Joss Whedon

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JM: Switching from new to established talent, do you think, in a general sense, certain creators get to pee wherever they want? I look at the All-Star Batman book DC is doing and think, "It’s gibberish. There’s no way they do that except for the fact that Frank Miller is Frank Miller in their minds, and they’ll let him do what he wants." Does that phenomenon exist, or is it my imagination? More directly, does it exist at Marvel? Do you have different "rules" for, say, just to pick a name, Joss Whedon?

JQ- Of course that phenomenon exists at Marvel. It exists everywhere. There are just some talents that are 800 pound gorillas, and that’s cool. These are the prime movers, the people that drive our business at the end of the day, and mind you, I don’t see anything wrong with it. In most cases, these guys have earned that kind of respect to do their thing. A guy like Frank has a lot of credit in the bank. He’s done some amazing things, especially at DC, so in my book, Frank gets to do what Frank gets to do. It’s Frank, and it’s going to sell like hotcakes. But as I said, this isn’t just a DC thing. We do it at Marvel as well, and lets face it, in most of these cases, the creators knock it out of the park. Sure, sometimes they don’t, but you run that risk with anyone. Where you mitigate your risk is by targeting the big name creator who puts asses in the seats AND has a track record of bringing their A-game all the time. Just to pick a name, yeah, I think Joss Whedon does that every time.

And let me add, in my experience, it’s rare when the big-name guys don’t deliver a home run. In the few cases where I’ve had to be straight up and tell a creator that their story or art was falling off the tracks, I have rarely encountered any sort of diva-ish behavior. It’s almost always been collaborative and workable, especially if you give the creator sound reasoning, and don’t dance around the issues. I’ve always found that when you just get to the point, people can smell that you’re being honest and working towards the same goal as they are—which is to put out the best story possible.

Truth be told, while I have encountered the occasional diva in comics, creators like that typically don’t last long at Marvel, or in the industry in general. Life is too short, and comics are supposed to be fun.

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