Newsarama: Joe, this year-end wrap may be a bit difficult because your biggest event of the year won’t conclude until January, but we’ll forge ahead anyway.

Joe Quesada: U-herm.

NRAMA: What?

JQ: Well, aren’t you going to congratulate me?

NRAMA: For..?

JQ: Come on, don’t be cute.

NRAMA: No, seriously, what?

JQ: I won my second year-end award this week. First, Wizard’s Man of the Year and now Time Magazine’s Person of the Year! I may be the only person in America to get two in one year, how cool is that!

NRAMA: Ummmm…

JQ: Dude, just roll with it, okay, it’s Christmas.

NRAMA: Ho, ho, ho. Okay, looking back, can you give us a sense of what the broad grand plan for Marvel in 2006 was? On December 31st 2005, what was on Top of the Marvel “To Do” list for 2006?

JQ: We wanted to start breaking down the walls of familiarity that the Marvel characters had with each other, and in a sense, that wall of familiarity also had to be torn down between the fans and the characters as well. There was a certain edginess, an unpredictability to the Marvel Universe back in the early sixties and seventies and much of that was due to the fact that the toys in the sandbox were new and people were taking them out for test drives for the very first time. Characters were being stretched to their limits and possible potentials, and in many ways, formed the rules which we live by in the Marvel Universe and by virtue of that, many of the things that fans consider canon, or to a larger extreme, sacrament.

After forty plus years of publishing, the air of familiarity and ease between the characters and between the fans and the characters made the Marvel Universe a very warm and comfortable place or sorts, but also one in which was lacking that certain air of unpredictability that made it so urgent. Not that it was gone entirely, but I do believe parts of it had been dulled down.

Now mind you, it’s the natural progression of things, it’s just what happens. However, if you don’t look up and take stock of what’s going on around you, you can suddenly find yourself one day with characters and stories that no longer have relevance. This becomes harder and harder to quantify as the audience that you managed to keep is aging right along with your line and as far as they’re concerned, things are cool and just they way they like it. What is going unheard are the readers that aren’t jumping on board because the books aren’t speaking to them, their generation or the climate of their world.

Also, in that mix are the readers that leave because of the self same problem. It can seem intangible, only really taking shape when you’re suddenly standing in an empty room. I equate it to the executive or leader of a group or nation who only surrounds themselves with yes people or hard liners of one doctrine or another. This is why you see publishers trying to reinvent themselves every several years or so, it’s a necessity, it’s the way to remain viable in entertainment.

So, the goal was a simple one for us in concept, but a significantly more difficult in execution. We’ve been publishing fearlessly in the past, but now, in 2006, it was time to really push it and go for broke. The idea that these characters were so fragile that you could only do so much, to me, was never a valid argument, especially when we’re talking about the Marvel characters who are imperfect heroes at their very core.

NRAMA: So can you check that off the list?

JQ: Civil War has been a huge asset in helping us get to the place we wanted to be. Obviously, I have to be careful of how I answer this, as I don’t want to give away the ending of the story. But, I think we can check off Iron Man and Cap as they are now two of the most interesting characters in the Marvel U. Hulk is rocking and rolling and only going to get stronger, or is that crazier?

As far as non-Universe related stuff, we have managed within a very short span of time to diversify our publishing plan to a place I only dreamed of when I started as E-i-C. I imagine a Marvel that could publish mature comics (MAX), other genres outside of superhero stories (Dabel Bros.), comics for kids and for schools (Marvel Adventures/Marvel Illustrated), find that one great license that will expand readership (Halo), find the one great project to adapt that will bring it home to the mainstream (Dark Tower) and a creator owned imprint (Icon). It really has been an incredible year and a year that was completely made possible by the vision of our Publisher Dan Buckley and our President, Alan Fine.

NRAMA: What do you have to move onto the 2007 list?

JQ: Next year we have a lot of stuff ahead of us. We have to take stock of the new and improved landscape of the Marvel U post Civil War, it’s going to be a wildly interesting place.

