J. Michael Straczynski vs. Stephen Wacker

58 Comments

1. They just need to take the internet away from wacker. Guy’s always stirring stuff up and making conflict where there shouldn’t be.

2. K-Box, see what you started? 😉

   And not only did JMS reply, it’s now an article on Bleeding Cool! Complete with K-Box graph! YOu should go over and update it for them with the November numbers are fully released!

3. One question is what jms is ‘just saying’. Another is why is he ‘just saying’ it. ; )

   Here’s another graph with information taken from the same source as the one he posted.

   http://s1201.photobucket.com/albums/bb358/Triple-F/?action=view&current=Chart.gif

   I seem to have a problem posting stuff to jms’s facebook page, so will post it here instead. ; ).

4. I’m with JMS in that Wacker responded immediately butthurt and accusatory in a manner that mischaracterized JMS’ intitial post.

   HOWEVER, I’m with Wacker in that for JMS to post that in the first place out of context wasn’t the coolest thing to do anyway.

5. I’m with Wacker on this point, something I’d never thought I’d say… This is the definition of making a statement and it’s not a good statement to make on your former colleagues and I say that as a massive JMS fan.

   Oh..and 130 “On Time?” issues? I seem to recall a week where 2 issues of ASM shipped twice towards the end of BND around the time of shed and a shipping lull at the start of Big Time which had up to 4 weeks between issues at one point (Not to mention OMIT delays). So saying they were all on time when they weren’t feels like a easy shot…..

   There’ that feels better.

6. I feel sorry for the BND crew as generally, they are excellent creators. The OMD debacle was not their idea. I didn’t stop reading and collecting ASM immediately after OMD but i did soon become an infrequent reader when it became apparent that the book had totally lost its hook on me. The current producers are working in a tougher market and have put out some solid stuff. But for me, once Spidey went through the ‘he was never married’ ringer, caring about the characters has become an uphill challenge.

7. @37 – Bertone, I grew up on Wein Spider-Man, so it holds a special place in my adolecent heart… and spots 5 to 8 can pretty much be interchangeable when the mod hits… 🙂

8. @41 – Sins Past would have been a GREAT story if Norman had simply “raped” Gwen…

9. You guys, JMS just replied to that Facebook thread.

   And it is epic.

10. Are Kevin and I the only ones who thought Sins Past was a great story? I can understand why people may not like it as it really was controversial, but I thought it was brilliant fitting in such a huge plotline into continuity which occurred decades ago.

    As for JMS, I know nothing of the man personally, but my first impression on his post was tongue in cheek. In comparison, I used to work at a major department store years ago, and I joke now when I walk in there today and see something on the floor or a messy shelf how things have gone downhill since I left. That’s kinda the way I thought JMS was presenting it, but I dunno. Maybe he’ll pop in there and respond.

11. A lot of people have pointed out that all comic sales have dropped across the board since JMS’ run, but what they are neglecting to point out is that ASM has dropped proportionately more than most other books. In the time since JMS’ run, it has gone from being one of the top-selling titles on the market to not even consistently making the top 25. So yes, the comics industry as a whole is not doing as well as it was in 2007, but ASM is doing EVEN WORSE.

    And Marvel knows this. You don’t get as pissy as Wacker did in response to JMS unless you’ve been hit close to home.

12. HA. Wacker. That guy. Always good for a laugh. JMS though wasn’t telling us anything we didn’t already know so I don’t know why he’s all so defensive about it. You can’t lose a portion of your fan base and logically expect sales t be where they once were, but to see them continue to dip despite pumping out more in shorter periods of time is interesting. Of course for $3.99 who could realistically keep up with the book at the old 3 per month pace anyway?

13. It’s like it does not register in the brains of the “brain”trust that the reason sales are tanking is precisely for the biggest elephant in the room that they have deliberately decided to ignore and will never admit – the end of the marriage and how they chose to do it. Until they reverse OMD, they can get mad at JMS all they want, they can come here and get upset over articles here all they want – but maybe it’s time to start admitting they were wrong and take it as a loss, and change things up.

    I guess the pride is too much to ever do that. Shame, really.

14. Wein above DeMatteis, Conway and Defalco? WOW

15. The 8) was supposed to be an “8” followed by a )…lol

16. JMS is a decent writer, but when you look at all the writers in ASM history (not including filler issues), he ranks 10th…

    This is my own personal list, feel free to debate it, but the best ASM writers are as follows in order of my own personal faves…

    1) Stan Lee
    2) Marv Wolfman
    3) Roger Stern
    4) Len Wein
    5) JM DeMatteis
    6) Dan Slott
    7) Gerry Conway
    8) Tom DeFalco
    9) David Micheline
    10) JMS
    11) The BND guys as a whole
    12) Howard Mackie
    13) Denis O’Neill

    Just my opinion….

17. I laughed out loud at Wacker saying JMS had “luxury of ducking out of controversy.” Wacker, Slott, and all the “Braintrust” willingly supported OMD and BND. They stated they knew they would lose readers and anger fans for years. They said they were fine with it and were glad fans were angry.

    Wacker, Slott, Quesada, and company created the controversy. Whatever problems they created were entirely of their own making. End of story.

