shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,874
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Post by shaxper on Jan 9, 2018 9:38:50 GMT -5
Mark Waid comes out looking pretty bad in the Oral History of Fantagraphics  Wow. That one i really didn't expect. Somehow, I always had the impression of Waid being a cheery fan who was always thrilled to be working in the industry. Of course, no one has one disposition every day, but that's...extreme. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,874
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Post by shaxper on Jan 9, 2018 9:39:20 GMT -5
as long as it didn't have Rob Liefeld proportions, eh? Or glow in the dark... -M I guess that would depend upon the youngblood of his spawning savage dragon  |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2018 12:07:17 GMT -5
Perhaps he was looking for an opportunity to tell you that his was polybagged, gatefold length, and came with a free trading card  as long as it didn't have Rob Liefeld proportions, eh? Small feet? |
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Post by Chris on Jan 9, 2018 12:38:47 GMT -5
Mark Waid comes out looking pretty bad in the Oral History of Fantagraphics I have no idea if this is true or not, but apparently there were quite a few rumors about Waid's time at Fantagraphics. In the final issue of Amazing Heroes, there were essays and notes from many prior contributors - in Waid's note, he wrote - "I wish I could regale you with fun little anecdotes about my time with Fantagraphics, but I've spent five years trying to forget them. Besides, if you work in the comics industry, you've probably already heard most of them. Their legend precedes me, though no matter what you've heard, I never threw a typewriter at R. Fiore."
ETA: Having said that about Waid, it's difficult to take anything said by Gary Groth without some quantity of salt. |
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Post by chadwilliam on Jan 9, 2018 13:27:29 GMT -5
Alvin Scwartz on Mort Weisinger:
"Weisinger was in the service for part of this time and things didn't begin to go bad until he came back. Weisinger was an infantile man with very serious ego problems. He had a terrible inferiority complex. I could just see him as a little kid, being laughed at because he was fat. He wasn't very bright. [Jack] Schiff was quite literate; an excellent editor. I don't know what the hell he was doing in comics - he had a better background than that, especially when it came to questions of English usage and things like that, about which we were very fussy at that time. Schiff knew how to use a subordinate clause without thinking about it.
I'll give you an example. I walked into the office one day and Weisinger was thrilled to death that he'd just written another one of his awful articles for one of the slick magazines - something to do with the March of Dimes. He showed it to me and the first paragraph read (I've never forgotten it): 'Every year, millions of Americans shell out an incredible march of dimes across the counters across the nation.' He could tell from my expression something was wrong. 'What's the matter?' he asked. 'That's a terrible mixed metaphor,' I answered. He didn't know what a mixed metaphor was... so he turned to another editor and read it to him: 'Is this a mixed metaphor?' He got a big nod in reply. Mort was crestfallen.
Mort would get an article on medicine into Reader's Digest and Jack would say to me, 'I could never write that, because I'm not that ignorant.' Mort could say things because he was so totally ignorant he didn't know what he was doing.
Very often, a writer would come into Weisinger with some plot ideas or cover ideas and he'd say 'None of them are any good' - then hand them to someone else later on, claiming them as his own. Everybody knew he was doing; he was the worst plagiarist I ever knew. He always felt such a need to be on top. A need for adulation and admiration, a hunger for recognition."
From Wizard: Superman Tribute Edition (1993).
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 10, 2018 0:21:47 GMT -5
Walt Simonson slept with his editor on X-Men and New Teen Titans; and, was repeatedly harassed by the editor, though I think that was about taking out the garbage. |
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Post by berkley on Jan 10, 2018 0:45:47 GMT -5
I remember one thing I read somewhere a year or two back that bothered me, though IIRC it wasn't presented as any great horror story, just a little anecdote about the Marvel office atmosphere. Basically the idea was that some of the younger generation of creators in the late 60s or early 70s would give Marie Severin a bit of a hard time, trying to embarrass her with risqué talk, stuff like that. I don't think any names were named and I imagine they didn't intend anything really hurtful, but knowing what young males in their early 20s can be like, especially when you get them in a group together, and considering that she was one of a very few females working there, it didn't sound like a good situation to me, even though Marie Severin wasn't the type to let them get to her.
