Marvel at San Diego Comic Con 2010

[THANOSRULES]

JMS ...creative freedom to draw a mediocre arc out for 20 issues and then leave it unfinished!

Hey don't mess with him ..he is the legendary creator of Babylon 5 !!

Where does this guy get off?

What comics has he done that DID NOT implode?

 

[Themanofbat]

JMS is a dick...

 

[Drz]

JMS ...creative freedom to draw a mediocre arc out for 20 issues and then leave it unfinished!

He left it because Bendis was going to undo his work. At first people thought he was leaving simply because Thor was being used on a major event, but now we know it's because Bendis wanted to alter the whole status quo of Thor.

 

[hippie_hunter]

JMS ...creative freedom to draw a mediocre arc out for 20 issues and then leave it unfinished!

Hey don't mess with him ..he is the legendary creator of Babylon 5 !!

Where does this guy get off?

What comics has he done that DID NOT implode?

JMS does have a point though.

I was having a discussion a couple of weeks ago at my comic book store where the clerk was saying that a reason why we're seeing JMS, Paul Cornell, and David Finch leave Marvel is because Marvel is getting really grabby lately. And Bleeding Cool is saying that DC is going to be grabbing more writers and artists.

DC really is the place for creative freedom right now.

 

[mre]

Didn't they originally intend for the host of Carnage to be a female?

Venom was originally going to be a woman. Not sure if that was planned for Carnage also.

 

[Themanofbat]

DC really is the place for creative freedom right now.

Until they decide to reboot your work in about 8 years...

 

[TheCorpulent1]

He left it because Bendis was going to undo his work. At first people thought he was leaving simply because Thor was being used on a major event, but now we know it's because Bendis wanted to alter the whole status quo of Thor.

Bendis didn't change Thor's status quo that much. Asgard fell but Balder is still king and the gods are still on Earth (arguably tied even more to it now that Bifrost ends at Avengers Tower). Move 'em into someplace new and carry on. What JMS calls "a lack of creative freedom," I call the nature of major characters who have to work in multiple series. Marvel was just fine to JMS; he simply wanted to keep Thor to himself forever.

 

[Themanofbat]

Bendis didn't change Thor's status quo that much. Asgard fell but Balder is still king and the gods are still on Earth (arguably tied even more to it now that Bifrost ends at Avengers Tower). Move 'em into someplace new and carry on. What JMS calls "a lack of creative freedom," I call the nature of major characters who have to work in multiple series. Marvel was just fine to JMS; he simply wanted to keep Thor to himself forever.

JMS is a dick...

See above.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Until they decide to reboot your work in about 8 years...

And then it won't. But for the time being if you want to write for either of the big 2 and enjoy creative freedom, DC is the place to be.

 

[iloveclones]

Well, isn't that always the case? The company that is trailing has to take more risks. Whether that be paying artists more, or giving them more creative freedom. In the end, DC wants its characters to be around for a long time, so it's not like he's going to have the freedom that he has on Rising Stars. And eventually, he's going to propose a story that he thinks is the bees knees (Sins Past) and DC is going to say, "Methinks thou goest too far." And then he'll be whining about DC.

If he wants creative freedom, be independent, with his own characters. It seems like he wants it both ways: the cache of a Spider-Man, Superman, Wonder Woman, and all the sales numbers that naturally come with them; but he also wants to treat the characters as if he just came up with them, and can do with them what he wants, regardless of any future repercussions (again see Sins Past).

 

[CaptainCanada]

Caught up? What the **** has he been doing all this time?

Weston was busy with some other commitment (I can't remember what it was) around the same time JMS was really busy.

And then it won't. But for the time being if you want to write for either of the big 2 and enjoy creative freedom, DC is the place to be.

I don't really see a marked difference, personally.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Bendis didn't change Thor's status quo that much. Asgard fell but Balder is still king and the gods are still on Earth (arguably tied even more to it now that Bifrost ends at Avengers Tower). Move 'em into someplace new and carry on. What JMS calls "a lack of creative freedom," I call the nature of major characters who have to work in multiple series.

But Thor is getting a major shakeup in status-quo with Fraction hopping on board, taking Thor and gang on a more cosmic route. Siege built up to what is going on with Thor in Fraction's run.

Marvel was just fine to JMS; he simply wanted to keep Thor to himself forever.

I think it was more along the lines of JMS being sick of events taking over his runs and effectively ruining them. Civil War ruined his runs on Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. Wouldn't you be wary if another event that is directly dealing with what you are doing?

And dare I say it's kind of a dick move for a writer like Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis who weren't writing the Amazing Spider-Man or Thor to just suddenly barge in and dramatically change things like revealing Spider-Man's secret identity and destroying Asgard.

Meanwhile with DC, you don't have Final Crisis and Blackest Night going off and tripping up what the writers had for Superman or Wonder Woman and whatnot. And when there is another DC event, I guarantee that it isn't going to interfere with what JMS is doing or what Gail Simone is doing or what Justin Grey/Jimmy Palmiotti are doing.

