Marvel Boy

I was browsing through Comic Book Resources and found the Lying in the Gutters column for Monday, March 24, 2008 to be rather interesting. The column touched on Marvel Boy and his controversial blog that caused a big storm over at Marvel’s office. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to read the blog before it was self-deleted. Fortunately, Lying in the Gutters posted the highlights from the blog. You can check out the Lying in the Gutters Monday, March 24, 2008 article right here. Be warned that there are some spoilers, however I don’t know how reliable they are. Here is what Lying in the Gutters highlighted from marvel b0y’s blog.

“Highlights include:

1) SECRET INVASION – Bendis is finally going to get reunited with his man-crush. Looks like a bunch of the 70s heroes were replaced by Skrulls which means gold-shirt, tiara-wearing Cage is back. Not-so-Sweet Christmas. 2 weeks until Brevoort’s praising this on his blog.

2) One word: MODOG (aka Fraction’s brilliant new idea for an Iron Man villain)

3) Spider-Man – Brevoort and Slott got into a huge argument today on the phone over who exactly is coming back in Slott’s Brand New Day arc in June. Those last pages are being drawn and Marvel’s been saying a “red-head” is coming back, but now Slott wants a certain “blonde” to return. No idea how it ended or what was decided, Brevoort went into a conference room after and came out red-faced from either fighting until he won or pissed that he lost. Or there were red-hot candies in there and he stress-ate them. Personally, I think MJ should be back but if anyone can make Gwen’s return work, it’s Slott

4) They had one of their “creative” meetings in the big conference room today so a big group of us went in and sat down. Then five minutes into the meeting, Bogart looks over at us and ‘politely’ asks most of us to leave. All they were doing was talking about what characters each office is using. What the hell could it hurt to let us listen in and hear what we had to say? What I might actually upset someone if I pointed out is that WE ALREADY HAVE AN IRON MAN BOOK AND CALLING THIS ONE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN ISN’T AN HOMAGE IT’S LAZY AND UNORIGINAL!!!!

This place is so frustrating. People need to get their heads out of their asses and realize a good idea is a good idea regardless of who came up with it. There are so many great characters here that I could make into kick-ass stories but they’re all afraid that if someone else comes up with an idea, then they’ll look bad. Get over yourself! You EDIT comic books, you don’t even write them. You take what someone else writes and tell them to change a phrase so you feel like you created something. You DIDN’T. Congratulations you’re a glorified spell check. And God forbid if someone who is creative comes up with an idea. That might actually make you feel as small and worthless as you really are. That or making six photocopies of the latest joke you just approved for printing.

Whatever, F it, I’m getting another green beer and then I’m going to read the new issue of Lone Wolf and Cub. Oh, my bad, I mean Cable.”

Now, the first thing I wondered was if this was a viral marketing campaign by Marvel or if this was actually legit. The latest version of Marvel Boy was created by Grant Morrison. And Morrison just happens to be the guy who is writing Final Crisis which is Secret Invasion’s rival big event for this year. I found it interesting that this mysterious blogger would choose marvel b0y for his tag name. However, due to some of the extremely negative comments, I am leaning to Marvel Boy’s blog being real and not a work.

Now, was the decision to post all of this information professional? No. Would I advocate for someone doing something like this? No. But, was it entertaining? Yup. I particularly the shot at the editorial staff being glorified spell checkers. I can see where the editorial staff could be a huge pain in the ass.

I also liked the comment about the new Invincible Iron Man comic book. That was absolutely hilarious and I completely agree. I’m probably one of the biggest Iron Man fans you will meet. But, I still think that a second Iron Man title is a dumb idea. Marvel should just let the Knaufs’ work their magic and leave Iron Man alone. And as much as I love Iron Man, the fact is that he is not a character that has ever posted strong sales numbers. I simply can’t see how Iron Man can support two titles.

And to make things worse it is going to be hard to reconcile the drastically different takes on the same character that we are going to get between the Knaufs and Fraction. I’ve read plenty by Fraction and I’ve read plenty by the Knaufs and if I have to pick one over the other then I’m taking the Knaufs every single time.

I’ll be interested to see if some of the spoilers are true like Luke Cage and a bunch of other 1970s heroes being revealed to be a Skrull. That certainly makes sense given that Electra has been revealed to be a Skrull and Mar-vell also appears to be a Skrull. It certainly appears that Secret Invasion will allow Marvel to go nuts with the retconning of numerous characters.

I have a feeling that we are going to see a 1970’s revival over at Marvel. You have already seen several 1970s titles revived like Iron Fist, Heroes for Hire, Captain Marvel, and The Defenders. Add to that the fact that Amazing Spider-Man has been retconned back to a version that is very reminiscent of the 1970s Spider-Man.

Bendis is 40 and grew up with the 1970’s Marvel universe when he was a kid. I always have viewed the ages 6-18 as the formative years for comic book readers as far as what they consider to be the definitive versions of various comic book characters. That puts Bendis’ formative years between 1972-1984. So, it wouldn’t surprise me if Bendis uses Secret Invasion to re-make the current 616 Universe into something similar to what he enjoyed during his formative years.