This is kind of a follow-up to this recent post about how I don't understand people who get so emotional cheering for "their team" in sports. It's that way in other areas.
Back in the seventies, I wrote a lot of comic books for Gold Key Comics, plus I was the editor of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate's comic book division and of the Hanna-Barbera comic book department. For the latter two, I wrote a lot of what those outfits produced. Much of what the H-B department did was published overseas and all of what that E.R.B. division did was for foreign publishers, plus I wrote scripts for a foreign comics department that Disney operated on its Burbank lot.
So I wrote quite a few comic books…just not many for DC or Marvel. Before any of you write in and take issue with that statement, let me tell you two things. Yes, I did assist Jack Kirby for a time with his books for DC…but those were comics Jack wrote, even if my pal Steve Sherman and I did give him some minor, wholly unnecessary help. We were paid by Jack, not by DC and as far as we were concerned, we worked for Jack, not DC, and he wrote those comics.
And yes, some of the comics I worked on for Hanna-Barbera were published by Marvel…but I worked out of the Hanna-Barbera studio and I was paid by Hanna-Barbera, as was everyone who worked on those comics. Marvel just published some of them in this country. If you read one, it may have looked to you like I was working for Marvel but I was working for Hanna-Barbera. Like I said, I didn't do much for DC and Marvel.
I did, however, spend some time at both their offices. Every year or two, I'd go spend a week — once it was three weeks — back in New York and I'd hang around the DC offices or the Marvel offices where absolutely no one ever said to me, "What are you doing here? You don't work here." Most, if they noticed me at all, just presumed I did. And once in a while, I'd be asked to do something as if I was an employee and I'd do it.
One of the things I observed was how loyal — and I don't necessarily mean this in a good or bad way — some people were to the company that was employing them at that moment. If a company is giving you a paycheck, what it should get in return is your best labors and efforts in whatever way it's been agreed you will earn that paycheck. But it shouldn't automatically get your heart and blind allegiance…or at least, you shouldn't give it freely.
Loyalty to people is great when properly dispensed. Loyalty to companies? Not so great…especially because companies change as the people change. And the people change. With both DC and Marvel, I have occasionally been in this position: I get hired to work with Editor A and then something happens and I find myself working with Editor B.
Again, that's not always bad. On one comic, I was hired by Editor A, was suddenly working with Editor B, then was suddenly working with Editor C and I wound up being Editor D. In this case, I got along fine with all of them, even that last guy.
I was friends with a man named Archie Goodwin who went back and forth a couple of times between DC and Marvel, at times being a very important editor and writer at each. Archie was great at many things and one was that he avoided thinking that the company that was paying him that week was the best because they were paying him that week.
We talked about it once and he said — I'm paraphrasing from memory here — "You can't get too emotionally involved with one company because then you get whiplash when you go to work for the other or when the boss changes." We had both observed folks who had suffered mightily from mistaking their workplace for their homes, their co-workers for their family, their boss for Mom and/or Dad, and what often turned out to be a short-term gig for Job Security for the rest of their lives.
This is not peculiar to comic books. I've seen it at animation companies, movie studios, newspaper syndicates, book publishers, TV networks…everywhere my career has taken me. I'm sure it happens to some degree in the insurance business and the aluminum siding business and just about every other kind but I'm just using comic books here for my example.
At one point, DC and Marvel used to exchange bundles. Each week when the newly-published comics came in from the printer, DC would send Marvel a batch of their new releases and Marvel would send theirs in return. I was up at Marvel one morning when that week's bundles came in from DC and everyone crowded into an office as one fellow opened the package and he and everyone there offered instant critiques. It sounded something like this…
"Oh my God! Look who they've got drawing Batman now!" "That's the worst cover I've ever seen on Wonder Woman!" "They must be desperate to give work to that guy!" "They're absolutely destroying Aquaman!" "They need to put that Sgt. Rock book out of its misery!"
Later that same day, I was over at DC. Someone had that week's bundle from Marvel and again, everyone who was free at the moment crowded into one office and offered their immediate reactions as the occupant of that office browsed past book after book…
"Oh my God! Look who they've got drawing Iron Man now!" "That's the worst cover I've ever seen on Hulk!" "They must be desperate to give work to that guy!" "They're absolutely destroying Daredevil!" "They need to put that Sgt. Fury book out of its misery!"
The rhetoric, if not the specific dialogue but for the nouns, was just about identical. Trust me on this. The air in both rooms was thick with the sense of "If the competition did it, it must be awful."
I'm sure they didn't all believe that. I think most of them thought that when you work for a company, that's what you say about the competition. (There was a gent there who was then freelancing for both companies. He'd been in the Marvel group earlier that day, happily engaging in bashing the other company that employed him.)
But I think a few of them believed what they were saying. And I think a few more were more inclined to believe it, sorta.
One person on the premises who did believe it was a DC executive who wandered by the room while this was going on. He poked his head in to ask what they were talking about. Someone said, "Just looking at this week's Marvels." He asked why and said, "They're all crap." And from this point on, I believe I am quoting the conversation verbatim. It made that much of an impression on me at the time.
Someone said, "They have some good artists working for them." He said, "No, they don't. And he added — and I'm sure I'm quoting this accurately — "The worst artist at DC is better than the best artist at Marvel."
This was followed by stunned silence even among those who'd been trashing Marvel only moments before. Someone ticked off some names of the best current Marvel artists: "John Buscema, Gene Colan, John Romita, Joe Sinnott…" He shook his head as if to say he was standing by what he'd just said.
In case you don't know comics, those are four guys who pretty much everyone would agree were good artists. That is, unless deep down, you had some emotional need to believe that the company that paid you was outrageously superior to all others.
And then the only guy in either room who hadn't joined in on the insulting of the comics in that bundle spoke up. I didn't work there so I guess I thought, "What's he going to do? Fire me?" I thought of someone then working for both companies and I asked, "Are you trying to tell us that Gil Kane art DC publishes is great art and the Gil Kane art Marvel publishes is bad art?"
He nodded and said, "Exactly. Gil knows he can't get away with handing that shit in to us." Yeah, right.