@’s by Marvel CCO
Joe Quesada!!!
AMBUSH BUG (BUG): Well, I’m here backstage at the Marvel booth here at C2E2 with Joe Quesada. Joe, it’s nice to see you again.JOE QUESADA (JQ): Mark, how are you?
BUG: I think the last time I caught up with you was at San Diego last year. It’s been a big year for Marvel, as it always is.
JQ: You loaned me that money, man, I’ll get it back to you one of these days, I promise.
BUG: One of these days…
JQ: Listen, I was down at the blackjack table and I needed something.
BUG: Anything to help you out. Tell me, what are you guys talking about mainly here at C2E2 this year?
JQ: You know, we’re talking about everything right now. That’s the crazy and amazing thing about Marvel is that when you look at us three, four, or five years ago it was basically publishing and we were really just starting to gear up on the movies, but now we are sitting here talking about animation, the future of television, you know, the future of digital…so much stuff, and then we have this little thing called THE AVENGERS movie that’s coming out very soon.BUG: What’s that? Is that a little independent movie?
JQ: I’m trying to find out. I’m going to scour the internet tonight and see what it’s all about. It sounds kind of fun. And we’ve got this other thing called THE AVENGERS VS X-MEN, which is really the prime focus of publishing right now and so that’s what we are promoting. So it’s a lot of stuff to keep track of.
BUG: Yeah, and how do you keep track of it all?
JQ: Thank god for my email, that’s all I’ve got to say. You know, people ask me, because I’m doing so many things at Marvel right now, how do I know what I’m going to work on next, and it’s literally whoever emails me first. I have a line of emails that sit there, like I’m sure the line of airplanes here at O’Hare, and I sit there and I’m like “Alright, this is the next thing that’s got to be taken care of, then this is the next thing that’s got to be taken care of,” so there’s a lot of good stuff going on.BUG: So you mentioned THE AVENGERS. Have you seen the movie?
JQ: Yeah. I’ve seen it many, many times. I was just at the Hollywood premiere. I just flew in from LA to here and again, people are going to say, “You’re the Marvel guy, you’re going to say this,” but I’ve got to tell you it is freaking unbelievable. It is just a spectacular movie. It is probably the closest thing to the pure Marvel Comics experience that I’ve ever seen on film to date. We’ve had some really good movies, but this is just crazy. I can’t even tell you the stuff that…there’s a lot of great stuff.
BUG: Very cool. What’s it like having this all come together with THE AVENGERS? Having all of this planning with the little teasers in all of the other movies and working so hard to kind of make it all kind of a cinematic universe--what’s it like as it’s finally all coming together?JQ: You know, listen: it’s exhilarating, nerve-racking, but at the end of the day it’s just…this is the first time I saw it with a full audience and that just level of satisfaction, not just as a Marvel guy, but also a sense of pride for the guys like Kevin Feige and all of the guys of Marvel staff along with the incredible talents on screen and Joss Whedon that made this thing happen, to hear the audience react to it the way that we hoped…“They should laugh here…They did! Yes, that’s fantastic!” “Okay, they should get quiet here and this is going to scare them…” and all of those things falling together and seeing the audience react, man, it’s just such a great feeling, it really is.
BUG:So after this, I know you can’t reveal too much, but are there plans for more interconnectedness between some of the smaller films that you guys are working on?
JQ: Yeah, you know, the thing is, “interconnectedness” is a tough word. It’s the same thing I did with comics--like fans like to talk about continuity, and I like to talk about consistency. I think as long as the universe is consistent you get that sense of interconnectivity. I think certain movies will connect a little bit more than others might, but our goal is to make it feel like it’s all part of the same universe, because I think if you get too intertwined and too continuity heavy what ends up happening is that you start to alienate a new person that might be experiencing one of our movies for the first time. The beauty of AVENGERS and hopefully every movie that we do is that…let’s take AVENGERS, for example: if you have seen CAP, if you have seen THOR, if you’ve seen IRON MAN, if you’ve seen HULK, when this movie opens and you get to meet these characters on screen you have a deeper understanding of where they are coming from. If you are a new person coming to this movie for the very first time you won’t sit there and go “Wait, wait did I just miss something?” It’s all going to sort of fall into line perfectly and you’ll get introduced to these characters as if you are watching them for the first time.BUG: Great. Well, let’s talk about the comics a little bit.
