The Four Color Media Monitor

Bounding Into Comics spoke about a recent Disney Plus documentary covering Marvel's recent history, which tells a pretty different story about how the awful Dan Slott is viewed, even by his own editors and co-writers:

An episode of Marvel’s 616, the Disney Plus documentary series which explores various aspects of Marvel’s history, has revealed that Dan Slott’s poor work discipline has garnered him a less-than-favorable reputation among his fellow Marvel creators.

[...] Slott has a notorious reputation among comic book readers, and many would argue, for good reason.

...despite Slott’s long-time position at Marvel, ‘The Marvel Method’ reveals that the writer’s work ethic is particularly frustrating for his colleagues, which has resulted in his own personal reputation hitting abysmally low levels within the House of Ideas.

In one scene, Slott is seen approaching Marvel Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of Publishing Tom Brevoort to ask for more time to work on a script.

“So I know you’ve got a lot of ideas and very little actually put together,” replies Brevoort. “And you need more time to get it done. Because it’s not good enough and you need more time.”

The Marvel executive then explains how “we use the term “work” loosely when it comes to Dan,” and adds that “Dan’s terrible with his deadlines.”

From a political standpoint, Brevoort's just as bad as Slott, so it's mystifying he puts up with this. Oh wait, maybe their coinciding left-wing politics are exactly the reason why Brevoort does. Politics do make strange bedfellows, after all. Seriously though, Slott's continued employment is inexplicable, considering he hardly brings much to the table, and did only so much in the past to alienate audience, with his work on Spider-Man easily some of the worst he's ever done. His online cybertrolling in the past is one explanation for his tardiness, and even today, after he may have finally disciplined under C.B. Cebulski, it's clear he hasn't changed much in his work ethics.

As the scene continues, Brevoort notes that “Dan is behind where I need him to be on his various assignments,” to the point where he “needed another writer to do the dialoguing on the book,” at which point Slott admits that “Christos Gage is half of my brain.”

When somebody needs the help of another writer to get his work done, it's clear he isn't very good at his trade at all. You could end up wondering how many stories credited to Slott were actually scripted by different writers, an approach that's likely common at times in comicdom, and also movies and TV, with certain names used as selling points, whereas ghost writers are actually responsible for the lion's share of writing credited to the public names.

Some creators were clearly embarrassed over this coverage, and went into apologist mode for Slott's sake. For example, Gage himself:

2) Dan's plots are much more detailed. Broken down by page and panel. In each panel description, it says what's happening, how the characters feel, what they're basically saying. The artist is free to make changes, but Dan's got everything there except the specific words.

— Christos Gage (@Christosgage) November 22, 2020

4) To sum up, anyone who thinks Dan is slacking off because he uses the Marvel Method is wrong. And that's...one to grow on. pic.twitter.com/u1aYLiFljs

— Christos Gage (@Christosgage) November 22, 2020

I can't say I'm surprised Gage would jump to Slott's defense. He apparently doesn't want to fall out of favor with him, even though Slott's undeserving of defense.

A new Disney Plus documentary showing how Marvel comics are made has comics fans divided. Marvel 616, streaming now, looks behind the scenes of various facets of the Marvel universe, from weird Japanese Spider-Man remakes to toys and cosplay communities. But it's the apparently lackadaisical approach of writer Dan Slott that's left some fans unimpressed.

And for good reason. His writing is so self-indulgent and self-serving, and worst of all, so clogged with contempt for what came in better eras, that who in the right frame of mind can enjoy it? Slott's disrespect for Mary Jane Watson over the past decade stands out as particularly awful. Much like Joe Quesada, he kept her marginalized in the worst ways for over a decade, and only after Slott left Spidey for other series like Iron Man and FF, was MJ finally brought back in some capacity and given a certain degree of respect for a change, long after Spider-fans had been driven away by all the alarming contempt for one of Stan Lee's best labors of love. Something which, unsurprisingly, goes without comment in this piece. That aside, what's fishy about this is when they claim Slott is following Lee's "Marvel Method" of the Silver Age:

The episode title comes from the so-called Marvel Method pioneered by Stan Lee in the 1960s. Back then, Lee was in charge of writing pretty much all of the company's comics. So he often gave artists a rough outline and let them use their imagination to fill the pages and panels with action. Dialogue was added in afterwards according to what the artists drew.