Probably I shouldn't bring this up without checking to get the details straight, but to be honest I forget exactly where I read it now - most likely one of the TwoMorrows magazines like Back Issue or something.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 10, 2018 2:06:42 GMT -5
In The Comic Book Artist #10, Ramona Fradon remarked about being intimidated by entering the bullpen and one guy would sneak up behind her and try to kiss the back of her neck, when she would drop things off. She finally talked to Joe Orlando and George Kashdan and they warned the guy off. In the same piece Marie Severin talks about the EC bullpen guys being complete gentlemen.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 10, 2018 16:45:04 GMT -5
Mark Waid comes out looking pretty bad in the Oral History of Fantagraphics Wow. That one i really didn't expect. Somehow, I always had the impression of Waid being a cheery fan who was always thrilled to be working in the industry. Of course, no one has one disposition every day, but that's...extreme. Well, he just quit Twitter because (as far as I can tell) he kept getting into arguments and saying not great things that got taken out of context and repeated via the game of telephone as REALLY not great things. But I like Waid as a creator a lot, and I know he has lots of friends in the industry and very good working relationships with his editors, including Joe Quesada, Tom Peyer, and Steve Wacker. (And some bad relationships with Bill Jemas and Dan Didio.) I suspect - based on no evidence whatsoever - that Fantagraphics slapdash, laissez faire work environment wasn't a great fit and - while he's always been an experimental and progressive creator, embracing webcomics and hnever content just churning out only corporate IP superhero stuff - But he's also always had one foot in superheroes, and I can imagine Groth and Fantagraphics as a whole being really snotty to the "superhero guy." |
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Post by berkley on Jan 11, 2018 2:30:16 GMT -5
Wow. That one i really didn't expect. Somehow, I always had the impression of Waid being a cheery fan who was always thrilled to be working in the industry. Of course, no one has one disposition every day, but that's...extreme. Well, he just quit Twitter because (as far as I can tell) he kept getting into arguments and saying not great things that got taken out of context and repeated via the game of telephone as REALLY not great things. But I like Waid as a creator a lot, and I know he has lots of friends in the industry and very good working relationships with his editors, including Joe Quesada, Tom Peyer, and Steve Wacker. (And some bad relationships with Bill Jemas and Dan Didio.) I suspect - based on no evidence whatsoever - that Fantagraphics slapdash, laissez faire work environment wasn't a great fit and - while he's always been an experimental and progressive creator, embracing webcomics and hnever content just churning out only corporate IP superhero stuff - But he's also always had one foot in superheroes, and I can imagine Groth and Fantagraphics as a whole being really snotty to the "superhero guy." What are some of Waid's more experimental, non-superhero books? Whenever I try to look at anything of his, even the independent stuff, it seems to be superhero-related in some way, though perhaps a little less conventional than the standard Marvel/DC kind of thing. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 11, 2018 4:36:25 GMT -5
Well, he's currently writing Archie. And it's GREAT.
Strange Fruit from Boom. Really ballsy, if not... particularly... good.
And, my favorite comic Waid has ever written, RUSE a Sherlock Holmes-y Victorian Detective thing except that (A) Doctor Watson is female and (B) she is smarter than he is.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 11, 2018 5:20:47 GMT -5
I remember one thing I read somewhere a year or two back that bothered me, though IIRC it wasn't presented as any great horror story, just a little anecdote about the Marvel office atmosphere. Basically the idea was that some of the younger generation of creators in the late 60s or early 70s would give Marie Severin a bit of a hard time, trying to embarrass her with risqué talk, stuff like that. I don't think any names were named and I imagine they didn't intend anything really hurtful, but knowing what young males in their early 20s can be like, especially when you get them in a group together, and considering that she was one of a very few females working there, it didn't sound like a good situation to me, even though Marie Severin wasn't the type to let them get to her. Probably I shouldn't bring this up without checking to get the details straight, but to be honest I forget exactly where I read it now - most likely one of the TwoMorrows magazines like Back Issue or something. The only thing I recall reading - at several places online over the years - that concerned another creator giving Marie Severin a hard time involved Wally Wood, and definitely *not* any of the younger creators in early '70s (in fact, based on my reading of the occasional article in Back Issue and various articles or memoir-type pieces posted online, it seems like all of those younger guys had a great deal of respect for Severin and the other "old-timers" like Romita Sr., Colan, etc.). Specifically, according to the stories I've read, when Wood did the art for the first issue of The Cat, in several panels he drew Greer Nelson entirely naked, i.e., complete with pubic hair and nipples - which Severin then had to erase when she did the inks. |
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Post by Cei-U! on Jan 11, 2018 8:38:19 GMT -5
I remember one thing I read somewhere a year or two back that bothered me, though IIRC it wasn't presented as any great horror story, just a little anecdote about the Marvel office atmosphere. Basically the idea was that some of the younger generation of creators in the late 60s or early 70s would give Marie Severin a bit of a hard time, trying to embarrass her with risqué talk, stuff like that. I don't think any names were named and I imagine they didn't intend anything really hurtful, but knowing what young males in their early 20s can be like, especially when you get them in a group together, and considering that she was one of a very few females working there, it didn't sound like a good situation to me, even though Marie Severin wasn't the type to let them get to her. Probably I shouldn't bring this up without checking to get the details straight, but to be honest I forget exactly where I read it now - most likely one of the TwoMorrows magazines like Back Issue or something. The only thing I recall reading - at several places online over the years - that concerned another creator giving Marie Severin a hard time involved Wally Wood, and definitely *not* any of the younger creators in early '70s (in fact, based on my reading of the occasional article in Back Issue and various articles or memoir-type pieces posted online, it seems like all of those younger guys had a great deal of respect for Severin and the other "old-timers" like Romita Sr., Colan, etc.). Specifically, according to the stories I've read, when Wood did the art for the first issue of The Cat, in several panels he drew Greer Nelson entirely naked, i.e., complete with pubic hair and nipples - which Severin then had to erase when she did the inks. ...which is impossible, because Marie was the penciller on Cat #1 and Wood was the inker. Cei-U! I summon the fly in the ointment! |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 11, 2018 9:50:59 GMT -5
^ unless y'all wanna hear about the time Gareb Shamus struck up a conversation with me at a urinal (um.. . equipment in hand) at the Wizard World Dallas show many years ago. Perhaps he was looking for an opportunity to tell you that his was polybagged, gatefold length, and came with a free trading card All while he was Wiz-zing next to bert. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 11, 2018 11:37:29 GMT -5
...which is impossible, because Marie was the penciller on Cat #1 and Wood was the inker. Cei-U! I summon the fly in the ointment! Yeah, sorry, I mixed up who was the inker and the penciler, but the essence of the story is still correct. Wood put the added attributes to Greer Nelson when doing the inks, so Severin had to go back and white out the naughty bits. The source of that story is Sean Howe, in his "Marvel: The Untold Story." There is at least one extant example of Wood's art in this vein, the original sketch for the cover of Cat #1. |
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