Captain America will be getting some incredible attention next year, we’re focusing heavily on him and I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets not only major play in the comic’s press, but worldwide as well.

X-Men will be going through some changes, which is to be expected with the introduction of a new driving editorial voice in the person of Axel Alonso.

The second act of our Hulk trilogy begins in World War Hulk and fans will also be treated to the beginning of Act III, which I promise will present them with a Hulk story the likes of which they have never seen.

Speaking of which, I just finished reading the first script for WWH and let me tell you, it is just non-stop action, a Jerry Bruckheimer on speed extravaganza! I mean the story just starts and doesn’t stop, the perfect follow up to the thought provoking story that was Civil War. In other words, lots of punching, YAY!

In the Ultimate U, you’re going to start to see the seeds of a very important story start to bear fruit. We have some major shake ups coming, but as of this Joe Fridays, we’re way to far ahead to even speak of it.

We’ll be launching probably more new stuff in 2007 than in any year previous of my tenure. You can chalk this up to several variables. Civil War of course is setting the table for a bunch of stuff, but also the climate of the comics industry and our trade business is allowing for more variety to the line. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next year as I know for a fact, like every year previous, there is a lot I know of what’s going to happen and then there are those amazing surprises that come along that are just the icing on the cake. Who knows what project, what comic, what idea is going to take the industry by storm next year that non of us even have a glimmer of right at this moment. That’s a pretty exciting place to be.

Oh yeah, and then there’s Spider-Man. We have some fantastic Spider-Man announcements coming soon and I promise you, the amount of chatter that will be spouted on message boards, blogs, emails, what have you, will be unlike anything ever seen before in the comic’s history. Guess what, folks, save time, start writing those cards and letters now! [laughs]

Also, write this down, folks. In August of next year, we’re going to be breaking the Internet in half so hard that Al Gore is going to wake up with an ache somewhere he’s most likely never ached before.

NRAMA: Which half are you breaking in half? I mean didn’t you already break it in half..?

Forget it, let’s just move on…Anything you just took off the 2006 to-do list completely?

JQ: Not yet, but we have so much, a wealth of riches as far as stories go right now, that who knows what may happen. I’ve already seen a few big story lines move from one month to the next, just to keep stuff from butting up against one and other.

NRAMA: Again, with so much of the future of the Marvel Universe riding on the completion of Civil War in January, this may be hard to answer, but as things stand as of right now, how is the Marvel Universe a different place in 2006 than it was in 2005, or any time in its previous history?

JQ: I wouldn’t go so far as to say as different from any time in its history, but certainly very different from the last twenty years or so. Remember, the goal was to get back to a place early on in Marvel history when the world was a much more dangerous place for our characters without retconning everything and saying that all of our past stories didn’t count. Remember, Marvel happened because Stan was quitting and felt he had nothing to lose. Then when things started to hit, he and his cohorts felt like they would be canceled at any moment so they came at these ideas and stories like someone who was told they only had a few days to live. That’s where we want to be, our moto over this last year has been, “What would Stan do?”

NRAMA: How about even broader, how about Marvel Comics as a publisher. How – if at all – did it change in 2006?

JQ: The expansion of the line to me was the single most important thing for us at Marvel. Early on in my tenure, we lived with certain restraints and we made the best of it. Mind you, this isn’t a complaint, sometimes you can truly create your best stuff when given a limited set of parameters, but there were certain things that were tough to do because we were just out of bankruptcy and we did have to watch the bottom line. Six years later, we’re a completely different company. Heck, even I’m surprised when I hear of some of the things we can do.

You know, it’s weird, you live under a certain set of rules and principles for a while and then when the doors are open, you still question if you’re allowed to walk through them. Now at Marvel, there is this real feeling that anything is possible, the sky’s the limit for comics, and the future is completely uncharted territory which is just an incredibly exciting place to be!

NRAMA: Was there any sea changes for Marvel or the industry in general the past year? Anything that made you notice how different it was then how things were in the past?