Today, Slott follows this same technique despite the fact the industry has typically moved to an alternative "full script" method. Writers nowadays are more likely to give the artist a more detailed description of what they want in each panel, and they also write the accompanying dialogue. The Marvel Method is seen by some professionals as an exploitative practice, while Slott's process places apparently unreasonable demands on the creators who come after him.

I'm sure this is disputable, right down to the risk they take of making Lee out to be exploitative. Sure, I know Lee made the mistake of not helping Jack Kirby regain the rights to the majority of his art drafts in their time, but artists can be just as much storytellers as the scripters themselves, and plenty of writers and artists have their disagreements, both just and unjust. What matters is that Slott has such contempt for Lee's hard work, having once declared in the past decade that Mary Jane was "anti-Marvel", that to say he employs the Marvel Method sounds like an excuse to ignore the bigger picture - Slott's work is simply terrible, and not worth spending 4 dollars over. That certain writers and artists are willing to work with him despite the mistakes he's made that Lee usually avoided in his time doesn't speak well of their MO either. But to say Slott actually follows the Marvel Method, that's the real insult, and the unreasonable demands would be filling in holes of an otherwise terrible plot layout. The article then takes a peculiar turn:

The episode has also struck a nerve because the comic industry, like the film business and many other industries in the #MeToo era, has undergone a drastic reckoning in the past couple of years with workplace behavior ranging from unprofessional to abusive. Comic companies, like many other huge businesses, have been accused of ignoring and even enabling toxic behavior from men including former Dark Horse editor Brandon Wright and former DC Comics editor Eddie Berganza.

Marvel has seen its own controversies: when C.B. Cebulski was promoted to editor-in-chief of Marvel comics in 2017, it emerged that Cebulski had previously adopted a Japanese pseudonym to write for the company -- somewhat insulting considering the comic industry's poor record on hiring actual people from diverse backgrounds. Episode 2 of Marvel 616 focuses on women creators, episode 3 follows a pair of Spanish artists and episode 5 showcases a diverse range of cosplayers, but it's notable that episode 7's glimpse into the Marvel offices features a veritable parade of balding, bearded white men.

What does any of this have to do with Slott's poor conduct, whether at work on online? It's decidedly irrelevant, and looks more like an excuse to engage in social justice propaganda, accusing a white guy of "cultural appropriation", proving that no matter how badly Cebulski kowtows, they won't appreciate his ascension to EIC of a famous publisher. But what's certainly clear here is the failure to acknowledge that women can be just as capable of wrongdoing as men, yet only menfolk seem to be held accountable here, and not women, as that recent "pledge" made clear too. Though that part about a whole bunch of old white guys does say something about who's really minding the store despite all the whining about a sore need for diversity. Let's be clear. What men like Berganza did was offensive. But it has nothing to do with the issue here, which happens to be Slott's lack of talent.

And then, suddenly, here's where the article's apologia really comes about:

While it's touched a nerve, the episode is clearly meant to be played for laughs. It's a modern version of the comedy skits featured in Marvel comics in the good old days, in which Stan Lee and other creators portrayed exaggerated versions of themselves as characters goofing around in the bullpen. We even see some of those comics in the episode, along with fun vintage photos of past Marvel offices.

I'm not sure how a writer's tardiness makes for laughter, after all the reprehensible conduct he was engaging in years ago, at least prior to Cebulski's appointment. Sounds like CNET's watering down certain issues to defend a faux-writer who's among several reasons the industry became such a venomous place. Not good at all. Slott's a terrible writer, and has easily been so since the time he first began in the early 90s. He doesn't deserve sympathy from the MSM, and they shouldn't be downplaying just how bad his MO really is. Eventually, he will be out of a job, but for now, Marvel's staff continues their strange-bedfellows relation with him, and it's detrimental to their now floundering output.

Labels: Avengers, bad editors, Fantastic Four, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, Spider-Man, X-Men