When you had Grant Morrison kill Batman, guess who was writing Batman? Grant Morrison. Or when you have Geoff Johns having the use the Green Lanterns as the platform for Blackest Night, guess who was writing Green Lantern? Geoff Johns. That is the way to handle events. We're not having Morrison or Johns just pop up, come on into Superman or Wonder Woman, change something dramatically and still expect the person who is supposed to write the character to just keep doing it.

 

[Drz]

Thanks for the perfect answer Hippie. You brought up my thoughts, and managed to write it in so much better way than i could have.

 

[random_havoc]

I agree with JMS that Cap giving up cuz of some crowd reaction was pretty cheap, and quite the cop out imo.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

But Thor is getting a major shakeup in status-quo with Fraction hopping on board, taking Thor and gang on a more cosmic route. Siege built up to what is going on with Thor in Fraction's run.

I think it was more along the lines of JMS being sick of events taking over his runs and effectively ruining them. Civil War ruined his runs on Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. Wouldn't you be wary if another event that is directly dealing with what you are doing?

And dare I say it's kind of a dick move for a writer like Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis who weren't writing the Amazing Spider-Man or Thor to just suddenly barge in and dramatically change things like revealing Spider-Man's secret identity and destroying Asgard.

Meanwhile with DC, you don't have Final Crisis and Blackest Night going off and tripping up what the writers had for Superman or Wonder Woman and whatnot. And when there is another DC event, I guarantee that it isn't going to interfere with what JMS is doing or what Gail Simone is doing or what Justin Grey/Jimmy Palmiotti are doing.

When you had Grant Morrison kill Batman, guess who was writing Batman? Grant Morrison. Or when you have Geoff Johns having the use the Green Lanterns as the platform for Blackest Night, guess who was writing Green Lantern? Geoff Johns. That is the way to handle events. We're not having Morrison or Johns just pop up, come on into Superman or Wonder Woman, change something dramatically and still expect the person who is supposed to write the character to just keep doing it.

What's going on with Thor in Fraction's run is that the Asgardians are searching for a new home. But if JMS had stuck around, I'm sure he could've simply given them an arc or two rebuilding Asgard and then gone back to business as usual with his human/god interactions. It's the difference between rolling with the punches and taking his ball and going home. JMS chose the latter and, frankly, Gillen's improved on where he left the series, so I'm not too broken up about it.

JMS does have some valid concerns, but like clones said, the only way he's ever going to have full creative control is if he goes independent and does creator-owned work. Playing in the major publishers' sandbox has always come with strings attached. DC may have found it profitable to lessen the strings lately, but to me that just means it's a slightly different paradigm, not that they're necessarily encouraging creative freedom more. Plenty of other writers get changes thrown at them and develop whole new ideas out of them. It's possible to be creative and adaptable at the same time; hell, it's necessary at the major publishers because, again, that's the nature of the beast. Work on major characters, deal with the need for those characters to have a presence beyond your series alone.

Also, I seem to recall DC trying fervently to throw plenty of changes into Morrison's work. The only difference is that DC's editorial, I assume, is laxer than Marvel's because they backed off and let Morrison effectively ignore everything they published in Death of the New Gods, Countdown, and other stuff. So are they really fostering creative freedom or are they just not as willing to put their foot down and steer the universe as a whole for the sake of their creators' egos?

 

[hippie_hunter]

I don't really see a marked difference, personally.

Really?

Because I see JMS, Gail Simone, Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Paul Cornell, Tony Bedard, and Justin Grey/Jimmy Palmiotti do whatever they want. Meanwhile, even Bendis can't get everything he wants such as Magneto on the Cabal or all the Avengers that he wants.

Sure, there are some titles that do get a lot of editorial interference primarily Justice League, Titans, and Battle for the Cowl, and guess what those suck. But the titles where the writers are doing what they want, they've been really, really good.

Also, we aren't seeing R.E.B.E.L.S., Blue Beetle, Manhunter, and Jonah Hex get cancelled in 5 issues. Blue Beetle and Manhunter went on way longer than they should have and R.E.B.E.L.S. and Jonah Hex are showing no sign of ending

 

[iloveclones]

I think it was more along the lines of JMS being sick of events taking over his runs and effectively ruining them. Civil War ruined his runs on Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. Wouldn't you be wary if another event that is directly dealing with what you are doing?

I didn't hear him complaining about the sales spikes those events gave him.

And again, this isn't his own little private company. He's part of a bigger whole.

On the whole, isn't this a little "tempest in a teapot." Don't you think he's playing to his bosses a little? I mean, how many times do athletes go to another team, and immediately start talking about "what they're building here." We all know it's 90% about the big bag of cash being offered. What's JMS supposed to say, "They have new toys for me to play with, and they're going to pay me big wads of cash to do so."?

I think if you ask Bendis, Slott, Pak, Brubaker, Fraction, Hickman, Kelly, Waid and many many others, they will say that they have more creative freedom than they know what to do with. Until they are paid somewhere else, and they'll say how stifling it was, BUT it's Great Here!

It's a big game, and I wouldn't take it too seriously.

