[SPOILER] Spider-Man Brand New Day

Normally about this time, we’d be catching up with Amazing Spider-Man editor Steve Wacker to talk about how things are going in the Spidey office, but today…a little something different. The Spider-writers (aka Spidey Braintrust) just wrapped a summit meeting, and Steve had a ton on his plate, so he moved the questions along to the man whose plate has no boundaries – Executive Editor Tom Brevoort, who’s been shepherding the thrice-monthly Amazing Spider-Man along with Steve since its inception…actually, probably earlier than Steve’s been a part of it. This week, we were looking to talk about all things art with Steve, and instead of switching up topics, Tom took all the questions we could manage.

So – in the spirit of filling in for Steve, Tom even kicked things off with his own intro, which we’re just going to back away from and let roll…

Hello! Steve Wacker’s still recovering from the madness of this past week’s Spider-Man Planning Summit, at which the Spidey Braintrust blocked out the next six months or so of storylines. So while the Simperin’ One recuperates, you’re all left with Newsarama’s favorite 2:00 am answer-man this week—Me, Tom Brevoort, Spidey Executive Editor and chief bottle washer, a poor but willing pinch-hitter. And I’ll make you a deal: if you promise not to expect laughs, I’ll promise not to attempt any.

Okay, onward to the questions

Newsarama: Tom, let’s start off talking about the launch artist on Amazing Spider-Man, Steve McNiven. First off, what was it about his work specifically that sold you on him as your lead-in guy? In terms of Spider-Man and Spidey’s world, what does he bring to the table?

Tom Brevoort: McNiven’s involvement with the Spidey launch actually predates Steve Wacker’s involvement, and goes back to Civil War. As we were wrapping up that series, McNiven and I had been chatting about what he should do next (he was looking for a gig with a single lead character, to no one’s surprise), and I was beginning to plan the Spidey relaunch. So I broached the notion with McNiven of him coming on board and doing the initial arc, and McNiv was enthusiastic about the concept—he’s a big Spidey fan, especially of the Gil Kane/Ross Andru era, which you can kinda see in the way he approaches the character. What made McNiven attractive to me was the fact that he creates whole environments, his characters occupy space—and with Manhattan being virtually a character in Spidey’s series, that was a real benefit. Plus, being completely crass, I knew that Steve M. doing Spidey next after Civil War wrapped up gave us a huge boost in terms of sales and reader interest right off the starting line, which we were going to need.

NRAMA: We’ve talked about the larger story elements that the writers will be playing with in their stories over the course of the coming year, but in terms of the design elements – the new characters, etc – did you have someone would out how new characters and things were going to work & look before the artists came on board, or did each work out the bits that were in their particular stories?



TB: In terms of the new characters, what we ended up with was a bit of a hodge-podge depending upon the needs of the moment. In the case of supporting characters such as Lily or Carlie who were going to be debuting at the end of “One More Day”, the initial designs were done by Phil Jimenez, and then tweaked and adjusted by Phil and Joe Q as we gave them feedback. Phil took a crack at most of the new civilian characters we were going to be bringing into the series as well as designing Jackpot. For most of the major villains, however, it tended to be the artists of those particular stories who got first crack at designing them. So Steve Mcniven did Mister Negative, Phil Jimenez did Overdrive in the Free Comic Book Day special, Salvador Larroca handled Menace, Phil did Freak and Chris Bachalo visualized Deity. Phil also did a series of designs for the Daily Bugle building interiors, and a digital artist, Jason Christiansen, built us a full electronic model of the Parker household, interiors and exteriors.

NRAMA: Backing up a little and looking at the larger picture, what were you looking for in your initial wave of Spider-Man artists? All of them seem to have slightly different styles – would it be safe to say you weren’t necessarily looking for a unified, or interchangeable art style across the series?

TB: At its most basic, what we were looking for were guys who it’d be exciting to see draw Spider-Man. One of my biggest fears with attempting the thrice-monthly shipping schedule was that the material would become homogenized, both in the writing and the artwork. We wanted to make sure that, as much as possible, each creator who worked on the book got their particular voice heard, their style across. So we definitely weren’t looking to create a narrow “house style” for Spidey. All of our roll-out artists have a distinctive approach to their work, and each one comes at the page in a different way. The guy who’s really been a revelation is Chris Bachalo, as you’ll see in a few short weeks. He’s just such a natural Spidey artist in the way he gets across how the character stands and moves and interacts with his surroundings that it’s incredible to me that he was never tapped to take on Spidey before this.

