Fan Expo 2023 Interview- Joe Quesada
Fan Expo Canada is soon upon us and I have a special treat with you all, I got to do a pre-convention interview with ex- Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada, who is currently with Amazon Studios. I hope that you all enjoy some of the fascinating topics that we will be discussing such as how Fan Expo Canada got to be part of Marvel history in September of 2009. Without further ado, here is the interview
I read that one of your first comics you ever read was Amazing Spider-Man#98, can you tell me how that comic got you interested in reading more comics from then on ?
JQ: It was my father, he picked up that comic because he had heard this story from somewhere, not sure if it was on television or through the newspaper but he talked about how there was this crazy man named Stan Lee in the news. The reason that Stan was on the news was that the subsequent issues of Amazing Spider-Man were the first since the initiation of the Comics Code to give them the finger and say that they were publishing these stories without them.
These were stories that you would think that the Comics Code would approve, stories that were about the evils of drug addiction. My father , you know the way that most parents thought, thought about how his son loved watching cartoons, loved to draw, what better way to teach him about the evils of drug addiction than through this character called Spider-Man.
He went to the candy store to hunt down this comic, we found it, we brought it home and much to my father’s glee, I never got into drugs but in the long run I ended up getting addicted to something else, comic books. I could not devour them fast enough , so we went back to the candy store and I picked up even more comic books.
Of course I knew Superman from the George Reeves television show and the other DC characters like Batman. I tried reading the DC stuff but the Marvel comics at that time really resonated with me at the time, I think it was because they were more grounded in reality. It was in New York City where I lived, Peter Parker lived in Forest Hills which I could go on a 15 minute bike ride from Queens where I lived. Of course I knew it was fantasy but I would sit at home and just imagine these adventures, every once in a while one of my relatives would take me on a train ride to Manhattan. Every once in a while, I would look up and just imagine Thor flying in the air or Spider-Man swinging around.
Can you tell me how you go your start in the comic book industry ?
JQ: Long story, but I started out as a colorist at Valiant Comics, I literary fell into that job but I had gone into art school where I majored into Illustration but I really had no goal or ambition to go into comic books since I had dropped them back while I was around 12 and never went back. This unjustified prejudice in my head saw it as more of a kids medium and in that medium, they just want to do projects for kids and that’s not what I wanted to do.
I was a really smug idiot back then, but also was not aware of what was going on in the comic book industry at the time and how far they had advanced. Once I discovered that, I figured this might be something I would want to do, I started out as a colorist at Valiant and my real pencilling start was over at DC. I started out on a book called Spelljammer which was a licenced TSR ( Dungeons and Dragons) book. From there, I graduated to The Ray and then did some Question quarterlies, I did a Batman short story I believe.
The big one for me had to be Batman: Sword of Azrael, it was just the moment itself and knowing the character, I knew a year or two about what would happen to Batman during the events of Knightfall and was tasked to create a character that would replace Batman. That was the goal but really the coolest thing was getting to work with two legends Danny O’Neil who was writing it and Archie Goodwin editing it. That was daunting, working with guys like that but also a huge learning experience. Danny would talk about storytelling and his knowledge of writing for comics for decades and of course Archie, I took notes about how they handled me and my personality and artwork ,sort of being the new guy in the industry then plucked the best out of me. Oh and course Kevin Nolan as my inker, who draws better than I do, so of course they got this guy who drew better than me as my inker on this project.
Can you tell me how Batman: Sword of Azrael came about ? If it was your idea, or from an editor ?
JQ: It was Danny, he was writing the big Batman books at the time and he had an idea where Batman would have his back broken and be out of commission for a while with someone else taking over. So he had the whole concept for the story and the character of Azrael formed. He came up to me about the concepts for me to formulate the designs and look of Jean Paul, I ran with it from there. Of course I also designed the father’s armour like a more traditional medieval armour but you know with a fire sword and how his son would later adapt it to fit more into Batman’s world.
The interesting thing with that gig came with the prospect with having the chance to redesign the iconic Batman costume for Jean Paul, the assignment was to take the Azrael costume and somehow mix it up with the Batman costume however they needed several versions because Danny wanted the costume to reflect his detoriating mental state. Danny wanted it to be over the top and much more inplausible by the end. I remember Danny saying ‘Take all the craziest designs from the Image guys, all the over the top stuff like the pouches, legs, the belts, go crazy with it’ so that’s what I did. I still have all the original pencil sketches with the different layers of the costume. Like how this costume starts to reflect his personality, more violent like if you pinched it anywhere, you would cut yourself.
In retrospect, I am sure that every artist that had to draw that costume hated me because I only had to draw it once but every once in a while, a fan would ask me for a sketch, I would yell at my younger self and ask him what was he thinking.
Can you tell me some of your influences for your art at that time ?
