Bu today's comics are a completely different beast....

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Sure -- but is that the NATURAL STATE of the form? Can we look at the history of American comic books over, say, the past thirty years and honestly say they have evolved in a logical manner?

Certainly the various forms they have taken have been deliberate and predictable, but have they really made sense? Comics have been ruled for decades now by diminished expectations running in tandem with a constant quest for easy fixes. Breevort's comments are totally symptomatic of this.

Is it too late to turn things around? Probably, given the people who would be in charge of doing so. But that doesn't mean the conditions as we find them are the only conditions that could have come to pass.

"Yet, when, a while back, we got to talking on this board about the likelihood of my taking on an X-MEN FOREVER kind of book, as Chris had just started at the time, and we even kicked around a title, X-MEN EVERMORE, and I even went so far as to say it sounded like it could be a fun project and something I would be actually interested in doing, Tom Breevort responded to a Forum member's email about this by saying it was up to me to pick up the phone and call him, to show I was "serious"."

In fairness, as someone who frequently hires contractors, if someone had been very public for the better part of a decade that they did not like the way my organization did business and would not want to work for my organization, one blink of a side note would not really make me think they had really changed their mind. I am not likely to chase someone down who is clearly against how we do things when I have a line of individuals who do want to work with us. Its too bad too because I know some great people in my field, but I can't aford the time because they have made it clear over the years that it would be a waste of breath due to politics.

In fairness, as someone who frequently hires contractors, if someone had been very public for the better part of a decade that they did not like the way my organization did business and would not want to work for my organization, one blink of a side note would not really make me think they had really changed their mind. I am not likely to chase someone down who is clearly against how we do things when I have a line of individuals who do want to work with us. Its too bad too because I know some great people in my field, but I can't aford the time because they have made it clear over the years that it would be a waste of breath due to politics.

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Thanks for accidentally underscoring another flaw in this whole process: that it had become about PERSONALITIES.

Comics used to be about hiring the best people to do the job. That was an editor's only interest. And when someone expressed an interest in doing a job, an editor would immediately make appropriate enquiries, not worry about whether the person involved was his buddy.

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This seems to be one of the major problems at the Big 2. One of the requirements that determines whether or not a creator gets hired at the Big 2, is if said creator are friendly or on good terms with certain editors. For example, it is rumored (IIRC, the rumor came from Brevoort himself) that Jim Starlin will never get work from Marvel as long as QAuesada is EIC until Starlin apologizes to Quesada. Jim Shooter has also publicly stated that he was denied work at DC because certain staffers had a grudge against him from his days as EIC of Marvel.

"I have to admit I miss the free flow of those old days.
When I started in this business I could talk to an editor
(at one of the Big Two companies) about a project in the
afternoon and start working on it that night. Now there
are so many levels you have to go through before anything
is approved that you might have to wait many months
before you can get started. You can easily lose interest
in a project during this wait."

orginal article

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A reality behind all this lies in the fact that hardly anyone below the bean counters and suits have any real power any more. Gone are the days when an editor could greenlight a project. Now, the best s/he can do is set the ball rolling.