The Four Color Media Monitor

Quesada, former Marvel EIC and now among the higher echelons of the studio, was interviewed on Kevin Smith's podcast, and gave a jumbled, bewildering opinion of the Man of Steel movie from last year, suggesting he likes the villains far more than the heroes. First, he said:

When talking about how Captain America dealt with his adversary in Captain America: The Winter Soldier in comparison to Superman dealing with Zod in Man of Steel, Quesada joked, “He could have broken Bucky’s neck. I’m sorry. I had to get it in there.”

I don't find that funny at all. Pretty sick joke. Now, here's where he really goes garbled:

“As a comic book fan, I wanted to love that movie so much,” said Quesada. “I wanted to love it so much, and I didn’t love it so much. Again, there are little things here and there that you could pick at and things like that, but I just think at the end of the day, Zod was the hero of the movie to me.”

“He wanted to save his race, and Superman didn’t let him,” explained Quesada.

I don't think Quesada really saw the movie, or he'd know Zod wanted to supplant Earth by turning it into a new Krypton, all at the expense of the human inhabitants. What's possessed him now? Maybe Mephisto?

Quesada added, “Zod, in this particular incarnation, struck me as not necessarily an evil man, but a man of…he had a particular…he had his orders, he had a mission. He was a zealot of sorts, but he was a zealot…again, correct me if I’m wrong… but he didn’t say, ‘I want to rebuild Krypton, and then come back and destroy this little planet. All I want is to rebuild this planet. And the only reason I’m blowing everything to bits here is because you’ve got what I want, and you’re not giving it to me. So please, give me my people, and I’ll leave.”

When Kevin Smith interjected that Zod forced Superman to make a choice that it was either going to be Krypton or Earth, Quesada replied, “When Superman said Krypton had its chance, I was like, ‘Will you just f***ing kill him Zod?’”

I guess he really hated Superman millions of years before Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster ever conceived him. He probably feels the same way about Spider-Man, given what he did in 2007. Quesada's long given telling hints he's the kind of comics contributor obsessed with darkness, and he seems oblivious to how Zod's vision was wiping out the humans and replacing the population with whatever Kryptonians he could find elsewhere. As if they couldn't coinhabit Earth or some other planet.

Quesada felt that Superman was abandoning his own race in the film, and there could have been a solution where Superman could have given Zod what he wanted, so Zod could have rebuilt Krypton elsewhere. However, Smith countered that even if Superman had given Zod some of his blood that Zod would have eventually come back and wiped out Earth.

Quesada replied, “You probably could have written a way around it. You could have had a better solution if you had written a better problem. So I see things like that, and I’m like, ‘Aww, man.’ It was one of some things in the movie, that I just ended up feeling disappointed in it.”

In that case, why did he bother to see it? Look who's talking, the man who couldn't come up with a better problem for Spidey to solve instead of making deals with Mephisto.

Quesada pointed out that he didn’t get that feeling with the Batman movies and that he loved the Batman movies.

And why's that? Because they represent the darkness he considers oh-so crucial for storytelling?

Some of the commentors to the article have good rebuttals to Quesada's spluttering. For example:

"So please, give me my people, and I’ll leave.” that's not what he said at all. This is why people argue over this movie. The detractors make crap up to back up their point with no regard that what they're saying doesn't actually happen in the movie. Zod had every intention of turning Earth into Krypton, he showed Superman that in the simulation. Did Quesada fast forward through that, or just ignore it? Is he ignoring that Zod wanted to kill Superman to extract the codex from him?

And also:

Exactly! Zod never said that, he actually said the opposite. When Superman asked what was going tot happen to the people of earth Zod specifically said:

"The foundation has to be built upon something"

That's when Superman refused to help Zod. In Zod's eyes humanity was nothing more than bugs standing in his way. He found a habitable planet why would he want to go somewhere else? He even went on to say:

"Every action I take no mater how violent is for the greater good of my people"

He could have cared less about what Superman thought he was going to kill humanity anyway. But somehow this guy say's that he is more of a hero than Superman who was sacrificing his own race for the sake of humanity. That's like saying the Pilgrims are the heroes for getting more land for their people even though they just killed alot of Native Americans and stole their land.

There are flaws in the Man of Steel movie, but Quesada's only proven he has no ability to make a logical disagreement with any of them. Obviously he's desperate for attention after all the harm he did to the Marvel universe, even before Bill Jemas left the company. But why should we listen to a man who wanted to make a name for himself alienating Spider-fans and Avengers fans, among others, while flooding the market with worthless crossovers like Civil War? Any sensible moviegoer who hears and reads what this daydreamer says will only come away wondering what he ever got into these businesses for in the first place.

Labels: bad editors, Batman, dc comics, marvel comics, politics, Spider-Man, Superman, violence