back that Stan Lee used to have with DC. Stan Lee, whether he was sincere or not, was always a gentleman about it. A lot of the guys now just sound like bullys.

There’s a very fine line between competitive smack talk and outright douchebaggery.

“it gives me the impression of a giant bully picking on a nerd. Marvel is the Flash Thompson to DC’s Peter Parker”

If that is the case then DC really needs to get picked on, they have some of the best known characters in the world, there is no reason that DC isnt right alongside Marvel when it comes to sales. Maybe someone at DC will be annoyed enough by comments like these that they get back into the ballgame.

“Manga — the comic industry’s bottled water.”
Bottled water is one of the most stupid ‘inventions’ in modern time, it generally reflects that we are a lazy and wasteful society. It doesnt really reflect well on Manga to compare it to bottle water

They’re the editors your momma warned you about…

Marvel Comics: The Bad Boy Nerds.

Jason, why doesn’t Brevoort extol the merits of Marvel’s products–it’s hard to call them stories–after they’re published? Because he can’t defend them against thoughtful criticism. He’s certainly willing to go out and do P.R. fluff, and talk and write about good writing, in a purely abstract sense, but those virtues he lauds when he’s writing about abstractions don’t appear in the stories he nominally edits. Look at MIGHTY AVENGERS, in which the latest arc relied on the “threat” of time travel paradoxes, as if alternate timelines didn’t exist, and had the heroes going after a villain because of a “terrorist” act, when the villain hadn’t actually done anything. The YOUNG AVENGERS PRESENTS specials that have come out have had virtually no plots.

Much of what Bendis and friends write now are more like porn films than the material has ever been before, because the issues are so deficient in plot material and so much emphasis is placed on making the art attractive. If they’d submitted to Roy Thomas what they’re submitting to Brevoort, et al. now, they’d have been told to look for work elsewhere, because they didn’t know how to write stories, with beginnings, middles, and ends. The stuff sells, only because readers are so undemanding that a few good scenes with his favorite character will satisfy one, just like a few minutes being turned on by a nude woman will justify the price of a porn film.

SRS