JQ: When I broke in, I was a huge Mignola fan so Mike’s work was integral to my look, I mean every artist starts mimicking somebody, I mean it was Mignola and Jack Kirby, you can see the direct line between Kirby’s work and Mignola’s work, you can see the blockiness. Alex Toth was also a huge influence, at that time I was really into Frank Miller but really most of my sources were outside of comics and in the world of illustration, I was a huge of Norman Rockwell’s work, but probably my favourite artist in the world was Alphonse Mucha, you clearly see his influence whenever I do Art Nouveau styled covers or in my Ninjak work and Issue 3 of my Doctor Strange work. So Mucha was probably my favourite influence, but there was also other classical artists that I loved and a handful of comic book artists whose work I still look at .
I am in a really Toth mood at the moment, I have stacks of Toth stuff I keep around and to remind me to simpfly since I tend to overcomplicate some of my personal work.
Can you tell me how you started the Marvel Imprints such as Marvel Knights when you became editor of chief at Marvel ?
JQ: Marvel Knights was considered a boutique imprint at Marvel at the time, I forgot what the price points were but I feel that they were a dollar more than most Marvel comics. The colouring was much better for example, we were just doing things that were different than what Marvel was doing. I keep referring to Marvel as another company because we were a contractor. I started Event Comics back in the mid 1990s as a indie comic book company, Event was hired to do four titles for them including Daredevil, Inhumans, Punisher, Black Panther. Inhumans and Black Panther both did not have titles at the time, Punisher had just been cancelled and Daredevil was on his way to being cancelled. So they were happy to do them as books in the imprint, they were happy since they were not using the characters and they were even happier since our titles were doing much better than their own comics at the time.
We started this little imprint within Marvel, we were not staff, we were not Marvel employees, we just kept getting paid to do these books. From there, Bill Jemas was CEO of Marvel at the time, he liked what we were doing with the four books and he asked ” Hey, did you want to run the whole show ?”. He asked me if I wanted to be editor in chief, after some soul searching, I decided to take the job. The reason why I said I was soul searching and hesitated to take the job was due to the fact that Marvel was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy at the time. The company asked me in July of 2000, it was like being offered possibly the best seat of Titanic for all I knew, I told myself I could do the job but was it too late to save it or do I go down as the last editor in chief of Marvel which was not something I wanted to be known by. My wife clarified all for me by asking ” If you’re not going to take the job, do you know who would be the second pick for the job ”
I had no idea, I really don’t so I ended up meeting with Bill the following Monday and brought with me a list of demands , if we were not committed to doing these things, it would not matter. Bill also had a list and they were very smiliar. Back in 2000, Marvel did not have a trade paperback program, no real collections of any of our work. There was nothing, DC, Dark Horse, every other company had trade paperbacks and Marvel didn’t, it was like leaving money on the table. That was such an important thing to me, Bill again was right there with me and probably way ahead of me. We also had putting emphasis on the talent at Marvel on the list, once we discussed more of our demands, I finally said that I was in.
How about the start of the Ultimates ?
JQ: The thing with Ultimates was that it was already in production by the time I came in as editor of chief at Marvel, it was not even called Ultimates at that point. It was either Ground Zero or Point Zero but I believe it was Ground Zero, this was one of the big things that got me into the gig.
Bill invited me to a meeting about the launch of Ground Zero and the relaunch and it was really uncomfortable since I was in an editorial meeting with staffers and freelance writers, I was not even a employee of Marvel and the editor in chief was looking at me like “What the hell was he doing there ?” Totally understandable
Bill didn’t care, he just wanted my take on this, so yeah I just saw there and threw some ideas and then when that meeting was over, Bill walked into my office and said this was not working. ” You seem to have access to young writers, do you have anybody?”. I said “Yeah, I got this guy Brian Micheal Bendis, you don’t know him, but he might be great for one of these books”. Bill was ready to go into another direction when he asked me to take over the gig.
Afterwards, Ground Zero became Ultimate, I talked to Bill, I talked to Brian, Mark Millar and others and none of us could remember who came up with the name Ultimate. But I could tell you who suggested changing it, it was Brian’s wife who said from a marketing viewpoint that having Zero in the title, especially on something brand new like this is asking for trouble and is a negative. The word Zero only really works if it’s on diet soda or other weight loss products. You could see the headlines already : GROUND ZERO, A BIG FAT ZERO. So yeah, we were asking for trouble.
That is insightful so we went and re-did it, again, can’t tell you where it came from.
Marvel MAX ?
JQ: That was a bit of a delicate conversation since we were wondering how could we publish adult comics with these properties that have been mainly considered for kids. So we had to identify certain characters, like look at the Blade movie for example, Blade was certainly an unheralded wonderful pieces of art because when you think of Twilight or the vampire goth trend that was everywhere at that time. Blade was really the first modern goth vampire story yet the comics could not sell since it was resonating yet the movie was a hit.
So we figured we would have probably have a lot of characters that would benefit from the adult treatment. Maybe the reason they were not selling was because they needed to be edgier. So we made sure to identify those characters and those stories since there was another audience out there. If other publishers could do it, why not Marvel ?
It was just modernizing our Marvel projects, we reinvented some stuff, stuff that no one had seen before, we also looked at what the market was baring, why aren’t we in that market ? That’s a good market, it’s foolish not to be in that market and it doesn’t hurt the brand.