JQ: Sure.
BUG: With AVENGERS VS X-MEN, that’s just…I’ve read the first couple of issues and it’s been really good. What kind of lessons have you learned with the previous kind of big event books and crossovers that you’re kind of implementing with this one?JQ: You know, every one of these have been different. They’ve all been different. I think it’s not so much a matter of “What lessons have we learned?”, it’s a matter of “What is the right story for the temperament of the comic book industry where it is right now?” For example, I think CIVIL WAR came out at a perfect time and CIVIL WAR, if it came out today it probably wouldn’t have the same sort of resonance that it did back then or even if it came out two years prior to that it wouldn’t have the same sort of resonance, so I think AVENGERS VS X-MEN is the perfect kind of comic for right now. It’s a very, very simple buy-in concept for anyone, whether you know comic books or whether you don’t. Here are the X-Men, everybody knows the X-Men, they’ve had several movies out, very popular movies. Here are the Avengers, you’re about to have an amazingly popular movie. The marketing is everywhere. So what happens when these two teams don’t like each other? Each has moral high ground, and what happens when it’s all said and done? So the lesson for us is that we really felt like the comic book audience was really in the mood for something like this, something with a lot of fisticuffs, something where the message is very, very clear. There aren’t a lot of heavy metaphors here like CIVIL WAR. So our lesson is to try to just make sure that we are in tune to the audience at all times.
BUG: You know I’ve got to ask: which side are you rooting for? Which are you behind?JQ: I am rooting for Marvel, man. I am rooting for the Marvel side of things. These are like children to me, I can’t sit there and say “Boy…” although I really do secretly hope that Squirrel Girl kicks major ass. I love Squirrel Girl. Squirrel Girl and Rocket Raccoon, those are my two favorite kids.
BUG: They are great. Speaking of Rocket Raccoon, are we going to be getting more of the cosmic stuff from Marvel?
JQ: You know, we do have plans for cosmic. I’ve been saying this for several years, because for those who are in tune to the Marvel world, you guys know that we start planning this stuff and we generally…the way our publishing plan works we are usually planned out two years in advance and we kind of know where the third year is going, but that’s only penciled in. So we’ve been working on some cosmic stuff for a while right now, and if you are a fan of the cosmic universe you are going to be really, really happy. If you are someone who hasn’t read our cosmic stuff before, you’re going to really dig what we’ve got planned. So there’s some really fun, big plans with that stuff.
BUG: Very cool. So what book would you want to request to people to read more of that aren’t checking it out as much?
JQ: DAREDEVIL. I think DAREDEVIL is a stand up book right now. I mean, Mark Waid is unbelievable. I mean, he just reinvents himself and comes back with new and interesting things. I mean, if you had told me a few years ago that Mark Waid would be the perfect DAREDEVIL writer, I’d be like “What? I don’t see it. I don’t quite get it.”BUG: He seems more of a Spider-Man.
JQ: The lighter, younger…and yet he came to DAREDEVIL with this wonderful idea and it’s a great book and he’s working with great talent and, by the way, the book is critically acclaimed and selling very, very well.
BUG: By far it’s probably my favorite Marvel book right now.
JQ: And you know, I cut my teeth on DAREDEVIL. That’s my baby. I couldn’t be happier for that book right now, just to see it get that reinvigorated life. So if you are not reading DAREDEVIL, pick it up.
BUG: Artistically, too, it’s just fantastic.
JQ: Oh my god…Marcos [Martin] and Paolo [Manuel] are just fantastic.
BUG:So what else? You mentioned digital, what are your plans for digital and I ask this every year, is it closer to a total move to digital? Or are you always going to have print comics?JQ: I don’t see a total move to digital. I mean, if you see the way that Marvel is handling the digital realm right now I think we are doing some very, very smart things and I say that because these are decisions that weren’t made by me, right? So the fact that when you pick up one of our traditional paper comics there is a code there where you can actually get the digital copy for free, it’s added value. We have certain promotions where if you buy a digital comic you get a coupon that allows you to go into your comic shop and be able to purchase comic books. There’s a lot of stuff going on in our digital world that I think mixes beautifully the idea of people collecting the paper editions as well as getting the digital comics. For me, the most exciting thing digitally, and this is personal, because I’ve been really involved in this, are the Infinite comics which is our new way of telling a story digitally, which is very very simplistic in its execution, but I think very beautiful when it’s done right.
