Priest was an intern Jim Shooter hired in the mid-1980s who unusually at 22 became the editor of all 3 Spider-titles (no one else wanted the job). For reasons, Priest went under the pseudonym "Jim Owsley" for several years before finally using his own name.
Here, he recounts what it was like working there at the time and (in his estimation) how badly he fucked it up, trying to do the right thing but due to his inexperience with the company culture often alienating veterans while getting along fine with others. To his credit he was also responsible for replacing the inoffensive but bland Al Milgrom with newcomer Peter David on Spectacular Spider-Man.
It's also one of the better defenses of Jim Shooter both as a person and as a manager (while still pointing out irritating things he did), and Priest makes the point that EiC is probably the job at Marvel most likely to burn you out of comics altogether. He compares the insane office politics to NewsRadio, and the anecdotes bear it out.
At the time he wrote this piece, he felt he'd burned so many bridges there that he'd never go back, but he's obviously gone back since as a well respected writer.
It's a good read both for oldfags and people who wonder now if Marvel was ever any good. It wasn't. It was great.
>The New Deal: Mark Beachum and Peter David completely re-envisioned Felicia Hardy, The Black Cat,ho obsessed over Spider-Man while we obsessed over her. From Spectacular #115. >ho
Ayyyyy
Ethan Howard
>Priest's blog is always interesting to read. And Shooter's is fucking amazing, both for the history and for the lessons.
Yesterday I read the two issues of Wonder Woman Priest wrote back in 1994. I had always thought they were mostly just Priest doing the scripts as a favor to Bill Messner-Loebs, and they probably were, but I noticed some things I hadn't before.
For one I noticed, I think for the first time, Priest has a really distinct writing style that I can't describe. Everything I've ever read from him uses some of the same "ticks", things that I've long had in my own writing style, and I wonder now if I somehow unknowingly adopted some of it from reading his work in the 90's as a young'un.
Another is that Diana's characterization is a lot stronger and more true to herself than it had been for several issues before. Diana had basically gone postal and was bashing up parts of Boston, but showed little remorse or restraint, while in Priest's issues she acknowledged repeatedly that she was acting out of character and had been somewhat unstable.
Jaxon Watson
This website is so great, but a bit confusing to navigate around.
Ayden Cook
>He compares the insane office politics to NewsRadio, and the anecdotes bear it out
hilarious to watch but not a work environment I would ever want to be stuck in
Gabriel Sullivan
>Everything I've ever read from him uses some of the same "ticks", things that I've long had in my own writing style, and I wonder now if I somehow unknowingly adopted some of it from reading his work in the 90's as a young'un.
Mmm, yes. Speak on that.
Xavier Myers
Probably the most notable is opening stories like this. The sentence fragments.
Cameron Parker
And this. You can see this in his Green Lantern, Black Panther, and recently his Deathstroke.
Joshua Gray
And of consistent quality.
Luke Allen
It's legally his name now, but it sure wasn't back then
Josiah Wilson
The three best comics publishers ever are First Comics, Shooter era Marvel, and Stan Lee era Marvel. Nothing else even come close.
Chase Phillips
So much truth in this thread.
Carson Gutierrez
In terms of consistency, yeah. If you ignore consistency and just include publishers that were putting out the most quality crap then 80s DC and 90s Dark Horse could arguably be on that level.
Kayden Ortiz
>First Comics Mah nigga. If only they reprinted these books. A couple of Grimjack omnis isn't enough.
Kevin Roberts
>not Roy Thomas era Marvel >not O'Neil era DC >not Vertigo
Missing a lot of good stuff there, buddy.
Bentley Martinez
I remember that there was some conflict over the Spider-Man vs Wolverine one-shot. Fans already complain that it's pretty bullshit that Spider-Man struggled so much, but it was originally going to be worse since Priest was going to have Wolverine win decisively.
>The fight was re-drawn at the ninth hour because of the raving of Marvel staffers who were, themselves, divided over how that fight should have gone. As originally approved, written and drawn, Spidey got the webs kicked out of him by Wolverine, essentially on the strength of Spidey ignoring his own Spider-Sense (due to other fish-out-of-water circumstances in the story, a hesitation that was foreshadowed in the very first scene in Times Square). I really liked that story until we were ready to turn the book in and all the office in-fighting started.
>Ultimately, I believe the then-EIC caved in to a particularly loud voice who kept arguing that Wolverine could never land a glove on Spider-Man. This was the simplistic, Crayola colorforms through-line of thought this particular voice was famous for, and it was a way of thinking that totally worked against the complex story we were telling. It was applying Baywatch rules to Schindler’s List. The whole point of SVW was to pull Spidey out of his element and confront him with hard doses of reality that made him question who he was, what his purpose was, what his methods were, etc. All of that was designed to play into the moment of the brawl where he’s facing a ruthless killer while no longer capable of trusting his own instincts, hence a Wolvie slice-‘n-dice.
Robert Campbell
>Rules are no fun unless you break them. And you need the craft and the respect for the character to know when and how to break them. SVW was all _about_ breaking rules, and breaking the rule (that Spider-Man cannot be hit) was set up with _great_ effort in many ways throughout the story. Spider-Man absolutely *can* be hit, but you have to set it up properly and work within the established rules of the character.
>Every scene in SVW was about how wrong Peter’s instincts were, from the opening scene in Times Square, to Peter’s midnight romp across Berlin with Logan (as Peter Parker, using his web-shooters and paranoid he’d be spotted). From his fear of commitment to Mary Jane to his complete mis-reading of Ned Leeds. *Everything* was there for one reason: to enable Wolverine to hit him at the end of the book. To properly set the stage for a vitiation of the Basic Rule About Spider-Man: that he can’t be touched.
>Changing the fight ruined the book, IMO, because the B-story was all about Spidey not trusting his instincts, and that story went nowhere because somebody parroted a “rule” and banged a drum and held his breath until the EIC caved.
Ryder Allen
It looks like Christopher Priest and Bendis are of the same school of thought when it comes to fights. Power levels and previous feats don't matter if you want someone else to win to show how badass he is. The idea that Spider-Man couldn't beat Wolverine without killing him is absurd. And so is the whole "without his spider-sense Spidey is defenseless". Also, Spider-Man has fought ruthless wild killers before, like Kraven and the Lizard.
Nathan Cook
>From his fear of commitment to Mary Jane to his complete mis-reading of Ned Leeds Ah yes, the infamous Ned Leeds dies and turns out he's the Hobgoblin clusterfuck.