JQ: The mainstream opening up its arms to us in a very big way. Mind you, this is still the tip of the iceberg, but go back to some of my earliest interviews with you Newsarama guys, go back to some of the first Joe Fridays, I said this would happen, I said it was coming, all we had to do as an industry is put out the best product possible and keep our noses clean. Believe it or not, I think the best thing that happened to the industry was the TV show Heroes. While Civil War garnered a tremendous amount of mainstream press, Heroes was a complete and total validation of what it is that all of us in comics know and believe. Sure, you can watch Heroes and say, hey, it’s X-Men, or it’s Rising Stars, or wait a minute, that character is Rogue and he’s Kitty Pride, but none of that matters.

Hear me out for a second.

The reason that what we’re seeing on Heroes, though fantastically entertaining, isn’t unique to us, is because we’ve seen the Heroes model before. The maturing of the superhero concept happened over 15 years ago and it began with books like Watchmen and V for Vendetta.

Why is Heroes such a huge hit? Well, it’s easy. The mainstream audience is experiencing for the first time what we did when we read those great comics only they’re experiencing it for the first time. Much like myself who came back to comics after reading Watchmen and being floored by the possibility of the medium, John and Jane Q. Public are now looking at comics and comic characters in a whole new light, they’re 15 years behind us. But, that’s to be expected, we’re still a small medium and the exposure to the masses was tough for us. Now, I feel that Heroes may change everything if it continues with its great success. Couple this with Spider-Man 3 and you have a tinderbox of acceptance ready to explode!

NRAMA: Because we speak to you nearly every week, we can look back at the year based not only on what you published, but what we talked about. We spent a lot of time talking about your view of Peter Parker’s marital status but as of today, December 22nd, 2006, nothing has changed. Was it all just discussion of theory, or we still waiting on the practice?

JQ: I think you know guys me well enough to know that I don’t just say anything for no reason [winks]. Now, sometimes that reason may be to foreshadow something or sometimes that reason may be to distract folks from what’s actually coming their way. So, let me just leave it at this, 2007 is Spider-Man’s year, these just no other way to put it.

NRAMA: Speedball was another subject oft-mentioned the last year. You seemed to delight in teasing his ultimate demise. Again, this something readers will have to wait awhile for the ultimate pay-off?

JQ: Absolutely. See, Speedball is exactly a case of me showing fans my right hand while the left was pick pocketing them [laughs]/ Speedball is a great character, and what we have planned for him… well, lets just say it’s going to hurt.

A lot.

NRAMA: Near the beginning of your tenure, the concept of “superhero” seemed to be evolving. The Matrix put a whole new spin in it and tried to remove the brightly colored spandex, radioactive accident trappings that perhaps a generation may have found hard to swallow. At that time, your flagship franchise took off their spandex and adopted the back leather look inspired by the Matrix.

Now on the cusp of 2007, superheroes seem to be depicted as traditionally as ever. What happened? Was the Matrix-ization of superheroes ill-fated from the start? How and why did you and DC both seemingly jump full boat into going back to your superhero roots?

JQ: Well, if it’s over, I don’t know how you explain the Heroes’ phenomena? But, more to your point, I think the Matrix effect was felt most in two places at Marvel. The first was the X-Men line and that was a conscious decision taking in several factors. One was the movie. Remember, you have to consider where Marvel publishing and comic’s publishing was at the time. We had this huge movie coming out and trying to have the comic reflect the movie wasn’t the worse idea in the world. Was it meant to be permanent, of course not. The other was when Grant took over the book, he and Frank had a certain look in mind for the characters. At that point, it was their book, they were the new voices and they brought us a new vision.

The second place you could definitely see the Matrix effect was in the Ultimate line and I think you can still feel it there, so there hasn’t been much of a change in that fashion of thinking.

Other less significant places you could see it would be in redesigns of villains and perhaps supporting characters, but that’s just a matter of what artists and writers are tuning into at that moment. When Star Wars was huge, it was affecting everything the world of fantasy literature. Heck, how many sci-fi comic concepts have been affected by Star Trek for that matter?

But, and this is a very important “but.” What is interesting to observe at this juncture is how much of what it is that we’re doing in comics is now affecting the world outside of us. It used to be the other way around, but now the tide is changing.

