JOE QUESADA HATES FOOTNOTE PEOPLE
I swear, I was just going to look for the new New Avengers list so I could talk about it here, but when I see a new Joe Fridays Monday edition, I thought to myself, “… well, I’ll just scan the questions. I won’t read the replies, just the questions!”
Oh, silly silly me.
NRAMA: Going back to last week again, it seems that there was a bit of a furor over your comment about footnotes. Do you want to elaborate on this anymore? And what do you say to critics that claim that the footnotes can be used to get customers interested perhaps in some older stories?
Hey, a question important to me! Something I expressed my opinion about last time! I’m a critic, does ol’ Joey Q have anything to say to me?
JQ: [laughs] Yeah, I’ve noticed that a few folks here and across the net got themselves all in a tizzy about this, so let me clear a few things up.
A tizzy. Not a valid opinion, not ‘Well, there are some really good points made out there, along with some overexaggerated ones’. Nope, a ‘tizzy’. Wow, way to dismiss criticism!
I never said we don’t do footnotes, I said we discourage writers from using them.
You discourage them, so they aren’t used as much, thus are not done. Pretty logical jump to make, if not entirely accurate. But that’s semantics! Sure he’ll jump right to the heart of the matter and not pick on critics!
So, it’s not like they’re banned from our comics. As a matter of fact if you look closely, you can find a few with them. So, to me this just sounds like people that want to complain.
That totally answers my question! They are there, we’re just not using them to answer important questions like what book follows another in a major crossover event that’s months behind. Man, I sure do like complaining.
Now, what I don’t understand is the following.
Sure, I’ll bite.
1.) If almost everything you need to know is in the recap page, why are people upset about footnotes? You’re getting the information that a footnote would contain, they’re just not in a footnote caption.
Very simple. Not everything you need to know is in the recap page. Sometimes, the recap page is very vague and doesn’t help for when specific events happen out of sequence. That infamous Sue Leaving in CW#4, then Leaving Again in FF issue? If people were confused on the order of those books (whch couldn’t be judged by how they came out), a little yellow box at the start of their conversation wouldn’t have ruined the flow and would have kept the recap page to just what happened last issue, rather than what’s going on everywhere in the Marvel Universe.
2.) As you stated above, if the recap page doesn’t cover it, and we really feel we need a footnote, we add the asterisk and the reader can find the footnote information in the letter’s page. Again, why are folks so upset that there isn’t a footnote caption, there is, it’s just in the back of the book as opposed to within the story. Are they saying that they need it right on the page in order to get the info? Hmmm.
What’s wrong with that? And I had no idea about the asterix addition as it was never officially mentioned in a Soapbox or a Letters Page or even as part of the Recap ( “Where a * is noted, please see the letters page for additional information.” Not too difficult. ) Maybe people are upset about the lack of a caption box is because that’s what they are used to. Back in the Way Back Day, Stan used to use them to talk to the reader about something silly within the story or about how pleased Jack Kirby was to draw some slick new car. While in this VERY SERIOUS age of comic storytelling, such a side note would be jarring if not obnoxious (I think JMS did an issue almost primarily using editor’s notes, which is just being childish, really…), it’s what became familiar. An unexplained asterix isn’t the same as a little yellow box positioned unobtrusively in the relating panel.
3.) If a particular back issue or trade is important in order to understand a particular current story arc, again, we would flag the mention of that past event as it occurs during the course of a story with an asterisk within the caption or balloon it appears in. We would then include all the pertinent information in the letters page.
This … this isn’t a question. Just a defence of the above.
Also, keep in mind that we don’t write our stories that way anymore. We try to make them as inclusive and none confusing as possible,
Well, he did also say ‘Dead is Dead’, so … I guess Over 123 related issues are fairly simple to those not in a tizzy.
I think that’s where the letter’s page comes in handy. I never understood why comic books and comic continuity had to be a puzzle only solvable by the most hardcore Fanman?
I agree, I don’t understand that either. You’d think that with such wonderful movies and media tie-ins that anyone and their mom could just walk into a store, pick up a book with Spider-Man in it and BAM! They’d have all the basic knowledge they’d need to read it. Did I mention that Civil War is listed at 95 issues on wikipedia?
4.) And finally, this has been in effect for nearly six yearsz! Six years without footnotes and nobody has complained nor noticed really until I said something last week [laughs].
Well, on a personal level, I just started complaining about Joe Quesada’s position on editor’s notes last week. Ha ha. But just because people are in favor of a good idea all of a sudden that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any merit. If a lot of people are in favor of something, maybe instead of seeing it as an attack or being against being against editor’s notes, it just might be an opportunity to look into something to keep paying fans happy. Maybe it might force the editors to keep a tighter reign on their books and akes sure that art goofs like when a girl has a broken arm and when she doesn’t or who’s sitting in private conferance with supervillains and who’s standing up in front of the rest of the resistance and surprising them with new help (who are also supervillains).
So, yeah, I think we’re covering all the bases with respect to getting the fans all the info they need, it’s just not in those little yellow caption boxes.
So what’s going to happen in the April releases of Captain America and New Avengers so retailers know what to order for the upcoming months? Oh! Oh, gosh. My bad. He said fans.
Okay, you want to discuss the lack of smoking within our comics?
I have nothing personal against Joe Quesada. Really. I wish him all the best and don’t think he’s a big meanie head for making the descisions he does. I just want the best product for the customers and I know he wants exactly the same thing. And yeah, I get snarky. So does Mr. Tizzy, it’s human nature and more importantly, fanboy nature to mock what we do not like so I can’t really fault him the tizzy remark and the general defensiveness of the answer.
Actually, I can because he’s a professional and should treat the paying customers professionally; I mean, I work at a comic shop and I have to do the exact same thing. But I won’t fault him because having a fan is more important than having a suit and having a readable book with recognizable footnotes to place a particular story within a timeline is more important than the trade paperback.
And that’s my unpopular tizzy.
