QUITTING MY FIRST MARVEL COMIC

Oh, the irony

Considering how much landing my first regular writing assignment meant to me, what could’ve possibly compelled me to leave it…?

To fill in some of the backstory, I’d refer you back to a previous newsletter. In that newsletter, I recounted exactly how I scored the gig writing the monthly CABLE series for Marvel Comics way back in 1997 (thanks to fellow writer, James Robinson). It was the culmination of a life’s worth of dreaming, woodshedding and effectively positioning myself within the comicbook industry. I had, as they say, finally “made it”.

But just as significant as the job itself was my collaboration -- and growing friendship -- with artist supreme, Ladronn (who was on a pure Kirby-meets-Moebius trip at that point in his artistic journey). It was an unexpected development, in terms of finding an artistic partner that not only shared my level of ambition and my desire to not only do the job at a professional level, but to be great at it. It was always more than “just a gig”. We were as committed as two young, naïve creators could be on a work-for-hire assignment. And over the two years that we busted our asses working on it, we received a fair bit of attention… from the comicbook press, from other professionals, and from certain discerning readers.

However, in that bygone year of 1999, it seemed we might’ve been slightly ahead of the commercial curve, because all of our hard work only served to transform Cable from a series that had been a perennial Top 20 book on the sales charts (outselling Amazing Spider-Man, for chrissakes!) into an unlikely critical success that… well… just wasn’t selling as well as it had been before we took it over.

Now… you could chalk that up to sales generally falling across the board (keep in mind, in 1999, the entire industry was basically in the shitter, with Marvel having recently filed for bankruptcy). Or you could chalk it up to the fact that we were treating an X-book as though it were more like the classic Marvel comicbooks that Ladronn and I had grown up loving. The problem was… that particular style of comicbook wasn’t what your basic Cable reader seemed to be interested in at that time. Meanwhile, not enough new readers had discovered what we were doing to make up the difference. And, as I said, the sales were starting to reflect that dilemma.

Although, here’s a sobering reality check… my first issue, Cable #51, had sales of roughly 72,000 copies. Our final issue, Cable #70, had sales of around 45,000 (and still in the Top 50). These days… that’s still a sizeable hit. Nevertheless, at the time, the drop was fairly precipitous.

Eventually, I received a phone call from my Cable editor, during which he informed me of two things that I never would’ve expected: Ladronn was being removed from the series. His replacement was going to be none other than Cable’s creator, Rob Liefeld.

The editor made it clear that I was welcome to stay on as writer, that Rob was interested in working with me in that capacity. But I’ll admit, the news that Ladronn was not going to be drawing the book left me reeling a bit. In any case, I told the editor I needed some time to think about it.

Now, by that point in my burgeoning career, I had met Rob Liefeld a handful of times (at conventions) and, if I’m remembering correctly, he had raved about the work that Ladronn and I were doing with his creation. He seemed to be very much onboard with our “classic Marvel” approach. Then again, he also had a financial stake in the continued success of the character, so when sales started to dip… he definitely noticed. It made perfect sense that he -- and Marvel -- would want to do whatever it took to goose sales on the title. In any case, I did my due diligence and got on the phone with Rob to talk it over. It was a pretty good conversation. Rob isn’t that much older than me, so we share a lot of similar pop culture influences and we got along well. He could tell I was on the fence but was still relatively excited about the possibilities and seemingly open to collaboration. But I still wasn’t sure.

Then things got even weirder… I got successive phone calls from two fellow professionals -- both who seemed to know what my situation was -- who generously offered their sage counsel. I don’t recall who called first, but one of the calls was from 90’s X-Men writer, Scott Lobdell (who I don’t think I knew at all at that time, aside from possibly a drive-by introduction at a convention somewhere). Lobdell encouraged me not to leave the Cable gig, to take full advantage of this opportunity to work with Liefeld and run with it all the way up to the top of the mountain.

The other phone call I received was from Jeph Loeb, who I did know a little bit at that point but would come to know much better in subsequent years… first as a fellow writer in the Superman office at DC Comics and then when he became head of Marvel Television, where he served as our boss when Man Of Action worked on the Ultimate Spider-Man and the Avengers Assemble animated series that aired on Disney XD. Where Lobdell had been cheerfully encouraging, Loeb -- a former Cable writer himself -- was really giving me the hard sell, enthusiastically and emphatically recommending that I climb onboard what he referred to as the “Rob Rocket” and to let it propel me -- and my still-developing career -- straight into the stratosphere. He practically called me a moron if I didn’t stay on.

But I still wasn’t sure. So I did what any young man searching for answers -- both concrete and existential -- would do… I hopped into my Ford Econoline van and drove straight to Las Vegas to hang out for a few days and clear my head and get some perspective. But instead, I gambled a bit… I ate a lot… and didn’t have many deep thoughts about anything.

But on the drive home, I accepted what had always been painfully obvious: my loyalty to Ladronn was a helluva lot deeper than any loyalty I might have to a fictional character I had written for two years… or to the long form story we were telling.

So I quit my first monthly gig as a comicbook writer. And I still feel pretty good about that decision.

It might’ve been the moment I became a true professional.

But, of course, I was still a bit of a punk… so I also sent my very own “press release” to my new friends at the up-and-coming comic news website, the fabled Newsarama.com to personally break the news of both Ladronn’s removal from Cable and my decision to leave with him. That little maneuver earned me a phone call -- and a bit of a wrist slap -- from Bob Harras (Marvel’s editor-in-chief at that time), who expressed his “disappointment” in my self-marketing initiative. He suggested that, in the future, I refrain from ever pulling a similar stunt while I was working at Marvel.

Right. You’d better believe I did it again…

Joe Casey

USA