BUG: You had that with the first issue of AVX?
JQ: Yes, when you buy the first issue of AVX you will get a code to get AVX #1, the entire issue for free, but there’s also a code in there that allows you to get the first Infinite comic which tells an all brand new tale of Nova and his story about how he got to Earth to incite, basically, the story of AVX. So the Infinite comic to me I really feel that as we go into the realm of digital comics I think that that’s what digital comics are going to look like in the future, I really do, and I think people are going to read this and start realizing, especially artists and writers are going to realize “Whoa, there’s some really interesting things to do here from a storytelling standpoint,” because it keeps the sanctity of what makes a comic a comic, but allows you to use digital tools in a beautiful subtle way to really enhance the reading experience.BUG: I tried to liken it to a little like the bonus features on a DVD or a BluRay, but it seems like it’s a little bit more than that.
JQ: It really is. I mean, we’ve been experimenting with how to deliver digital comics for a very, very long time, right? The most basic one is okay, we take out paper comics and we sort of chop them up digitally and try to make them fit and configure into that tablet form or onto the phone, but it’s still not a purely digital experience, because it started out as paper and it’s not unlike when comics were first created in that small comic size and people were reducing Sunday strips and trying to make them fit into the comic book. So historically there is precedence for this, but to me…God, I lost my train of thought now all of a sudden. What was the question again?
BUG: Just it seems a little bit like the bonus features on a DVD.
JQ: Oh, right. We were experimenting with “What’s the next step?” So we tried motion comics, right, and motion comics got to a point where we have gotten so good at motion comics that we’re looking at this going “This isn’t a comic book anymore, this is animation.” So now we have this sort of motion comics animation thing going on, which leaves the digital realm open for us, and then when we discovered this technique…I came across a website of a French artist who goes by his pen name “Block” who demonstrated this methodology for how to tell a digital story and it just hit me, because it was so simple and beautiful. I’m like “We have to do this.” But that was about two plus years ago and I don’t think there was the audience there for it. Now we are at the point where there’s an audience that’s accepting as much digital content that we think, “This has a chance to succeed.” So whether it happens now or whether it happens next year or the year after that I do believe that this Infinite technique of telling comic book stories is really where it’s going to be at.BUG: Well, I know you’re really busy and I don’t want to keep you too long. How much more time do you think you’ve got?
JQ: We’ve got a few minutes.
BUG: Great. Well, I try not to listen to a lot of message boards, because there are a lot of rumors and you never know what’s the truth.
JQ: Internet rumors not true?
BUG: (laughs) Yes, but there are a couple that I’ve heard…the result of this AVX is going to be some type of possible reboot or something like that for Marvel, and with the guys across the street, with them doing that and that being pretty successful for them, is there a temptation to do that sort of thing? What can you say about that?
JQ: The only thing I could say about that, because if it was true I couldn’t tell you and if it wasn’t true I couldn’t tell you, right? I tip my hand no matter what I do. What I can tell you, as I stated to one of your earlier questions, was we plan our stuff two to three years in advance, so what’s happening at the end of AVX is something that was planned way beyond last year. These are plans that have been in the works. I mean even the idea of AVENGERS VS X-MEN, this is not a new idea. This is an idea that I have been hearing and we have been batting around since right after CIVIL WAR, but the time wasn’t right. There were other stories that we needed to tell and AVX we stashed it in our bandolier, it’s a bullet that we were going to get to amongst many many bullets that we have in the bandolier, so what’s happening after AVX is exactly what’s been planned to happen after AVX.The one thing we don’t do, and we have never done at Marvel, is look at what any of our competitors are doing and say “Oh my god, how do we counter-program?” Because if you are counter-programming then you are not taking the lead. For us, it’s all about leading the pack doing what Marvel does and if somebody else wants to look at what we are doing and counter, well that’s up to them, but you know, we are certainly not sitting here. There are people out there in the world who are trying to Marvel-ise their universes and we are certainly not here trying to make our universe like anybody else’s. The Marvel universe is unique and it was designed this way and it’s pretty much really built on the same scaffolding that Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby] and Steve and all of those guys built. We are not reinventing the wheel, we just keep retreading it.
