Interview with JMS and JQ on Spidey in Wizard

[roach]

here are a few gems from those two idiots:
Wizard: Lets start with the new costume... was it a success?
JQ:When we announced the new costume, the pre-orders on the issues it appeared in whent up by a third to twp-thirds. Litterally overnight. Fan reaction is really tough to judge. The only way you can really tell at the end of the day is by the sales of the book.

is JQ really that stupid that he thinks it was a good fan reaction that increased sales? no it was collectors and slimey resellers driving those pre-order sales... JQ is smart enough to know that, he just doesnt care... whatever happened to telling the best story possible and it selling like crazy? isnt that what claremont did to make the x-men the success they became? ugh... i can feel the piss in my hair right now...

when the EIC is more driven by sales than story all is lost

 

[Darthphere]

When youre EIC your main job is to make sure youre telling good stories and that continuity is tight. Dan Buckely is the guy who needs to be worrying about selling the books.

 

[Doc Destruction]

OMFG exactly, Darth.

Marvel needs a new EIC and some hardcore bastard editors to whip them into shape.

"So then, Spidey gets these stingers and...."

*WHAP*

"NO. NO. Bad JMS. NO."

 

[Darthphere]

OMFG exactly, Darth.

Marvel needs a new EIC and some hardcore bastard editors to whip them into shape.

"So then, Spidey gets these stingers and...."

*WHAP*

"NO. NO. Bad JMS. NO."

Heres the thing. Joey Q is worried more about sales than quality stories. Thats not his job. His job is to tell good stories that people will want to read. Thats where Dan Buckley comes in with his advertising dollars and selles the bokks to the fans. If fans dont buy the book, its not anyones fault, but the people who buy the book got a good quality story for their $2.99 or $4.25 in Canda.

Let me put a comic book spin on it. J.Jonah Jameson is responsible for selling papers. Robbie Robertson is responsible for having well wirtten articles to go along with the extravagant headlines J to the 3rd power puts on his paper.

 

[gildea]

Heres the thing. Joey Q is worried more about sales than quality stories. Thats not his job. His job is to tell good stories that people will want to read. Thats where Dan Buckley comes in with his advertising dollars and selles the bokks to the fans. If fans dont buy the book, its not anyones fault, but the people who buy the book got a good quality story for their $2.99 or $4.25 in Canda.

Let me put a comic book spin on it. J.Jonah Jameson is responsible for selling papers. Robbie Robertson is responsible for having well wirtten articles to go along with the extravagant headlines J to the 3rd power puts on his paper.

I think joes argument is though that if fans are buying it then they are enjoying it, hence the book is of sufficient quality. Which is why he feels justified in looking at sales figures.

How else is he supposed to know if it is a quality book other than the sales figures at the end of the day? Sure his own opinion will have significant input but it would be rather arrogant not to factor in those who buy the books!


OF COURSE thats not to say COMMON SENSE shouldn't come into it, when someone comes up and suggests gwen and norman doing the nasty or spidey having stingers joe q should activate the explosive charge in the writers head.

 

[Darthphere]

I think joes argument is though that if fans are buying it then they are enjoying it hence the book is of sufficient quality.

How else does he know if its a quality book other than the sales figures?

Its a flawed argument. Sales dont equal quality. Its the same argument used in movies. There are several factors of why someone keeps buying a book they find mediocre.

1.Completists.-They need every issue of the comic, collector mentality.
2.Importance- A book like New Avengers has become marvel's tent pole book, which means all big events go through this book. i.e. House of M, Civil War, and now the Collective arc.
3.Loyalty-Either to the book or creators.
4.They like it- Its a mixed bag some people think its bad, while others think its a great book. its all subjective.

While its logical for Joey Q to say that if youre buying the book you must like it, its a somewhat flawed argument. A book like She-Hulk who a large marjority seem to love (whens the last time you heard anything bad about this book?) doesnt get high sales numbers. Why? It could be a plethora of reasons but for Joey Q to say somehting to the like that it doesnt sell as much as new Avengers, therefore it must be a bad book if wrong.

 

[gildea]

Its a flawed argument. Sales dont equal quality. Its the same argument used in movies. There are several factors of why someone keeps buying a book they find mediocre.

1.Completists.-They need every issue of the comic, collector mentality.
2.Importance- A book like New Avengers has become marvel's tent pole book, which means all big events go through this book. i.e. House of M, Civil War, and now the Collective arc.
3.Loyalty-Either to the book or creators.
4.They like it- Its a mixed bag some people think its bad, while others think its a great book. its all subjective.

While its logical for Joey Q to say that if youre buying the book you must like it, its a somewhat flawed argument. A book like She-Hulk who a large marjority seem to love (whens the last time you heard anything bad about this book?) doesnt get high sales numbers. Why? It could be a plethora of reasons but for Joey Q to say somehting to the like that it doesnt sell as much as new Avengers, therefore it must be a bad book if wrong.

