Blah Blah Blog – Ten Years Ago This Month (Then)

A post from my old Marvel blog, this one another look back at what my office had put out a decade prior to the time at which I wrote it. Today, this was 23 years ago.

Ten Years Ago This Month

April 6, 2009 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General

It’s been a little while since I did one of these, so it’s time to turn the clock back a decade and see what I and my office were up to Ten Years Ago.

April 1999 looks like a cakewalk compared to the workload I’m managing these days. My office only produced five books that month (which is one up from March 1999, my lightest workload month in all the time I’ve been keeping track of this stuff.

AVENGERS #17 was the middle part of a three-part guest story both written and illustrated by Jerry Ordway, to give the regular team of Kurt Busiek and George Perez enough time to get ahead on their big Ultron story. What I remember most about the issue was working on the cover, which had to be resized somewhat to make he figures fit the space without obscuring the logo, and on which a patch had to be done for Ms Marvel to put her in the correct costume. Even so, it’s not a terribly wonderful cover, difficult to make out, with all of the figures becoming a hard-to-distinguish jumble in the center.

THOR #12 has a wraparound cover, only the front of which you see here. This was a double-sized issue, as all of our #12s seemed to be in those days (as a celebration of a solid year of publishing, so rocky had the retail environment become.) This was the climax of the year long “Dark Gods” storyline that saw the Asgardians returned to their place of prominence in the Marvel U, and boasted some stellar artwork by John Romita Jr and Klaus Janson.

THUNDERBOLTS #27 features some interesting cover copy which was almost certainly the brainchild of writer Kurt Busiek. Kurt and I would do this kind of throwback cover copy with word balloons and blurbs on T-BOLTS every nine or ten issues or so—it seemed to fit with the spirit of the book somehow.

AVENGERS FOREVER #7 moved us into the latter half of this twelve-issue epic (which we’ll be collecting again in a handsome hardcover edition shortly.) Spectacular artwork by Carlos Pacheco and Jesus Merino on this book, though I’ve never been overly fond of the Yellowjacket figure on the cover—it looks like somebody just shocked him on the behind!

Finally, there was HULK #3, my first issue editing the book. Actually, most of the work on this issue was completed by previous editor Matt Idelson before he jumped ship to work for DC, and all I did was put the issue together and get it out to press. This was right at the outset of the short-lived John Byrne/Ron Garney run that sounded like it held a lot of promise, but which disintegrated before too long for a myriad of reasons.

So really, not that wonderful a set of covers this month, but all of the books were at least solid—there aren’t any out-and-out stinkers in the bunch, at least from my perspective.

By way of comparison, here’s a list of all the books I’m working on for shipping this month (with the first batch being titles I’m directly editing, and each subsequent batch being edited by a subordinate editor within my area)

APR
New Avengers #52
Captain America #49
Mighty Avengers #24
Fantastic Four #566
Marvels: Eye of the Camera #5
Marvels: Eye of the Camera #5 Black and White Variant
Dark Avengers #4
Secret Warriors #3
Dark Reign: Fantastic Four #2
Sub-Mariner Comics #1
Dark Reign: The Cabal #1

New Avengers: The Reunion #2
Fantastic Force #1
Avengers: The Initiative #23
Cap: Theater of War: Brother in Arms #1

Ms Marvel #38
Amazing Spider-Man #590
Amazing Spider-Man #591
Amazing Spider-Man #592
Avengers/Invaders #10
Skrull Kill Krew #1
Captain America Comics #1
Marvel Apes: Spider-Monkey #1

Amazing Spider-Man Family #5
Marvel Assistant-Sized Spectacular #2

Nova #24
Guardians of the Galaxy #13
War Machine #5
Thunderbolts #131
War of Kings #2
Dark Reign Hawkeye #2
Marvel Zombies 4 #1
Timestorm 2009/2099 #1
War of Kings Ascension #1

Daredevil #118
Immortal Iron Fist #25
Invincible Iron Man #12
Dark Reign: Elektra #2
Dead of Night: Werewolf by Night #4
SI Aftermath: Beta Ray Bill #1
Thor #601

Marvel Assistant-Sized Spectacular #1

Don’t know quite what this all proves—other than that I need a vacation.

More later.

Tom B

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