NRAMA: While the writers all had new elements of Spider-Man to work with that would demarcate “Brand New Day” from what came before, were there similar elements, or at least guidelines for the artists? That is, do ASM artists have rules of thumb now along the lines of “From here on out, we don’t show Spider-Man this way, but rather, we show him this way…” or more long shots…or one splash page per issue…or…something?



TB: Not really, nothing along those lines. We did generate the Spidey Bible that was handed out to retailers a while back in didacted form as a central repository for character and location reference that could be shared among all of the artists. And Steve and I certainly have our own tastes when it comes to what we think looks good for Spidey. But there weren’t any overall guidelines. As I mentioned earlier, Steve McNiven tends to channel the fluidity of Gil Kane and the vistas of Ross Andru when he works on Spidey. Salva is very influenced by the motion picture incarnation of the character. And Bachalo kind of brings a natural Ditko creepiness to his depiction. The guy who probably grappled with it the most was Phil Jimenez. Phil’s a very analytical artist, so he really spent a lot of time working out for himself how he thought Spidey would move, what kinds of wardrobe the assorted members of the cast were likely to wear, what the look and the flavor of the city would be—he really put himself through ten kinds of torture in working out how he was going to come at the character. (But I gather this is standard operating procedure for Phil—he draws from the “inside out.”)

NRAMA: Well, that said, how should a “Brand New Day” issue of Amazing Spider-Man look? Whole package, not just art – cover to color, and overall design…

TB: Bright, bouncy, contemporary, but with a little bit of a shout out to the history. That’s one of the reasons we’re back to a version of the classic trade dress, with the original logo and the Spidey-in-a-circle element. As a general guideline, Amazing Spider-Man is also a bright book, so while a particular storyline may call for somber, moody colors, the baseline is almost always going to be a little bit more colorful and upbeat.

NRAMA: Getting into your head a little – what makes for a good Spider-Man artist? What elements are you and Steve looking for when flipping through pages and headhunting for artists?



TB: Spider-Man is a tricky character, in that there are a number of really excellent artists who somehow were never quite able to wrap their heads around the way Spider-Man stands and moves. Chief among these was Jack Kirby—Kirby could draw anything, but his Spider-Man always seemed uncomfortable in his own skin. John Buscema and George Perez are two other guys to whom Spider-Man did not come naturally. Part of this is the fact that Spider-Man moves like no other character. He’s kind of gangly, kind of a little creepy, and he’s at home on any surface, so he’s much more likely to squat on the side of a wall or hang upside-down from the ceiling than to just be standing there dramatically. Spidey can’t quite pull off the typical dramatic arms-akimbo heroic poses that typify a character like Captain America. He’s almost always crouching, swinging, or clinging. So the best Spidey artists being a good sense of motion to the character, and are even comfortable getting just a hair cartoony with him, exaggerating his anatomy and physiognomy so that he’ll strike spiderlike poses and just move like a spider.

NRAMA: What is the process of securing artists for the series? Are you getting calls and e-mails from people looking to be put on the schedule, or are you mostly doing the calling?

TB: It’s a little bit of both. Certainly, Spider-Man is an icon, probably the best-known and best-beloved of all the Marvel characters, and artists like drawing him. By that same token, the way we’ve got the book being machined, it can be difficult for a given artist to feel like they’ve got “ownership” of the character and the series. But we’ve been very fortunate to secure the services of the talent we’ve already revealed are working on the series, and the other guys who are waiting in the wings are equally good. Especially given the way we have to run the book, it’s an extremely high level of quality across the boards in terms of artists.

NRAMA: Schedule-wise, how full up are you? First year’s worth of issues filled up?

TB: We’re rock-solid up through around October at this point, and now that the Spidey Braintrust Retreat is finished, we can begin to line up the next six to eight months beyond that.

NRAMA: Moving on to the next artist who will be taking on the series, preview art by Salvador Larocca for #549 was just released by Marvel, going back to how we had you looking at Steve earlier, what does Salva bring to the Spider-Man equation?

TB: Salva’s another guy who’s been working for Marvel for years now, but somehow has never had a crack at Spidey. He’s got an intricate, photorealistic style, which adds a different sort of flavor to a Spidey story. He’s got a great sense of environment. And with the greytone approach he’s been developing of late, his work has jumped to a whole different level.



