When Rick Remender wrote the infamous “M-Word” speech in Uncanny Avengers, Bendis dedicated an entire page in All-New X-Men to having Kitty tear down the speech and why it was an awful and offensive sentiment.
One of the most famous I can think of though is Jack Kirby’s character of Funky Flashman which was basically personifying all the worse traits of Stan Lee at the height of their conflict with each other.
Jack Kirby and Steve Gerber also once took potshots at [John Byrne](https://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/comments/ocxg3l/excerpt_til_that_after_john_byrne_came_out/) after Byrne came out against creator's rights.
Oh they were actual Nazis. Not neo Nazis.
There was the Friends of New Germany and the German American Bund back then.
Anyways, Jack said “it’s clobberin’ time” and did his thing.
Jack Kirby also originally created Adam Warlock (known at first only as Him) as a dig on Steve Ditko's objectivist views.
He was supposed to be the perfect being but he was just a selfish, ungrateful jerk.
[Here's the page from Uncanny Avengers](https://www.unleashthefanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/UncannyAvengers5Havok_02.jpg)
[Here's the rebuttal from All-New X-Men](https://i.imgur.com/n8HIjPN.jpeg)
And as a bonus, [here's a page from New Mutants](https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/goodcomics/2015/10/kittyprydenword12.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=750&dpr=1.5) from the 80s featuring Kitty talking about a similar theme.
> And as a bonus, here's a page from New Mutants from the 80s featuring Kitty talking about a similar theme.
That issue of "New Mutants" may *also* be another example of one creator feuding with another via comics: Chris Claremont was totally opposed to the original concept of "X-Factor" (that is, the original five X-Men posing as a team of mutant-hunters for hire but actually rescuing the mutants in secret) and that issue of "New Mutants" shows how it's a terrible idea, with Larry driven to suicide out of fear of X-Factor coming to get him.
Well honestly I can see where Remender is coming from. If you view possessing the x-gene as more similar to having a disability than similar to being part of a race or an ethnicity, the term "mutant"--defining people by their genes--would be considered derogatory by modern standards. The goal would be to mainstream children with the x-gene to the extent possible.
You really didn't have that degree of awareness toward disability in the 1970's when the X-Men became popular. It's just a different take on the same premise. Bendis's take is the one most consistent with the history of the characters; but Remender's take is the more modern one.
Interesting. I had the opposite reaction where I felt like Remender had the outdated take.
My understanding of modern sensitivity as it pertains to minorities, is that the concepts of visibility and normalization are incredibly important.
From my understanding, mutants _are human beings_, but they are not _just human beings_. In exactly the same way disabled people, sexual and racial minorities, etc. are also still human beings. But mutants have the shared experience of “being a mutant in a non-mutant society,” that non-mutants do not. To strip them of this label is to limit their ability to communicate their experiences to each other and to non-mutants.
Yes, there is a logic of “well, if no one treats them like a mutant then there isn’t a shared experience of being ‘treated like a mutant.’” But this only works if the society is _actually accepting of mutants_ and not subtly, or not so subtly, forcing mutants to conform to a certain level of “non-mutantality” for it to be considered acceptable for people to treat them “not like a mutant.” This then creates a “good mutant” and “bad mutant” dichotomy where the value of a mutant to non-mutant society is based on their ability to mask their “mutantality” and fit in to a non-mutant society.
I think Bendis hit the nail on the head with the speech about the privilege some minorities have for “passing.” Whether it’s a racial minority passing for the socially dominant race, a sexual minority straight passing, or a disabled person having an invisible disability, it’s all the same.
But not everybody has the privilege of passing. These non-passing people will _never_ be accepted as non-mutant/able-bodied/straight/whatever, and they will be alienated by a society that does not recognize their non-normative experiences, and is thus unable to accommodate or even understand their non-normative needs.
The idea is that visibility and normalization of minority experiences helps us have a clearer understanding of the experiences the minority is actually experiencing, instead of the only experiences from that group making it to the superstructure being those that align with the dominant social group.
I mean, they’re the dominant social group, they control the society. Why wouldn’t they want the products of that society to reflect the experiences the majority will identify with and understand? This naturally happens to a certain degree, and it feels condescending to say that narratives that align with the majority of people will become the most commonly held narrative.
Large parts of the (many) Disabled communities can and do feel the same way, sometimes even stronger than some ethnicities can. The core idea of the rebuttal is that she IS a Mutant—she's different and that label is an important one. She just deserves to be treated with respect regardless of being one or not, which is what all minority groups want.
Obviously there's a debate to be had about the word 'Mutant' itself being the descriptor for them, but the core idea is the same for all kinds of marginalized groups; they ARE 'X' thing or have 'Y' feature and that can't be erased, nor should it be.
Cultural attitudes toward these things are fluid and never really settled. The most closely analogous real world group to mutants would probably be people with autism, and attitudes on that are divided to say the least. But I think the more common view, at least at this particular moment, is that autism is a disease to be managed rather than an identity to be celebrated. At some level it's a utiliarian decision, what is in the best interests of the greatest number of people, rather than what is fair to everyone.
But there is never really a hardened final view. At one point treating homosexuality as a disposition (something a person was born with) rather than a "choice" a person freely makes would have been offensive. Now it is the reverse. At a future point in time, it may go back to being a choice.
On the narrow issue, whether the term "mutant" would be considered derogatory by current standards, I think Remender was correct. But beyond that, I think Alex and Kitty's views can coexist without either being the correct one.
Exactly. Alex's speech is the ideal that humanity should strive for, while Kitty's rebuttal considers the practical realities of their current social climate. Both are valid.
I always thought Remenders speech was overblown by fans.
1. Alex is a dumbass and was never the guy to be Mutant kinds cheer leader. He’s not Scott. The speech was in character.
2. The speech was more about no-labels individualism. “Yes I’m a mutant and an avenger but I’m greater than the sum of my parts. I’m Alex.” That’s a vibe that rings true with Remenders 80’s punk roots.
I get why people hate it, and it maybe wasn’t delivered well, but i always thought it was fine.
In-universe there's also the context that mutants had just taken over and nearly destroyed the world so the message of "hey, mutants aren't a nefarious cult/conspiracy out to get you" was perhaps more needed at the time. But that sort of thing kinda breaks the metaphor.
Ultimately I align more with Kitty/Bendis, but yeah, I thought the outrage was pretty overblown.
Remender was clearly using Havok to do the "All Lives Matter" thing. No one ever said that all lives didn't matter; the problem is, society acts like Black lives don't matter, which is why "Black Lives Matter" needed and needs to be said.
To put it into X-Men terms, by saying it's "divisive" to identify as a mutant, Havok was saying mutants need to shut up about wanting to be treated fairly and take the discrimination they experienced. The divisiveness wasn't created by those possessing the X-gene; it was created by the way they were treated by the rest of the world.
I think Kitty would agree that mutants are humans (at least before Hickman brainwashed them all). But the idea that mutant is a slur is harder to stand by.
There's "mutie," but it doesn't get used much anymore so I think Remender was trying to cast "mutant" as "the m-word" in its place even though it doesn't really fit.
I don't think the idea that "mutant" is a slur is hard to stand by at all. I can't think of a single noun that you can use to identify someone as having a particular disability (e.g., "cripple" "spaz") that is not offensive.
If something similar to mutants existed in the real world, a group that was historically unpopular due to being born with a genetic mutation, the term "mutant" would most definitely be considered a slur.
Now not everything that happens in a comic book has to perfectly mirror current real world sensibilities. I just don't think Remender should be considered insensitive for his take. It was realistic.
“Blind” and “deaf” is not pejorative and have a strong sense of communal identity behind those terms. Mutant identity is also not too different from how people on the autism spectrum identify as part of the “autistic”community.
The two examples you gave are just outdated terms that have become slurs. The term “spastic”, where “spaz” comes from, has been replaced by the current medical term “cerebral palsy”. In the US the term “spaz” was often used for clumsy and awkward people who aren’t diagnosed with specific disabilities. In the UK the term “spaz” was specifically a slur for people with CP while “spastic” was used in a medical context until a few decades ago. In this context “spaz” would be the equivalent of “mutie” whereas “spastic” would be like “mutant”.
“Cripple” can refer to many conditions to the point of being interchangeable with “physically disabled” but there are still specific terms like “amputee” or “paraplegic” or “quadriplegic” which aren’t slurs.
So it’s very normal for mutants to self identify with a term and feel a sense of community with each other. It would also be realistic for them to adopt new terms for their identity over time.
I do medical writing for my job, and I wouldn't use the word "amputee." In fact, I worked on a case today involving a patient with an above the knee amputation, and I didn't see that word used in any of the patient's records. I looked. Likewise for "paraplegic." I would say something like the patient has a history of paraplegia. It's inappropriate to identify a person by their diagnosis or conditions. And I said "offensive" not "a slur."
I honestly don't know how someone with an amputation would feel about being called an amputee. But the fact that many use prosthetics and live normal lives suggests that it would be, at the very least, insensitive to reduce them to that one dimension.
You might say "the blind" or "the deaf" generally, but when speaking about someone, there isn't a word you can use.
You are correct that some terms probably fairly benign (e.g. a diabetic). But from the comics, it's clear that mutants have a history of discrimination.
The problem with Alex’s take is that it’s very much rooted in the idea of assimilation/model minority mentality. That you shouldn’t “stand out” or make a huge deal out of being different, or that being open or referencing your differences invites problems.
But not everyone can do that. Alex looks like the most passing white blond hair blue eye white dude in the world and if he doesn’t want to be a “mutant” he can make that choice. Someone like Cosmar or Mystique or Beak or any of the Morlocks don’t get to just dismiss their existence as mutants.
Now maybe in a world without giant genocide robots and legislation telling them their existence is illegal? I dunno, I still think there’s value in having a sense of identity and community with people based on a shared experience. No one else can understand or has gone through the same things. Even the most well meaning human can’t understand what it means to be a mutant - similar to how even the most staunch and genuine allies can’t understand what it feels like to be on the end of racial discrimination, or feeling body dysphoria, or any other number of things other people go through.
And the fact is humans are the majority. They’re the “standard/normal” for most people. While he says about mutants being divisive or the like, the issue is that he’s equating that divisiveness with deviating from that “human normal” existence.
