A trio of posts from my old Marvel blog in which I polled the readership for answers on how they might change certain things about Marvel and the competition.
March 30, 2009 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General
I’ve been seeing a bit of a decline in the number of readers posting responses to the blog over the last couple of weeks. And this is likely entirely due to the fact that I’ve been less-than-regular about updating it.
Nevertheless, time to get some Reader Feedback going again. So I’m opening up a question to the floor:
If you were given the power to make a single change at Marvel to make things better, what would it be? This can involve story, creators, personnel, direction, anything–but you only get one. What would it be?
(And yes, I know that I’ve just laid out an open invitation for the same six people to come back and complain about the Spidey marriage once again–that’s the cost of doing business, I’m afraid.)
So, bitch away…
Tom B
March 31, 2009 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General
Well, that’s more like it. We saw an immediate uptick in the number of responders to yesterday’s question–so let’s do another one as long as we’re all here.
This is based on a meme that was going around on Twitter recently, but framed slightly differently here.
What I want to know is, what is the one element of Marvel that you believe should be sacred and forever unchanging? This can be something in the present, something in the past, something that’s already changed–whatever. So if you think that Bucky should always be dead, that only Frank Miller should ever write Elektra or that Scott and Jean should forever be a power couple, that’s what we want to hear about.
More later.
Tom B
April 3, 2009 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General
Typically, there’s been a nice and varied response to the last two audience participation questions (if not a real consensus on anything.) It’s pretty obvious that you guys like to share your opinions. So let’s do a follow up to my previous question–actually, sort of a reverse on it:
What’s the one thing that you wish other comics publishers would do that Marvel does? Again, this can be anything, from approach to format to style to talent–absolutely anything.
And let’s also show a little bit of decorum while discussing this. I’m not looking to spank or to vilify anybody among our competitors (and if I was, recent sales figures would have taken care of that anyway.)
So what is it, in your opinion, that we’re doing better than the other guys?
More later.
Tom B
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
On #1, I personally hate the trend of retconning things so that Hydra and SHIELD go back decades and increasing numbers of heroes are retcon legacy characters (though that can work, as in Immortal Iron Fist).
#2. While I loved legacy heroes when it looked permanent (e.g., Wally as Flash — and despite being a big Barry Allen fan, I wish he’d stayed), the modern habit of “let’s put someone into Iron Man’s armor for six months” just doesn’t work for me.
These are personal taste things rather than Serious Flaw things.
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I’d sctuslly enjoy someone else in the armor so long as Stark remains a part of the ecast. Doom as Iron Man is the exception to that and was excellent!
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I’ll cheat and throw in an extra Thou Shalt Not: Writers should stop trying to explain villains (or for that matter heroes) by revealing they were abused as kids. It was startling when that was the reveal in Hulk but it’s a cliche and a stereotype now.
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Not sure if this is within the purview of the question, but the big thing I’d change would be to start printing on better paper, even if it meant a price increase. It’s the biggest source of complaints I hear from people and employees at my shop, and Marvel seems to have issues with this that don’t affect other publishers.
As for things that should never change, I will always love that Marvel attempts to maintain one continuity going back to the beginning. While titles are frequently renumbered or rebooted, I appreciate that the overall continuity of the universe hasn’t been restarted. For me, the increasingly unwieldy nature of that is a feature not a bug. I love seeing the adjustments necessitated by the sliding timeline.
That’s also the thing I wish the Distinguished Competition would emulate. I feel like there have been a few too many Crisis style events attempting to make sense of continuity that lead to factions of fans who cling to their preferred version of continuity.
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