JB, that tallest midget comment really made me laugh :)

It's amusing (to me) that many of these suggestions involves the removal of people such as Joe Q, Bendis, Mark Millar etc, and also the end of the "writing for the trade" regime. Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that love him or hate him, Joe Quesada helped to resurrect Marvel from the bankruptcy and creative stagnancy that the company was suffering from - and along with Bill Jemas, he really began to push the Marvel trade programme which brought in a significant increase in revenue to the company. It still does today. The fact is, there are people who prefer to buy an X-Men (for example) trade, rather than a monthly X-Men comic. And said trades work (and sell) far better when they contain a complete 132 page story, rather than six individual 22-page stories. Indeed, the trades have often allowed monthly titles to remain alive when they would otherwise have been cancelled, simply due to the extra revenue and readership those trades bring in.

As for ditching the likes of Bendis and Millar, the problem with that is that those two writers are responsible for the majority of Marvel's top selling comics right now, and indeed have been for the past few years - month after month. From a business point of view - and Marvel is a business, just like any other - it would be suicidal to ditch Quesada, Bendis, Millar & co from the company, because right now those guys are selling the most units. OK, so you could argue that Writer A could replace them and do an even better job in terms of sales... but unless that can be proven beforehand, you can't change what is a winning formula.

I know Joe Q isn't too popular around here, in part because he axed Hidden Years for a reason which he subsequently did a u-turn on, but... well... get over it. It's in the past, what's done is done, the book is gone and JB is working elsewhere now. Look, I love JB's work, always have and always will, and I'd love to see him working on Marvel characters again. His commissions prove that he could do an incredible job back there. But unfortunately, we all know that's not going to happen for the forseeable future. Doesn't mean Quesada is the spawn of the devil though, and people should remember that when Joe steps down as EIC, whenever that may be, he'll be leaving Marvel in a far better state of health than it was when he took over the reigns.