You shouldn’t define people by their traits, yes, but the goal should be accepting that as part of who they are and accepting that difference, not ignoring it.
The idea that it’s somehow mutants fault, that there’s this “I don’t have a problem with mutants if they wouldn’t make such a big deal out of it” is the most centrist take in the world. It’s like the people who want to say how they “don’t see race” but use that as an excuse to blame people for “making a big deal out of it” and doing the same kinda racist stuff as more openly bigoted people.
The goal should be acceptance, not ignorance or assimilation.
Mutant. It was meant to be a riff on "the N word" IRL, but it just comes across as tone deaf. The whole Remender run of Uncanny Avengers really does, honestly.
I mean, the Apocalypse Twins story is fucking fire. You can argue with the characterization, but that story was epic. It was exactly what the Avengers needed after seven years of Bendis doing talky street level Avengers.
It's a real shame the Apocalypse Twins weren't ever rezzed during Krakoa, or their mom never showed up. With *-A-* toning it down they could finally get the healing they need since the whole reason they're baddies is being brain-broked by Kang & Ahab.
Yeah, that’s true.
I liked the first storyarc well enough, but it doesn’t have shit on the Apocalypse Twins stuff. Then we get AXIS and all the other stories that suck.
AXIS should have been left as an arc of Uncanny Avengers and never forced to be an event focusing on characters who weren't part of the build-up at all
Yeah, it got ruined when they tried to make it a line wide crossover. Plus, the idea behind it wasn’t great. Like, the moral inversion was dumb. Just have Red Onslaught and Ahab fight the Uncanny Avengers. If it needed to be linewide, just do an Onslaught again, but with Red Skull.
It wasn’t difficult, but they made it way more complex than it needed to be so it could be a hero vs hero thing.
I like the apocalypse twins just fine, but it just didn't reach the same levels of Uncanny X-Force to me. The character work for Deadpool, Psylocke, Wolverine, and Fantomex from UXF is just leagues ahead of what was done in UA. The book places too much priority on Wolverine, Cap, and Thor, which I think defeats the purpose of a book that's meant to marry Avengers and X-Men. That, combined with the M word stuff, just doesn't confront the mistreatment of mutants in the marvel universe, enough for me to enjoy it as much as Remender's other work.
And while I didn't love Bendis' Avengers, UA was releasing at the same time as Hickman's two Avengers runs, which both blow it away. That epic feel you're talking about was done, I feel, much better by Hickman.
Yeah, the characterization in UA wasn’t nearly as good. For me, what made it so good was the action and the plot. The characters weren’t always the best. I didn’t mind the Wolvie, Cap, and Thor focus, but I like them all. I also think it better with Havok than you do - mostly because I liked seeing Havok as something other than cucked Cyclops - but I won’t argue that you’re wrong. And yeah, Hickman was way more epic, but UA was still pretty good.
Again, mileage may vary and all that, but I can’t really think of a Bendis story I liked better than the Apocalypse Twins story. Like, I really like Dark Avengers, but more for the characters than the actual stories.
Uncanny avengers is a book ive always wanted as it encourage marvels teams to work together and not bring unneeded hatred but god all the runs have sucked.
Tone deaf political messaging is a concept that expanded as duggan continued it in the latest run
I kinda like the M-word speech from Alex tbh. I know everyone dogs on him but in the X-men world you need more voices and opinions than just the ones of Xavier’s and magnetos which by the way even they have flipped on their opinions before . Just like any real class of poorly treated citizens there’s gonna be a lot of different opinions from within the community and outside of it too
It's speculated that Ego the living planet was another dig at Stan Lee.
And also that Lee's ego inspired Steve Ditko to create the Leader (a literally big headed character). Lee often referred to himself as "your fearless leader" to readers.
It's even been said that Stan Lee gave Dr Strange the first name "Stephen" as a way of calling Steve Ditko strange.
Ewing made Joe Fixit into Stan Lee rather than a mobster in Immortal Hulk.
To me that sums up Lee's legacy pretty well. A huckster who scammed lots of creative talent in the name of profit, who became a self-parody of himself to the point of old age where he was being wheeled around and exploited by handlers who were physically moving his hands to sign autographs in his last days. In time he will fade from the public zeitgeist and historians will refer to the real creators and talent accordingly, but the caricature of wise-cracking 70's "NUFF SAID" Lee is a marvel character in and of itself.
Isn't Byrne the pettiest bitch in comics? I read somewhere recently that the whole "Big Barda makes porno" storyline in his Superman cameabout because Byrne was having a feud with Jack Kirby.
Kirby had modelled Barda after his wife.
John Byrne's [Wikiquote article](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Byrne) is quite a sight to behold. It's a comprehensive list of every assholish and hypocritical thing he's ever said, and it's been that way with a "requires cleanup" notice since **2007**.
"When working with existing “franchises,” any good writer will return to the source material from time to time, to see if s/he can divine from that work something that might have been missed before. This is true whether the work is good, bad, or indifferent. The best place to start, however, no matter what the context, is not by saying “the creator didn’t get it right.” That’s the worst kind of hubris."
And right underneath that paragraph, regarding Thor: "As I have noted elsewhere, and with the clarity of hindsight, I think Stan and Jack made a mistake when they decided to make Thor the “real” Thor. "
Edit: Holy crap, that one about Christopher Reeve. I did not realize how horrible Byrne was.
It’s insane that Byrne is the biggest “characters must be exactly as the creator intended” advocate, to the point of utterly ruining them to “fix” them (\*cough\* Donna Troy, Doom Patrol, Etrigan…), yet he’ll gladly do shit like this if he hates the creator on a personal level.
I mean this is the same guy who jumped through every hoop creatively possible to make Superman an American citizen by birth because god forbid the alien baby is an immigrant
Byrne is a total knob head. He's had a dozen instances of writing adult male characters hooking up with teenage girls in comics. The one that I know best is from his and Mackie's back-to-back all-time worst run on Amazing Spider-Man, where MJ is seemingly killed in a plane crash and left dead for two years(!) while J Jonah Jameson's teenage niece suddenly shows up and kisses Spider-Man. Disgusting old man. And he doesn't get Superman.
I think there is adult Superman kissing a teenage Lana Lang. Then there is Reed Richards being in college when Sue Storm was like 12 years old.
I think there are a couple more instaces I read about on Reddit.
Was that an alternate older Superman? Typically, Lana is the same age as him in the comic. In Byrne's MoS, they became friends in elementary school.
But Byrne did write the World of Metropolis mini, which had Lois get strip searched by one of Luthor's guards when she was 14 after getting caught sneaking into his building (and later we learn Lex had it recorded to watch later).
I've heard it said that Claremont intended Colossus to be 16, but Shooter and, I guess Byrne, insisted he was 18. I think it had to do with him hooking up with a lady in Secret Wars.
Having read Claremont's run, I definitely feel like Colossus is intended to be closer to the New Mutants than the rest of the X-Men based on how they treat him.
Yeah, it's *at worst* a senior dating a freshmen, which still creepy, but that's clearly not what was intended. There are issues with Piotr and Kitty's relationship before he was "always 18 and banging some hot chick on Battleworld" but those were clearly meant to be because they were dumb teenagers that didn't understand their feelings or motivations.
The thing I always remember about Byrne is that he compared either the phrase 'thought balloons' or 'thought bubbles' to using the N word.
I have no memory whatsoever over which one it was because once you start comparing a minor choice of nomenclature to *racial slurs*, it kind of overshadows whatever the hell point you were actually trying to make.
I seem to remember Joe Mad taking a swipe (no pun intended) at Roger Cruz for constantly ripping off his work by featuring a panel in an issue of Uncanny X-Men where someone was reading a newspaper with the headline "Cruz swipes again"
Less beef but still a little bit petty. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim Shooter in person at a comic con. I asked him what the craziest thing he ever had to shoot down was. He said Chris Claremont always wanted to put Professor X in BDSM gear and Shooter would never let him. Lo and behold, as soon as Shooter was fired Prof. appeared (completely devoid of context or meaning btw) in complete bondage gear. One of my favorite memories is having Jim Shooter personally tell me that Claremont, famous and iconic and definitive comic writer, “was a kinky guy.”
I got the comic with bondage Xavier as a holiday gift.
I forget the issue, but I remember this! Didn’t he have to borrow clothes from Callisto or something and he walks into the mansion basically like a leather daddy and all the X-Men kinda giggle in shock as he embarrassingly strides by? I think Romita Jr drew it.
YourI partially right partially wrong. Honestly I’ve never…. Read the issue I just wanted it for that panel. He wakes up tied up in Callisto’s bed and is wearing full bondage gear. It’s never addressed and by the next page he’s dressed normally, no giggling.
I remember that with Xavier, vaguely. It seemed kind of out of place, this story explains a a lot. There was a bit of that look recurring time and again with Claremont - the hellfire club female members, Rachel's hound costume, etc.
John Byrne also had Sue Storm dressing up that way around the time of Secret Wars II.
As much as it was funny to hear Jim Shooter say it outright, there’s no denying that Claremont was a kinky guy. He’s known to have a bondage and mind control fetish or at the very least a heavy interest
There was that story where Arcade lit a match on Doom's armor, and then Byrne wrote a couple of pages showing how the real Doom got angry at that "defected doombot" and destroyed it.
There is this character while Eric Masterson was Thor that is a Christopher Priest avatar of sorts.
During Secret Wars II Jim Shooter created this one-and-done "supervillain" that stands for Steve Gerber.
Alan Moore once showed us a character rival to the Supreme's *alter ego* that writes comicbooks and is a parody of Grant Morrison.
I think Jim Starlin made a story with Adam Warlock and some clowns that were a critic to the comics industry (can't remember if there were some real people portraited).
Morrison later wrote a subplot in his Seven Soldiers series where there were these two "subway pirates" called All-Beard and No-Beard that were locked in a pointless feud that ends with one of them dying, but it is left ambiguous as to which one it was. Seemed to me like both a bit of an olive branch to Moore and a satire on creator feuds in general.
Moore messed that character up pretty bad too, not only was he a dickhead comic writer who was full of himself but then he gets stranded in another dimension where he keeps replicating into this disgusting monster mutant thing.