What were some of your favourite characters that you go to work on ? Could be Marvel, DC, Event etc.
JQ: Clearly my character Ash was a blast to work on, but on the Marvel side I was always a Spider-Man guy, Daredevil and Cap beyond reason but I don’t know if I’d be able to write Cap. You know,Spider-Man I love because as a kid, he resonated with me, I see how he resonates with everyone, Spider-Man fans are the most passionate on the planet and I think it’s because we all have a era of Spidey that we love, it depends on the age that we discovered him.
There’s something about him that touches everyone, he is every person. Daredevil who used to be Spider-Man Lite before Frank Miller reinvented him is the most Shakespearean and most complex Marvel character. Lawyer by day, vigilante by night, he’s a blind superhero that manages to improve himself, also he is a devout Christian but dresses like a devil. It causes friction just from minute one and then you add on levels of storytelling from there, makes Matt Murdock a fantastic character. His relationship with his father, who his mother was and was the first superhero whose religion was just right there. You know how like other characters like Ben Grimm was Jewish and we went on from there but I am certain that Matt was indeed the first one but I could be wrong.
How did you feel about Disney’s purchase of Marvel in 2009, were you more excited or more worried for your job ?
JQ: I was really excited, I will be honest with you, you look at DC and they had so many other ventures for their characters due to their connection with Warner Bros., of course we’d sit back and play Fantasy Marvel Future all the time, like could you imagine Disney owning us but of course we’re too edgy for Disney, there’s no way they could do it. We were thinking about other studios like Sony as well in that game.
I then got the call that Disney was going to do this, that they were going to pull the trigger on this in Toronto, during Fan Expo Canada, it felt like something out of a espionage movie, because you get the call. As an executive, my contract had certain clauses and stipulations in it and they wanted a guarantee that my contract had an out, that if ever Marvel was sold, I can say cool I’m out of here, out of my contract. So I kept getting calls saying we will send you this and it was crazy, I was getting all these e-mails sent to me during the convention so I am going over to the hospitality room ( Green Room) and try to take these calls , while the chief legal counsel of Marvel was yelling sign this now, sign this now. It was a bit nutty but it was awesome.
We were thrilled, particularly thrilled because Bob Iger made it a point to make it worthwhile, we took a few trips down to Disney in California to make sure that we wanted to do this deal. Ike Perlmutter who owned Marvel at the time sent his most trusted people at Disney. There was two exploratory trips and Bob was adamant about letting us know about his philosophy , which was what Disney was all about. Bob made it clear that they were not going to touch Marvel’s culture , that they were not going to turn us into Disney. Just doing Marvel stuff.
We were very comfortable with that because he had the example of it which was Pixar , you know Pixar remained Pixar and does what Pixar does and they do not touch anything there. So we felt comfortable doing that deal and then I remember a meeting once the deal was consummated , Bob actually came and visited us at Marvel and spoke to the entire editorial staff and he basically just put everybody at ease ” You guys are Marvel, you do your Marvel stuff”. What we had now was the muscle of Disney behind us and what does that get us, it’s clear, just look at the success of Marvel Studios, the muscle behind them that let them reach their true potential.
Can you tell us about your activities at Fan Expo Canada ? Can you tell us more about The Joe Quesada Experience ?
JQ: It’s not a tribute band but it should be, you can find out more about it on the Fan Expo website and how there are certain levels of the experience for example a one on one with me, there’s sketch levels but for the rest, you can see them on the website.
First of all, I love going to the Fan Expos because they really run fantastic shows, they really do. I get to meet awesome fans and run fantastic panels, I get to do signings, I do believe that there will be a booth at the convention this year. I’m just there for the fans and , if you are listening to me out there, I thank you because you are paying my rent, you are making this possible for me. I love meeting everyone at these shows, the panels are especially my favourite things to do, they’re simple Q and A questions where I will answer anything kind of like this. You can just throw it at me and here we go, I also love the experiences because they are more intimate.
So it depends on the show, could be like 5 to 10 people to even larger and we just do a roundtable and hang out. Those are cool , another thing to expect of me is that I started a newsletter on Substack, it is 100% free, it comes out weekly, sometimes every week and a half, heck even maybe two times a week. The newsletter basically consists me of reminiscing about the past, taking about business in comics, even some tutorial stuff about them, not really about drawing but more about preparing a portfolio and how to build your brand. Like things not to do, things I’ve seen and learned, I see others do their mistakes which is really a smart thing to do. So just me meandering , going on and on, the best part is that it is 100% free. If you just go to Substack and search my name or draw a line somewhere, open a window and click Subscribe and welcome to the ride. You’ll get a welcome letter and become part of the family.
That’s what I am doing now, it will also be the place where I will be doing announcements , that’s where you will find it, it’s just a lot of fun.
Joe, it’s been a real pleasure talking with you before the show opens, for those of you reading this interview attending Fan Expo Canada, I hope to see you there and that you all come and visit Joe at his Joe Quesada Experience Booth in the South Building of the Toronto Metro Convention Centre.
For those interested in subscribing to Joe Quesada’s SubStack, you may do so by scanning the following QR code :