I agree it is a flawed argument for all the reasons you said, I guess my point is though what else is there that doesn't have comparable or even worse flaws when judging the opinion of the fan base?

Joe needs something to judge the opinions of the fanbase what else should he use if not sales (open question!!)????

 

[Harlekin]

Maybe Dan Buckley and Joey Q should just switch jobs. If there's one thing that Joey Q is capable of, it's being a hype machine. He's got the skills to make the cash, at least give him the position where that is what he's supposed to do.

 

[Darthphere]

There really isnt anything he can use to base fan opinion on. Its impossible to read the minds of every comic book fan. Sales are really the only tool he has, but even he must realize that not every person buying the book is exactly happy with it. I also realize that you cant please everyone. The thing is, its not exactly what im trying to argue. He shoudnt make creative decisions based on whether or not it will sell or not.

 

[gildea]

He shoudnt make creative decisions based on whether or not it will sell or not.

What should he base them on?

I imagine your answer will be based on some notion of quality of story (which is what i would say) the problem is in who decides what is a quality story? I would argue, flawed as it may be, its the fans and the best indicator (with all its flaws) is sales.

Naturally there has to be a common sense constraint, for example spidey turning into a crazed murderer would sell by the barrel load but would ruin the character

 

[Darthphere]

What should he base them on?

I imagine your answer will be based on some notion of quality of story (which is what i would say) the problem is in who decides what is a quality story? I would argue, flawed as it may be, its the fans and the best indicator (with all its flaws) is sales.

Naturally there has to be a common sense constraint, for example spidey turning into a crazed murderer would sell by the barrel load but would ruin the character

Anything other than sales. The new Spider-Man costume is a stunt. He knew it would sell and therefore allowed it to go through. Now I ask, has it provided any interesting or good stories to the Spider-Man mythos? No, not really, other than becoming Tony Stark's *****, it really hasnt done anything but generate more sales. Those are the type of decisions he needs to make like tell JMS, hey these extra stingers are stupid. Not "hey these extra stingers are controversial thereofre will sell a lot of books, lets do it!"

 

[Doc Destruction]

DC seems to be doing pretty well with quality as their main goal...why can't Marvel?

 

[Darthphere]

DC seems to be doing pretty well with quality as their main goal...why can't Marvel?

At the end of the day Dan Didio isnt much different than Joey Q, but he has people to whip him into shape.

 

[gildea]

DC seems to be doing pretty well with quality as their main goal...why can't Marvel?

In your opinion, i can find you plenty of people that disagree (For example the fourth rail gave ic#7 4/10, the dc boards have allegedly been volatile and so on).

But the question i put to you HOW does dc judge what is 'quality'?

And my argument is quality is marvels goal and their basis of that is rightly or wrongly sales.

 

[Doc Destruction]

By embracing continuity and writing good characterization, I would think.

They aren't PERFECT at it, but they are far better at it than Marvel. Marvel used to be KINGS of this.

 

[BrianWilly]

Britney Spears sells more -- much more -- than Alicia Keys, but anyone with any semblance of intelligence knows who is more talented.

When you judge quality by way of sales, already you are going about it the wrong way; more than a hundred years of capitalism and retail teaches us that more often than not the two are not complementary. Quality is determined by quality alone and always has been. Needing sales of a book to tell you what is quality is pretty much the past of least resistance here, needing no individual effort and no individual ideas. How can this possibly be analogous to creativity of all things when it is a complete dearth of creativity, much less creative decisions?

As for what exactly he should base his creative decisions on, well, why not base them on what he thinks are good stories? Not just shocking or temporary sales boosters, but stories that he actually likes? Did Tolkien need monthly sales charts to tell him what he should write? Did Sondheim? I mean, these days you might be laughed out of nearly any entertainment medium if you said "I let sales tell me what I want to do." That's not the attitude of a creator, that's the attitude of the stereotypical money-hungry businessman; at the very least your artistic integrity would be derided.

I mean the idea that anyone should need something to tell them what quality is is just backwards. A good creator should know what quality storytelling is, independent of sales or marketing. Of course you shouldn't just ignore outside influences like sales and reader responses, but those things shouldn't be the basis of your creativity and quality because they are largely unrelated to them.

When you read any interview from the DC staff (not just necessarily Didio) versus ones from Quesada, the former are always talking about staying true to the characters and making good stories from those characters and taking risks and reinventing things, while the latter just can't help but go on tangents about sales and profits and marketability. It's really not too hard to see what DC uses to judge quality versus what Marvel uses to judge quality.

 

[gildea]

By embracing continuity and writing good characterization, I would think.

They aren't PERFECT at it, but they are far better at it than Marvel. Marvel used to be KINGS of this.