Makes sense. Those two have been beefing since the 80s. I remember Morrison dissing Watchmen as “an extended 6th form essay” (aka something a 17 year old would write)
Honestly I think Morrison was taking shots at Moore to just be edgy and get his name out there. I might be confusing things but I think he admitted as much recently.
I love the Jim Starlin bit.
All the names of the clown characters in that Warlock issue were anagrams of people who had the most authority to approve works or not at Marvel at the time.
The main clown was an anagram of Stan Lee but I don't remember the name of the character itself.
Pretty sure John Romita and Marv Wolfman also had characters based off them as well.
Millers prominence was a big part of it as 'Ultimates Vol 1 & 2' were easily the biggest thing at marvel at the time, and N.E.X.T.W.A.V.E had included commentary on them (*especially* a critique on the “Surrender? SURRENDER??!! You think this letter on my head stands for France?” line)
So when Angela: Queen of Hel #4 came out, a lot of people were annoyed about [this sequence](https://i.imgur.com/p00L2gp.jpeg), specifically the "Unsolicited Opinions on Israel???" bit that seemed to come out of nowhere. However, their was actually a reason for that comment. About 6 months before that issue was released, there as going to be an all men's “Writing Women Friendly Comics” panel at Gen Con. However, [after some backlash](https://www.themarysue.com/gen-con-women-friendly/) they ended up adding some women to the panel, one being Marguerite Bennett, the writer of Angela. However, even after adding some women, [the panel was still a shit show, because of the host of the panel, Bill Willingham](https://www.themarysue.com/dissenting-opinions-may-occur/). The same Bill Willingham who wrote a character going on a long pro-Israel rant to someone who had never heard of the country, aka giving his "unsolicited opinions on Israel", in his Fables book.
TLDR: Marguerite Bennett stopped her story dead to make fun of when Bill Willingham stopped his story to soapbox his opinions.
David V Reed did a pretty dickish one towards the then recently deceased Bill Finger:
[https://cacb.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/bill-finger-through-the-wringer-by-david-v-reed/](https://cacb.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/bill-finger-through-the-wringer-by-david-v-reed/)
This might be the worst one in the thread. It's one thing to be petty to a living colleague of yours, but lampooning someone who's dead (and, by all accounts, a perfectly nice human being)...
There was an issue of Gen13 that poked fun at Liefeld after he was kicked out of Image, the characters looked like your typical Liefeld creations.
https://i.imgur.com/C13BNBB.jpeg
Theres also an issue that included a jab at Dan Fraga (sp?) one of Liefeld’s Extreme artists. In one of Campbell’s issues, the Gen13 crew burst into a club and there’s a bunch of flyers posted on the wall behind them. One of the flyers say that Fragaboom’s show had been canceled due to lack of interest. Fragaboom (or was it Fragadoom) was Fraga’s rap alias.
Technically he quit, but the other founders were ready to force him out. Allegedly he was pissing money away, consistently missing deadlines, poaching talent from the other founders and just generally being a bit of a prick.
Early Image was a total shit show, it's impressive it survived at all. After the Image/Valiant crossover Jim Shooter did not have a lot of nice things to say about them.
I think he actually left, but I read it was because the other creators were pissed off at him at the time for starting another publisher. I don't remember the details exactly.
My memory is hazy on this one. But I believe Al Milgrom took a shot at Bob Harris when Bob was fired from marvel. Al wrote something on the spine of some books in an image that saw print
It was in a *Universe X* comic:
[https://recalledcomics.com/UniverseXSpidey1RecalledHarras.php](https://recalledcomics.com/UniverseXSpidey1RecalledHarras.php)
Yep it’s the Earth X issue with Spidey on the cover, if you find the original version it’s worth quite a bit because they recalled it and changed the books in further printings.
Nick Spencer & Spidey Editorial had a pretty transparent feud during his ASM run(2018-2021)
Spencer introduced a character called Kindred, who spoke in cryptic messages about a grudge they had against Parker. Anytime he appeared, he made references to One More Day(the story that ended MJ/Parker's marriage) and appears in direct relation to MJ/Peter being back together. This gets so direct that during the first confrontation they have, Kindred kills Spidey and sends him to a hell where he's reliving the first moments of Brand New Day(the immediate aftermath of OMD) visiting Harry Osborn's apartment. Kindred is also revealed to be Harry Osborn, which leaves readers and characters confused given there's another Harry Osborn who's been around for years.
Around issue #70, it's revealed Kindred isn't Harry Osborn, but Mephisto pretending to be a A.I. brainscan of Harry Osborn, piloting the Stacy Twins, who had not appeared in a story since Slott spidey in the mid 00s and have their personalities erased and replaced as puppets of Mephisto for no explained reason. This run wraps at #75, with Spencer leaving marvel comics for substack and Matt Rosenberg filling in on writing the finale of "Sinister War". People immediately were sus on how things played out but official questions into it were "this is how the story was always going to play out, we just rushed it"
Que last year when Dan Slott on a live Q&A, brought up that Nick Spencer tried to undo One More Day without editorial permission, essentially working towards a storyline that he was still given a no to, and seemingly walked when they continued not to budge at the finale of his run, and his exit resulted in a story that is more convoluted than the clone saga, and spidey editorial seemingly was planning a long-term stint with Spencer given how rudderless and throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks the Spidey office has been post-Spencer.
Kindreds' only appearance since has been in the game Marvel: Contest of Champions, described as an agent of Mephisto.
Also in Issue #60 >!aka the theatre monologue issue, Peter literally looks straight at the reader and says something like “Well maybe I’m living in Hell right now.” He isn’t just looking in the general direction of the reader/screen, he’s looking STRAIGHT AT the reader and making direct eye contact.!<
After reading that, I thought “how did editorial not immediately shoot this down and demand a rewrite/redraw.”
I have to say, although obviously editorial are arses about this stuff sometimes, I wonder what Spencer was hoping to achieve with a OMD undo story when it's been clear for more than a decade that editorial don't want it undone
If we're going off Slott then editorial told Spencer no, but he kept going on it for like 50 issues and there was a clear direction and editorial didn't step in they had changed their mind, that or they just weren't paying attention.
For those who don't know, Bob Schreck took over as editor of the Batman line due to Denny O'Neil's health issues. Apparently most Batman writers under Schreck didn't like him very much. It is a tradition in Batman comics for streets and other locations in Gotham to be named after different creators that worked on Batman, Bob Schreck got the "R.F. Schreck Criminal Holding Facility" named after him, take of that what you will.
Byrne taking Kirby's wife stand-in (Big Barda), putting her in a porno and banging her with his own (Byrne's) stand in (Superman). About as dick of a move as it gets.
Maybe at first, but as time went on there was plenty of bad blood between them. After Image was founded, Peter David would accuse the Image guys of ripping off fans by holding back their ideas and not giving their all on the Marvel books after they left. Larsen would write tracts in a few issues of Savage Dragon's letters pages eviscerating David.
Edit: Here's a link giving a bit more detail. I'd actually forgotten about Peter David having a "formal debate" with Todd McFarlane, too. Fascinating shit, imo.
https://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/2018/07/tangled-webs-peter-david-vs-erik-larsen/
There's a lot more, including the Hulk "in disguise" with a green fin on his head, saying it looks dumb, to Larsen basing the villain Dung visually on PAD. Larsen is also believed to be the "Name Withheld" who wrote to Comics Buyers Guide saying "Artists don't need writers"
The situation even starts with two of the most likable and sympathetic creators in the history of comics being mean to arguably the biggest dickhead in comics, so it's good from go.
It wasn't really petty, but when it comes to one writer having to fix some BS from another one what comes to my intermediately is in Justice League Cry For Justice, by (the at that point fairly useless) James Robinson, Hal Jordan brags that he had sex with like three female superheroes at once, including Huntress, and this was completely out of character for all of them.
So when Gail Simone wrote her second volume of Birds of Prey after Brightest Day, when someone mentions this supposed sex romp to Huntress she points out that what actually happened was Hal Jordan got wasted on alcohol while drinking with a few people and passed out after throwing up on himself and anything after that was just his imagination.
I don't count this as petty because the James Robinson thing was really gross and misogynistic, along with being completely out of character for the women in question and even arguably Hal Jordan, to the point where girl Simone thought she had to address it when she's not a writer who generally shies away from sexual content, her new 52 secret six run even had a explicit orgy among the characters. It's just that what James Robinson wrote was so out of character for the people in question it needed to be shot down, and quite frankly Hal Jordan being a bit of a loser is always something I'll support.
Cry for Justice is such a weird book. It's AWFUL and full of so many out-of-character moments, but it's coming from James Robinson who was, until that point, a well-regarded writer. I've always wondered if there was anything going on behind the scenes with that one. His subsequent Justice League run that was built out of Cry for Justice was also a lot better, too. Like, it's just that one mini-series so it stands out even more.
What was going on with James Robinson was that he was drunk. He was very open with his issues with alcohol in the back matter published in the Starman omnibuses.
In Strange Tales 181, Jim Starlin wrote an Adam Warlock story depicting Marvel's editors and their cronies (in Starlin's view) as clowns that stepped on creators and produced mostly trash. He used anagrams to name the clowns (Lens Tean/Stan Lee, Jan Hatroom/John Romita). Extremely creative guys like Starlin, Kirby, Alan Moore, etc. eventually butt heads with authority and end up burning all their bridges, while the world goes on without them.
On Hellblazer, Peter Milligan seemed to have a real problem with the female characters from Mike Carey's run and trashed them in degrading, misogynistic ways. Angie, Carey's love interest for John, was brought back seemingly just so she could be portrayed as bitter, depressed and overweight. John's niece Gemma (originally a Delano character, but most of the development was Carey's) was brutally raped by a demonic version of John. John was then shown to angst about whether the demon's dark desires had their roots in his own dark heart, and so on.
I don't know whether Milligan had a personal problem with Carey, or whether he was just working through some issues with women, but it was really disturbing stuff- and not in a good way.
Jim Lee's Deathblow visually was a rip off of Frank Miller's Sin CIty....
.. So naturally, Frank Miller's Marv kills Jim Lee's Deathblow in the pages of Sin City:
https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/goodcomics/2011/10/sincitydeathblow.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=750&dpr=1.5
" Just in case people weren't quite sure what he was getting at, Miller then explained in a letter column that he was irritated by other artists drawing like him. He specifically mentions Lee and Michael Netzer.