    And I don’t give JMS a pass on this either. He has defended the ‘idea’ of OMD and undoing the marriage in subsequent interviews. The only thing he had a problem with was not being able to do the story his way.

    JMS is as guilty as Quesada, Slott, and Wacker in my mind.

18. @30… JMS wanted to write OMD because he was under the impression he could undo his own stories such as Sins Past… He wanted to reset the clock back to the drug issues so that Mary Jane stayed with Harry, so they never broke up, and Peter would have stopped Norman, thus preventing Gwen’s death, so that neither Peter nor Mary Jane would have gotten married… THAT’s the story JMS wanted to tell, but it would have “erased” almost 40 years of real continuity, and that’s WHY Quesada had to change his script and JMS left with his panties in a bunch.

    While it was JQ and Marvel that wanted the marriage gone, JMS had no issues with writing that story… if for no other reason that he would have been able to eliminate Sins Past… arguably one of the WORST Spidey stories ever told.

19. I love that I can cause all this drama without even DOING anything anymore.

20. Heh. 8)

21. Regarding JMS being responsible for OMD: that, I think, is not fair. JMS, as far as I’m aware, had no attachment to the marriage or opposition to it. From the beginning he wrote what he was told – as I recall, reuniting Pete and MJ at the beginning of his run was not his idea either. At the time that was the direction Marvel wanted the book to go, because it was doing poorly and fans wanted MJ back. Then towards the end of his run editorial said it was time for them to get broken apart and JMS again wrote what he was told. That is the way it is when you are a comic book writer. Even one of JMS’s stature does not get to just do whatever he wants.

    His problem with OMD was that the ending Quesada forced on his script did not adequately explain… basically anything, and he was 100% right about it. Regardless of how you feel about the marriage being broken, everyone hated OMD, and that was one of the major reasons: it made so little sense it was almost unbelievable that anyone would have let it get out the door. So, while I think there are plenty of things about JMS’s run that you can blame him for if you don’t like them, the dissolution of the marriage and OMD in general are not among them. That really was entirely Quesada’s doing.

22. I think that Marvel needs to put a tighter leash on its employees. Regardless of how JMS intended that post, I don’t think it’s appropriate for employees to be getting involved in arguments publicly about the quality of their books.

    Enigma has a good point. I don’t think there’s a single writer to touch ASM who hasn’t turned out at least the occasional dud. That’s just the nature of writing for comics – you’re on a deadline, you have editorial to deal with, and it’s just not always going to come out as well as you’d hope.

    I think there’s a tendency among people of either camp to trash either run in its entirety based on certain low points, and that bugs me in both directions. Personally, I’ll take the JMS era, but I’m not going to pretend it didn’t have some bad stories or that Slott & Wacker haven’t produced some good ones.

23. LOL well said Enigma!

24. @#26

    Hmmm… me thinks you only know HALF the story.

    I’m torn on this one.

    JMS: The Other

    Wacker: Shed

    Far as I’m concerned, they both have their low points.

25. Well JMS if you hadn’t written One More day and screwed up the reality of Spider-Man, sales WOULDN’T be down. And hey if it bothers you that much, come back and FIX THIS!!!

26. Well, you can’t argue with the math, but you also need to show the graph of the industry as a whole to compare. That’s basic analysing.ASM isn’t gonna go up if the whole market is going down. But it MUST burn to have your predecessor come up with something like, that on Facebook none the less.

27. JMS posting this doesn’t strike me as pompous, maybe if he were to gloat about it. as it is, all he’s doing is presenting facts. Wacker seemed to jump on it pretty harshly.

28. Jms doesnt seem t realize sales on all comics in general are down

29. The JMS is probably the most controversial run in ASM: the only one that could possible beat it are the teams that ran the 90s Clone Saga. I took some time to wonder why his run sold so well. Then I remember how ASM was before JMS took over.

    Do you? The horrible, horrible (in my opinion anyway) second half of the Clone Saga (yes, I liked the first half) and it’s fallout, then some run between that and the “JMS Age” which my brain has purposely purged from my memories.

    When he took over ASM had tanked, so he did what he could.

    Yes, it was controversial, yes I hate most of the story lines (‘cept ASM: CW, BIB, CH), and yes I hate how the “JMS Age” ended, but remember that it sold.

    Now I see similarities between “JMS Age” and Slott’s Big Time. But all this comment is just my opinion.

    ~Lament~

30. @17: JMS approved of it and wrote. The only reason he got mad at the ending was because he didn’t get to do the ending he wanted, which was to send Peter back to #100 and start again from there actually erasing 400 issues of continuity. We don’t know if he would’ve done such a story without Quesada but he still wanted to do it. It might not have been his idea but he was behind it and we don’t know how much of it was Quesada’s and how much was JMS.

    JMS is just a culpable for OMD as Quesada is.

31. “Wacker made a point of saying he had to deal with the after effects and controversy and JMS didn’t. I think there might be some deeper feelings there..”

