Day: October 31, 2002

“60 Minutes II” ran a somewhat unfocused segment last night about our little industry. The good news is, there was nary a “POW or “BAM” in sight. The bad news is, I wasn’t entirely sure what the piece was about.

It seemed to be about comics in general and Marvel in specific. There was a good deal of attention paid to the translation of comics into movies, including footage shot during “Daredevil” in which apparently Elektra was slugging it out with some muggers on what appeared to be Sesame Street. At first I thought the main impetus for the piece was the arrival of Spider-Man on DVD. Then the piece broadened to comics as Hollywood fodder, featuring lots of time spent talking to Avi Arad. Nice puff piece so far.

Then, abruptly, the piece did a 180 and the reporter was grilling an obviously uncomfortable Stan Lee as to the raging discontent he felt over the fact that he doesn’t see dime one from the Spider-Man film. “Do you feel you were screwed?” asked the reporter. Even if Stan did feel that way, he’s far too much of a gentleman–and too canny a businessman–to cop to it. Besides, it’s not exactly news. He’s had decades to come to terms with the fact that he doesn’t get a share in the billions that his characters have generated for Marvel. The most he would admit was feeling a little down about it. But the reporter then talked about how Stan Lee was “unhappy” over not getting his fair share of Spider-Man…except Stan didn’t say that.

Then he started asking Avi Arad about whether Stan had gotten his “fair share” from the film. Arad said Yes, he had. Of course, since Stan (as he himself made quite clear) worked as “work for hire,” his “fair share” is nothing. “Fair” has nothing to do with “just.”

So Arad looked bad and Stan looked not thrilled.

So the reporter had opened a significant can of worms. Was his next stop Paul Levitz to discuss Siegel and Shuster? Chris Claremont to discuss X-Men? Gerry Conway to talk about how much of his material was lifted for the climax of the Spider-Man movie without so much as a by-your-leave? No. Instead he interviewed Art Spiegelman about how comics were reaching more adult audiences.

Weird. If you’re going to do a story that makes people look bad, see it through. If you’re doing basically a puff piece, then go with that. Don’t produce a puff piece with delusions of hard-hitting reporting. It’s just annoying.

PAD

Seems we’ve gotten a lot of traffic from a new weblog, iJournalista! and their coverage of what they call the Marvel Lovefest. Take a look– it surprised me.