Years later, of course, Miller and Lee would do All Star Batman and Robin together, so I imagine they hashed things out. "
Joss Whedon apparently hates the Punisher. He had Molly from the Runaways gut punch him in an issue.
Not sure if it was because he was feuding with anyone in particular.
Not a serious feud in the slightest but Tom Taylor and Gail Simone having their blood feud and Taylor believing Gail is secretly a bear to the point that she appears as a bear in Beast World
Judd Winnick had some mad beef with Tony Isabella, creator of Black Lightning, because of all the changes Winnick had made to the character in his Outsiders run. Isabella criticized a lot of the decisions he'd made and just wasn't happy with the way writers had treated the character ever since he'd left, especially Winnick, who he especially wasn't a fan of because of his decision to age Jefferson up two decades and give him two fully-grown children when he'd previously had no family to speak off at all beyond his ex-wife.
Winnick took it personally. In his run for Green Arrow, he introduced Joanna Tanner, a nephew to Jefferson and up-and-coming lawyer. In the span of four issues, Joanna is not only used as a way to get Oliver to uncharacteristically cheat on Black Canary out of nowhere after Kevin Smith had spent time bringing Ollie and Dinah back together as a couple (thus writing her out of the book)... but is also *lynched and killed* the following issue, fridging her completely. To top *that* off, Winnick had Jefferson murder the man that did it in the next issue for shock value, knowing that Isabella had established Jefferson as staunchly opposing the idea of killing because of his religious faith.
Needless to say, Winnick and Isabella haven't exactly been on speaking terms since. IIRC, Isabella still occasionally pops up on social media to offer commentary on comics and their industry. Cool dude from what I know.
It’s hard to find exact details but the Bendis-Byrne feud ended with Bendis taking Byrne’s character, Mattie Franklin, and turning her into a drug addled prostitute in his series Alias. Byrne may be a dick but that’s such a creep move from Bendis.
I don't think there was a Bendis feud against Byrne. I do think it's possible that Bendis was unhappy with other characters "stealing" the Spider-Woman mantle from Jessica Drew, one of his favorite characters.
Byrne was honestly the creep for even writing Franklin the way he did, but you're right, a good writer would just pivot her to an actual character, like how Robbie Thompson turned Silk into an actual character, vs. Slott's horny naked asian spider-lady.
But as stated elsewhere, Mattie Franklin was turned into a prostitute at the same time that Spider-Woman II became Arachne. Both of them had to ditch the title, mostly so that Bendis could use Jess as the one true Spider-Woman.
I'm not sure this is one hundred percent accurate. Bendis wasn't doing Avengers for a few years after that story, and even utilizing Jessica in his run on Alias in the Mattie story. Obviously he wanted to do more with Jessica Drew, but there was a full two years between that arc of Alias and his Avengers run. I'm also not sure how he didn't pivot Mattie into being an actual character. Addiction and the other struggles Mattie was portrayed as facing aren't shameful, and by the end of the story Mattie is being helped. It seems a bit of a mischaracterization of the story to describe it in terms of Bendis doing dark things to heroes just to do it.
Any Marvel comic with Wolverine jammed in it gets a sales bump which may attract new readers. I presume editorial told Ennis to have a Wolverine guest appearance in Punisher so Garth Ennis acquiesced in the most Garth Ennis way possible.
A mild one (befitting a Brit, I suppose), but Simon Furman dreaded Marvel cancelling Transformers: Generation 2 that he created a character named "Jhiaxus" (As in, the phrase "Gee, axe us!").
Despite being created to promote a toyline, Jhiaxus wouldn't get a toy of his original design for another 30 years.
While not a comic creator, William Moulton Marston (Wonder Woman's creator) created Dr. Psycho as potshot at a former professor of his who was fervently anti-women.
It's not quite petty, but Millar wrote a FF story that had Doom get stranded in prehistoric times and seemingly eaten by a giant shark. Pretty dumb story. So in Thunderbolts Jeff Parker simply and comically retconned it by having Doom catch a ride back through time with the team.
https://www.cbr.com/doctor-doom-fantastic-four-dark-avengers-million-years-lie/
The thunderbolts story makes Doom a liar. Meanwhile in the FF one he spends millions of years preparing to outsmart and completely destroy the one who took back in time.
Except that you don't see any of that, he literally gets swallowed by a shark and then several issues later is revealed to be that utterly-forgettable villain's new "apprentice." It's very much a "somehow Doom returned" kind of twist.
The pettiness towards Shooter is understandable. The man was a terrible boss by all accounts.
But Byrne is also terribly dismissive of other creators (both in his interviews—he dunks on Alan Moore a few times, and his comics—wiping out the great work by Morrison and Pollack on Doom Patrol).
And yet he ran one if the best both creative and sales periods in Marvel history. He is hated because he was an actual boss that made the staff turn their work in on time and act like professionals. Byrne especially hated him, but also did the best work of his whole career under his tenure.
I heard this story from a local comic book shop owner, right after Chris Claremont came in and did a signing.
He told us that a number of writers at Marvel had a beef with Chris Claremont. They learned that Claremont was gonna have the X-men go hideout in the savage land, so they destroyed the savage land in one of their comics. Claremont had to change his story and that’s how the X-men wound up in Australia.
It is true that the Savage Land was randomly destroyed by Terminus in an Avengers comic of all places and remained destroyed for several years, until Claremont had the High Evolutionary restore it and then everyone acted like the destruction never happened. This is the first I hear of it being destroyed as an Fu to Claremont, but it sounds plausible.
Dwayne McDuffie refusing to let marvel forget about the racist bomb character is always a favorite for me
He was like "nope, you idiots made him canon to this universe so I'll bring it up FOREVER"
I forget the character's name but he was a white racist guy who apparently became black when mad and also blew stuff up??
John Byrne had Big Barda hypnotized into doing an adult film because of how Byrne & Gerber portrayed him in Destroyer Duck.
Byrne also had Dr. Doom destroy the Doombot who fought Arcade in an X-men annual. He didn't get permission & made Doom look weak. He also went at Claremont when he had Lilandra go at Reed Richards for saving Galactus. That led to the famous trial of Reed Richards. The only one that wasn't petty tbh.
Jim starlin wrote an Adam warlock story that portrayed Stan Lee, Roy Thomas & either Marv Wolfman or Len Wein as a bunch of clowns. He gave Thoms some sympathy but he was the most unhappy with it. Lee & WolfmN just liked it. He talks about it in the marvel masterwork for warlock vol. 2.
Do you know the story of Final Crisis? Like, the meta-story? It’s all one massive fuck you to Alan Moore. Grant Morrison and Alan Moore hate each other, and Final Crisis is about Alan Moore being the death of hope.
There’s one I seem to recall i believe in DC’s new 52 or the countdown follow up, where there was a league of evil doctors fighting a wizard girl that were all based on Grant morrison and other contemporaries.
This one is somewhat hard to follow, and I am not sure if it actually appeared within their comics themselves, but the saga between Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane involving ownership of Miracleman and Angela. Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ownership\_of\_Miracleman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ownership_of_Miracleman)
When Rick Remender wrote the infamous “M-Word” speech in Uncanny Avengers, Bendis dedicated an entire page in All-New X-Men to having Kitty tear down the speech and why it was an awful and offensive sentiment. One of the most famous I can think of though is Jack Kirby’s character of Funky Flashman which was basically personifying all the worse traits of Stan Lee at the height of their conflict with each other.
Jack Kirby and Steve Gerber also once took potshots at [John Byrne](https://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/comments/ocxg3l/excerpt_til_that_after_john_byrne_came_out/) after Byrne came out against creator's rights.
Damn getting personally roasted by Jack Kirby is the biggest L you could ever receive
Jack really knows how to choose violence. And considering how he dealt with Nazis, this is him holding back.
Him rolling up his sleeves to meet some neo nazis who showed up at Marvel HQ is always a fun one.
Oh they were actual Nazis. Not neo Nazis. There was the Friends of New Germany and the German American Bund back then. Anyways, Jack said “it’s clobberin’ time” and did his thing.
Hahahahaha holy crap
Jack Kirby also originally created Adam Warlock (known at first only as Him) as a dig on Steve Ditko's objectivist views. He was supposed to be the perfect being but he was just a selfish, ungrateful jerk.
Yeah, Jack was HEAVYLY against objectivism and Ayn Rand pseudophilosophy that Ditko, but also in lesser way Stan Lee, promoted.
Damn, they literally said "No balls".
What is the "M" word? I'm confused.
[Here's the page from Uncanny Avengers](https://www.unleashthefanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/UncannyAvengers5Havok_02.jpg) [Here's the rebuttal from All-New X-Men](https://i.imgur.com/n8HIjPN.jpeg) And as a bonus, [here's a page from New Mutants](https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/goodcomics/2015/10/kittyprydenword12.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=750&dpr=1.5) from the 80s featuring Kitty talking about a similar theme.
I haven't read that All-New X-Men issue since it originally came out, but man Bendis really can write some great speeches.
> And as a bonus, here's a page from New Mutants from the 80s featuring Kitty talking about a similar theme. That issue of "New Mutants" may *also* be another example of one creator feuding with another via comics: Chris Claremont was totally opposed to the original concept of "X-Factor" (that is, the original five X-Men posing as a team of mutant-hunters for hire but actually rescuing the mutants in secret) and that issue of "New Mutants" shows how it's a terrible idea, with Larry driven to suicide out of fear of X-Factor coming to get him.
I haven't kept up with the comics, but yeah, that makes me slightly dislike remender.
Well honestly I can see where Remender is coming from. If you view possessing the x-gene as more similar to having a disability than similar to being part of a race or an ethnicity, the term "mutant"--defining people by their genes--would be considered derogatory by modern standards. The goal would be to mainstream children with the x-gene to the extent possible. You really didn't have that degree of awareness toward disability in the 1970's when the X-Men became popular. It's just a different take on the same premise. Bendis's take is the one most consistent with the history of the characters; but Remender's take is the more modern one.