NRAMA: Touching on a larger design issue, from the cover to Amazing Spider-Man #549, it looks like the costume is the movie one, with the raised webbing. That costume’s shown up on covers before, unofficially, I believe, but are you looking to integrate that costume, or move the comic one towards the movie one a little?

TB: No, not specifically. As I mentioned before, Salva is a huge fan of the movies. He even owns, I kid you not, one of those full-size replicas of the movie costume which he wore one Halloween. So his depiction of Spidey tends to skew a bit closer to the movie version. Plus, Salva’s style tends to be a bit more representation than a lot of Spidey artists to begin with. I look at this as artistic license, in the same way (though on a more universal level) that occasionally artists will have Spidey’s eyepieces squint or distort to express emotion or shock.

NRAMA: One more on covers - #549 has a variant cover by David Finch. Will we be seeing that as a regular feature, that is, a variant cover on the “changeover” issue as the baton is passed?

TB: Only for the first four months, as we bring each member of the Braintrust on stage. Thereafter, we’ve got one or two more variants planned at key strategic points, like on any other series, but they won’t become a regular thing.

NRAMA: Your other upcoming artists – can you just touch on them a little as to their strengths when it comes to Spider-Man: Phil Jiminez, Chris Bachalo…

TB: I think I covered this pretty well a bit earlier. Plus, I need to leave Steve something to say a few weeks from now when their first issues see print.

Funny, I suddenly have this strange urge to drop in a reference to Mike Carlin …



NRAMA: Fair enough, but just checking - these two are still paired with Bob and Zeb, respectively? And that’s the creative order, that is, Bob follows Marc, and then Zeb?

TB: Yes, that’ll be the batting order for the first four months. Thereafter, in month five, we’ve got a single issue from Bob Gale, and the first two parts of a three-parter from Dan Slott. And we’ll continue to mix things up going forward.

NRAMA: Dan’s kind of implied this in mentioning that John Romita Jr is the third artist he’ll be working with on Amazing, but your artists are going to rotate in and out of the series, compared to writers, correct? In other words, these writers/artist teams aren’t going to be the “ongoing” creative teams, are they?

TB: No, these pairings aren’t going to be permanent, nor will all of these artists be working on Spidey on a regular basis. For example, one of the things that we talked about at the Spidey Summit was the possibility of Phil Jimenez drawing one of Marc Guggenheim’s upcoming storylines, schedule permitting. And we’ve got a bunch of artists in the pipeline that we’ll be announcing as their issues go on sale, each doing anywhere from a single issue to an extended run over a longer period of time.

NRAMA: What kind of commitment are you looking for from your artists? At least 3 issues? No single issues?

TB: We’re very flexible, but we tend to try to cast the artist to the storyline. So typically, we’ll know that we’ve got, say, a two-part story by Bob Gale featuring the villain The Bookie, and so knowing what the story entails, we’ll try to match it with an artist whose strengths lie in that area. But provided that they can deliver 22 pages of art by the time we need to send the book to the printer, we have no problem having a really great artist for a single issue.



NRAMA: That said, are you looking for artists who will lock in with the writers for a long run? That is, say, an artist who will partner with Zeb for a year or more on his issues?

TB: No, not especially. There’s an ebb and flow to the way the individual pieces of the mosaic we’re crafting come together, and because we need to work so far ahead, it simply isn’t practical to pair up one artist with a single member of the braintrust. Just as an example, if we’ve got a six-issue story in the works, those issue are all going to see print in two months’ time, but the amount of time they’re going to take to draw will be the same as if they were coming out over the typical six months. In the meantime, though, that same writer may have a one or two-part story in the production cycle, and there’s no real sense in waiting six months to be able to get to work illustrating those issues. It’s perhaps not the ideal situation, but to my mind, as long as the overall caliber of the artistic talent remains high, fans will be willing to forgive the hand-offs between artists, and the writers.

NRAMA: From what you’ve seen so far, is the weekly schedule harder on the writers or artists?

TB: At this point it’s probably harder on the writers, because there’s a bit of overlap in terms of timing as they’re working on their scripts. Zeb may be writing something for month six at the same time that Marc is starting a multi-part story for month ten. It’s a bear to keep the timeline straight, and to make sure that we’re hitting all of the large story milestones that we need to hit in order for the uber-story to unfold properly. At the same time, it’s difficult to be as flexible as you can be on a regular monthly title, where a creator may get a brainstorm while working on a given issue that’ll completely change the trajectory of where they were going. We can modify our trajectory a little bit along the way, but we’re really locked in on the major tentpoles.

