Tuesday, July 21, 2009

De Nada, Joe Quesada


So, upon writing my opinion blog on the current states of Marvel and DC, I started thinking on a controversial bigtime player, Joe Quesada. Joe was the instigator of the Marvel Knights line, bringing in Kevin Smith on Daredevil which has basically had a ten-year run of being really good. From Smith begat Mack who begat Bendis who begat Brubaker. From the success of that line he was promoted to EIC, and proceeded to make huge changes in the Marvel U. He brought in Morrison and Quitely to X-Men, helped usher in the Ultimate line with Bendis, Millar, Kubert, Hitch and Ellis, brought Ennis to The Punisher and JMS to Amazing Spider-Man.

There've been a lot of good runs under his tenure, with Hulk under Bruce Jones and Mark Waid's Fantastic Four. I also believe he was the guy that resurrected Black Panther with Christopher Priest at the helm.

However, people on the internet hate him. Now, I've covered this slightly on my post on internet message boards, but it bears repeating. I've heard him called "Joe Quesadilla" which struck me as a little bit racist considering that he's Cuban. His name sounds different. It's the same principle as the assholes who stress Barack HUSSEIN Obama. The general consensus is that he's ruined Marvel, he's pissing in the open graves of Jack King and Stan Lee (wait, Stan Lee's not dead yet? Boize Moi, he must be drinking that same swill that Nick Fury does), yada yada yada.

What exactly did he ruin at Marvel? The hopelessly convuluted X-Men? The post-Clone era Spider-Man? The Avengers featuring teenage non-evil Tony Stark? Heroes Reborn? Ugh. Just think of all the great, memorable comic runs and stories in the 1990s. Then think of the same of the 2000s. 2000s wins.

Obviously I think Joey Q has done more good than harm. He brought back the subtle rivalry with DC while making JLA/Avengers a reality. Although after reading it maybe that one should have stayed a pipe dream. Marvel comics continue to spank DC in regards to sales so he's clearly doing something right. He's also done a good job of positioning Marvel as the hipper company, which it kind of always was-from the era of stodgy Silver Age "your dad as a superhero" DC to the modern "simple wing of a huge conglomerate", the competition isn't really fierce. Marvel is a Twittering, TV-friendly place.

Is he perfect? No. As mentioned before, the revamp of a universe not even a decade old was unnecessary and dumb. The idea that you don't have to explain magic, and that Peter Parker would make a deal with the devil (literally, Beezlebub) is idiotic. They kinda killed Supreme Power by bringing it away from MAX. They cut off Epic's wings before it took flight, only for them to eventually allow creator-owned series too late to take advantage of Millar's movie and sales-spawning works, not to mention probably alienating a ton of dudes that probably just went to Vertigo. Yeah, Epic was a huge missed opportunity. And he keeps hiring Greg Land, although it's admirable for him personally that he sticks up for friends and employees.

So, I dunno. Feel free to criticize Joey Q. Hell, do it here, in the comments section, and give me something to respond to. But try not to be too big of a weirdo about it. Or else you'll end up like this gentleman here.

9 comments:

MrMisanthrope said...

It seems you're pointing to past failings of other writers to excuse the current decisions of an editor. I'll take Age of Apocalypse over House of M any day of the week. I'd rather read X-Men 2099 at it's worst to Astonishing X-Men at any point in it's run.

House of M alone is enough to invalidate any good thing he's done. Stan Lee has had his low points, but coming up with mutants was one of his most brilliant ideas. Why waste time on origins when you can just say they were born that way? Because of this, characters don't have to have power sets, they can just have one single power, which made them more vulnerable.

To just say "lolno" and erase that because he didn't want any more X-Books was plain flat out retarded. Civil War was an abortion of every character acting completely out of it, including the random nameless civilians. We've worshiped heroes pretty much forever previously, but hey some villain blew up a bus in a little town, so now we're gonna mug an unrelated one outside of a nightclub in a completely different state."

The entire Ultimate line was asinine to begin with, and basically everything that was wrong with 90's comics, just in "hipper" and ironically much lamer form, World War Hulk was a moronic waste of time, the Skrull event was wall-to-wall suck, and don't even get me started on Bleedball. I'd rather be forcibly made to read an ongoing series about Kaine and Spidercide than look at one panel of Penance. I'd rather watch an animated retelling of the Illiad and the Odyssey as drawn by Rob Liefeld than so much as acknowledge the existance of Young Avengers, The Runaways, or X-23. I'd rather listen to a books-on-tape version of Ravage 2009 narrated by Stan "The Man" Lee than read a story about Luke Cage that portrays him as anything other than a generic, uninteresting strong guy who's not even as interesting to read about as well, Strong Guy. I'd rather have an ongoing Captain America series written by Jack Chick in pamphlet form, than see one page of the recent fellation Black Panther has received, often at the expense of every fucking character around him.

Seethe Rogers said...

Well, what we have here seems to be a case of "different strokes for different folks". Quesada is far from perfect and has made some boneheaded moves, such as some that I've detailed here. However, I would far more take the '00s Marvel output over the '90s, any day of the week. Namely, Wednesday. That's new book day.

It's weird, from your references you're not a mouth-breathing fanboy. You've got some obscure and witty remarks. I just can't fathom, though, that you can't see the quality of "Runaways" and "Young Avengers". Granted, I thought "House of M" was beyond pointless, and nothing more than a glorified What-if scenario (kinda like "Age of Apocalyse" actually), and "Civil War" can be seen as controversial for the politicizing apolitical characters. But the two books I've mentioned are really good, and you should check them up and put the Quesadahate aside.

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Aaron said...

I had the chance to meet Joe Quesada way back in the day, probably the mid 90's. He was sitting alone at a booth at the SD Comic Con, so I approached him and asked him to sign my recently purchased Ash #1, to which he replied "Sorry kid, I'm only signing bla-bla-bla cards."

Fuck Joe Quesada.

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