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I think that this is symptomatic of some very bad decisions being made by Bill Jemas, and that if Jemas continues to run rampant, he probably will wreck all of Marvel's positive achievements over the past few years.
There's a very interesting post on the Image Message Boards from a person who clearly has a great deal of inside information, and knew about this Waid firing before it went public. Scroll down to Felicia's 6/14/03 05:36 PM entry. It's from a thread about Marvel's Epic line.
In case that post gets deleted, here it is, missing only the final paragraph which suggests alternative companies for aspiring creators to submit work to.
For starters, this whole Epic idea stems from Bill Jemas scheming up the idea that he can undercut his costs by allowing wannabe creators a shot at writing/drawing for much less than a professional would do it for. Consider this: A certain well paid mainstream artist who I won't say by name is currently paid an average of $1000 dollars per page. At 22 pages that comes out to a production cost of $22,000 dollars. Even at a bi-monthly rate, that's alot of wad for a whole year and that is just the artist. On the Epic line, you get (up to) $8000 dollars to distribute within yourselves: artist, writer, inker, colorist, letterer and compositor. Yeah, you may be able to split this labor between 2 of you creative geniuses, but that's still alot less... ALOT less than the cost of producing a book with a pro. A second part to this that benefits Marvel's pockets is that editorial is completely taken out of the equation. The current salary for an editor at Marvel can range anywhere between 30 to 60,000 dollars. This depends on seniority and how many books are being edited per editor that is... work load distribution. If editorial is liquidated, then Jemas and higher ups (Ike, Avi Arad) will have even more money to line their pockets. Also, there will be no need for the Bullpen or anyone in production who assembles the current Marvel lineup and do things like color correcting and compositing since you will be doing this work for them which you agreed to do when you signed that piece of paper that says you HAVE to. In fact, consider this: Within the past 2 months, Marvel has fired more people and more ENTIRE departments from their company than they have in the past 5 years. About 2 months ago, the entire lettering department, except for the head of lettering (Dave Sharpe) was let go. The employees at this company are so fed up with the insecurities of their jobs that some of them are even quitting before hand. Ultimately, Marvel which existed on 3 floors at 10 east 40th street (floors 9, 10, 11) which they pay alot of rent for will be compressed into one floor (floor 10) and then afterwhich will then have every creative element from within expunged and computers for graphic work replaced with computers from accounting and number crunching. You know who is going to help them do that? You are. Every last person that wants to submit an Epic story that will settle for less money and every person that buys from that Epic line (in the event that Epic should be successful).
Sounds crazy right? What you don't think Bill Jemas is crazy like that? Consider this: All of you should find this interesting as this information hasn't been made public yet: Mark Waid, the current writer for Fantastic Four has been fired. Yes, Mark Waid fired from FF. Don't believe me? Give it time to get to your nearest news source. You know who is replacing him? Bill Jemas. Yes, Bill Jemas himself, who has the ego the size of his bloated head believes that Mark Waid was taking the book in a bad direction. FYI: FF was selling more books than it currently had in years. So for those of you saying it's not a big deal, they change writers all the time... but it is. Marvel's editors had struggled very hard to get this book selling back at the top. They even did the 9 cent issue for promotion and lost alot of money doing so. You still don't think Bill is full of himself? The Namor that is being put out by him, well, nothing more than "the Little Mermaid" redone in Namor flavor. What about Sentinel? "A Boy and His Robot." Bill Jemas believes strongly that books will sell in same amounts if they are done by any artist and written by any writer. This is a theory he shares alone, as none of the other editors or Joe Quesada himself support this concept.
Why don't creators leave Marvel if this is true? They don't know yet. Those that do suspect something, well what are they gonna do? They really don't have to go anywhere unless they get fired. They can keep doing what they are doing and working the books they work on. Bill isn't going to tell them to their face that he doesn't want them and they aren't really gonna ask Bill if this is really the deal. And if they do, there is always plausible deniability. Bill can just take them out to lunch, or make Joe do it, and tell them how much they are loved and appreciated. Admittedly, Marvel does need them for now. And, in my belief, they will always need them. Imagine a Marvel without Bendis, Millar or Morrison. Bill Jemas can imagine it... and to him, it is the same successful Marvel it will always be. To it's fans? Well... we'll see. But remember, when you see creators walking out of the company, the power leaves with them, and I believe, as many others within the company, that Bill Jemas will single-handedly take that company down. |
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