Jim McCann, Marvel’s mighty marketeer, writer of New Avengers: The Reunion and just plain all-around nice guy, is leaving his staff job with the House of Ideas to pursue writing full-time, according to an interview with ComicsBeat.
McCann, who is writing the Hawkeye/Mockingbird ongoing for the publisher’s Heroic Age status quo as well as The Return of The Dapper Men for Archaia, spoke at length about his time as both a marketer and as a writer. Here’s one highlight, from when Captain America was killed following the end of Civil War:
[T]he death of Cap, man! I had calls from press, was shuffling Joe Q and Dan Buckley around New York City from station to station until we finally had to set up a station of our own in the Hulk Conference Room at the offices and have the press pool come to us. Brubaker, Joe, Dan, and Tom Brevoort were constantly taking the press calls I was fielding. Along with DKC, our PR firm, we worked around the clock for almost a week after that news broke. I also had civilians calling me up, swearing at me for killing such a beloved icon. I almost gave them Ed Brubaker’s number, but that’s not what you can really do when you’re in my position (no matter how much I wanted to——you owe me, Bru!)
There’s also a story about Jim delivering Tom Brevoort’s Captain America shield — which once belonged to the legendary Mark Gruenwald — to the Colbert Report… only to find out that Stephen wanted to keep the shield as a permanent prop on his set. The result may surprise you! But in all seriousness, many congratulations to Jim, and may he have the best of luck in his writing career.
