Is he the worst EiC in Marvel's history? Possibly even in the Big 2's history? There are some close contenders...

Is he the worst EiC in Marvel's history? Possibly even in the Big 2's history? There are some close contenders, and it's definitely debatable, but I can't really think of anything that cusps some of the pure shit that has come out since Alonso turned EiC.

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Too much evil Diversty~

Diversity is fine and has existed in Big 2 comics, in some form or another, for over fifty years. The problem is bad stories that serve forced diversity for the sake of diversity and not the story itself.

I feel like Marvel has had good intentions but poor execution under his direction.
but its also hard to see how much of that is directly his fault and not meddling from other sources (the infamous Ike penny-pinching)

Harass is way worse, senpai. He nearly bankrupted the company for crying out loud.

Quality is relative. Diversty isn't or wasn't to the extent whe have now.

The vest you got back then was a few white women heroes and a token black guy. The majority of heroes in the a list are white males.

I wonder how do these people will react when they become minoroties later on in 2056? No amount of trump can stop the birthrates problem.

I see two main issues that have only sprung up during his tenure:
>Event fatigue
Which, arguably, started with Quesada. The difference being that Quesada, for all his problems, knew how to market and pitch an event like a motherfucker.
>Diversity for the sake of non-comic readers
There is a reason why every new legacy hero gets an exclusive article on USA Today, or ET, or appears on the View. It's a push for those #1's to sell big. Headlines like 'Captain America is now a black man' and 'The new Hulk is an Asian-American' are click bait, and little more.

And this is coming from someone who is Asian.

It's not like he singlehandedly financially ruined Marvel. Really, sales weren't that bad during his era. It was a variety of factors.
My point is that diversity without a good, engaging story is worthless and probably more damaging to minorities than if they hadn't introduced more diverse characters at all.

the former is definitely something you can blame on him.

but the latter is more of a corporate synergy issue, and possibly above his head? I don't know how much power he has vs Marvel's CEO, Publisher or VP or even Disney's hand in stuff.

I can see someone above Alonso telling him that Marvel's comic division needs 'more diversity', but I doubt - highly - that anyone who has never been a comics creator started dictating a publishing strategy to Alonso.

I am 99.9% sure that Ike had nothing to do with this.

He states he isn't a sjw in a interview. Dismey don't bother to do it either in mcu.

It's more of sara and Joe imo. Writers too. Bendis suggested black spiderman. Slott suggested random gay marriage in one comic.

It's not really that Alonso is an SJW (he might be, I dunno) so much as it is that he's trying to score headlines for the sake of selling sensationalist concepts that don't produce good stories.

It may be a pretty good short term plan, but not necessarily much of a long-term plan, as it basically evades the people who were buying your product to begin with.

>He nearly bankrupted the company for crying out loud.

No he didn't. The stuff leading to bankruptcy was already happening long before Harras became EIC. Purchase of Heroes World, Fleer/Skybox, etc came from Marvel's owners. Neither DeFalco nor Harras would be involved with those.

I meant the latter as in all the ABC/View/clickbait news stories, not the comics that inspired those stories.

comicsbulletin.com/main/sites/default/files/rage/96799501696184.htm

From 17 years ago:

>An Anonymous poster posted rumours about what happened with Bob Harras to the Savage Dragon Message Boards. He then reposted a reply posing as another individual, pretending to be surprised at the news. Erik Larsen responded by saying that previous to the post, a source he knew had posted the exact same message to him.

>Since then the post has been doing the rounds. The original poster's IP adress is 64.12.105.182 and was posted on August 30, 2000 at 14:12:56. Now, all I've been able to do is dicover that this canme from an AOL address, but that IPs gets swapped around real easily by AOL. If anyone can take this further, go for it.

>Some of the rumours tie in with what I've been hearing from other pros in the industry, but there's a lot on insults in the post. I do not have any idea of the truth of this message. And, unless you have heard from a primary source, neither do you.

>Under the title 'What Happened At Marvel', Anonymous throws insults around, a figure called 'Ike' being tagged as the real boss at Marvel, with Peter Cuneo as "the President in name only", with Bill Jemas in charge of editorial and new media.

Nah his tenure has been decent all things considered

>Ike has been identified by other sources as 'Isaac Perlmutter', a director at Marvel who was with ToyBiz when the Marvel/ToyBiz structure was rearranged. Its reported that both he and Avi Arad hold the controlling levers to Marvel, and Isaac does hold a large amount of Marvel stockā€¦ more than any other individual I could find.

>Jemas is also insulted with a story that he "made the fumetti for the website for $30,000 but didn't bother to find out that you can't put JPEG's into Flash and make a little animation."

>According to Anonymous, this situation started when John Galvin, who had delivered the mail at Marvel since 1968 was fired just before San Diego and "Bob suddenly had an epiphany and said, "these people are dangerous. They really do have no soul." He started fighting back suddenly, after years of playing the compromiser and mediator."

