EDMONTON COMIC EXPO (Part One):
(Lol this was going to be a short-ish thing, but then it turned into one of these monster-essays, so I'll have to split it up in parts)
Just got back from another one of these, and it was pretty solid. It's really the same show every year, even with the same booths, so nothing too exciting goes down
.
* Finally got to talk to Larry Hama for a sec, since he was drawing at the table instead of like six feet from it, but he's not a very chatty guy. I asked him what the most annoying character they insisted he put in
G.I. Joe was, and he was just like "I don't really think about that kind of stuff". When I brought up some short-lived guys, like Sgt. Slaughter, he was all "there's not really much you can do with Sgt. Slaughter, though" and added that he was glad they at least dropped the Iraqi thing (his WWF angle where he became a Saddam sympathizer at mega-heel World Champion).
His booth has a funny, sarcastic bit of an "FAQ", featuring snarky responses to those questions he always gets ("Why is your old stuff better?" "It's not"), and demanding that people check to see if he knows a character before they write down a name on the "To-Draw List".
Despite it being the 35th anniversary of the modern
G.I. Joe franchise (ie. the '80s one), there weren't really any toys around. Kind of odd.
* Bob Budiansky was there, and I was thinking "I don't know who that is" but it turns out he was the main editor behind the MARVEL CARDS, so I was suddenly way into meeting that dude. When I told him that's what got me INTO comics (I didn't bring up this thread, but it is 100% responsible for this, too), he said he gets told that alot. He says the "Power Ratings" idea came from Marvel Bio-Books that I'd never read. And apparently the Series III "Starfield" designs link up in a 10x10 panel (that always bugged me- cards linked up side-by-side, but I couldn't figure out how to match the bottoms until adulthood, and they don't fit like that in a binder!). He brought up the
Aunt May card that listed stats like "Pies Baked"- the Cards were based off of baseball cards at the time (hence all the stats), but all of the Wins & Losses were just made up garbage (god, I always wondered that). And apparengtly the cards were a HUGE hit, and did good business until the market fell out.
* Jim Steranko of all people was there, and he is HILARIOUSLY short in person. Like, I'm 5'9" and I could rest my chin comfortably on the top of his head. He's super-tanned, has snow-white hair, big fake teeth and sunglasses on indoors- it's a bit of a funny picture. Total comic book legend, of course. His booth was by far the biggest of any comic guy.
* Fabian Nicieza was there, and had a huge line- bigger than any comics pro. Despite him charing ten bucks for each autograph (!). His booth says "Creator of Deadpool", and all of his stuff was Wade-related, explaining the line. I didn't wait in it, but I went to his panel, which was very fun- he tells stories about the early pranks at Marvel- when a young Kurt Busiek (apparently pronounced "BYOO-sick", so I've been mispronouncing THAT my whole life- oddly, I got "Nih-see-YAY-zah" correct) was making a pitch all nervous-like, the office pranked him by waiting thirty seconds (just enough time to get into the groove of a pitch) before sending in a new person with important business ("OH sorry, Kurt, but I just need this signed off on right now!" over and over again, until he was flustered to the point of fury. They confessed it the next day and bought his pitch for some Iron Man thing
. Fabian also tells of how his hair-loss resulted in a gag where the office were cutting off pieces of their own hair and leaving it around him so he'd think he was losing it constantly.
He gave a bit of his history- majoring in Communications and working in various offices for years (one hiring guy told him that the industry was incestuous and contantly moving- "if you're still at this job in six months, either you suck or *I* suck"), before finally landing at Marvel- he always looked for the higher paychecks in office work. The office was pretty awful at first, with every department hating every other department, but he and some other newbies made friends and started going out drinking, which helped the office meld a little better once others got involved. "And when Jim Shooter was removed as Editor-In-Chief, it let out a lot of the air out of the balloon" of office angst that was going around.
He worked his ass off so hard in those early years, because in marketing and advertising there was a ton to do (he Edited the "Star Comics" line for a while, and had to constantly deal with Mattel altering their own licensing department, so he had to fly to California three times a year to train a whole new crew on how comics worked- "No, we can't just use your same six images of Barbie in every comic- I have five or six panels
per page"). He admits that it was good for his career, but he worked SO MUCH (four hours of sleep a night) that he couldn't ever stop and enjoy it, so it just blew by.
The New Warriors: He's often quoted as saying the first years of that book were the thing he's most proud of in his career- he explained that it might not be the most well-WRITTEN exactly (he's his own toughest critic), but it's what the book MEANT to him. It was his first regular series, and there were ZERO expectations at the office for that book to succeed- that it started doing well within its first year was a huge pride moment for him, and it basically made his career- he got the X-Books based off of that.
When asked "which character did you feel you didn't get the most out of", he explained that he cycled them around enough to get the most out of them, but admitted that Namorita in the first couple years got NOTHING, largely because "John Byrne was using her on
Namor" and there was "tension" there. The smirk on his face let everyone know pretty much immediately just how that probably went down, especially when the Communications Major brought up "Editorial Intervention", and how "even in my early thirties, I knew how the industry worked, how PEOPLE worked, and how people like THAT worked". Hence, a couple years of Namorita doing nothing, before he finally got his teeth into it and started messing with her.
He feels that Firestar had the LEAST to do, but only because of her passive personality not making her proactive. Then he says "She was the most powerful member of the team, so of course Marvel de-powered her after I left, because they're afraid of powerful female characters".
Regarding the
Deadpool and Cable book, he confesses that he was out of work when he got that assignment, and hung up the phone going "how in the HELL am I going to get THAT to work?" Cable fans hated Deadpool, Deadpool fans hated Cable, and the two characters hated
each other. It took him a year on the book to figure it out, but he ultimately realized that the two were very desperately lonely people, and kind of needed each other.
He brings up how Editorial is different now- you can't screw around like they did in their day. He brings up how comics suck now, and the reason why is because "Each editor only had about five or six books in my day, and THAT was a lot- nowadays each editor probably has fifteen to eighteen books PER MONTH", so there's no quality control and too much is being released. And like many industry pros I've heard speak, he mentions how button-down and businesslike things are there compared to the "fun days" of office pranks and goofiness (he mentions everyone in the office wearing cut-outs of a local newscaster's face as masks in some black & white film, leading to 6'8" Jim Shooter walking in wearing the same).
He actually brought up something I've heard John Byrne mention- about how you don't need to create new characters, because as Gruenwald told him, "The sandbox is so huge right now, why add to it? Why not just take something that's not working, and make it better?"
Fabian also brought up the Image X-Odus, when someone asked him about it. He pointed out that the office understood their reasoning, and actually wanted them to have success. BUT... the X-artists deliberately bailed on the company at the worst possible time, choosing to draw out their departure right before the next big event, in a clear attempt to hurt Marvel and help themselves, leaving the new creative teams to work on
The X-Cutioner's Song alone.
Apparently Wolverine losing the Adamantium was Peter David's idea at the "writer's retreat". But he said it as more of a frustrated "Why the @#$! doesn't Magneto just TEAR HIS SKELETON OUT!? Instead of tossing him across the room like an idiot! That's what I'D do!", so he was surprised when the writers went with it. Larry Hama was apparently pissed, because it messed up his plans for
Wolverine. But in the long run, it worked out, because they got years worth of storylines out of it.