I started as a reader, of course. I picked up my first issue of FF in 1962, and was hooked. Stan and Jack, and later Stan and Steve, and then Stan and a whole flock of people, were doing things no one had ever done before. At least, no one I was aware of, at the ripe old age of 12, 13, 14. Marvel was, in my eyes (and even without really knowing the word) all about innovation. Sure -- superguys in suits, fighting badguys. Nothing new there. Except, they were in New York. Or New Mexico. Or some other place I had actually heard of out here in the real world. They talked like real people. They argued.

Marvel, in a nutshell, was leading the way, and DC, the only company with any real chance of following, was hard pressed to do so.

But by the time I joined Marvel, in the mid-70s, something had changed. It had been a long time since something as new and different as the Fantastic Four or Spider-Man had come out of the "House of Ideas". Marvel had become a place that recycled its own old ideas -- the "all new, all different" X-Men, for instance -- or took other people's ideas and tried to pound them into the superhero mold. "The Exorcist" gave us SON OF SATAN. The Kung Fu craze gave us MASTER OF KUNG FU and IRON FIST.

It is perhaps no coincidence that it was during this time I first began hearing more and more people working up at Marvel refering to comics as a "stepping stone" to Hollywood. ("So step," I would say, "and leave more work for those of us who want to do comics!")

I did not recognize this groundswell for what it was, back then, but with the clarity of hindsight it seems an awful lot like the first hints of what we see all too much of these days -- people working in comics (specifically superhero comics) who are embarassed by comics (especially superhero comics). The Image boys made much noise about wanting to make comics "just like Hollywood" -- and in large part they succeeded. Much to the detriment of the "House of M". Marvel today is much like the Marvel I joined in 1975. Recycling their old ideas. Lifting ideas whole cloth from other sources (movies and TV mostly). Only real difference, the pay is better but the books sell less. That's discounting the rampant unprofessionalism infecting every corner of the industry, mind you.

So, hey, Marvel -- how about some real innovation. The 400th turn on "Days of Future Past" isn't innovative, in case you don't know. Frank Miller blew apart stiff and staid ol' DAREDEVIL and that's why you remember those issues. Copying them is not a route to immortality. Shock and Suspense, as Hitchcock pointed out, are two different things. As are Sensationalism and Controversy. And in both cases, the first one is easy. The second one takes work. And talent.