 

[kguillou]

From a writer's viewpoint i can understand JMS' chagrin. I mean, if you have the opportunity to write one of these characters, you wanna tell your story and do things your way until your time is done and pass it on to the next guy. These big crossovers really do restrain the writer's creative freedom a bit because now they have restraints in which they must play ball in.

But then u have guys like Bendis who is given the ability to do whatever he wants to whomever character whenever. I mean, who else was shocked when Bendis shot hulk into space in an issue of Illuminati? You'd expect something big like that to happen in the actual Hulk book written by the guy who was writing Hulk at the time.

Admittedly, JMS is probably a little too stubborn for his own good, but i can understand his viewpoint of a writer should have the ability to write a character the way he wants without having some other writer reveal his secret identity to the world in some crossover event, thus dramatically changing things.

 

[Silver Knight]

Off topic but does anyone have the Oct Solics?

 

[iloveclones]

As I remember it, he was shot out in his own title. I forget who was writing, but it was, obviously, right before Planet Hulk. I'm pretty sure the whole Illuminati stuff came later. If anything, it would have been Pak who wanted him shot into space, otherwise he couldn't do that story.

 

[iloveclones]

Incredible Hulk #91 (Daniel Way, Juan Santacruz, William Murai, Mar. 2006) This is the last issue before Planet Hulk

The New Avengers: Illuminati one-shot (Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev, Dave Stewart, May, 2006)

 

[iloveclones]

It's a really bad example to use anyway. I mean, let's say for example that it was Bendis' idea to send Hulk off into space, and someone had to come in and clean up the mess, and they somehow turned it into Planet Hulk, one of THE BEST Hulk stories in, well, decades. And I'm supposed to feel bad for the previous writer(s) who weren't doing anything interesting with him?

 

[hippie_hunter]

What's going on with Thor in Fraction's run is that the Asgardians are searching for a new home. But if JMS had stuck around, I'm sure he could've simply given them an arc or two rebuilding Asgard and then gone back to business as usual with his human/god interactions. It's the difference between rolling with the punches and taking his ball and going home. JMS chose the latter and, frankly, Gillen's improved on where he left the series, so I'm not too broken up about it.

JMS' run started to suffer because he started to hastily wrap up his run in three issues plus a Giant Size conclusion, instead of allowing it to continue naturally. I think that if JMS didn't have to do such a thing, his run would have been just as fantastic as Thor #1 - 12 and #600.

JMS does have some valid concerns, but like clones said, the only way he's ever going to have full creative control is if he goes independent and does creator-owned work. Playing in the major publishers' sandbox has always come with strings attached. DC may have found it profitable to lessen the strings lately, but to me that just means it's a slightly different paradigm, not that they're necessarily encouraging creative freedom more. Plenty of other writers get changes thrown at them and develop whole new ideas out of them. It's possible to be creative and adaptable at the same time; hell, it's necessary at the major publishers because, again, that's the nature of the beast. Work on major characters, deal with the need for those characters to have a presence beyond your series alone.

But you still shouldn't have other writers who aren't even writing the character just pop in and change things like what Millar and Bendis did. Frankly, I find the lesser the strings are pulled and allowing the book to simply stand on it's own instead of constantly tying in, the better it is. Books starring solo characters like Thor, Superman, Amazing Spider-Man, Captain America, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. should be left to their own devices.

Meanwhile, team books like Titans, Avengers, and Justice League should have massive editorial influence to prevent inconsistencies. This is where DC and Marvel fail though because you have DC's editorial ruining Titans and the Justice League while Marvel's editorial allows Bendis to do whatever he wants so Spider-Man, Captain America, and Iron Man feel like completely different people than the ones who are starring in the Amazing Spider-Man, Captain America, and Invincible Iron Man.

Also, I seem to recall DC trying fervently to throw plenty of changes into Morrison's work. The only difference is that DC's editorial, I assume, is laxer than Marvel's because they backed off and let Morrison effectively ignore everything they published in Death of the New Gods, Countdown, and other stuff. So are they really fostering creative freedom or are they just not as willing to put their foot down and steer the universe as a whole for the sake of their creators' egos?

I think that's more along the lines of DC knowing that Countdown sucked and Death of the New Gods being completely contradictory to what was going on. They knew they dropped the ball with Countdown and they knew that fans hated it.

That is an instance where allowing Morrison to say "**** it!" was for the best.

 

[Brainiac 8]

He basically just talked down Civil War and how everything went down in it.

So, yeah, he kind of just shot the finger at Marvel, too, for that matter with this one.

Here's the link from cbr, it's basically just a sum up of the transcript of the event.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=27474

EDIT: Though, in fairness, he didn't spend the whole panel crapping on people. He did praise Alan Moore and Geoff Johns

That's because Geoff Johns is awesome.

Interesting read though. I agree with him though, DC is the best place for creative freedom right now, even if I'm not liking the direction Superman is taking right now...I have to wait and see how it ends up though.

 

[hippie_hunter]

I found Superman #701 to be fantastic.