I recently got a chance to interview Marvel Comics Editor-in-chief Joe Quesada. We spoke of a number of things happening in the Marvel Universe and in the latest Marvel film, Iron Man.

THE COMIC BOOK GUY: First off, you pretty early on seem to have taken, kind of an adversarial role with DC Comics. You kind of called them out, mostly like trash talking on a basketball court. Was this a conscious effort?

JOE QUESADA: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. By the way I made a pretty public statement pretty early on, before I got in to any schoolyard thing with DC. A sort of a malaise had fallen over the (comic book) industry and I remembered back when I was reading comics just as a hardcore fan was that there was sort of a battle line drawn in the sand. There were the DC people the Marvel people and a few that read both but there were tons of arguments. Like DC fans didn’t like Marvel fans and vice versa. And there was a definite rivalry between the companies.

It was a lot of fun, and at the end of the day you can’t have the New York Yankees without the Boston Red Sox. That sort of a rivalry just makes baseball more exciting.

So I felt that the rivalry needed to be sparked up a little bit. So I did a little bit of teasing and prodding more like what Stan Lee did back in the day. Back then he used to call them the Distinguished Competition and Brand X. so it was keeping in the tradition.

And lo and behold fans woke up and DC woke up a little bit so, I think competition is great. I think passion is a good thing. Specifically fandom. Passion among the fandom is, and by the was if passion means some fans say they hate the guy at Marvel because he’s saying mean things, that’s passion, you know. Have at it. That’s great, So long as you’re passionate about it, that’s great.

CBG: So knowing that this was coming, did you really early on resign yourself to that?

JOEQ: What’s that?

TCBG: The idea that you would be hated.

JOEQ: Oh yeah. One of the clearest things that anyone ever said to me when I took over this job was when Tom DeFalco, editor-in-chief before the guy that I took over this job, came into my office and Tom did this job for a long time. So he told me, “Just be aware that you need a really broad back to do this job. Because no matter how good your intentions are there will always be people who are going to see conspiracies where there are none. And going to blame you for things that are totally out of your control.”

So knowing that, and now having experienced that, I can increase circulation and improve the books a thousand-fold - and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that - but there’s always going to be people that are going to say, “He sucks.”

And that’s just fandom you know. I mean I’m a fan of comics, of sports and it just comes with the territory. Fans are very passionate. So you can either take it or you can’t, it just comes with the job.

To use another sports metaphor, there are people who say that certain athletes can’t play in New York because the fandom is just too passionate. And there may be some truth to that, but some of them can and do.

So knowing that, it was a simple decision to make.

TCBG: With that already behind you, that kind of feel for your job, does it make it easier to do something like “Brand New Day” where you know it will anger some of the fans?

JOEQ: Brand New Day was a bandage that had to be ripped off sooner or later. This isn’t something that just occurred to us here and we said, “We think it’ll work better to have him like this.”

This is something that every editor that I know of, every one for the last 10, 12, 15 years has wanted to unmarry Peter Parker again. And they either didn’t have that solution or they weren’t ready to do that yet because you knew that there would be a backlash from a certain segment of fans.

But one of the things that I try and advocate around here is that we do not publish in fear. We can’t. Once you start staring into the rear-view mirror you’re going to end up in an accident.

And Brand New Day was one of those things where we could easily have sat back and said, “Oh, I don’t want to get all those e-mails.” but at the you know what, it was what was best for that character in the long run. So let’s just do it. Lets get it over and done with.
To me, One More Day was less important, to me it was more important to get to Brand New Day. And I get tons of fan mail telling me, “I didn’t really like One More Day but now I’m loving Brand New Day and I understand why you did it.”

That’s really the ultimate goal and two years down the road, five years down the road, no one’s going to care. So long as we keep putting out good stories.

TCBG: Right. And I was one of those fans where it really bothered me. I mean Spidey is what brought me into comics. But the stories in Brand New Day have been really solid.

JOEQ: And there’s so much more we can do with Spider-Man that you can’t do with him married dot Mary Jane. We haven’t even scratched the surface we haven’t had any real romance brought up in the book. But there’s stuff coming down the pike where I just want to tell everybody what’s coming but I just can’t.

I also think that, at the end of the day, one of the things that has lots of the fans upset is, “How does this fit into my Marvel continuity world.”

Those answers are coming, we didn’t want to give them away right away. But those answers are coming don’t even panic. Believe it or not, it’s all under control.

TCBG: And you just mentioned romance right now. I don’t know if it’s how you guys are thinking of it but to me it felt like it was a conscious decision not to have any romance right away because it would kind of be like seeing a friend that just recently got divorced with someone else. It just kind of feels weird.

JOEQ: Oh yeah no, that’s absolutely true. Part of it is also, lets clear the deck, lets clear the air, we’re introducing a new cast. Lets let the writers have their way with it. Who does Pete meet, who does Peter run into, who does Peter have a crush on and who does he fall out of a crush on. It’s just letting that happen organically with our writers instead of being like, he’s going to date her, he’s going to break up with her.

