Quesada vs. McFarlane

Originally published December 22, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1414

In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

In Wizard magazine’s end-of-the-year letters column, the following missive appeared from Marvel Editor in Chief Joe Quesada:

The first weeks as Marvel’s E-I-C have been pretty interesting. But through the never-ending waves of groupies and hangers-on pounding at my door, I still ponder one question: Whatever happened to Todd McFarlane? What happened to the golden boy who reveled in his badassness and made his fortune on the backs of fans, retailers, and collectors only to disappear in our industry’s greatest time of need? Does he no longer care? Or is he just afraid to come back?

Where is the Todd and his big yapping mouth? I’ll tell you where, home, wrapped in his MTV music awards and Spawn movie posters, saying, “Please, Wanda, don’t make me come back to comics! Everyone will see I really had no clothes!”

Back in the good ol’ days, Todd never had trouble calling anyone out to the mat. So if he can dish it out, I’m going to assume he can take it. I’m prepared to offer Todd McFarlane $1,000 to come back to the comics industry and draw! That’s right $1,000 cash…

I’ll go head to head with you, pencil to pencil. You do an issue, I’ll do an issue, and we’ll let the fans, retailers, and collectors you abandoned decide which book is better. Come on, Toddler, whaddaya say? Wait! Does anyone hear that? BUC-BUC-BUC-BUCKAW! Sounds like Big Mac is in the house!

This was evocative, of course, of two things. The first is the immortal bit on Saturday Night Live more than two decades ago, when producer Lorne Michaels endeavored to coax The Beatles into reuniting on SNL. That, at least, had a comedic context. The Fab Four were being offered millions upon millions at the time by various promoters trying to coax them to get together for one more concert. Michaels, by contrast, dangled the princely sum of $3,000: “That’s seven hundred and fifty for each of you,” intoned Michaels gravely, adding as an afterthought, “…or a little less for Ringo, if you prefer.” Legend has it that John and Paul actually happened to be watching that night and toyed with the idea of showing up on the air.

Obviously, McFarlane needs a grand as much as The Beatles needed three grand. But Joe’s “challenge” doesn’t have an outside context; it’s pretty much just out of the blue.

The second thing this painfully reminds me of is the entire debate debacle in Philadelphia some years back, in which it was Todd who was throwing down the gauntlet and insisting that I defend comments about Image I’d made in this column. And I, like a chowderhead, went along with it, convinced that people would be asking me forever after why I’d chickened out. Except Americans have the attention span of fruit flies; if I’d waited it out, taken the high road, it would have gone away. Instead, foolishly believing that Todd was interested in “the truth” (as he claimed), I walked right into the middle of Todd’s carefully orchestrated scheme. Todd is a “means to an end” type of guy. He wasn’t interested in the truth except as a means to an end, the end being publicity.

At that time, a number of people speculated that McFarlane and I had cooked up the whole thing between us, WWF style. I hear much the same speculation being floated now about Joe and Todd. I have no idea if it’s valid now; the only thing I can tell you with authority is that it sure wasn’t then.

Back in those days, all the replies were filtered through CBG, since weekly discourse was the most that anyone could hope for. But this is the computer age, and Todd was able to fire back almost immediately on his website. It read, in part:

I believe that Joe does think that I could help contribute to the sinking comics market. As a matter of fact, he and I had a conversation recently that allowed us to both give some of our opinions on the current state of the industry.

My biggest disagreement is that any book from my hand would have any real impact on the way the industry is sliding right now. The argument from his side is that we need to start some place and continue to build upon it. I can hardly argue with the theory of that statement but the implementation is the harder of the two.

…the truth is that we are all doing what we can to keep this business flourishing. All the way from Paul Levitz to the guys that color ad pages. No individual effort will matter in the long run. And that is what is far more important. Because it is the shortsightedness of many of us that have led to this situation. And Marvel being that king of the industry had, perhaps, done more to hurt this community than anyone else. Their bankruptcy, attempted self-distribution, and many managerial changes have had a detrimental effect on all of us, albeit in an indirect way. So hears hoping that Joe is given the chance to bring some of his ideas to light. Good or bad, time must be given to those in charge.

