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Interesting Shooter interview from the Comic Book Resources archives: The NU bits are about 2/3 down the page, but here's what I thought was the relevant portion conceptually...
I said, you know, the original Marvel Universe -- Stan's conception of it -- instead of doing something Superman or Green Lantern, he was really trying to do science fiction. The Fantastic Four didn't have costumes in the first issue. He was trying to be down to Earth.
The problem is Stan doesn't have any science background and the minute you start working with Kirby, you're going to get Atlantis under the ocean, the Blue Area on the Moon, a repulsor ray. It's like Kirby does fantasy, period. He wasn't a science guy either. I said, so Stan's concept was why don't we do this more realistic? ... [W]hat if we went back to that moment in time where Stan said, let's do this more realistic. We have some science background. Let's do a science fiction comic book universe, where things are based more on real science, try to make it more real. We don't have Atlantis under the ocean and the Blue Area of the Moon.
Then gulp in horror as the whole thing goes down the crapper...
Right after that, this is about the time the company had been taken private and put on the block to be sold. I'm called up to Galton's office and he says "What's your budget for the New Universe?" I said, "$120,000." He said, "How much of it have you spent?" I said, "Not much, we just got started really." He said, "We have to cut your budget." I said, "What? We have to create these titles out of thin air." He said, "You'll have to do it with $80,000."
[Then] I get a call and he says "We're cutting your budget to $40,000." I said, "What?"
The next day, he calls up and said "How much have you spent?" I said, "About $20,000." He said, "Don't spend any more."
Which explains why some of the work was, er, subpar...
One of the things in my business plan [for the New Universe books] is that we were going to guarantee royalties or pay higher rates in order to get the big name artists to do this stuff. .... All that stuff got scrubbed. I was told, you can pay people their page rate, that's it. ... So basically, if you check the New Universe, the artists you'll find were people who couldn't get any other work.
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