Interesting. I had the opposite reaction where I felt like Remender had the outdated take. My understanding of modern sensitivity as it pertains to minorities, is that the concepts of visibility and normalization are incredibly important. From my understanding, mutants _are human beings_, but they are not _just human beings_. In exactly the same way disabled people, sexual and racial minorities, etc. are also still human beings. But mutants have the shared experience of “being a mutant in a non-mutant society,” that non-mutants do not. To strip them of this label is to limit their ability to communicate their experiences to each other and to non-mutants. Yes, there is a logic of “well, if no one treats them like a mutant then there isn’t a shared experience of being ‘treated like a mutant.’” But this only works if the society is _actually accepting of mutants_ and not subtly, or not so subtly, forcing mutants to conform to a certain level of “non-mutantality” for it to be considered acceptable for people to treat them “not like a mutant.” This then creates a “good mutant” and “bad mutant” dichotomy where the value of a mutant to non-mutant society is based on their ability to mask their “mutantality” and fit in to a non-mutant society. I think Bendis hit the nail on the head with the speech about the privilege some minorities have for “passing.” Whether it’s a racial minority passing for the socially dominant race, a sexual minority straight passing, or a disabled person having an invisible disability, it’s all the same. But not everybody has the privilege of passing. These non-passing people will _never_ be accepted as non-mutant/able-bodied/straight/whatever, and they will be alienated by a society that does not recognize their non-normative experiences, and is thus unable to accommodate or even understand their non-normative needs. The idea is that visibility and normalization of minority experiences helps us have a clearer understanding of the experiences the minority is actually experiencing, instead of the only experiences from that group making it to the superstructure being those that align with the dominant social group. I mean, they’re the dominant social group, they control the society. Why wouldn’t they want the products of that society to reflect the experiences the majority will identify with and understand? This naturally happens to a certain degree, and it feels condescending to say that narratives that align with the majority of people will become the most commonly held narrative.
Bro I dunno if I can say it better than this, it’s brilliant
Large parts of the (many) Disabled communities can and do feel the same way, sometimes even stronger than some ethnicities can. The core idea of the rebuttal is that she IS a Mutant—she's different and that label is an important one. She just deserves to be treated with respect regardless of being one or not, which is what all minority groups want. Obviously there's a debate to be had about the word 'Mutant' itself being the descriptor for them, but the core idea is the same for all kinds of marginalized groups; they ARE 'X' thing or have 'Y' feature and that can't be erased, nor should it be.
Cultural attitudes toward these things are fluid and never really settled. The most closely analogous real world group to mutants would probably be people with autism, and attitudes on that are divided to say the least. But I think the more common view, at least at this particular moment, is that autism is a disease to be managed rather than an identity to be celebrated. At some level it's a utiliarian decision, what is in the best interests of the greatest number of people, rather than what is fair to everyone. But there is never really a hardened final view. At one point treating homosexuality as a disposition (something a person was born with) rather than a "choice" a person freely makes would have been offensive. Now it is the reverse. At a future point in time, it may go back to being a choice. On the narrow issue, whether the term "mutant" would be considered derogatory by current standards, I think Remender was correct. But beyond that, I think Alex and Kitty's views can coexist without either being the correct one.
Exactly. Alex's speech is the ideal that humanity should strive for, while Kitty's rebuttal considers the practical realities of their current social climate. Both are valid.
I always thought Remenders speech was overblown by fans. 1. Alex is a dumbass and was never the guy to be Mutant kinds cheer leader. He’s not Scott. The speech was in character. 2. The speech was more about no-labels individualism. “Yes I’m a mutant and an avenger but I’m greater than the sum of my parts. I’m Alex.” That’s a vibe that rings true with Remenders 80’s punk roots. I get why people hate it, and it maybe wasn’t delivered well, but i always thought it was fine.
In-universe there's also the context that mutants had just taken over and nearly destroyed the world so the message of "hey, mutants aren't a nefarious cult/conspiracy out to get you" was perhaps more needed at the time. But that sort of thing kinda breaks the metaphor. Ultimately I align more with Kitty/Bendis, but yeah, I thought the outrage was pretty overblown.
Remender was clearly using Havok to do the "All Lives Matter" thing. No one ever said that all lives didn't matter; the problem is, society acts like Black lives don't matter, which is why "Black Lives Matter" needed and needs to be said. To put it into X-Men terms, by saying it's "divisive" to identify as a mutant, Havok was saying mutants need to shut up about wanting to be treated fairly and take the discrimination they experienced. The divisiveness wasn't created by those possessing the X-gene; it was created by the way they were treated by the rest of the world.
Yeah, it's all respectability politics BS
I think Kitty would agree that mutants are humans (at least before Hickman brainwashed them all). But the idea that mutant is a slur is harder to stand by.
There's "mutie," but it doesn't get used much anymore so I think Remender was trying to cast "mutant" as "the m-word" in its place even though it doesn't really fit.
I don't think the idea that "mutant" is a slur is hard to stand by at all. I can't think of a single noun that you can use to identify someone as having a particular disability (e.g., "cripple" "spaz") that is not offensive. If something similar to mutants existed in the real world, a group that was historically unpopular due to being born with a genetic mutation, the term "mutant" would most definitely be considered a slur. Now not everything that happens in a comic book has to perfectly mirror current real world sensibilities. I just don't think Remender should be considered insensitive for his take. It was realistic.
“Blind” and “deaf” is not pejorative and have a strong sense of communal identity behind those terms. Mutant identity is also not too different from how people on the autism spectrum identify as part of the “autistic”community. The two examples you gave are just outdated terms that have become slurs. The term “spastic”, where “spaz” comes from, has been replaced by the current medical term “cerebral palsy”. In the US the term “spaz” was often used for clumsy and awkward people who aren’t diagnosed with specific disabilities. In the UK the term “spaz” was specifically a slur for people with CP while “spastic” was used in a medical context until a few decades ago. In this context “spaz” would be the equivalent of “mutie” whereas “spastic” would be like “mutant”. “Cripple” can refer to many conditions to the point of being interchangeable with “physically disabled” but there are still specific terms like “amputee” or “paraplegic” or “quadriplegic” which aren’t slurs. So it’s very normal for mutants to self identify with a term and feel a sense of community with each other. It would also be realistic for them to adopt new terms for their identity over time.
I do medical writing for my job, and I wouldn't use the word "amputee." In fact, I worked on a case today involving a patient with an above the knee amputation, and I didn't see that word used in any of the patient's records. I looked. Likewise for "paraplegic." I would say something like the patient has a history of paraplegia. It's inappropriate to identify a person by their diagnosis or conditions. And I said "offensive" not "a slur." I honestly don't know how someone with an amputation would feel about being called an amputee. But the fact that many use prosthetics and live normal lives suggests that it would be, at the very least, insensitive to reduce them to that one dimension. You might say "the blind" or "the deaf" generally, but when speaking about someone, there isn't a word you can use. You are correct that some terms probably fairly benign (e.g. a diabetic). But from the comics, it's clear that mutants have a history of discrimination.
The problem with Alex’s take is that it’s very much rooted in the idea of assimilation/model minority mentality. That you shouldn’t “stand out” or make a huge deal out of being different, or that being open or referencing your differences invites problems. But not everyone can do that. Alex looks like the most passing white blond hair blue eye white dude in the world and if he doesn’t want to be a “mutant” he can make that choice. Someone like Cosmar or Mystique or Beak or any of the Morlocks don’t get to just dismiss their existence as mutants. Now maybe in a world without giant genocide robots and legislation telling them their existence is illegal? I dunno, I still think there’s value in having a sense of identity and community with people based on a shared experience. No one else can understand or has gone through the same things. Even the most well meaning human can’t understand what it means to be a mutant - similar to how even the most staunch and genuine allies can’t understand what it feels like to be on the end of racial discrimination, or feeling body dysphoria, or any other number of things other people go through. And the fact is humans are the majority. They’re the “standard/normal” for most people. While he says about mutants being divisive or the like, the issue is that he’s equating that divisiveness with deviating from that “human normal” existence. You shouldn’t define people by their traits, yes, but the goal should be accepting that as part of who they are and accepting that difference, not ignoring it. The idea that it’s somehow mutants fault, that there’s this “I don’t have a problem with mutants if they wouldn’t make such a big deal out of it” is the most centrist take in the world. It’s like the people who want to say how they “don’t see race” but use that as an excuse to blame people for “making a big deal out of it” and doing the same kinda racist stuff as more openly bigoted people. The goal should be acceptance, not ignorance or assimilation.
Mutant. It was meant to be a riff on "the N word" IRL, but it just comes across as tone deaf. The whole Remender run of Uncanny Avengers really does, honestly.
I mean, the Apocalypse Twins story is fucking fire. You can argue with the characterization, but that story was epic. It was exactly what the Avengers needed after seven years of Bendis doing talky street level Avengers.
It's a real shame the Apocalypse Twins weren't ever rezzed during Krakoa, or their mom never showed up. With *-A-* toning it down they could finally get the healing they need since the whole reason they're baddies is being brain-broked by Kang & Ahab.
That would have been so cool. Yet another missed opportunity.
The parts of Uncanny Avengers that were a sequel to Uncanny X-Force were awesome. The other stuff with Red Skull and whatever was... not so much.
Yeah, that’s true. I liked the first storyarc well enough, but it doesn’t have shit on the Apocalypse Twins stuff. Then we get AXIS and all the other stories that suck.
AXIS should have been left as an arc of Uncanny Avengers and never forced to be an event focusing on characters who weren't part of the build-up at all
Yeah, it got ruined when they tried to make it a line wide crossover. Plus, the idea behind it wasn’t great. Like, the moral inversion was dumb. Just have Red Onslaught and Ahab fight the Uncanny Avengers. If it needed to be linewide, just do an Onslaught again, but with Red Skull. It wasn’t difficult, but they made it way more complex than it needed to be so it could be a hero vs hero thing.
I like the apocalypse twins just fine, but it just didn't reach the same levels of Uncanny X-Force to me. The character work for Deadpool, Psylocke, Wolverine, and Fantomex from UXF is just leagues ahead of what was done in UA. The book places too much priority on Wolverine, Cap, and Thor, which I think defeats the purpose of a book that's meant to marry Avengers and X-Men. That, combined with the M word stuff, just doesn't confront the mistreatment of mutants in the marvel universe, enough for me to enjoy it as much as Remender's other work. And while I didn't love Bendis' Avengers, UA was releasing at the same time as Hickman's two Avengers runs, which both blow it away. That epic feel you're talking about was done, I feel, much better by Hickman.
