It's Clobbering Time

[khaosworks]

What the fuck?


http://www.newsarama.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000724

Mark Waid has confirmed for Newsarama that issue #508 will be his last.

The decision came at the end of last week, according to Waid. "Friday, I
received a call from Marvel informing me that FF #508 would be my last
issue," Waid told Newsarama. "I'm very disappointed, but, hey--it's
Marvel's sandbox, not mine."

...............


"I wish I'd had a longer run, and I'll admit I was surprised at being so
abruptly fired," Waid told Newsarama. "A few weeks ago, Bill [Jemas] phoned
and tried to convince me to jettison our high-adventure approach and everything
else we've been doing in favor of making the FF a wacky suburban dramedy where
Reed's a nutty professor who creates amazing but impractical inventions, Sue's
the office-temp breadwinner, the cranky neighbor is their new "arch-enemy",
etc. Editor Tom Brevoort and I discussed that option at length; ultimately, I
apologized and explained that I didn't feel it was something I could write nor
something that played to any of my strengths--a radical revamp like that was
just too much of a departure from what I was originally hired to write. I
simply, honestly, couldn't even wrap my head around the idea. Still can't. And
when word came back, 'We'll use that concept somewhere else. Tell Mark to
keep doing what he's doing,' all seemed well.

"But -- they're not my characters. Ultimately, my job is to sell the
publisher something he wants to publish. So, in a good-faith attempt at
bridging the gap, Tom and I put our heads together and - kind of to our
surprise! - figured out a logical way to deliver a run of stories following
'Authoritative Action' that could temporarily 'suburbanize' the series
without completely changing the FF's personalities beyond recognition. To be
honest, we were kinda proud of ourselves for being play-along guys and assumed
we were good to go for the long haul, but our effort was, in retrospect,
pointless. It would seem the decision to replace me was made the moment I
failed to get with the program. Still--Bill's company, his prerogative."

Fantastic Four #508 is the final issue of the six-part "Authoritative
Action" arc which begins in August with issue #503, and should end (barring
double ship months) next January. As reported previously, Howard Porter is
illustrating the arc. 

As for the art side of the series after issue #508, while not knowing of
Waid's departure for sure when asked about his future with the series on
Saturday (the artist was at the Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC), Wieringo
indicated that if Waid were leaving the title, he most likely would be as well.

Mark Waid
posted June 15, 2003 10:19 PM

By the way, Matt, I hope I made it clear that while I'm sad to be fired, I
understand that's just the way it goes. I'm told I'm being replaced by Bill
himself. It's a tough assignment--all the luck, Bill!

Looks like I picked the right time to give up comic books.

Waid's run on the FF was the first time I actually got excited about the team since, well, before John Byrne started writing those incredibly long word balloons that crowded everyone out of the panel and decided to drop the backgrounds on FF. I mean the good old days, circa "Terror In A Tiny Town". My ideal team on the FF would be Karl Kesel and Tom Grummet, but Waid and Wieringo made a passable stand-in, and Waid's take on the FF as "imaginauts" managed to pin down an aspect of the FF that actually made them distinct from your everyday superhero.

And I got to admit, "Unthinkable", the current storyline where Doom takes up his long neglected mystic side, stirs up images of those times during Stan and Jack's day when the FF were facing their "DAY OF DISMAL DEFEAT". It's that good.

The current famine of decent comics on the stands reminds me how far Marvel has fallen since Heroes Return heralded a new age for it. But Busiek and Perez have left Avengers. Iron Man has been sub-par since Stern and Busiek dropped it. Thunderbolts, the best "villian-centric" comic since Suicide Squad, has become "Fight Club". Captain America has gone grim and gritty and isn't as interesting anymore. Black Panther somewhere along the way lost its sense of humor. And FF... well...

It's all been squandered. Sad, really. Seems it's time to drop Marvel mainstream again^[1] - like I did in 1986 when the Mutant Massacre and cross-title continuity exploded beyond all bearable proportions. This time, it's for a different reason - the management has screwed up and has ceased creating comics and writing characters I care about anymore. The reason I came back was because Busiek and Ross created a comic called "MARVELS" that recreated that sense of wonder I felt growing up and reading Marvel Comics, and which reminded me that the characters were gold - it was the writers that were horrid.

Someday, someone will write another series like that for Marvel and convince me that the writers are going to be good again.

^1. Not that it's all bad. JMS' Spider-Man is readable, and Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man is actually quite good. But the rest? Save for PAD's Captain Marvel and maybe Morrison's New X-Men... Bleah.

Comments

[cheshyre]

Here's Peter David's take on the story, in case you're not reading his blog.

[eldritch-wizard.livejournal.com]

Morrison's X-Men is the only Marvel title I read
Generally I avoid reading characters and I follow the good writers, Waid did some good stuff with JLA and thats how I first found his writing