>Anonymous says that this started a lot of pressure on Bob, being held accountable for orders of paper clips and staples, and to harass people for arriving 7 minutes late to work. Anonymous continues that Bob was told to "Make them punch out at the end of the day" and that Bob refused, "saying that editors are salaried, not timeclock employees." Apparently "they wanted him to fire Mark Powers for coming in every day at 9:30 and Bob refused to even speak to Mark about it."

That's not the case, because oftentimes the hype articles are from non-Disney affiliates. NBC/USA Today often features them, and they're no fans of Disney.

>Here Anonymous is a little unclear and isn't sure which happened first. He/she talks about the point where Bob and Ike stopped speaking. Apparently, "Ike stopped Bob in the hall. "You should be ashamed of yourself," said Ike. "You should be embarrassed for writing 'Stan Lee Presents' on the X-Men TV Guide insert." Bob said something along the lines of "you can't be serious, that's policy. If it's changed, you need to tell me.""

>Another moment Anonymous talks about is when "Ike told Bob he should be "ashamed and embarrassed" for having written a memo a year ago in support of keeping the coffee maker for the employees. Bob said, "Eric Ellenbogen (president at the time) asked me to write that to explain why we needed it." At this point, Ike got hopping mad and said, "THAT guy! I hate Eric Ellenbogen! If your children turn out like him,you should KILL them!"" Anonymous presumes this is a reference to Eric's sexuality.

>Anonymous continues, saying "So Bob says "I don't have to take this," and walks away. They don't speak again until Ike fires Bob today. Bob raked Jemas and Cuneo over the coals for letting Ike fire him. "That man told me to kill my children," he told them. "You shouldn't have had him do it. He's not my supervisor, you are.""

>According to Anonymous, when Bob asked them why, they replied "First, they said, "you take too many days off." Bob said, "I've taken off a week this year, try again." "You make too much money... no, wait, that wasn't it... you're, uh, burnt out... uh..." All this said with downcast eyes. Jemas and Cuneo couldn't face Bob, who was to my mind, clearly fired because Ike wanted to intimidate and cow the cool kid on the playground. To my mind, it's clear, deliberate malice."

>Anonymous concludes with Bob Harras after work in the Abbey Tavern, a pub/bar near to the Marvel offices, saying "he thought I should kill my children. He said I should kill my children if they're gay."

>Okay chaps, this is rumour posted by someone who remains anonymous. So who knows what truth lies within here. Make that call yourself.

>However, as Warren Ellis said when this was reprinted on his Delphi forum, "I would not write this off as bullshit" and that "I happen to know that Bob did go out for a drink that night". Mike Heisler replied "I can't speak to what Warren knows or how he knows it, but there is nothing in that report that I haven't already heard from other sources." And Steven Grant wrote "I wouldn't necessarily discredit this report either. I've already had parts of it independently verified. And the Abbey Tavern is close enough to Marvel - I used to eat and drink there when I lived in the neighborhood (you could tell it was an English pub, 'cause they kept the home fries burning) - that it fits."

>Remember, this is a post full of hate, bile and anger. That doesn't mean it's false, but in no way does it mean it's true, either. Remember that.

>I contacted Joe Quesada, Bill Jemas, Bill Rosemann and Marvel's PR department with no response. I attempted to contact Isaac Perlmutter but failed.

>I have, however been informed by another source that Bob Harras' firing was welcome news to his wife who was very pleased with the severance pay. No news as to how much this was, but a perusal of Warren Ellis's latest CIA column shows that when Eric Ellenbogen was fired, he received 2.5 million dollars. Enough to cover the electricity bill, anyway.

>tfw I thought Joe Quesadilla was still running things
Who's man is this?

How?

>>tfw I thought Joe Quesadilla was still running things

Have you been living under a rock the past six years? Quesada hasn't been EIC in a long time.

>"You should be embarrassed for writing 'Stan Lee Presents' on the X-Men TV Guide insert." Bob said something along the lines of "you can't be serious, that's policy. If it's changed, you need to tell me.""
Why is Ike the Kike such a dick?

Ike's pro character less the creator. They did recently drop stan lee presents but in the form of created by Stan lee and Jack Kirby tag line.

This was happening at that time Ike was pissed off at Stan Lee for not wanting his salary cut and bringing in the lawyers.

>
The X-Men TV Guide story seems to have been some kind of breaking point for Harras at Marvel. Mark Waid (who hates Harras) complained about it too.

I can't find a panel from it offhand but it was written by Claremont in total Claremont style, meaning it was slathered with caption exposition but was still very confusing to anyone who didn't already know the characters.

That may have been the turning point that led to the modernization of Marvel's writing style in 2001. Or one of the turning points anyway.

Anyway Harras was not responsible for the bankruptcy and he had some successes (Thunderbolts, Avengers) but he deserved to be fired for letting the X-Men and Spider-Man lines go completely to shit by 2000.

>he deserved to be fired for letting the X-Men and Spider-Man lines go completely to shit
We can only hope this happens again.

With Quesada you never got the feeling that he let public opinion or pressure sway the direction of the books. He made a lot of mistakes, but they were honest ones. Alonso on the other hand fucking caves to any pressure from social media.

