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My Unknown Greats pt. 2
2008-03-05 17:04:50

For some strange reason, the system ate the last paragraph or so and the sign-off for yesterday's blog entry. Weird. In any event, let's move onto another Unknown Great.

BLAZE OF GLORY can't entirely be considered one of "my" Unknown Greats. The project was started by editor Mark Bernardo.

In any event, while almost any western project is a tough sell, Mark got the go-ahead to proceed with the book, and Leonardo Manco signed on to do the artwork. It was scheduled to be a two-issue Prestige Format series, squarebound. Mark, John and Leo got about halfway into it when the bottom dropped out. For these were the days of the Marvel bankruptcy, and in one of the periodic rounds of layoffs, Bernardo was let go from the company, and the project was killed, the work that had already been done written off.

And that's where the story might have ended, if not for the efforts of my then-assistant Gregg Schigiel. A short while later, he brought the series to my attention--he'd seen some of the art for it, and he wanted to see if there was some way we could continue and complete it. I remember that Gregg took an inventory of exactly what had been produced up till that point, and then he sat down with numbers guy Andy Ball to run P & L (Profit and Loss) numbers on a variety of different formats: would it be profitable as a single volume? As four monthly issues? As a black-and-white series? And so on. Eventually, buoyed by the fact that over half the series had already been drawn and written off (so the costs to complete those pages wouldn't be weighted against the project any longer), he came up with a format that was deemed acceptable--and the series rode again!

In moving into this format, we had to break what would have been the first 48 page book in an odd place, in order to get to an appropriate story break--so the first issue had 27 pages of story, while the second one had only 21.

While in no way a sales juggernaut, the book was well-received enough that I later produced a follow-up for the then-new MAX line, titled APACHE SKIES. That series, however, was fully painted by Leo. I did hear some complaints, though, both about the handling of the characters in this somewhat-more-realistic depiction (their earlier exploits chalked up to being Dime-Novel exaggerations.), and the fact that a number of them met their end in this series (chiefly the Two-Gun Kid.) I always found that just a little bit strange--after all, by 1999 when the book was eventually published, all of these characters would have been dead and gone for almost 100 years even if they'd lived to be old men!

More later.

Tom B

I really regret, as a reader, that John Ostrander hasn't done more Marvel work. There was Heroes for Hire and a little bit of Quicksilver, I think, but for the guy who had SO many classic runs over at the Distinguished Competition and that's added so much depth to their universe, he's done so little at Marvel.

I'd love for you to try to fix that, Tom.

Posted by MattDiCarlo on 2008-03-06 08:19:24

sad....I'm sure you'd love to see an APACHE SKIES book again, who would be unusual for a Marvel book but coul be a Marvel equivalent to the acclaimed 'Jonah Hex' from DC; I personnally didn't mind with a mini about the Rangers, or the Phantom Rider ,or Red-Wolf...

American Eagle, yeah, already said I know...

I also would love very much books about locations from the MU :
'Savage Land','Yancy street' ...

Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-03-06 10:45:59

I would very much like to see more Marvel westerns. I loved your fifth-week event (or whatever you call that sort of thing) last year. Failing that, bring the Ostrander/Manco books back into print!

Posted by Josef Karven on 2008-03-06 10:57:33

TOM....APOLOGIZE NOW!
Be a stand up guy and offer your apologies on behalf of Marvel for the ruination of Spider-man !!!! You offered no condemning words for this atrocity. In fact, in the face of fan disgust, you offered accpetance of it. You owe us an aplology, and if you are a stand up guy, you will apologize for not having the guts to say what is right. Denounce OMD/BMD NOW!!!!! We dont want your ongoing babble intended to divert attention from the real issue. WE WILL NOT ALLOW SPIDER-MAN TO BE SWEPT UNDER THE CARPET! AND GET RID OF THAT PICTURE OF YOURSELF! YOU LOOK LIKE SCOTT GORDON FROM THE UNCLE FLOYD SHOW!

