Saw that Joe Quesada is moving his weekly Q&A to MySpace.com. Fought the urge to comment when ignorant posters blamed his leaving Newsarama on my dust up with Guggenheim and Slott. But then people started claiming it was because Newsarama bashed One More Day and Brand New Day.
That's when I decided I had to say something.
People really need to get their facts together before just hurling conspiracy theories out there.
Joe stopped doing New Joe Fridays about 5-6 months before the announcement. That's pretty far before my MOSTLY civil debate with Guggenheim that's ending ruffled some feathers. That's pretty far before all the OMD negativity on Newsarama that was in no way the official opinion of Newsarama.
Yes, the roundtable that I participated in had a distinctly low opinion of One More Day. But the opinions of the Best Shots crew are not the opinions of Newsarama. That's always been made crystal clear. When Brandon Thomas came out as pro-OMD, he was accused of just trying to brown nose for a gig and then had it suggested that it was Newsarama trying to do damage control by spinning a positive view on the book.
So...was the official Newsarama opinion the one that came from reviewers like myself (giving my opinion for free) or an official regular column where there is some sort of contractual deal undoubtedly in place? Neither was. But people don't bother looking closely enough to see that.
What else might have Newsarama been blamed for? A poll about OMD where the fans overwhelmingly voted as having thought the event's resolution was shite? Please...
It is clear, however, that Slott cracked and seemed to start snapping at Newsarama, blaming it for much of the reaction to OMD that was present on the site.
NRAMA: You've said before, Spider-Man is one of the what, three books that you would kill to write monthly...did your devotion to the character waver at all when it was made clear the changes in the status quo of Spider-Man and his world that you would be writing?Slott went on a bit of a witch hunt after anyone who was posting an opinion that might negatively effect his Brand New Day arc before it hit the stands. He was all over Blog@Newsarama, criticizing what was clearly one of Newsarama's many OP/ED areas for not researching claims that were made by other sites in link blogs.
DS: Wow. That's a pretty loaded way of putting it. I can see where you fall on some of these issues, Matt.
I highly doubt that Slott's attitude is evidence of how Marvel feels, though.Joe Quesada and Marvel are always looking for the bigger better deal that puts their product out into the mainstream. Not everyone would agree that it is the best move at this point, not that we're all privy to exactly the deal. I mean...we haven't seen the first column yet. I'm not going to damn him for the decision when we haven't even seen a few columns worth of the new status quo (which, I guess, is ironic since I decided to drop BND before I saw an issue).
By the way: if you think that my kerfluffle with Guggenheim cost Newsarama NJF, why was it still intact after I called Brevoort a liar?
That's right. When the Civil War delays were announced a year and a half ago, Brevoort said that they were doing everything they could to give retailers ample warning. Retailers found out about the delay by Civil War not being on their invoice the Saturday before the books were supposed to arrive in store. I called him on it several times and pointed out how having the interests of the retailers as a top priority was obviously a lie when they let notification be put off so long in order to come off with a plan that made them hopefully look a little less inept.
I was just as much a contributing writer at Newsarama during the Brevoort discussion as I was in the Guggenheim debate. I actually behaved more like an ass in the Brevoort talk, with not even the slightest attempt at tact.
Let's recap:
- Joe Quesada stopped doing NJF long before the completion of One More Day.
- Many other editors were sporadically filling in for him, with several Fridays passing without a column long before One More Day.
- Many Marvel books have been savaged by the Best Shots crew in the past (when they deserved it) with NJF humming along nicely.
- My Guggenheim issue pales in comparison to my Brevoort argument, making it highly unlikely that the former killed NJF when the latter didn't phase it.
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In the interest of fair play (and let it be understood that unless I had a question answered, I never looked in the replies to NJF), Brevoort may not have been lying.
ReplyDeleteI have found out in the last four years that a lot of shops have no idea what they are doing. First of all, some invoices are avaialable on Friday (that is why Midtown's list goes up). 2ndly, many other factors go into a shop not having information. Many still fax in their orders and have no idea that they can view their invoice online (seems silly, but it is true, something like 10% of all shops are not even online yet in the most basic of ways). There is a Diamond dateline that comes to email accounts daily, most shops ignore these. At the top of EVERY invoice there is a section that tells you that a book has been made eligible for returns or order reductions based on shipping errors.
We knew well before hand at our shops that the CW books were not shipping on time, we didn't always know the new date, but we knew before we saw an invoice and most of the time two to three weeks before hand that the books were not coming out.
All of this is really off topic, but I thought that maybe you should understand that there is a little bit of inepitude going on at the retailer level. I think one of the reasons that I have not been contacted by various websites as a retailer is that I have generally low opinion of most shop owners... there are some great ones out there, don't get me wrong, but when I hear stories of displays telling people not to buy a comic they have ordered and put on their shelf, well baffle is the most polite term that comes to mind.
I understand what you're saying, but Brevoort publicly acknowledged that the first notification to retailers was the book's failure to appear on the invoices that weekend. He stated this to counter that retailers only found out the day before it was to be on shelves by fans who don't know the full process (heck, larger shops would have received their shipments as early as Monday or Tuesday).
ReplyDeleteDon't want to derail this into the old Civil War history. That was just used to provide evidence that I've shot my mouth off about Marvel before in ways that should be more inflammatory than the Marvel thing and I was no more or less a frequent contributor (not employee or direct contractor) at that time than I was during the Guggenheim occurrence.
Actually, I'd have been less of one, since I had already indicated to Matt Brady my intention to do no further work for the site, other than my Best Shots vlogs that were posted off-site.
Blaming Khux is becoming the new "blame Imaginova." ;)
ReplyDeleteYeah. From what I understand, more than a few folks thought I became one of the new moderators over there. It is kinda funny to cause such paranoid thoughts over there. ;)
ReplyDeleteIt really is all about you, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteNo. It isn't. When it was just about me, I bit my tongue. When it expanded to be about Matt Brady and Newsarama, I spoke up.
ReplyDeleteWhatever the reason it sucks. Like I posted when the news hit Newsarama -I'd rather crawl naked across broken glass then mess around with MySpace.
ReplyDeleteIt was a bad move and I don't think it will last. (hope not)