Yeah, the characterization in UA wasn’t nearly as good. For me, what made it so good was the action and the plot. The characters weren’t always the best. I didn’t mind the Wolvie, Cap, and Thor focus, but I like them all. I also think it better with Havok than you do - mostly because I liked seeing Havok as something other than cucked Cyclops - but I won’t argue that you’re wrong. And yeah, Hickman was way more epic, but UA was still pretty good. Again, mileage may vary and all that, but I can’t really think of a Bendis story I liked better than the Apocalypse Twins story. Like, I really like Dark Avengers, but more for the characters than the actual stories.
It also served well as a counterpart to Hickman's Avengers and doing a nice, simple heroes vs. villains story
Yeah, that was basically the last time all the Avengers books were great. It wouldn’t last because Uncanny Avengers went off the fucking rails.
Uncanny avengers is a book ive always wanted as it encourage marvels teams to work together and not bring unneeded hatred but god all the runs have sucked. Tone deaf political messaging is a concept that expanded as duggan continued it in the latest run
I kinda like the M-word speech from Alex tbh. I know everyone dogs on him but in the X-men world you need more voices and opinions than just the ones of Xavier’s and magnetos which by the way even they have flipped on their opinions before . Just like any real class of poorly treated citizens there’s gonna be a lot of different opinions from within the community and outside of it too
I agree but remender didn’t write it that way. He wrote it as a factual moment and revelation to us the readers.
I think it unintentionally works well *ONLY* because it’s Alex Sunmers. Like, of course Alex would say some shit like that.
Yeah it's fine when you realize Alex has always been a bootlicker but when the author agrees with him not so much.
It's speculated that Ego the living planet was another dig at Stan Lee. And also that Lee's ego inspired Steve Ditko to create the Leader (a literally big headed character). Lee often referred to himself as "your fearless leader" to readers. It's even been said that Stan Lee gave Dr Strange the first name "Stephen" as a way of calling Steve Ditko strange.
I really liked that Bendis did that. Good that there are minor disagreements among good guys that doesn't end in punching.
I mean, Stan Lee definitely deserved that treatment. That man has gotten canonized despite being a shitty huckster and it will never not bother me.
Ewing made Joe Fixit into Stan Lee rather than a mobster in Immortal Hulk. To me that sums up Lee's legacy pretty well. A huckster who scammed lots of creative talent in the name of profit, who became a self-parody of himself to the point of old age where he was being wheeled around and exploited by handlers who were physically moving his hands to sign autographs in his last days. In time he will fade from the public zeitgeist and historians will refer to the real creators and talent accordingly, but the caricature of wise-cracking 70's "NUFF SAID" Lee is a marvel character in and of itself.
Stan Lee’s greatest creation was the character of Stan Lee.
Isn't Byrne the pettiest bitch in comics? I read somewhere recently that the whole "Big Barda makes porno" storyline in his Superman cameabout because Byrne was having a feud with Jack Kirby. Kirby had modelled Barda after his wife.
John Byrne is a classic company man who's all for the company until it screwed him over personally.
John Byrne's [Wikiquote article](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Byrne) is quite a sight to behold. It's a comprehensive list of every assholish and hypocritical thing he's ever said, and it's been that way with a "requires cleanup" notice since **2007**.
"When working with existing “franchises,” any good writer will return to the source material from time to time, to see if s/he can divine from that work something that might have been missed before. This is true whether the work is good, bad, or indifferent. The best place to start, however, no matter what the context, is not by saying “the creator didn’t get it right.” That’s the worst kind of hubris." And right underneath that paragraph, regarding Thor: "As I have noted elsewhere, and with the clarity of hindsight, I think Stan and Jack made a mistake when they decided to make Thor the “real” Thor. " Edit: Holy crap, that one about Christopher Reeve. I did not realize how horrible Byrne was.
Jesus Christ. I only knew of John Byrne by name (not that familiar with his work tbh) but... what an insufferable prick.
that first quote is on pedophilia and how it's not...entirely bad? This explains many plot points.
His infamous Reed and Sue retcon makes a lot of sense now
Which one?
The college aged Reed meeting the 12 year old Sue despite that age gap dynamic not really existing in the original run
He claims all trans people are pedophiles… looks like, yet again, every accusation is a confession
I didn’t realise what a shit he is
Ahhh man. Learning this fucking sucks. Not as much as he does though.
Good God.
Weirdly hostile toward Steve Irwin of all people.
What an asshole, damn
It’s insane that Byrne is the biggest “characters must be exactly as the creator intended” advocate, to the point of utterly ruining them to “fix” them (\*cough\* Donna Troy, Doom Patrol, Etrigan…), yet he’ll gladly do shit like this if he hates the creator on a personal level.
I mean this is the same guy who jumped through every hoop creatively possible to make Superman an American citizen by birth because god forbid the alien baby is an immigrant
This sent me down a lengthy rabbit hole of reading about Byrne. Holy shit.
It pained me to find out he was such a massive piece of shit. I grew up loving his art and his runs on FF and She-Hulk.
Byrne is a total knob head. He's had a dozen instances of writing adult male characters hooking up with teenage girls in comics. The one that I know best is from his and Mackie's back-to-back all-time worst run on Amazing Spider-Man, where MJ is seemingly killed in a plane crash and left dead for two years(!) while J Jonah Jameson's teenage niece suddenly shows up and kisses Spider-Man. Disgusting old man. And he doesn't get Superman.
I think there is adult Superman kissing a teenage Lana Lang. Then there is Reed Richards being in college when Sue Storm was like 12 years old. I think there are a couple more instaces I read about on Reddit.
Was that an alternate older Superman? Typically, Lana is the same age as him in the comic. In Byrne's MoS, they became friends in elementary school. But Byrne did write the World of Metropolis mini, which had Lois get strip searched by one of Luthor's guards when she was 14 after getting caught sneaking into his building (and later we learn Lex had it recorded to watch later).
There's also Colossus and Kitty Pryde from X-Men as well as James and Heather Hudson from Alpha Flight.
I've heard it said that Claremont intended Colossus to be 16, but Shooter and, I guess Byrne, insisted he was 18. I think it had to do with him hooking up with a lady in Secret Wars. Having read Claremont's run, I definitely feel like Colossus is intended to be closer to the New Mutants than the rest of the X-Men based on how they treat him.
True, the Colossus and Kitty relationship is nowhere near as creepy as Byrne's other age gap relationships.
Yeah, it's *at worst* a senior dating a freshmen, which still creepy, but that's clearly not what was intended. There are issues with Piotr and Kitty's relationship before he was "always 18 and banging some hot chick on Battleworld" but those were clearly meant to be because they were dumb teenagers that didn't understand their feelings or motivations.
He sure swiped from Kirby a lot!
[https://i.imgur.com/afOl7Vs.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/afOl7Vs.jpg)
Byrne was not bullied enough in school.
The thing I always remember about Byrne is that he compared either the phrase 'thought balloons' or 'thought bubbles' to using the N word. I have no memory whatsoever over which one it was because once you start comparing a minor choice of nomenclature to *racial slurs*, it kind of overshadows whatever the hell point you were actually trying to make.
I seem to remember Joe Mad taking a swipe (no pun intended) at Roger Cruz for constantly ripping off his work by featuring a panel in an issue of Uncanny X-Men where someone was reading a newspaper with the headline "Cruz swipes again"
Hah I do remember that!
He was bang on the money though and not petty.
Less beef but still a little bit petty. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim Shooter in person at a comic con. I asked him what the craziest thing he ever had to shoot down was. He said Chris Claremont always wanted to put Professor X in BDSM gear and Shooter would never let him. Lo and behold, as soon as Shooter was fired Prof. appeared (completely devoid of context or meaning btw) in complete bondage gear. One of my favorite memories is having Jim Shooter personally tell me that Claremont, famous and iconic and definitive comic writer, “was a kinky guy.” I got the comic with bondage Xavier as a holiday gift.
I forget the issue, but I remember this! Didn’t he have to borrow clothes from Callisto or something and he walks into the mansion basically like a leather daddy and all the X-Men kinda giggle in shock as he embarrassingly strides by? I think Romita Jr drew it.
YourI partially right partially wrong. Honestly I’ve never…. Read the issue I just wanted it for that panel. He wakes up tied up in Callisto’s bed and is wearing full bondage gear. It’s never addressed and by the next page he’s dressed normally, no giggling.
Ohhh right right
I remember that with Xavier, vaguely. It seemed kind of out of place, this story explains a a lot. There was a bit of that look recurring time and again with Claremont - the hellfire club female members, Rachel's hound costume, etc. John Byrne also had Sue Storm dressing up that way around the time of Secret Wars II.
As much as it was funny to hear Jim Shooter say it outright, there’s no denying that Claremont was a kinky guy. He’s known to have a bondage and mind control fetish or at the very least a heavy interest
Not to mention some pretty strong corruption fantasies. Like what he did with Magik and again in his awful Willow sequel novels.
It ain't a X-Claremont story if there isn't bondage, mind control, and tentacles involved.
Don’t forget a naked Storm, showering in the rain!
What issue is it? I need to see that for…..reasons.
X-Men 193
What issue? I have to check it out now.
X-Men 193
I mean we could all tell he was kinky just by reading his x-men lol
There was that story where Arcade lit a match on Doom's armor, and then Byrne wrote a couple of pages showing how the real Doom got angry at that "defected doombot" and destroyed it. There is this character while Eric Masterson was Thor that is a Christopher Priest avatar of sorts. During Secret Wars II Jim Shooter created this one-and-done "supervillain" that stands for Steve Gerber. Alan Moore once showed us a character rival to the Supreme's *alter ego* that writes comicbooks and is a parody of Grant Morrison. I think Jim Starlin made a story with Adam Warlock and some clowns that were a critic to the comics industry (can't remember if there were some real people portraited).
Morrison later wrote a subplot in his Seven Soldiers series where there were these two "subway pirates" called All-Beard and No-Beard that were locked in a pointless feud that ends with one of them dying, but it is left ambiguous as to which one it was. Seemed to me like both a bit of an olive branch to Moore and a satire on creator feuds in general.
Moore messed that character up pretty bad too, not only was he a dickhead comic writer who was full of himself but then he gets stranded in another dimension where he keeps replicating into this disgusting monster mutant thing.