NRAMA: Marvel wound up holding onto its market leading position despite a pretty hard charge by DC with Infinite Crisis, ‘One Year Later’ and 52. Why do you think Marvel still manages to hold onto the position you do? It has to be more than just the subjective and always evolving quality of your respective titles, doesn’t it?

JQ: I could sight many reason beginning with our creators. While DC has some great writers and artists, our team at Marvel, our bench if you will, is much, much deeper. I also feel that we have the best editorial group probably in the history of Marvel at this point, It’s an incredible balance of guys and gals that think in a classic fashion and those that think more off the beaten path. But, let’s put all of that aside, and let’s just assume for a moment that all was equal on both sides, Marvel has one distinct advantage, the most important thing in our arsenal, is our characters. I know this will light up these boards faster than you can say “Hawkeye is dead,” but keep in mind that this is just one man’s opinion and it’s one that I had long before I was ever at Marvel.

Superman was the first, no one is arguing that. He was the very first to put on his underwear outside of his pants. He is the Elvis of comics. Sure, was his creation influenced by other sci-fi and classic stories that came before, of course it was, Elvis was influenced by early rhythm and blues. Much like Elvis, Superman and his compatriots shook up the comics world, in essence created it. He flew over tall buildings, he was the model on which every thing else would be built. Elvis shook his leg, greased back his pomp, and created the blueprint for what was to become Rock n’ Roll.

While Elvis had some incredible hits, as did Superman, the music was simple, quaint in many ways. Almost every Elvis song can be boiled down to three chords. We call it a 1-4-5 progression. They would just change the key, tempo, feel or melody in order to decorate it differently. Still, it was the music of its time and it was beautiful. Then in the 60s came this little group called the Beatles, they were funny, articulate, socially conscious and they spoke to us on a whole different level. The core of the relationship between the music and the listener was much deeper, more relatable.

More importantly however, they brought something else into the music. While they themselves worshipped Elvis and had their share of very early singles with the simple 1-4-5 progressions, they learned from their predecessor and built upon it. Suddenly, we were getting songs with minor chords, diminished sevenths, before you could even get accustomed to all of that, they layered harmonies and added orchestras to their compositions, it was a whole new world that was much more sophisticated than what Elvis had first presented. That’s no slight on Elvis, it’s what happens when art moves on.

To me, the creation of the Marvel hero is very much like this. It took what Superman and other DC greats made famous, in many cases lifted whole parts, and added layers never before seen. Heroes with problems, heroes with Achilles heels, heroes who didn’t always make the right decisions, heck, sometimes they didn’t even beat the bad guy. This was a huge variation in the theme, the defining moment for everything.

Today, we can listen to Elvis songs, and they sound great, but because of the simple quaintness of them, I don’t believe they hold up to today’s younger listeners in the same way that the songs of the Beatles and those that followed hold up. Yes, much like Superman, every once in a while, someone does a great cover of an Elvis tune, but, it’s more nostalgia than anything else. I think the Superman movie proved that as well. You watch that movie and put it up against either of the Spidey movies and it feels like the difference between introducing a kid to Pong vs. Wii.

There’s a reason Batman is the greatest DC hero, he’s the closest to the Marvel formula, but the rest of the DC universe I feel suffers from the same flaws as Superman. In his time, Superman spoke of the immigrant experience which was very important in America at the time, but he’s also a paternal figure where as Spider-Man is us. At his core, Superman is also actually a dishonest character in his make up. He has to create a persona in order to be accepted by the people around him, the same for Batman. That’s also an intrinsic difference between the Marvel and DC characters. Spider-Man is the façade, he’s the mask, Peter Parker is the real deal and if we could actually be superheroes, that’s exactly how it would happen and by virtue of that, makes Spider-Man truer.

By the way, if you disagree with this, that’s cool, but then you would have to argue as to why DC, since the inception of the Marvel Universe, has been trying to Marvelize their characters.