And it’s part of the deccision to give the old Spider-Man villains a break, we’re introducing a lot of new villains. Not that Spidey’s villains aren’t great and we will bring them back, it’s just that they’ve been used so much lately. And not just with Spider-Man, throughout the Marvel Universe. So we just want to give them a break for a little while and bring on new characters and make the cast even bigger and thus the soap opera even bigger. So I’ve been pretty happy with the way that these guys have been taking the books.

It’s also part of taking the books thrice monthly and a single title instead of three separate titles. Bringing back what made Spider-Man so great, what made Marvel so great was there’s one life, Peter Parker and the other part of his life if the Amazing Spider-Man. So we’re really looking at the soap opera of this guys life.

TCBG: You mentioned the term soap opera and I think that’s really been done on Ultimate Spider-Man where you’re really involved in this guys life. If the Spider stuff happens of it doesn’t happen, you’re still engaged as a reader.

JOEQ: Exactly. And remember the first six issues, there was no costume and you were just engaged in the life of Peter Parker.

And that shows you that what I’ve always been saying is true. You need to care about the guy in the red and blue suit. You have to care about Peter Parker to care about Spider-Man, you need to care about Matt Murdock to care about Daredevil. They’re their alter-egos first and the superhero second.

TCBG: And that’s been coming up a lot with the reviews of Iron Man. Most of the reviewers have pointed out that it’s a long time before you ever see the suit.

JOEQ: Let me tell you, as a guy that’s seen the film about a dozen times at this point. From the very first iteration of the film, I keep telling people, “I don’t care if he ever puts on the suit.” Because Robert Downey Jr. just does such a great job of capturing Tony Stark. He does such an incredible job of making this multi-dimensional man that becomes this hero that the suit is secondary. You just want to see more Downey Jr. He really nailed what it is to be a Marvel hero, right at it’s heart.

TCBG: How did you feel about that casting when you found out?

JOEQ: I loved it. I absolutely loved it.

First of all, I happen to be a huge fan of his. So much so that I even watched Alley MacBeal to watch him. (both laugh)

So I was thrilled when I heard it. And it really was art imitating life at that point because in a lot of ways he’s lived the life of Tony Stark.

TCBG: And the whole cast if phenomenal. The lead cast has about 7 Oscar nominations among them?

JOEQ: Oh yeah, and I’ll go on record saying this. Aside from Downy doing an incredible job in this, it’s the first tie that I’ve seen a romance on the screen of a superhero movie that really touched me. Where I was like, “OK, I really feel this.”

There’s just some sort of a magic between him and Gwyneth Paltrow (as his personal assistant Pepper Potts) that really touched me.

TCBG: And that’s one of the places where the movie can feel outside of the standard context of the book. There’s been romance between Tony and Pepper in the past but it’s never seemed like it could last.

JOEQ: And it’s funny that they should nail this particular romance because the Pepper Pots Tony Stark romance isn’t like Peter and Mary Jane, Peter and Gwen, Clark and Lois, you know, it’s not a classic comic book romance. And yet they managed to take something like that and make is something really special.

Where Robert Downey Jr. has really captured the essence of the character, I think what Gwyneth Paltrow has done for us is that she’s given us a new look at Pepper Potts. Where we’re really looking at this going, “Wow.” this could be the case where an actor playing a character on the screen will probably effect the comic books because she she gave us a look at Pepper that we never saw before. We see her in the flesh now and I think that, invariably, will effect the way writers write her in the future.

TCBG: The movie has the modern Iron Man suit but I was wondering if at any point the Ultimate Iron Man suit was considered?

JOEQ: You know, that’s more of a question for our West Coast guys. The development guys and (director Jon) Favreau. What I do know is that Arnie Granoff, who was drawing Iron Man for quite a while was asked to design the suit. So I think they were looking at the standard version but that’s really a question for those guys.

TCBG: Sure. Speaking of the Ultimate Iron Man, there’s a few things in the Ultimate storyline there are elements of Tony Stark that makes him seem more tragic than in the standard storyline. Is something like that that is coming in the standard storyline?

JOEQ: In “Invincible Iron Man” we’re going to be revealing a lot of stuff about Tony. It won’t resemble Ultimates, it’ll be different, but there’s some stuff coming out about Tony that I think will reveal a lot.

TCBG: Well, they did shoot a cameo with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Is this kind of layng the groundwork because I noticed that the two Marvel movies have sort of a cross referencing.

JOEQ: Oh, you know … Is there a cameo somewhere? I have no idea of what you speak. (both laugh)

TCBG: All right. This is sort of a goofy question, you put out a song earlier this year called two weeks late …

JOEQ: Oh, actually that was last year. I put out a song to Marvel fans each year. I’ve done it five years in a row, unfortunately I didn’t get to do it this year. “Two Weeks Late” was a comment on late comics and fans were really getting up in arms so I put out this song.

It was for Christmas of 2006 but I put it out two weeks late so it was actually in 2007.
It’s just something I do. I used to do a musician for a living before I ever did any of this stuff so once in a while I like to get goofy with that.

TCBG: You have a history of actually standing behind the comics that are running late. A lot of the time it really pays off with a great comic. On a few occassions, like “Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk,” it just kind of stalled out in production. Is there any projection for when tht would be coming out or is it a dead project?

