SGT. CROCK MOCKED
There was some sort of kerfuffle at a comic book convention last weekend, when the guy who writes the Daredevil comic for Marvel (remember the Ben Affleck movie? No?) got into it with some marketing guy at DC Comics (have you heard about the new Batman movie? Yes?). The writer, Brian Bendis, wants to do a comic where Batman and Daredevil team up to fight criminals in tights and so forth, but according to DC Comics VP of Sales & Marketing Bob Wayne, they don't want to participate because they don't like the current management at Marvel.
Which I couldn't really care less about one way or the other, but I did enjoy this exchange:
Though Wayne had some harsh words, the mood was fairly cordial between the two. Then things momentarily got a little nasty."Did Micah Wright write this up for you?" Wayne asked, questioning the way Bendis was taking this issue straight to the fans.
"I don't know Micah Wright -- you work with him," Bendis bit back. "There's no good reason for this. You're just mad that [Marvel Comics Editor in Chief Joe Quesada is] kicking your ass."
So now the DC Marketing chief is name-dropping me as a diss.I still get checks from these people... where does he get off insulting ANY creator, past or present, in public? Does he seriously think I'll never see him again? Or that people wouldn't point it out to me? Or that this type of "Hey, lookit me, I'm the King of the Fanboys" behavior is in any way professional?
Hell, given the turbulent nature of this industry, there's every chance I may work with him again. Look at DC's relationship with Alan Moore over the last 30 years.
If you don't know who Alan Moore is, here's a good place to start.
P.S. A helpful reader reminds me of Wright's previous history with the aforementioned Joe Quesada, as detailed here, here, and here. But hey, given the turbulent nature of the industry...
*If this quote is no longer there, it's only because I linked to it.
P.P.S. Wright follows up, responding to the charge that he's hardly the guy to complain about airing dirty laundry in public:
The difference being that (a) I'm not in charge of Marketing at DC, (b) in the article I read, it said that Bob & Paul had contacted the owners of Marvel and tried to get Joe Quesada & Bill Jemas fired, and (c) Bob Wayne personally crawled up my ass on three separate occasions while I was working for DC for talking out of turn in public. What he did here is about 100x worse than any of the things he criticized me for and I think it shows an astounding double standard. THAT is why I said what he did isn't professional... because he's a boss and one of his jobs is to yell and scream at creators if they do anything which brings DC 5% of the negative attention that this juvenile crap brought about.
Maybe he didn't think mocking a notorious liar would bring negative attention to the company? Maybe he thought that distancing DC even further from Wright, in a humorous way, might actually bring them positive attention? Just a theory.
Also, did you know that one of the telltale signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder is "a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations"?
Posted by Jim Treacher at August 21, 2004 10:42 AM