Again those are completely subjective matters and offer no discrete proof. But we will go with it DC have embraced continuity ok according to who? They write good characterisations ok according to who? WHO tells them this is good continiuity, this is good characterisations who who who who??

 

[Darthphere]

Again those are completely subjective matters and offer no discrete proof. But we will go with it DC have embraced continuity ok according to who? They write good characterisations ok according to who? WHO tells them this is good continiuity, this is good characterisations who who who who??

Well theyre running the company, one would hope that they would have some idea what their characters are.

 

[Vic Von Doom]

here are a few gems from those two idiots:
Wizard: Lets start with the new costume... was it a success?
JQ:When we announced the new costume, the pre-orders on the issues it appeared in whent up by a third to twp-thirds. Litterally overnight. Fan reaction is really tough to judge. The only way you can really tell at the end of the day is by the sales of the book.

ugh... i can feel the piss in my hair right now...

I smell a new nickname:

Joe "Golden Showers" Quesada

Joe "R. Kelly" Quesada

What do you think?

I was a little pissed myself reading that article. Sales are the only way you can really tell? *******! Uncanny X-Men consistently sold in the Top 10 even during Chuck Austen's crappy run. Joey Q defended him on the basis of sales, but clearly even Marvel knows he was crap because when was the last time you saw him write a Marvel book? And there was a time when he was writing half the major books at Marvel.

Plus, we all know that there are Marvel Zombies who are reading that book no matter what, same with Amazing (though no longer me, I dropped it) . If you want to know what people are thinking, it's pretty easy to find out. We comic fans are harsh with our criticisms, it's true...but when we find something we like, our praises are gushing.

Examples: House of M sales = great
House of M fan reception = not so much

Civil War sales = great
Civil War fan reception = the same
See the difference? Sales are good because people are going to buy the event comics, tis true. But I theorize that people also buy comics in part to support the industry. But if you want to drive away the readers...please, more books like House of M and The Other. Why don't you reveal that Richard Parker raped Aunt May, making her his real mother? People would buy it! Actually...I shouldn't even have written that. He'll do it.

 

[gildea]

Well theyre running the company, one would hope that they would have some idea what their characters are.

yay.

thats all i was wanting, are you saying those in charge should make the decisions regarding quality themselves, ignoring fans opinions?


I'm only wanting to know how we think companies decide what quality is and naturally it has to be quantifiable (ie saying good characterisation and continuity is incredibly wooly and again completely indiscrete).

 

[Darthphere]

yay.

thats all i was wanting, are you saying those in charge should make the decisions regarding quality themselves, ignoring fans opinions?


I'm only wanting to know how we think companies decide what quality is and naturally it has to be quantifiable (ie saying good characterisation and continuity is incredibly wooly and again completely indiscrete).

Well you couldve just said it instead of letting us fish for the response.


Either way, its up to them to decide whats best for the characters. We put our faith that they know their characters well enough to write them correctly, its our jobs as fans to answer back financially for or against a story.

 

[Horrorfan]

Britney Spears sells more -- much more -- than Alicia Keys, but anyone with any semblance of intelligence knows who is more talented.

When you judge quality by way of sales, already you are going about it the wrong way.

But here's the thing with capitalisim....if you don't like what your reading/watching/listening to, don't spend more cash on it. Period. If as many people as some here claim hated the comic, why not drop it? If they hate it and don't drop it, then who are they to ***** when they are just helping the attitudes of 'hey this is selling so we must be doing good' over at Joey Q's office?

For example, I brought New Avengers, didn't like it, dropped it. In WWE, I used to watch it, now it sucks, so I don't. It's THAT easy. That's how you get through to companies. The dollar is mightier than the fanboy. Is that the way it should be? No. But it's the way it is.

It's not even like a movie box office....when you pay to see a movie, you don't know if it's good or not. You notice that a lot of movies that suck have a great opening weekend, but then take a SHARP decline. Comics, you don't have the whole 'oh they dazzled me with marketing' stuff, even with things like House of M. You read an issue or two, that should be more than enough to let you know if it's going in a direction you like or not, so you should decide to drop it or continue reading. And if people still pick it up, month after month...well I can't blame him for thinking they are doing well if they are retaining a strong core readership. I agree with what your saying to an extent about the marvel zombies and die hard fans of the title, but that would probably account to a not significant amount of total sales.

 

[SpideyInATree]

I'm glad that this subject is on the Marvel forums now.

While many posters on this site, and many other comic message boards, really dislike JMS and Quesada...I don't.

While Quesada comes off like a jerk who doesn't really have much knowledge in the Marvel comics he's overseeing, I have nothing against the man. He's done a lot of good for the company as well as bad. Nobody is perfect. But, yeah, Quesada shouldn't do interviews anymore, haha. He always digs himself further into a hole with many fans. Though, in his defense, it's hard to be in his position and the people on this site criticizing him daily probably couldn't even tie his shoes when it came to the job.

