With the flurry of NYCC announcements about to rain down upon us all, I thought we might take a look back at the tenures of current industry leaders. For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll begin with Marvel EIC Joe Quesada. What, in your estimation, is the BEST move made by Quesada since he’s been in the big chair?
For my money, I would say the aggressive proliferation of Marvel’s trade paperback program. Before Quesada got in there, the release and distribution of Marvel trades was spotty at best. Since he arrived, there has been a huge full-court press in regard to trades, hardcover, and their frequency and speed of release. This has made Marvel a significant bookstore presence beyond the direct market.
What say you? For this one, let’s focus on BEST moves. We can debate not-so-great moves among the various leaders after we run through the first cycle.
February 5th, 2009 at 7:55 am
A few years ago I would have agreed with the trades/HC thing, but since they started doing the Premiere HC books (which are basically overpriced trades), I feel like they took two steps forward and then one step back. They made progress, but then pulled it back with the introduction of the Premiere HC. They’ve also been less on the ball with getting things out in a timely manner unless it’s at the forefront of their line, and I’ve noticed that they’ve let things fall out of print that really shouldn’t (Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules, Captain America: The Truth–both of which are back in circulation, but it took some time to get then that way). They are still leaps and bounds better than DC in this area, though.
That said, I still agree with Troy that that is my favorite aspect of Quesada’s tenure, but it is quickly followed by the various levels of content that they have (all ages, pg, pg-13, mature readers).
February 5th, 2009 at 9:26 am
I agree with the emphasis on trades, especially now that I’m getting my long-awaited SPIDER-MAN 2099, but we’ve also gotta look at the contenders:
1.) Expanding the Avengers franchise to one of (if not the) most profitable franchises of the modern day. A lot of this was the work of a chess player, moving pieces and players around until everything just … clicked. Bringing in Bendis, making the New Avengers an all-star squad like the Justice League… All very brilliant moves.
2.) The Ultimate Experiment, a move that brought me (and countless others) back to comics after an almost ten year hiatus; granted, most of that line suffered through 2006 and 2007, but 2009 promises to return some semblance of unpredictability to the universe as a whole.
3.) Quesada is the spiritual successor to Stan Lee, which I know has to take a lot of work but all those interviews, hype and status quo-changing decisions (many of which took a brass set to make) are some of the biggest reasons I read Marvel. That should count as one of Joe’s masterstrokes, as well.
February 5th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Of course, my comic heart is crusted in thick layers of jade, but I agree that creating a strong collections line has been a big plus for Marvel.
Flooding that line with a thousand spin-offs and derivative titles and releasing a multitude of overlapping, slightly-different-format collections (premiere hcs, softcovers, omnibuses, ultimate editions [even for non-Ultimate titles, see New X-Men recently], etc.) is, however, not so much a good thing.
February 5th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Bringing in the CrossGen artists. Most of those artists really improved while in Florida and can put out great looking monthly books. Epting, Cheung, Guice, Pelletier and the others have made Marvel’s books look better than ever–and DC is suffering with the lack of talent and a heavy reliance on mediocre foreign talent.
February 5th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I think his work on making stories progressively making stories move forward in one cohesive universe is his best work at Marvel. Allowing the writers to move from Avengers: Disassembled to New Avengers to HoM to Civil War and NA: Illuminati to WWH and Messiah Complex to SI to Dark Reign. I know some people don’t like it saying theirs no “real” conclusion, but to me that’s more like real life. Few things ever have a “real” conclusion even if something technically ends. WWI created the rise of the Nazis which created WWII which created the Cold War which helped kick off the mess in the Middle East (along with European colonialism decades before that) etc. Nothing ever resolves, it just creates the mood for the oncoming conflict.
That’s why I love Marvel right now.
February 5th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I agree with Kent that this Premiere HC thing has been a big step backward, esp. in this economy. Books I recently wanted to try to find (keeping in mind that I only came back to comics less than 3 years ago) were suddenly taken out of print for no reason that I could see. When I asked about it at my LCS, the response was “Oh, Marvel’s going to reissue that in HC.” So it was for God Loves, Man Kills, Spider-Man Blue, and all kinds of cool books that I’d heard good things about.
I see that some the trades of Brubaker’s run on Captain America, which aren’t all that old, have been phased out of print too. I’m guessing the same thing is happening there? Likewise, my daughter was interested in the digest sized Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane books, but they’ve also been taken out of print. So we have all them EXCEPT for Volume 1 (which I’ll hopefully find somewhere for her).
Umm… OK, a positive. Well, putting Brubaker on Cap was a great move (obviously). The best thing I can say, and I mean this seriously, is that Quesada isn’t nearly as inept as Dan Didio. That’s going to be a short list, IMO, looking for the positives in Didio’s reign.
February 6th, 2009 at 11:05 am
I have to say his sales efforts through the Internet (Newsarama, cup of joe, etc). During the bankruptcy, I was still reading my core titles, but I wasn’t really paying that much attention to them, but sometime before House of M, I started reading Newsarama and getting more into the whole Marvel world. And picked up more books!
August 24th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
From this fans perspective, it’s hard to like Joe Quesada. After he managed the make the ‘NEW” Avengers title a big hit he allowed things that were sometimes strange and certainly below Marvel’s previous standard of Quality of previous times. The conclusion of House of M doesn’t make any sense at all. How can there still be Mutants if there’s not supposed to be ‘No More Mutants’. How do you keep doing stories where the remaining X-folk keep running into other Mutants, it doesn’t make any sense. I give credit for the X-writers for putting up with that one. New Avengers is just 7 issues and the story stops with little conclusion to go with it. Basically, it’s the worst thing he has done is ruin his most popular character. I mean, he completely destroyed Spider-man. They promised readers an resurrection, an unmasking, a new costume, a new job, and a he flies in one issue. Amazing is the single worst series of a multi-hundred issue title I have ever read. Peter Parker was reduced to a pathtic idiot, a amoral sap who doesn’t deserve our compassion nor our notice in a series wher the EIC lied to people about what was going to be in the book. Anyone of us could come up with a better unmasking story and anyone us would probably want a story made out of it, not an excuse to drag on the series until the ‘hero’ gives up and he’s not married anymore. It’s insulting. Joe Quesada is insulting.