    There is deeper feelings there. Wacker and company still has not raise the sales of Spider-man despite the huge hype and cheer-leading from them and their fans. All they have done is divide the fanbase even more with their personal attacks and childish behavior on sites that don’t agree with their views on the character. The personal attack from Wacker is solid proof of that, which was uncalled for. JMS did not have to post what he did but he did not attack marvel personally, Wacker on the other hand did attack JMS personally. Which shows who is the one who does not have any class. If you are secure with your product, you don’t even have to respond, which means Wacker is not secure or confidant of the work he’s doing for the book. That’s why he acts the way he does.

32. I’m going with the “I don’t have anything nice to say, so I won’t say anything at all” approach…

33. JMS was the WORST Spider-man comics I’d ever read. Sure, I read at first out of curiosity. Then I lost interest and then heard they were doing the big Other thing after reading through some of Sins Past things just go worse on that book. They let him do whatever he wanted and for a few months they changed Spider-man’s character practically every month in extremely major ways. In the span of a few months Spider-man died a magical death came back to life, then got a new job and costume then amongst other things revealed his identity to the world. A story that I don’t think was there to begin with. How do you do the biggest thing ever to happen to Spider-man and not do a decent story out of it becuase somebody wants the man to be single. That’s not writing, that’s just promising people stuff that will never play out or pay off. Oh, Aunt May was sick again. Great.

    The reason Slott’s run will never be seen as big and legendary (in my opinion) is because there’s not much to do. Imagine if Slott did a story where everyone found out who Spider-man was. Would it be better? Ofcourse, how could it not be. Imagine what a story with Jonah and Robbie finding out would REALLY be like. They jsut brushed it off like it was nothing. That stuff destroyed Spider-man’s credibility as a character and a comic and sales only went up during that time based on earlier credibilty. Marvel used to pay off it’s big stories and not say ‘I quit’ where a conclusion should be.

    I know for a fact Amazing Spider-man sales were decreasing before that last couple years he was on the book.

34. @ #15 – Yeah but OMD was NOT JMS’s idea or baby was it. It was Quesada’s. I think we can safely say that JMS would NEVER have written that story on his own. Although I wish he quit in protest rather than doing it and then leaving.

35. JMS seems enormously pompous and arch. Considering how he tanked Superman after what, three issues? I don’t think he has anything much to brag about. Solomon said in the book of Proverbs that only a foolish person praises himself.

36. I think Wacker is mainly in the right on this one. This was a low blow from JMS, it doesn’t matter if it was meant to be serious or not. A guy can find kicking someone else in the nuts to be hilarious but the guy on the floor holding his nuts doesn’t think so. Wacker could’ve been a bit more eloquent with his points though.

    JMS has no right to say this either since it’s partially his fault sales dropped when he left because of all those people who dropped the book after OMD.

37. I like JMS as well, but that was tasteless. Wacker was right on the money.

38. I think there’s only one way to really settle a sensitive issue like this…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egne2ZCMM_0

39. @ #11 Yes it is. That’s the funniest part to me.

40. Well said, -_-. I thought the same thing. IS that one of K-Box’s graphs?

41. Thanks…um…smiley face? How do I pronounce your name?

42. I have to appreciate the fact that you guys took consideration and put warnings to commenters when putting up this post. Even putting comments like “keep it clean” attempt to keep to discussion more dignified. Less of a TMZ feel if you know what I mean.

    About the article. I dont think you can talk about class when you end in the same way as the person your rebutting. How can you be a better man when you speak in the same kind of patronizing tone.

43. I think JMS meant “since OMD/BND”?

44. I’m still working out where I fall on this one…a few thoughts I have are…

    * I thought JMS was posting this in a light hearted way.

    * Wacker made a point of saying he had to deal with the after effects and controversy and JMS didn’t. I think there might be some deeper feelings there..

    * People dropped ASM and it lost sales after JMS left…this can’t be argued.

    * No book is selling in the range JMS Spider-Man is…that is where comics are, unless it’s a one off gimmick.

    * It’s Wacker’s right to defend his team.

    * I don’t know if Wacker should have called JMS names though…I don’t think he should have.

    For the record I met both JMS and Wacker in San Diego. One of them initially refused to take their picture with the Crawlspace sign until I said “it will just be a few seconds”, the other one kissed it and gave us a 30 minute interview.

45. I’m with Wacker on this one….I’m not the biggest fan of JMS’ run on the books, I like the current stuff Slott is putting out better. Regardless, I don’t get why he chose to post that right now or what purpose it serves other than to start up controversy.

46. I agree with Wacker on this one. I loved JMS’ run more than any other run in Spider-Man history. But, if you had a chart averaging that top ten books of every month, you would say that sales have tanked across the board. It has nothing to do with JMS leaving the book. Just look at his wonder woman and superman numbers. I am saying this as a huge JMS fan by the way. Kind of weird that he would post this. Seems like a weird time to do something like that.

47. Tread lightly…

    For the record I thought the “on time” emphasis was hilarious.

48. Wacker talking about class. Wow.

49. This was discussed with three Admins for about 30 min before Brad made the call to post it. But accuse away! Better me than Wacker or JMS! Hit me with your best shot!

50. Bertone, no offense, but you know you’ll probably be accused of starting something by just posting this instead of anyone actually namecalling first.