Jeph Loeb Appointed Marvel's Head of Television

[kguillou]

From Comicbookresources:

Marvel Entertainment, LLC announced today that it has appointed Jeph Loeb as Executive Vice President, Head of Television, a newly created division of Marvel Entertainment. In this new role, Mr. Loeb will work alongside Dan Buckley, Publisher & President of the Print, Animation & Digital Divisions, Marvel Worldwide, Inc., to translate Marvel’s popular characters and stories to the television medium, in both live-action and animation formats. In addition to these responsibilities, Mr. Loeb will oversee the development and distribution of live-action, animated and direct-to-DVD series. Mr. Loeb was previously a Marvel-exclusive Eisner-Award-winning comic book writer and an Emmy-nominated writer for his work on NBC’s Heroes. The announcement was made today by Alan Fine, Executive Vice President, Office of the President and Chairman of Marvel Studios’ Creative Committee, and by Mr. Buckley, to whom Mr. Loeb will report.
Mr. Fine stated, “It’s with tremendous pride that I announce the creation of our Marvel Television division and the appointment of Jeph Loeb as Executive Vice President. His work in the comic book field is in a class of its own, showing his passion and talent for bringing Marvel’s finest characters to life in an innovative manner. Jeph’s work on multiple award-winning television series and popular films has shown fans worldwide his ability to deliver thrilling entertainment in a number of media. With Jeph as our EVP, fans will experience the highest quality and most exciting television projects featuring their favorite Marvel characters.”
“I couldn’t be happier to accept this new position at Marvel Entertainment, working with both Dan and Alan to deliver exciting, cutting edge television projects,” said Mr. Loeb. “Marvel continues to break new ground in storytelling in both their comic book and film ventures, so, along with everyone here, I’m excited to bring the same brand of excitement into homes across the globe.”
Mr. Loeb has written acclaimed stories featuring every major super hero in comics, including Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Daredevil, Spider-Man, the X-Men and more. Multiple-time winner of the prestigious Eisner Award for his writing, Mr. Loeb quickly established himself as one of the most sought after writers in the comic industry. Mr. Loeb also served as writer/producer on television series Smallville and Lost; writer/co-executive producer on Heroes; and writer of hit films Commando and Teen Wolf.

I guess since Leob did such a crackerjack job of running Heroes into the ground, they decided he'd be the best candidate to run all of marvel's tv properties.

 

[KangConquers]

Not to mention his amazingly bad runs on ultimates and Hulk.

 

[Themanofbat]

Yeah... he's had some bad "runs" since his son's death, but hopefully he can bounce back, and maybe this is the the time and opportunity.

 

[Drz]

I don't mind Loeb being in charge of the DTV. DTV movies from both Marvel and DC are all about superhero action flicks, and hey what does Loeb do best? Action Action Action! He's the guy who wrote story/scipt for Commando after all lol. Tho i wouldn't want him to be alone in this, since yeah this also counts on Live action television and cartoons.

 

[Judge Holden]

Loeb should just retire from all things comics before he discredits his own name even further.

Action is good... but not when it means nothing and has no story or character to back it up.

 

[Darth Rockwell]

I just started picking the trades of Hulk up and I thought they were not to bad. So far Rulk has been entertaining. It should be interesting to see what he does with Marvel and tv.

 

[GyLocke]

Loeb is a great negotiator. He is obviously good with people in a industry, gets placed on high profile projects with great artists and gets a lot of hype and advertising, without ever doing anything really great (and doing some fairly terrible stuff).
He is not the best creative mind Marvel has, but is obviously great at navigatin through suits.

Quesada is not the best artist, but he's a pretty mean CEO - made some pretty genius business decisions over the years from Ultimate Marvel to Marvel Films.

This is going to be fine. Maybe he'll have less time to write from all the important business and coke/****es meetings.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Eh, if he can put out better stuff than Wolverine and the X-Men, I'm all for it. Marvel's TV projects have consisted of The Spectacular Spider-Man, which was good, and a bunch of other crap that was not for the past few years.

