Sunday, September 13, 2009

Quesada on the Graphic Novel

This most likely qualifies as piling on.

And I'm not sure that Joe really cares, but what the hell.

Comics Alliance posted this interview the other day, and I was so flabbergasted by the quotes that i almost thought that I was reading the comics version of the Onion.
"I've stated publicly on many occasions that I've never seen the benefits of original graphic novels. The economics just don't work and are poor for both the publisher, retailer and the creator, especially during this Marvel regime when so much of what we do gets compiled into a collected edition anyway..."
I guess that if you operated out of sheer tunnel vision than this quote would make sense, except that i think that Joe is smarter than that. While i suppose that the Editor in Chief of Marvel is supposed to act like theirs are the only comics that matter, but even Stan, the absolute master of self aggrandizing would refer to the "Distinguished Competition", so Joe can do better than that. There is simply no reason to act like no one that is not currently employed by Marvel sucks (the old "they can't be any good or they'd be working for us" nonsense).

In fact, it makes more sense that the independent Graphic Novel will lead us to the next Paul Pope, the next indy star who decides to grace your covers with his street cred rather than the other way round.

And if he does mean it, and I don't know Joe personally so I'm making suppositions here, it shows a disregard for any other type of creativity and authorship out there so broad as to be stupefying. You might ask yourself, is this why we have Marvel OK'ing tentacle porn on covers? Or 4th generation Sal Buscema clones on the current Ms. Marvel storyline?

I give up. Wait, isn't that just what Joe wants?

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