Quesada really remembered for royally fucking up Spider-Man, Marvel's golden child, with two of the worst stories in the character's history, with one of them being one of the worst stories of ANY superhero. his intentions with both were always (reset the character) OK. but then we got an abortion of a story and he'll never live that down amongst fans.

but during his tenure, he turned around a struggling comics division, produced the Ultimates imprint, which we know was wildly successful and generally well liked for a while.

Alonso has overseen nothing but drama, excuses, and talent drain.

Omd is great.

OMD had great art though.

This ...and that.
Seriously nothing else to add

>>He states he isn't a sjw in a interview.

Wasn't that the same interview where he said he was Korean by extension simply because his wife is Korean?

he is awful, he gives zero shits about the creators and is too busy mining shekels from constant #1 issues to give shit if people are putting in racist messages in his books

Who should replace him?

Was Harass responsible for this?
Oh my god this art is horrible.

Fuck forget to include image.

Several stories have floated as to why Harras was ultimately let go. In general, they tend to focus on three things:

1. The failure of Marvel to capitalize sales-wise on the X-Men movie in 2000. The TV Guide thing was part of it, but also the fact that the X-Books had hit rock bottom after Harras fucked up the Twelve/Apocalypse Vs Cable storyline everything had been building towards since the early 90s. And the much hyped return of Claremont had been one huge flop, due to Claremont demanding he be allowed to focus on all new villains, most notably the reviled "Neo" and the BDSM Goth/Slavers.

2. The complete collapse of the Spider-Man line. Hiring Byrne and giving him free reign over the books, with Mackie (who was the only Spider-Man writer NOT fired when Byrne came onboard, and only out of pity because he was fighting cancer and Marvel didn't want him to lose his job) being the fall guy for a huge number of storylines that alienated fans even moreso than the Clone Saga (Sandman was evil all along, the clusterfuck with Mysterio, Byrne shilling his new Spider-Woman, Chapter One, killing MJ).

3. Joe Quesada's backroom backstabbing. The story goes that when the Ultimate line was first pitched, Harras wanted the usual suspects crony-wise to write the Ultimate books (Mackie would have written Ultimate Spider-Man, Terry Kavanaugh on Ultimate X-Men) because he saw them as being D-List books. Basically what the Marvel Adventure line was: fluff for kids to read and would be given super low priority.

Quesada not only counterpitched that the Ultimate line should be treated and marketed as a huge fucking thing, but that they should head hunt A-List talent for the books (Bendis/Millar) and make A-List artists (Bagley, who was outright threatened with being blackballed from Marvel if he didn't draw Ultimate Spider-Man) for the books.

Quesada made his pitch behind Harras' back, which was allegedly sealed Harras's fate and assured Quesada would be his replacement

Joe Q Is the liason between corporate and comics. He's above Axel in the hierarchy but Axel is ultimately responsible for the comics Marvel publishes.

>The problem is bad stories


This.

This right here.

TELL GOOD STORIES.

How fucking hard is this?

Jim Shooter or anyone outside Marvel.

>>How fucking hard is this?

Pretty hard if Marvel can't handle it.

>Jim Shooter

He's not coming back. Give it up.

I hate Alonso but Jemas deserved and STILL deserves to die.

It's weird because alonso was a great editor at DC

Marvel's BIGGEST problem right now is quality, or lack thereof

The MUH DIVERSITY thing only stands out because THERE ARE NO QUALITY BOOKS TO DISTRACT US

Under Quesada there were bad books, of course there were, law of averages. But you still had hype shit people were always looking forward to.

Bendis DD/Ult Spidey
Brubaker Cap/DD
Morrison/Whedon X-Men
Priest Black Panther
Giffen/DnA Cosmic stuff. Stuff that Quesada said wasn't his thing but he knew a good story when he saw one and still greenlit it (hallmark of a good EiC)
Millar Ultimates
JMS Spidey/Thor
Nicieza Deadpool
Carey X-Men
Pak Hulk
PAD X-Factor
Gillen JiM
Fraction Iron Fist/Hawkeye/Iron Man
etc

The sea is shit is held back by the dam of quality stuff. Nobody cares about bad books when they are hyped for Ennis Punisher every month. Once Quesada left to do more media stuff the clock was ticking on Marvel and look at them now

There wouldn't even be an outrage over shit like Waid's terrible Champions if there were good books to cancel it out but there aren't. Bendis had GOTG by the balls for years and it sucked dick, X-Books are in creative limbo because muh movie rights, you've relaunched Carol like 5 times, and every time you get a good diamond in the rough like Vision, the writer ends up going to DC.

So all you have are bad books and everybody talks about them because. there. is. nothing. good. to. cancel. it. out.

I like both companies and they've both made their share of mistakes but it's infuriating to see what Marvel is doing to what Quesada & Co built in the 2000s, they were striking gold almost every time, now it's just a fucking joke. Meanwhile DC managed to shake off the godawful new52 and rebirth is legitimately amazing

Big Shooter is the hero we need right now

I'M SO FUCKING SORRY JIM PLEASE COME BACK