BUG: I wanted to ask, I know it’s not under the Marvel banner, but the SPIDER-MAN movie is coming out this summer. What are your feelings on that? Are you still rooting for it?JQ: Absolutely! You know, we have wonderful partners at Sony and Spider-Man is our guy. I mean, he’s our Mickey Mouse, so we are hoping that the movie is spectacular, pardon the pun. Everything that I’ve seen looks really, really amazing. I haven’t seen the movie yet. I actually have some friends at Disney that did see it and they loved it. The cast is fantastic…Emma Stone is just amazing. I think she is the next big female Hollywood star. She is like Julie Roberts and Sandra Bullock put together. I’m a huge fan of hers, so when she was cast in the movie I was ecstatic, so again, fingers crossed, I think it’s going to be great.
BUG: Sure, yeah--everything looks really good on that too. One last question: the last couple of years it seems like there is one star of the Marvel universe. For a while there everyone was focusing on Tony Stark and then it was Norman Osborn and then it was a little bit for Cap and now it seems to be going a little bit maybe towards Cyclops a little bit. He seems to be the character to watch. Over the next year, who’s the character to watch in the Marvel universe?
JQ: Wow, in publishing I could tell you who, but then I would be tipping by hand at some of the things we have.
BUG: (Laughs) I’m trying really hard here to get something…
JQ: Just within the characters that you know and love, I think after the AVENGERS movie I think HULK is going to be immensely popular. Every character in that movie has their moment to shine, but I really do think that Mark Ruffalo gives us a Bruce Banner and Hulk that has never been more likable and fun since Bill Bixby played the part, you know? And let’s face it, the reason that that HULK TV show was so popular was because there was no more likeable TV actor in Hollywood than Bill Bixby, and Ruffalo…you see this movie and you just want to hug the guy. You want to hang out with him and then when he becomes the Hulk, I’m just like “Be my buddy, dude. Be my wingman. Let’s go drinking.”BUG: One of my favorite books right now from you guys is AVENGING SPIDER-MAN. How is that book doing? Is it going to be continuing? Is it pretty solid?
JQ: You know, as far as I know the sales are solid. I mean, whether it continues is probably a question for Axel. The unfortunate part for me in being chief creative officer is that I am not knee deep day in day with everything that’s going on in publishing, so sometimes I find out stuff like a week later, like “Oh yeah, you were out of town and we forgot to tell you.” It’s technically not my job anymore. (Laughs) Although I like to meddle probably a little too much, but as far as I know the book has been doing great and it looks beautiful, it reads great, and it’s got some great talent on it.
BUG: Are there any temptations for you to get back into drawing?JQ: There always are, you know.
BUG: I know you do covers every now and then.
JQ: This is the process, right? “Hey, that sounds like a really good story. I would love to draw that,” but you know before I draw that I’ve got to do this cover for whatever promotional thing we will do and then I’ll sit down and do that cover and realize that that cover just took me three days to do, because I’ve got a million other things to do, and then the reality sets in with “I can’t do that other project, there’s just no way.” So yes, nothing would make me happier than to pencil someday, because I really do miss doing sequential, but right now there just aren’t enough hours in the day. I mean, I have to see my daughter sometimes.
BUG: Yeah, sure. Well, thank you so much. I’m always excited to see what Marvel has up its sleeve and you are always a great person to talk to and everything. Hopefully we can talk again in San Diego and I’m sure there will be a million other new developments.
JQ: It’s a date in San Diego, man. I’ll have your money by then.
BUG: Awesome. Thank you. Have a good day.
Joe Quesada: I appreciate it, Mark.
Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole/wordslinger/reviewer/co-editor of AICN Comics for over ten years. He has written comics such as MUSCLES & FIGHTS, MUSCLES & FRIGHTS, VINCENT PRICE PRESENTS TINGLERS & WITCHFINDER GENERAL, THE DEATHSPORT GAMES, WONDERLAND ANNUAL 2010 & NANNY & HANK (soon to be made into a feature film from Uptown 6 Films). He is also a regular writer for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND & has co-written their first ever comic book LUNA: ORDER OF THE WEREWOLF (to be released in October 2012 as an 100-pg original graphic novel). Mark has just announced his new comic book miniseries GRIMM FAIRY TALES PRESENTS THE JUNGLE BOOK from Zenescope Entertainment to be released in March 2012.Proofs, co-edits & common sense provided by Sleazy G
