Blah Blah Blog – My Assistants

A post from my old Marvel blog concerning all of the various Assistant Editors I worked with over the years. Since this was written, I’ve worked with several more.

My Assistants

June 16, 2008 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General

I stopped to think about it the other day, and I realized that, over the years I’ve had quite a number of assistant and associate editors working in my office—and these days, a couple of full editors as well. Taking it all chronologically:

My first assistant, back when I had been promoted to Associate Editor (then called Managing Editor) was Sarra Mossoff. Sarra didn’t stay with the office for too long, though, choosing instead to join Joey Cavalieri’s 2099 start-up team.

Sarra was replaced by Mindy Newell, who was hired by Tom DeFalco. Mindy’s background was more in writing than in editing, but she was tired of freelancing and was looking for more regular employment.

After being promoted to full editor, my second became Glenn Greenberg, with whom I worked on trading cards and a number of books in the Spider-Man areas under Bob Budiansky and later Bob Harras.

When Glenn was promoted, he was replaced by “greatest assistant Gregg Schigiel” (so termed because he recently sent us a jar full of Reeces Peanut Butter Cups fresh off the factory line for no reason, years after he had stopped working at Marvel.) Gregg was really meant to be an artist, though, and he eventually left staff to work for Nickelodeon.

While I waited for Gregg’s replacement to graduate college, Frank Dunkerly, who had been Rubin Diaz’s assistant, helped out in my office for about three months, and acquitted himself well.

Marc Sumerak came next. Marc was nicknamed “The Mechanic” for his ability to get under the hood of a comic book and tighten every loose screw, and was top-of-the-line in terms of working hard and effectively. He set the bar from this point forward.

At this point, the structure of my office began to change, and I began to have more than one subordinate at a time. The first add-on was Jeff Youngquist, who didn’t stay all that long, choosing shortly thereafter to take over our developing collections department.

Jeff’s successor was Andy Schmidt, who eventually went on to helm the ANNIHILATION series. Andy ultimately ascended through the ranks to become a full editor.

Right around the time that Marc was planning on leaving, the office grew again, with the addition of Nicole Wiley (now Nicole Boose of CABLE & DEADPOOL fame.)

And after Marc departed, Molly Lazer joined our crew, almost an even trade-out in terms of ability and thoroughness. Molly was the bedrock of our office for a good, long time, and was promoted to Associate Editor.

In an editorial shuffle, Nicole moved on to work on custom publishing, and Stephanie Moore joined our team from the X-office. She didn’t remain all that long, though, eventually opting to return to school.

Taking over for Stephanie, Aubrey Sitterson was brought in. Like a number of my other assistants before him (Schigiel, Sumerak, Schmidt), Aubrey had once been a college intern at Marvel.

After that, there were a series of shake-ups in editorial, beginning with my promotion to Executive Editor. In the wake of the restructuring, Warren Simons came over from the world of Spidey/MAX that Axel Alonso had been overseeing, swapped off with Andy Schmidt. Alejandro Arbona was hired to be his direct assistant.

At the same time, first Bill Rosemann and then Stephen Wacker were hired from uptown. A former Marvelite, Bill quickly wound up shifting over to work with Ralph Macchio on the Ultimate titles, while Steve took the reins of the planned Thrice-Monthly AMAZING SPIDER-MAN relaunch. (Steve is also known among the cognoscenti as either “The Ambassador”, or “Nifty.”)

Then, when Aubrey migrated over to the world of X like Andy before him, Wacker hired Tom Brennan to directly assist him on the Spidey stuff.

Now, as many of you are aware, Molly Lazer has left our ranks to continue her education, and while she cannot be replaced, she can be succeeded.

Our new Associate Editor is Jeanine Schaefer, direct from DC to the mighty halls of Marvel. She’ll be working directly with me on all of the titles I edit directly while simultaneously heading up a number of projects of her own. In other words, she’s going to be working for a living, but given her track record and experience, we expect great things from her. Hopefully, I won’t mess her up too badly.

Most important of all from your perspective, once “J9” (as we’ve decided to call her) is up to speed on Brian Bendis’ phone number and where we keep our staples, I’ll be able to push off some of my workload onto her, and get back to blogging on a regular basis.

Consider yourselves updated. More later.

Tom B

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