JMS, who gets called a talentless hack on this board daily, is a fantastic writer. Talentless? Far from it. Should he be writing iconic comic book characters with almost 50 years of rich history? No. His weakness, as a writer, seems to be writing a story confined within only continuity.

The beginning of his Amazing Spidey run was awesome, at least to my standards. The Book of Ezekiel was a perfect finish to the story arc. But then he had to dip his hand into continuity and, pretty much, scar his run for life. And its been quite the uphill battle for JMS, when it comes to the fans anyway.

Should the two men who are responsible for Sins Past be writing a Spider-Man mini series that will take Spider-man back to the Stan Lee-esque Spidey? In my opinion, no way in hell should they be doing this.

I'm going to touch on what's been talked about earlier in the thread. Now, you can't tell me these two guys don't read message boards or have heard fan reactions to their stories. Especially Sins Past and The Other. Now, knowing full well that many long time Spider-Man fans HATE JMS and HATE Joe Quesada...why do a freakin' miniseries together? Is that supposed to be some kind of little "FU" to fans or something?

While, personally, I don't care that they are doing the miniseries and I'll probably be getting it...I can understand what other fans feel like and how this interview can further anger readers. I can understand being angry at them...but constantly calling these guys names and saying how they're horrible isn't really going to help matters further. If you want people to take you seriously and listen to you...are they going to listen to a person who's first sentence is "Joe Quesada is a *****e bag"? No they're not.

Everyone has a right to express themselves, of course. That's why these message boards are so popular. And while your voice may be getting heard, eventually the voice will become tiresome.

 

[Darthphere]

I'm glad that this subject is on the Marvel forums now.

While many posters on this site, and many other comic message boards, really dislike JMS and Quesada...I don't.

While Quesada comes off like a jerk who doesn't really have much knowledge in the Marvel comics he's overseeing, I have nothing against the man. He's done a lot of good for the company as well as bad. Nobody is perfect. But, yeah, Quesada shouldn't do interviews anymore, haha. He always digs himself further into a hole with many fans. Though, in his defense, it's hard to be in his position and the people on this site criticizing him daily probably couldn't even tie his shoes when it came to the job.

JMS, who gets called a talentless hack on this board daily, is a fantastic writer. Talentless? Far from it. Should he be writing iconic comic book characters with almost 50 years of rich history? No. His weakness, as a writer, seems to be writing a story confined within only continuity.

The beginning of his Amazing Spidey run was awesome, at least to my standards. The Book of Ezekiel was a perfect finish to the story arc. But then he had to dip his hand into continuity and, pretty much, scar his run for life. And its been quite the uphill battle for JMS, when it comes to the fans anyway.

Should the two men who are responsible for Sins Past be writing a Spider-Man mini series that will take Spider-man back to the Stan Lee-esque Spidey? In my opinion, no way in hell should they be doing this.

I'm going to touch on what's been talked about earlier in the thread. Now, you can't tell me these two guys don't read message boards or have heard fan reactions to their stories. Especially Sins Past and The Other. Now, knowing full well that many long time Spider-Man fans HATE JMS and HATE Joe Quesada...why do a freakin' miniseries together? Is that supposed to be some kind of little "FU" to fans or something?

While, personally, I don't care that they are doing the miniseries and I'll probably be getting it...I can understand what other fans feel like and how this interview can further anger readers. I can understand being angry at them...but constantly calling these guys names and saying how they're horrible isn't really going to help matters further. If you want people to take you seriously and listen to you...are they going to listen to a person who's first sentence is "Joe Quesada is a *****e bag"? No they're not.

Everyone has a right to express themselves, of course. That's why these message boards are so popular. And while your voice may be getting heard, eventually the voice will become tiresome.

I agree. Beautiful post. Thats why ive been saying if you really want to support a book or show how much you hate a book, speak with your wallet. Stop buying the books you hate and keep buying the books you love. As gildea and me have been discussing, the sales numbers are pretty much the only indicator of fan approval. Sadly its true. I dont understand how someone can hate JMS on SPider-Man so much and still buy ASM.

 

[SpideyInATree]

I disagree with you about the sales being the only indicator.

How many comic book message boards are out there? A lot these days.

You can get instant fan reaction by going onto ANY of these message boards. Unlike the days of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko where they had to await letters through snail mail.

The orders on the book went up when the new suit was announced. Ok. But does that mean the fans are loving it and enjoying it?

Can I understand that Joe Quesada and JMS don't have time to browse message boards? Yes. But don't they have interns and other people who do things at Marvel?

Maybe before the Internet and the advent of message boards I could see an Editor in Chief say, "The only indicator I have are the sales". But this day and age you've pretty much got immediate reaction to the stories, artwork, and editorial decisions.