Posted by Steve Zoovie on 2008-03-06 15:45:03

I know this is really off-subject, but...
I was going through my old issues, and I found one that dealt with One More Day, and the Peter and MJ marriage. In regards to the 1989 graphic Novel, you said:

"[Parallel Lives] completely changed all the classic Lee-Romita stories. It meant mary Jane didn't necessarily react to Peter as this loveable loser for all those years, because she knew he was actually Spider-Man. It may have been a nicely executed story, but because of the ramifications, I've hated it since the day it saw print."

Now, as much as I'm enjoying Brand New Day, I have to ask...didn't OMD and now BND have just as serious, if not more so, than Parallel Lives?

Posted by Venomfan1995 on 2008-03-06 19:44:38

But anywho....
Cool post, I had never even heard of that before (i had heard of the hood before).

Posted by Venomfan1995 on 2008-03-06 19:45:38

you had me at...
...John Ostrander. might have to seek this one out. Ostrander is absolutely killing it on Star Wars: Legacy...

Posted by artiepants on 2008-03-06 20:42:38

it ain't nostalgia
do you think you could provide some new books around old concepts, like CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS II, or something like that ?
I remember a pitch by SR Stahl about pocket versions of all the super-heroes for gladiators fights, and I tought the idea was brilliant, really....
or
SECRET WARS III,
SECRET WARS:IGNORANCES AND APOLOGIES,
SECRET WARS: DO IT YOURSELF
SECRET WARS:ASK TO YOUR MOM
SECRET WARS:ASK TO YOUR DAD....

Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-03-07 04:36:00

apologies to everybody,
I just had kinda overreacting...
I don't know what happened.

Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-03-07 05:01:22

- Be a stand up guy and offer your apologies on behalf of Marvel for the ruination of Spider-man !!!! You offered no condemning words for this atrocity. In fact, in the face of fan disgust, you offered accpetance of it. You owe us an aplology, and if you are a stand up guy, you will apologize for not having the guts to say what is right. Denounce OMD/BMD NOW!!!!! We dont want your ongoing babble intended to divert attention from the real issue. WE WILL NOT ALLOW SPIDER-MAN TO BE SWEPT UNDER THE CARPET! AND GET RID OF THAT PICTURE OF YOURSELF! YOU LOOK LIKE SCOTT GORDON FROM THE UNCLE FLOYD SHOW! -

I'm feel sorry for with having to deal with this kind of stuff Mr. Brevoort. Don't let people like him get you down! BND was OK, since it had to happen sooner or latter, but you still do enough good to make up for 50/50 comics. ;)

Posted by fetty_pet on 2008-03-07 10:06:49

Where's my "aplology"?
You know, I spent the majority of my waking hours yesterday (8:30am - 7:00 pm) at the local emergency room on the uninformed semi-educated guess of my son's school's social worker, which in turn cost both my fiancee and I our day's wages along with a $100 co-pay for nothing.

Really, I'm having trouble seeing that the 30 min time waste along with $8 or whatever for a couple comic books self-responsibly purchased is worth all this whining. In other words, seriously:

Shut up.

Posted by PseudoSherlock on 2008-03-07 11:33:48

Zoovie, you know all these comics are just made up, right? They're not actually historical documents, none of the stuff in them actually happened. Just so we're clear on that.

Posted by Fetsur on 2008-03-09 13:00:50

I LOVE Blaze of Glory!
I do!

Posted by Ben Morse on 2008-03-09 17:18:52

DOOM'S MOTHER !!!
Isn't it about time to free Doctor Doom's poor sweet mother from the bowels of hell ? Hasn't that poor woman suffered enough ? Plus, how evil and cruel would she be ? How much residual power would she possess ? It's a Marvel event that really needs to happen. Or, Doom has no mother because he's really a skrull. f*#@in' Bendis.

Posted by TigerPupil on 2008-03-28 12:59:56

Array

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About this blog:
Ramblings and musings from the mind of Tom Brevoort. "It won’t be clean. It won’t be fun. It mostly won’t be coherent."

About the author:
Tom Brevoort is Executive Editor for Marvel Comics, and oversees such titles as New Avengers, Civil War, and Fantastic Four.


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