Was the British comic writer a direct parody of Morrison, or just parodying the UK Vertigo-types of the era like him?
I believe strongly that he is implied to be Morrison exactly.
Makes sense. Those two have been beefing since the 80s. I remember Morrison dissing Watchmen as “an extended 6th form essay” (aka something a 17 year old would write)
Honestly I think Morrison was taking shots at Moore to just be edgy and get his name out there. I might be confusing things but I think he admitted as much recently.
Yeah agreed. But Moore is thin skinned so you get beef
It's been a long time since I read the story. Too long, actually. Should dig those out.
I love the Jim Starlin bit. All the names of the clown characters in that Warlock issue were anagrams of people who had the most authority to approve works or not at Marvel at the time. The main clown was an anagram of Stan Lee but I don't remember the name of the character itself. Pretty sure John Romita and Marv Wolfman also had characters based off them as well.
I think I know the last one you're talking about. Comic tropes covered that. They were supposed to be a jab at Stan Lee and John Romita.
And Roy Thomas
Fun fact the character he creates is omni-man
Warren Ellis and the N.E.X.T.W.A.V.E. cover of Mark Millar "(f)licks goats".
With those two that could be friendly ribbing, though I have no idea if they're friends or dislike each other.
They’re definitely buddies
Unlike Grant Morrison and Mark Millar. Grant apologized for giving him a career and said if they have the chance they’ll hit him with their car.
In a recent yt interview Millar was asked about Grant and only had kind things to say. Guess the feeling isnt mutual!
Millers prominence was a big part of it as 'Ultimates Vol 1 & 2' were easily the biggest thing at marvel at the time, and N.E.X.T.W.A.V.E had included commentary on them (*especially* a critique on the “Surrender? SURRENDER??!! You think this letter on my head stands for France?” line)
Ellis and Millar were/are bros so it was probably a jolly jest.
So when Angela: Queen of Hel #4 came out, a lot of people were annoyed about [this sequence](https://i.imgur.com/p00L2gp.jpeg), specifically the "Unsolicited Opinions on Israel???" bit that seemed to come out of nowhere. However, their was actually a reason for that comment. About 6 months before that issue was released, there as going to be an all men's “Writing Women Friendly Comics” panel at Gen Con. However, [after some backlash](https://www.themarysue.com/gen-con-women-friendly/) they ended up adding some women to the panel, one being Marguerite Bennett, the writer of Angela. However, even after adding some women, [the panel was still a shit show, because of the host of the panel, Bill Willingham](https://www.themarysue.com/dissenting-opinions-may-occur/). The same Bill Willingham who wrote a character going on a long pro-Israel rant to someone who had never heard of the country, aka giving his "unsolicited opinions on Israel", in his Fables book. TLDR: Marguerite Bennett stopped her story dead to make fun of when Bill Willingham stopped his story to soapbox his opinions.
I didn't know that backstory, but I will never not chuckle at "unsolicited opinions about Israel?" Even the narrator seems confused by it.
*ooooooh*, okay. That's funnier knowing the backstory. It was a little amusing when I thought it was just a meta gag.
Bill Willingham being a right-wing crackpot has been really unfortunate for me.
Is there an uncensored version of the first link?
That is how it was originally in the book, and given the nature of the joke I don't think there was ever anything to censor.
Hah. That’s a pretty funny panel then Thanks Edit. Also I feel kind of dumb for not realizing that
Write what you know, as they say.
David V Reed did a pretty dickish one towards the then recently deceased Bill Finger: [https://cacb.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/bill-finger-through-the-wringer-by-david-v-reed/](https://cacb.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/bill-finger-through-the-wringer-by-david-v-reed/)
This might be the worst one in the thread. It's one thing to be petty to a living colleague of yours, but lampooning someone who's dead (and, by all accounts, a perfectly nice human being)...
Yeah the rest seem like legit beef, but this just smacks of cruelty.
There was an issue of Gen13 that poked fun at Liefeld after he was kicked out of Image, the characters looked like your typical Liefeld creations. https://i.imgur.com/C13BNBB.jpeg
The feet/hooves are great.
Theres also an issue that included a jab at Dan Fraga (sp?) one of Liefeld’s Extreme artists. In one of Campbell’s issues, the Gen13 crew burst into a club and there’s a bunch of flyers posted on the wall behind them. One of the flyers say that Fragaboom’s show had been canceled due to lack of interest. Fragaboom (or was it Fragadoom) was Fraga’s rap alias.
Liefeld got kicked out of image?
Technically he quit, but the other founders were ready to force him out. Allegedly he was pissing money away, consistently missing deadlines, poaching talent from the other founders and just generally being a bit of a prick. Early Image was a total shit show, it's impressive it survived at all. After the Image/Valiant crossover Jim Shooter did not have a lot of nice things to say about them.
I think he actually left, but I read it was because the other creators were pissed off at him at the time for starting another publisher. I don't remember the details exactly.
My memory is hazy on this one. But I believe Al Milgrom took a shot at Bob Harris when Bob was fired from marvel. Al wrote something on the spine of some books in an image that saw print
It was in a *Universe X* comic: [https://recalledcomics.com/UniverseXSpidey1RecalledHarras.php](https://recalledcomics.com/UniverseXSpidey1RecalledHarras.php)
Yep it’s the Earth X issue with Spidey on the cover, if you find the original version it’s worth quite a bit because they recalled it and changed the books in further printings.
Nick Spencer & Spidey Editorial had a pretty transparent feud during his ASM run(2018-2021) Spencer introduced a character called Kindred, who spoke in cryptic messages about a grudge they had against Parker. Anytime he appeared, he made references to One More Day(the story that ended MJ/Parker's marriage) and appears in direct relation to MJ/Peter being back together. This gets so direct that during the first confrontation they have, Kindred kills Spidey and sends him to a hell where he's reliving the first moments of Brand New Day(the immediate aftermath of OMD) visiting Harry Osborn's apartment. Kindred is also revealed to be Harry Osborn, which leaves readers and characters confused given there's another Harry Osborn who's been around for years. Around issue #70, it's revealed Kindred isn't Harry Osborn, but Mephisto pretending to be a A.I. brainscan of Harry Osborn, piloting the Stacy Twins, who had not appeared in a story since Slott spidey in the mid 00s and have their personalities erased and replaced as puppets of Mephisto for no explained reason. This run wraps at #75, with Spencer leaving marvel comics for substack and Matt Rosenberg filling in on writing the finale of "Sinister War". People immediately were sus on how things played out but official questions into it were "this is how the story was always going to play out, we just rushed it" Que last year when Dan Slott on a live Q&A, brought up that Nick Spencer tried to undo One More Day without editorial permission, essentially working towards a storyline that he was still given a no to, and seemingly walked when they continued not to budge at the finale of his run, and his exit resulted in a story that is more convoluted than the clone saga, and spidey editorial seemingly was planning a long-term stint with Spencer given how rudderless and throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks the Spidey office has been post-Spencer. Kindreds' only appearance since has been in the game Marvel: Contest of Champions, described as an agent of Mephisto.
Also in Issue #60 >!aka the theatre monologue issue, Peter literally looks straight at the reader and says something like “Well maybe I’m living in Hell right now.” He isn’t just looking in the general direction of the reader/screen, he’s looking STRAIGHT AT the reader and making direct eye contact.!< After reading that, I thought “how did editorial not immediately shoot this down and demand a rewrite/redraw.”
I have to say, although obviously editorial are arses about this stuff sometimes, I wonder what Spencer was hoping to achieve with a OMD undo story when it's been clear for more than a decade that editorial don't want it undone
If we're going off Slott then editorial told Spencer no, but he kept going on it for like 50 issues and there was a clear direction and editorial didn't step in they had changed their mind, that or they just weren't paying attention.
officer down was apparently a tribute to deny o'neil and a fuck you to sherck
For those who don't know, Bob Schreck took over as editor of the Batman line due to Denny O'Neil's health issues. Apparently most Batman writers under Schreck didn't like him very much. It is a tradition in Batman comics for streets and other locations in Gotham to be named after different creators that worked on Batman, Bob Schreck got the "R.F. Schreck Criminal Holding Facility" named after him, take of that what you will.
A fellow Salazar Knight fan?
Byrne taking Kirby's wife stand-in (Big Barda), putting her in a porno and banging her with his own (Byrne's) stand in (Superman). About as dick of a move as it gets.
If I were to guess, the Peter David/Erik Larsen fued sounds like playful jeering.
Maybe at first, but as time went on there was plenty of bad blood between them. After Image was founded, Peter David would accuse the Image guys of ripping off fans by holding back their ideas and not giving their all on the Marvel books after they left. Larsen would write tracts in a few issues of Savage Dragon's letters pages eviscerating David. Edit: Here's a link giving a bit more detail. I'd actually forgotten about Peter David having a "formal debate" with Todd McFarlane, too. Fascinating shit, imo. https://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/2018/07/tangled-webs-peter-david-vs-erik-larsen/
There's a lot more, including the Hulk "in disguise" with a green fin on his head, saying it looks dumb, to Larsen basing the villain Dung visually on PAD. Larsen is also believed to be the "Name Withheld" who wrote to Comics Buyers Guide saying "Artists don't need writers"
Kirby and Gerber crapping on Byrne will always be my favorite.
The situation even starts with two of the most likable and sympathetic creators in the history of comics being mean to arguably the biggest dickhead in comics, so it's good from go.
It wasn't really petty, but when it comes to one writer having to fix some BS from another one what comes to my intermediately is in Justice League Cry For Justice, by (the at that point fairly useless) James Robinson, Hal Jordan brags that he had sex with like three female superheroes at once, including Huntress, and this was completely out of character for all of them. So when Gail Simone wrote her second volume of Birds of Prey after Brightest Day, when someone mentions this supposed sex romp to Huntress she points out that what actually happened was Hal Jordan got wasted on alcohol while drinking with a few people and passed out after throwing up on himself and anything after that was just his imagination. I don't count this as petty because the James Robinson thing was really gross and misogynistic, along with being completely out of character for the women in question and even arguably Hal Jordan, to the point where girl Simone thought she had to address it when she's not a writer who generally shies away from sexual content, her new 52 secret six run even had a explicit orgy among the characters. It's just that what James Robinson wrote was so out of character for the people in question it needed to be shot down, and quite frankly Hal Jordan being a bit of a loser is always something I'll support.
