Tom Brevoort's defense of hypocrisy
3 Comments Published by Avi Green on Sunday, May 27, 2012 at 10:55 AM.
A reader on Tom Brevoort's Formspring page asked him:
A real shame that Brevoort, after all these years, still holds onto the same dismal beliefs, and thinks that being a "youth idol" means it's wrong to be married.
Do you not think there's hypocrisy in undoing the editorially mandated marriage of Peter and Mj and then doing something like the marriage of Storm and BP and Northstar and Kyle? The marriage of Peter and Mj felt far less forced or sudden.Brevoort replied:
No, because different characters require different things. This is similar to arguing that it's unfair that Reed Richards is so smart--that works for his character, but wouldn't work as well for, say, Ben Grimm. Different character. Also, and take this from somebody who was there as a reader and watched it happen, the marriage of Peter and MJ was absolutely as forced and sudden, probably more so. It's just had the advantage of having been a status quo for so long that a lot of readers grew up with it and accepted it. We've never said that no characters should be married, the point is that Spider-Man, the most popular youth-based character in the entertainment world, probably shouldn't be married.The Peter-MJ marriage, it should be noted, was mainly Stan Lee's idea, and he created both characters, so it wasn't as editorially mandated as Brevoort seems particularly hell-bent on claiming. And why does he say "probably"? As he, Quesada and Alonso have made clear from their terrible actions these past 4 years, they think it was definitely. I wouldn't be surprised if there'll come a day when they'll decide that Reed Richards and Sue Storm shouldn't be married either, and that either one should be written out in favor of an entirely different cast member.
A real shame that Brevoort, after all these years, still holds onto the same dismal beliefs, and thinks that being a "youth idol" means it's wrong to be married.
Labels: bad editors, Fantastic Four, marvel comics, Spider-Man, X-Men
"the point is that Spider-Man, the most popular youth-based character in the entertainment world, probably shouldn't be married."
And Northstar, the Token Gay Guy, should be married cuz it's currently the cool, hip torn-from-the-headlines thing to do. Next month: Luke Cage gets killed by Hate-Monger while visiting Tony Stark's gated community.
Honestly, I never liked the married SM stories too much, but this is a stupid, stupid argument. Years from now Civil War, Northstar In Love and these fake #1s may look as silly, cynical and contrived as the glitzy refractor covers of the 90s.
I suspect Brevoort, like most comics pros, will do and defend whatever he has to in order to keep his paychecks flowing.
Comicbook hacks as a breed are fat, old, and insecure. They are the ones with the youth issues. The endless resetting of characters stems mostly from the psychological issues of the writers. Simple as that.
Newspaper strips that started in some cases 100 years ago have more continuity, character succession, tradition and history than any disney or warner crap.