NRAMA: Speaking of scheduling, how far out do the artists have to work? Most need a month or a month and a little more to do a full issue, and to have the issues come out concurrently, it’s not as if they’re being produced simultaneously a la a 52 or Countdown…



TB: What it really means is that we need to be planned out much further than normal, and have multiple artists all working at the same time. McNiv, Salva, Phil and Bachalo have all been working concurrently on their arcs, and we’ve got another six or so artists also working on issues at the same time. But it is imperative that we stay ahead of the curve in terms of having our stories planned and our scripts ready, because one bad bounce can cause these issues to all ship late, like a string of dominos falling. That’s why we’re lucky to have Steve Wacker helming this operation, as he’s the person in the business with the most experience in dealing with this sort of weekly scheduling. His experiences in running 52 for DC are invaluable in terms of allowing us to predict and avoid potential pitfalls in the distance.

NRAMA: Are you working with other offices to keep your artists’ profiles high? That is, Steve McNiven would be out of sight for three months-plus working on his issues, and they come out in under one month…that’s a long time not to have any work being seen compared to the period of time that the work is coming out. Are there ways to keep the artists’ work out there and in front of people while they may be in their respective Spider-Bunker working on their issues?

TB: That can definitely be a concern of the artists, but one that you deal with on a case-by-case basis. In the instance of McNiv, he was just coming off of Civil War, so he was looking for a little bit of downtime before he jumped on the horse again. Guys like Salva are fast enough to be juggling another assignment at the same time they’re working on Spidey pages. And in the case of an artist like Chris Bachalo, we’ve machined the schedule and gotten scripts in hand early enough that Chris has been able to fit in X-Men issues in-between Spidey installments. But except when you’re talking about long five or six-part stories, the time commitment to do a shorter Spidey sequence wouldn’t keep an artist off the racks for too long—and when the books do ship, it’s like hitting the readers with machine gun fire. And it’s Spider-Man, the quintessential Marvel character, so artists are perhaps a bit more forgiving when it comes to having an opportunity to get their hands on the web-head.

NRAMA: So – just thumbnailing, at this point, the art say, for Dan’s second set of issues is already…what, done?

TB: Dan’s second storyline is three parts. At this point, the first part is entirely penciled and inked, and the second part is something like 80% finished. At the same time, we’re also two issues worth of pencils into Dan’s third story.

NRAMA: We talked about this with Steve a lot during his run as the train engineer on 52, but is the scheduling process for Amazing from an editorial point of view just a massively accelerated monthly schedule, or is it a whole other beast?



TB: I can’t speak for Steve on this concretely, but I think the big difference between scheduling on 52 and on Amazing is that Amazing is a single character book, and one in which the writers work in rotation, rather than divvying up the contents of each sequential issue. So where on 52 you could work sequentially, and if you needed to give a writer a break, or ran into a snag with an artist, you could always switch to another character or have one of the other writers cover those pages. With Amazing, we have less flexibility in terms of shifting particular storytelling sequences around, both when it comes to Spidey himself—if he’s trapped in a tank of water at the end of one issue, we can’t drop in a story next month that opens with him falling from the sky—and when it comes to the track of the supporting cast. It’s a tremendous scheduling challenge, but what it really means is that the planning has to be there—by the time you realize that there’s a problem coming, it’s already hit you, so we need to be rolling well out ahead of the ship date, at least when it comes to the opening issues of any given story.

NRAMA: So if we can – let’s look ahead a little…Dan’s confirmed that John Romita Jr. will be coming on to his run…can you mention any other names that will be settling in to make Amazing their home for a period of time?

TB: Sorry, I don’t think it’s really my place to say. Maybe you can pry this info out of Wacker when he returns to your accolades and thrown-roses next week.

NRAMA: Fair enough – finally, then – Steve mentioned it somewhat obliquely, but are you looking at any Annuals or special issues this year?

TB: Actually, Marc Guggenheim just turned in a script for a Spidey Special that features Jackpot and her new status quo, and which’ll pick up on elements he’ll be laying down all this coming month in Amazing #549-#551. So yes, there will be occasions where we’ll build additional books off to the side of our main storytelling trunk for one reason or another. Hey, this is the Brevoort division, work is what we do, and comics are what we make.

And with that, I’ll pass the baton back to my weary-but-unbowed associate Steve W, and I’ll bid you all adieu.