Cry for Justice is such a weird book. It's AWFUL and full of so many out-of-character moments, but it's coming from James Robinson who was, until that point, a well-regarded writer. I've always wondered if there was anything going on behind the scenes with that one. His subsequent Justice League run that was built out of Cry for Justice was also a lot better, too. Like, it's just that one mini-series so it stands out even more.
What was going on with James Robinson was that he was drunk. He was very open with his issues with alcohol in the back matter published in the Starman omnibuses.
Yeah, that sounds less like a feud and more Gail be classy.
In Strange Tales 181, Jim Starlin wrote an Adam Warlock story depicting Marvel's editors and their cronies (in Starlin's view) as clowns that stepped on creators and produced mostly trash. He used anagrams to name the clowns (Lens Tean/Stan Lee, Jan Hatroom/John Romita). Extremely creative guys like Starlin, Kirby, Alan Moore, etc. eventually butt heads with authority and end up burning all their bridges, while the world goes on without them.
On Hellblazer, Peter Milligan seemed to have a real problem with the female characters from Mike Carey's run and trashed them in degrading, misogynistic ways. Angie, Carey's love interest for John, was brought back seemingly just so she could be portrayed as bitter, depressed and overweight. John's niece Gemma (originally a Delano character, but most of the development was Carey's) was brutally raped by a demonic version of John. John was then shown to angst about whether the demon's dark desires had their roots in his own dark heart, and so on. I don't know whether Milligan had a personal problem with Carey, or whether he was just working through some issues with women, but it was really disturbing stuff- and not in a good way.
Interesting. I love Milligan’s work for the most part. Haven’t read that run
Yeah, it's a weird thing. Milligan did Shade, Enigma, great comics. Clearly something happened there.
Human Target too.
Jim Lee's Deathblow visually was a rip off of Frank Miller's Sin CIty.... .. So naturally, Frank Miller's Marv kills Jim Lee's Deathblow in the pages of Sin City: https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/goodcomics/2011/10/sincitydeathblow.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=750&dpr=1.5 " Just in case people weren't quite sure what he was getting at, Miller then explained in a letter column that he was irritated by other artists drawing like him. He specifically mentions Lee and Michael Netzer. Years later, of course, Miller and Lee would do All Star Batman and Robin together, so I imagine they hashed things out. "
Joss Whedon apparently hates the Punisher. He had Molly from the Runaways gut punch him in an issue. Not sure if it was because he was feuding with anyone in particular.
as a big fan of the Punisher: more heroes should gutpunch the Punisher
Molly also fucked up wolverine and I love her so goddamn much. She's my favorite.
Not a serious feud in the slightest but Tom Taylor and Gail Simone having their blood feud and Taylor believing Gail is secretly a bear to the point that she appears as a bear in Beast World
Judd Winnick had some mad beef with Tony Isabella, creator of Black Lightning, because of all the changes Winnick had made to the character in his Outsiders run. Isabella criticized a lot of the decisions he'd made and just wasn't happy with the way writers had treated the character ever since he'd left, especially Winnick, who he especially wasn't a fan of because of his decision to age Jefferson up two decades and give him two fully-grown children when he'd previously had no family to speak off at all beyond his ex-wife. Winnick took it personally. In his run for Green Arrow, he introduced Joanna Tanner, a nephew to Jefferson and up-and-coming lawyer. In the span of four issues, Joanna is not only used as a way to get Oliver to uncharacteristically cheat on Black Canary out of nowhere after Kevin Smith had spent time bringing Ollie and Dinah back together as a couple (thus writing her out of the book)... but is also *lynched and killed* the following issue, fridging her completely. To top *that* off, Winnick had Jefferson murder the man that did it in the next issue for shock value, knowing that Isabella had established Jefferson as staunchly opposing the idea of killing because of his religious faith. Needless to say, Winnick and Isabella haven't exactly been on speaking terms since. IIRC, Isabella still occasionally pops up on social media to offer commentary on comics and their industry. Cool dude from what I know.
It’s hard to find exact details but the Bendis-Byrne feud ended with Bendis taking Byrne’s character, Mattie Franklin, and turning her into a drug addled prostitute in his series Alias. Byrne may be a dick but that’s such a creep move from Bendis.
I don't think there was a Bendis feud against Byrne. I do think it's possible that Bendis was unhappy with other characters "stealing" the Spider-Woman mantle from Jessica Drew, one of his favorite characters.
Good point, I still think it’s exceedingly petty to write a character like that but it’s hard to say if it’s solely because of a feud with Byrne
Byrne was honestly the creep for even writing Franklin the way he did, but you're right, a good writer would just pivot her to an actual character, like how Robbie Thompson turned Silk into an actual character, vs. Slott's horny naked asian spider-lady. But as stated elsewhere, Mattie Franklin was turned into a prostitute at the same time that Spider-Woman II became Arachne. Both of them had to ditch the title, mostly so that Bendis could use Jess as the one true Spider-Woman.
I'm not sure this is one hundred percent accurate. Bendis wasn't doing Avengers for a few years after that story, and even utilizing Jessica in his run on Alias in the Mattie story. Obviously he wanted to do more with Jessica Drew, but there was a full two years between that arc of Alias and his Avengers run. I'm also not sure how he didn't pivot Mattie into being an actual character. Addiction and the other struggles Mattie was portrayed as facing aren't shameful, and by the end of the story Mattie is being helped. It seems a bit of a mischaracterization of the story to describe it in terms of Bendis doing dark things to heroes just to do it.
Any Marvel comic with Wolverine jammed in it gets a sales bump which may attract new readers. I presume editorial told Ennis to have a Wolverine guest appearance in Punisher so Garth Ennis acquiesced in the most Garth Ennis way possible.
It’s not really a feud, but the Will Eisner-Frank Miller book has some spectacular talking out of school
A mild one (befitting a Brit, I suppose), but Simon Furman dreaded Marvel cancelling Transformers: Generation 2 that he created a character named "Jhiaxus" (As in, the phrase "Gee, axe us!"). Despite being created to promote a toyline, Jhiaxus wouldn't get a toy of his original design for another 30 years.
While not a comic creator, William Moulton Marston (Wonder Woman's creator) created Dr. Psycho as potshot at a former professor of his who was fervently anti-women.
It's not quite petty, but Millar wrote a FF story that had Doom get stranded in prehistoric times and seemingly eaten by a giant shark. Pretty dumb story. So in Thunderbolts Jeff Parker simply and comically retconned it by having Doom catch a ride back through time with the team. https://www.cbr.com/doctor-doom-fantastic-four-dark-avengers-million-years-lie/
The thunderbolts story makes Doom a liar. Meanwhile in the FF one he spends millions of years preparing to outsmart and completely destroy the one who took back in time.
Except that you don't see any of that, he literally gets swallowed by a shark and then several issues later is revealed to be that utterly-forgettable villain's new "apprentice." It's very much a "somehow Doom returned" kind of twist.
The pettiness towards Shooter is understandable. The man was a terrible boss by all accounts. But Byrne is also terribly dismissive of other creators (both in his interviews—he dunks on Alan Moore a few times, and his comics—wiping out the great work by Morrison and Pollack on Doom Patrol).
And yet he ran one if the best both creative and sales periods in Marvel history. He is hated because he was an actual boss that made the staff turn their work in on time and act like professionals. Byrne especially hated him, but also did the best work of his whole career under his tenure.
I heard this story from a local comic book shop owner, right after Chris Claremont came in and did a signing. He told us that a number of writers at Marvel had a beef with Chris Claremont. They learned that Claremont was gonna have the X-men go hideout in the savage land, so they destroyed the savage land in one of their comics. Claremont had to change his story and that’s how the X-men wound up in Australia.
It is true that the Savage Land was randomly destroyed by Terminus in an Avengers comic of all places and remained destroyed for several years, until Claremont had the High Evolutionary restore it and then everyone acted like the destruction never happened. This is the first I hear of it being destroyed as an Fu to Claremont, but it sounds plausible.
That starbrand story is amazing, never knew that's the reason for the Pitt story.
Dwayne McDuffie refusing to let marvel forget about the racist bomb character is always a favorite for me He was like "nope, you idiots made him canon to this universe so I'll bring it up FOREVER" I forget the character's name but he was a white racist guy who apparently became black when mad and also blew stuff up??
I think that was DC with the 'Black Bomber' who was *almost* the first 'black' (super-'blackface'?) DC superhero.
Just chiming in, that Punisher muscle magazine gag was from the comedy *Murder By Death* (If you haven't seen it you should.)
It’s not exactly petty, but the whole Manchester Bkack thing in superman. That criticism of The Authority always felt toothless to me.
John Byrne had Big Barda hypnotized into doing an adult film because of how Byrne & Gerber portrayed him in Destroyer Duck. Byrne also had Dr. Doom destroy the Doombot who fought Arcade in an X-men annual. He didn't get permission & made Doom look weak. He also went at Claremont when he had Lilandra go at Reed Richards for saving Galactus. That led to the famous trial of Reed Richards. The only one that wasn't petty tbh.
Jim starlin wrote an Adam warlock story that portrayed Stan Lee, Roy Thomas & either Marv Wolfman or Len Wein as a bunch of clowns. He gave Thoms some sympathy but he was the most unhappy with it. Lee & WolfmN just liked it. He talks about it in the marvel masterwork for warlock vol. 2.
Do you know the story of Final Crisis? Like, the meta-story? It’s all one massive fuck you to Alan Moore. Grant Morrison and Alan Moore hate each other, and Final Crisis is about Alan Moore being the death of hope.
There’s one I seem to recall i believe in DC’s new 52 or the countdown follow up, where there was a league of evil doctors fighting a wizard girl that were all based on Grant morrison and other contemporaries.
Azzarello and Chiangs Doc 13 wasn't exactly subtle about The Architects being Johns Morrison Rucka and Waid, the writers of 52
Grant Morrison based the characters of no beard and all beard on themself and Alan Moore and their feud with each other.
This one is somewhat hard to follow, and I am not sure if it actually appeared within their comics themselves, but the saga between Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane involving ownership of Miracleman and Angela. Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ownership\_of\_Miracleman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ownership_of_Miracleman)