So, on an even playing field, I believe the characters leave DC at a disadvantage. Yes, of course there are those that have a huge amount of affection for them, there will always be those that prefer a DC Universe to a Marvel Universe, but I’m speaking in much more broader terms. In order for the DC characters to move into the modern era, it would take such a complete revamping of the character and their origins that it could be beyond prohibitive for them to attempt. Superman is Mickey Mouse, there’s a lot of money attached to the character and the nostalgia behind it, in many ways, he is a prisoner to his once greatness.

By the way, I also think that that’s why you have to do a Crisis in the DCU, because if you take the characters too far in one direction or the other, the only way to get them back to where you need them to be is to hit the reset. That’s also why in a Crisis aftermath, Batman has always been the one who changes the least. You can take the character to extremes, he’s durable and pliable like a Marvel character. The thing of course for me that is very dangerous, is that if you don’t find a way to truly bring the idea of Superman to the 21st Century, there is a very plausible argument that 20, 30 years from now, he will seem as old and insignificant to the kid on the street as the Shadow or Phantom are to my 18 year old nephew.

NRAMA: Speaking of DC, let’s talk about 52 for a moment, as it’s a rather interesting phenomenon for anyone who follows our industry.

Did you expect - now well more than halfway through - the series would buck the attrition trend and stay above 100k copies week in and week out?

JQ: I think DC has done an incredible job. I’ll be the first to admit, I thought 52 would launch big, but I thought for certain it would have dropped considerably by this point. Kudos to them, just an amazing job! They proved a lot of people wrong, including myself.

NRAMA: What’s your theory on why it’s performed as it has, and is there anything Marvel has learned from observing its performance?

JQ: First, I think the timing was perfect. Much like our timing for Civil War was ideal, they hit the nail on the head with 52, the industry was ready for it and could afford it. It’s not like 52 was the first weekly by any stretch of the imagination, I mean what Mike Carlin was doing with the Superman books back in the 90s was a Herculean feat. We did it ourselves with the MAX War Machine, but the climate in the industry was poor and while the vision was great, we at Marvel executed it badly. We just weren’t ready to produce it and do right by it.

Remember, I was one of those dissenting voices who was very concerned about retailer cash flow when they announced it and the returnability aspect. What can I say, I got it wrong.

Also, one of the chief things I think attribute to its success is that it is a finite story. I think that fans knowing that there is an end in site makes it an easier buy in for them. If the story hooks you, okay, I’m in, I’ll see it through, it’s over in a year. If they would have announced it as an ongoing with an indefinite end point, I think you would have seen a greater rate of attrition than what we’re seeing, so that was very smart as well.

Now, I haven’t been reading it since issue six, so I can’t comment on its content one way or another. That said, I’m pretty damn certain they’re doing a great job as that also has to be a huge factor in fans coming back week in and week out, but the one thing I do know is that whatever the ending is, because they have announced that it is finite (a double edged sword as well), that ending better be fantastic and live up to what readers have vested in the series. I’m sure they have the end in their back pocket, and I’m rooting for them to knock everyone’s socks off, because if they don’t, it will reflect badly on other future weeklies if anyone should attempt it again.

Like I said, big kudos to the folks ‘cross town. When one of us in the trenches succeeds with a new daring idea, we all succeed.

NRAMA: So, you know I’m going to have to ask you this…

JQ: Yeah, I know, are we doing a weekly ourselves?

NRAMA: No, that’s a question for next week. Something much more important.

JQ: What?

NRAMA: Is there a Christmas song this year?

JQ: Sorry to say that I’ve been a naughty boy and couldn’t find the time to get one done this year, seems that everything I do is running late [laughs]

However, I’m giving you this previously never before heard recording of my Punk Rock version of Frosty the Snowman. It was recorded in the studio last year as we were rehearsing last years Christmas tune, it was a goof, but it’s kind of fun. My daughter was in the studio that day and can also be heard on the tune. So, sorry to everyone out there, but hopefully you’ll get a kick out of this little ditty.

Oh yeah, and HAPPY HOLIDAYS everybody, stay safe and play nice [winks]!

And as always, more Marvel news and artwork can always be found on Marvel.com.

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