JOEQ: The current projection write now is that Damon (Lindelof) has handed in every single script except for the verly last. But that doesn’t really matter right now because Leinil (Francis Yu) is doing Secret Invasion.

My suspicion is that when Lenil get’s done with Secret Invasion, he really wants to finish this, so I think that this will be the next thing that he jumps on. And then we’ll be able to finish that and get the comics out.

So I know that Damon is pretty much done but he’s not really in a rush to get the last script out because we don’t have an artist for it now but I suspect that once Lenil is done we’ll green light it again.

TCBG: One thing that happened last year was a certain amount of “hatred” toward Iron Man. Was that something that was conceived before …

JOEQ: Oh yeah absolutely. We know which side of the registration act fandom was going to rally against so we knew we were putting Tony Stark into a really interesting position. But it was really a position that we thought was right for him.

What’s interesting about that is that is that shortly after, almost every single script we were getting in from our writers, nearly every pitch I was getting from our writers or young writers trying to get into the industry either featured Tony stark or had Tony Stark in a cameo. So at the end of the day I think its really been working out well for us in that he’s really the misunderstood hero in this whole thing. But it’s made him that much more interesting to all our fans out there and he’s literally in all out books at this point.

TCBG: Not knowing that that would be a by product, was that really a calculated gamble on your guys’ part, kind of casting him as the bad guy?

JOEQ: Well first of all, we didn’t cast him as the bad guy. When you look at the decisions he made … We didn’t take any side in this, we presented both sides of the argument with registration of not registering and everybody falls within those lines. But when someone, one of our characters says, “You know what, I think the government’s right” because of the climate of this country right now, most of our readership is going to say, “Oh, I’m not with him, he’s with the government.”

Say what you will but that happens to be what happened and we expected that. It doesn’t mean that Tony’s wrong, by the way. It doesn’t mean that the government is wrong either. In the storyline, Tony ended up being right but he made the tough call of saying, this is right for us right now.

So people might want to see him as a villain but that’s certainly not how he was cast in any of this.

TCBG: On that same level though, most of the best villains don’t think of themselves as “bad guys.” But I don’t’ think he was a “villain” I mean, he was going up against Captain America and it’s kind of hard to look like a hero while doing that.

JOEQ: Well yeah. (both laugh)

TCBG: Well if Cap were whacked out on drugs or something maybe but other than that you’re going to look like the bad guy. This next one is definitely a loaded question though. Are we going to see Steve Rogers return as Captain America?

JOEQ: Are we going to see Steve Rogers return? Quite frankly I don’t know. I mean, I’m looking at the next six months of books right now, I don’t see Steve Rogers anywhere. So I have no idea.

What I can tell you is that “Captain America” the book is doing incredibly well and Steve Rogers ain’t in it. We even have a new Captain America and Steve Rogers ain’t in that costume.

TCBG: Oh, and it’s being done really well by Ed Brubaker. And I think it’s really one of the best entry level books out there in that it’s not a traditional comic story it’s being written more like an espionage book.

JOEQ: And he’s managed to do one of the most difficult things in our industry which is making Cap, I mean he wears the American Flag, and he’s made him an interesting character that we want to read about.

TCBG: Well Captain America has traditionally taken an interesting look at our country I mean he had, well they never directly stated, but he had Richard Nixon as a bad guy.

JOEQ: You now, when a writer decides to go out on an edge, like Ed has, Captain America is a really interesting character. But when Marvel says, “We don’t want him to take a stand, we just want him to be a superhero,” that’s when the character has suffered. So that’s what I’m saying. It’s a little bit tough to write Captain America because you really have to have a little bit of chutzpah to be able to say I’m going to have the character stand for something.

Not everyone is going to agree but that’s what we’re going to do.

Again, everyone sees the American Flag and everyone has varying degrees when they see that. When I look at the American Flag, I think I’m as patriotic as the next guy and I have certain feelings. When my dad looked at it, I mean my dad fought in the Korean war, he feels, possibly similar to me but he feels something different. The same thing with my grandfather, he was an immigrant who came to this country and fought in World War II. So everyone who sees Captain America feels the same thing. They all see a piece of themselves in that character, so you’re never going to please everybody.

TCBG: Two more questions. One is about you. You’re probably about the highest ranking Latino in the industry right now. Do you feel a certain weight about that?

JOEQ: I don’t feel any “weight” about it. I feel a lot of pride. My father was very proud of his roots and made sure that I understood it completely but as far a weight, not really.
I mean Latinos, we’ve done really well in a lot of major industries. But at the end of the day I’m just a guy trying to do my job and if that inspires people that’s great, but really just trying to keep my head above water.

TCBG: My last question is really for you. At the end of interviews I like to turn over the floor in case there’s anything we forgot to talk about and something you wanted to say.

JOEQ: No I think we’re good. We covered a lot actually. (both laugh)

When last we saw Marvel’s new Star-spangled avenger he was about to go toe-to-toe with four super-villains. A task he referred to as “No problem.” With issue No. 36 you can take a peek at whether that was a line that Bucky can back up or ramblings of a cocky novice. (Read the review Monday.)