On a closing note, let me say that Mr. Q. is a tad bit confused as to what makes me tick at times. One of the bigger reasons for leaving Marvel in 1991 was to have the freedom to do the thing that I wanted to do. I long ago stopped worrying about what some Marvel employee wanted me to do with my day. And so Joe’s challenge is going to fall on deaf ears just like every other thing that a competitor would like to see me do different. I’ll do what I deem important after talking it over with my company and fans.

You have absolutely no idea the sort of chill that runs down my spine when I find myself thinking, in regards to something that Todd McFarlane wrote, “Wish I’d said that” (albeit without the misspellings and poor grammar). Because, when it was McFarlane seeking to exploit me for publicity, I let my ego drag me into it, rather than say, “If you have a problem with the way I cover Image, do what everyone else does: Write a letter to the editor. The words in my column speak for themselves and don’t need me to waste my time buttressing them face-to-face.”

McFarlane’s also correct in stating that Quesada doesn’t know what makes him tick. Todd doesn’t have any motive to engage in a machismo-fueled duel of art, because, remember, Todd’s a means-to-an-end guy. I believe his art was simply that, as well, the “ends” being becoming a millionaire. Since he’s accomplished that multi-million goal, he’s got zero need to prove anything regarding his art. Drawing served its purpose, and so he’s moved on.

In any event, Joe’s response was as follows:

I’ve got to say, I’m a huge McFarlane fan. Even more than Todd’s art, what I use to love was his bravado. He never had second thought about calling people out or busting their chops. Anybody remember the Peter David/McFarlane debate? How about all the hoopla that preceded it in the letters pages of Spawn? How about Todd’s unflattering, yes possibly cruel, portrait of Peter?

“Possibly?” Try “definitely.” But it was something he was able to do, because I played right into his plans. Joe went on to say:

Love him or hate him, the guy had stones! Now listen to what he’s become, listen to what he’s saying. He sounds like my dad for crying out loud!

Now Todd may feel that no individual effort will help in the long run and he may be partially right, heck, I’ve been quoted myself as saying that there is no comic book messiah, but you can’t tell me that Frank Miller’s return to Dark Knight won’t give our industry a much-needed shot in the arm! Not only will comics shops be filled with long-time readers who gave up on us, the mainstream ink alone is worth three times what they’re paying Frank. There are very few people in this industry that can get that kind of press and Todd is one of them.

…I now understand what this is all about, he’s playing hard to get. All right, all right Toddster, I’ll tell you what, I’ll make it $1,100! You called my bluff, Chief! Come on, Toddy boy, don’t go spineless on me now. The fans are calling you out, go ahead ask them, everyone wants to see you with pencil in hand. You know it’s killin’ ya, if it weren’t I wouldn’t be here writing a rebuttal! See ya in the funny books.

PS: Did they back bits of Todd’s nads inside of every Spawn toy? If not, where did they go?

Just as Lorne Michaels increased his initial offer to the Beatles by a nominal amount, so, too, does Quesada. Between the condescending diminutives of McFarlane’s name and the locker-room bombast, Joe winds up sounding like McFarlane from years gone by. The thing is, it was said that Image wanted to be Marvel in the worst way—and also succeeded. But who the hëll aspires to be Todd McFarlane in the worst way?

Yes, yes, I say again: It could be something they’re in collusion over. Except McFarlane is a control freak; I have trouble buying the notion that he’d agree to a chest-thumping exchange where he’s the one put on the defensive.

For McFarlane to claim that “no individual effort will matter in the long run” is silly. What else is history but individual efforts mattering in the long run? Hëll, if it weren’t for the individual efforts of Ron Perelman, the industry wouldn’t be in its present fix. Would some sort of McFarlane-Quesada face-off help? In best Jewish thinking: It couldn’t hoit. Will Todd be as dumb as I was and rise to a challenge concocted to generate publicity? Only if there’s something in it for him, which means probably not; even though Fandom.com—milking this for all it’s worth—ran a poll which presently has 49% of the respondents stating that McFarlane “owes” it to the industry to take Quesada up on his challenge.

I tend to think that McFarlane feels the only person he owes anything to is McFarlane. Will he be as dumb as I was? Probably not. Todd’s always had a better sense of what’s self-serving than I did.

And hey, Joe:

Listen to your dad more.

Peter David, writer of stuff, offers the following means of amusement: Drive around to local theaters and see how many have 102 Dalmatians misspelled as 102 Dalmations.