 

[kguillou]

I agree, Marvel's animation projects havent been too great and their one exceptional cartoon, Spectacular Spiderman was canned for some ungodly reason. If they can give us a real X-men cartoon, a good Avengers one, and a Fantastic 4 toon that isn't some anime reject, then marvel can compete with DC's animation slates.

 

[Raiden]

Marvel's TV division has always play catch-up to DC, and I don't think appointing Jeph Loeb will change that. Marvel should try to figure out why their animation & TV series aren't doing so well, and now that they are part of the Disney/Pixar/ABC conglomerate, I think they can find the people who can fix their problems. But I don't think Loeb is the answer to their problems.

 

[Drz]

Spectacular Spider-Man was canceled because noone watched it. I think it's time competetion was Transformers: The Animated serie. Both shows we're awesome, yet sadly canceled too early. : (

 

[runawayboulder]

SSM's undoing was it was dropped from WB and took forever to get S2 aired in Dis XD. Season 2 was on Youtube for a year and a half before Disney put it on. By then no one was watching it. Other than the 90's X-Men cartoon it was the best animated comic based show I've ever seen.

 

[kguillou]

The 90's X-men show was awesome. The 90's Spiderman show was great too but was hampered by crappy animation and ridiculous censoring. The way spidey was portrayed on that show is the definitive 616 characterization imo.

The reason why the DC cartoons were so successful was because they were for EVERYBODY. They were mature AND kid-friendly at the same time. They didnt talk down kids, had smart innuendo and great plotting. More superhero cartoons need to take that example i think.

 

[Drz]

Well Ultimate Spider-Man seems like a team-up show, so they're following Brave and Bold's steps, which seriously is the best Batman animated show since BTAS!

Anyhow you guys think Loeb will still be writing comics? I heard Jeff Parker was taking over Hulk comic, so that only leaves him writing New Ultimates (which 1st volume concludes in October, whenever or not he will continue then is a mystery i guess) and Ultimate X.

 

[runawayboulder]

I could care less about anything Ultimate and I dropped the Hulk a long time ago. Well just TIH, I couldn't deal with the crossover.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Indeed. F*** Ultimate Spider-Man, team-ups or no.

 

[GamerSlyRatchet]

Spectacular Spider-Man was canceled because noone watched it. I think it's time competetion was Transformers: The Animated serie. Both shows we're awesome, yet sadly canceled too early. : (

No one is watching Iron Man: Armored Adventures and Super Hero Squad either. Those two are renewed for second seasons.

Like previously mentioned, Spidey was doomed the day Kids WB announced its death, and no amount of ratings could have prevented that.

 

[Drz]

I thought Superhero Squad had excelent ratings?

 

[yenaled]

A managerial/editorial role like this is something Loeb should have taken years ago. Instead we were all present to see his writing quality rapidly decline.

 

[fifthfiend]

Seems like a weird decision in that Loeb's terrible comics work sold well whereas his terrible TV work got terrible ratings along with its terrible lack of quality.

From a purely business standpoint I'd think they'd just put him in charge of the Comics Where The Blob Eats Wasp's Innards division and let him churn that **** out until the end of time.

 

[kguillou]

I guess at the end of the day it doesnt matter what we think of the guy, his Hulk and Ultimates books sold off the charts. He sells just as well as Bendis or Millar does, so in Marvel's eye, we're the crazy ones because clearly sales tell the whole story. lol

 

[WolfCypher]

Spectacular Spider-Man was canceled because noone watched it. I think it's time competetion was Transformers: The Animated serie. Both shows we're awesome, yet sadly canceled too early. : (

No, SSM was cancelled because Disney bought Marvel, and didn't want to bother negotiating things with Sony, so Disney decided to do their own show.

 

[Mace Dolex]

Didn't Loeb have a hand in writing the coming of age story of the classic Teen Wolf?

 

[bored]

This means he won't have time to write, correct?

 

[kguillou]

It means we'll get one issue of Hulk a year.