Found in Translation

As a first day back in the old routine, I thought I'd take a look at some comments from the Marvel Gang a few weeks back and put them through the old translator.

JOE QUESADA ON SPIDER-MAN AND THE MARRIAGE:

“We worked too hard to get Peter to this point. I can understand why some of you
want to see the characters grow old, but we have to manage these characters for
the future – a future beyond you and me."

TRANSLATION: "My entire career is riding on this. Listen, we like to think that Marvel's characters are robust and vital with incredible unexplored potentials, but they're not - they are fragile things that can only be used in a very limited number of stories to be recycled again and again."

A married Peter Parker – as cool as that may seem – from a creative standpoint, it handcuffs the character. It’s a very problematic thing for Peter because it cuts him off and makes Peter the oldest person in the book."

TRANSLATION: "We prefer that Peter Be the stupidest character in the book who remains static while everyone else moves on in their lives."

“It’s very tough to write because you want to see Peter and M.J. happy, and in a book where, really at its crust, is a soap opera about Peter’s life, the minute he gets everything he wants and life is happy, the stories get boring. So how do you create [the conflict the drama needs]? You have Mary Jane and Peter butt heads. But now you’re dealing with a marriage that isn’t a very happy marriage and they’re constantly bickering."

TRANSLATION: "Long-term relationships and marriages are either blissful static utopias or constant bickering, with nothing inbetween. This is the consensus of a group of grown human beings living in modern society."

"...when you look at every iteration of Spider-Man out now – the movies, the cartoons – he’s a single guy."

TRANSLATION: "Marvel is all about rigid conformity in brand identity. Our version of the character is now virtually identical to his appearances in other media, except you have to pay more money per story."

JOE QUESADA ON THE ORIGINS OF THE HEROIC AGE:

"The Heroic Age started with a manifesto that came from doing a lot of big company-wide crossovers…and we just needed to get off that treadmill. It felt like we were just feeding the beast: one big event, then another big one, and then it became a matter of diminishing returns."

TRANSLATION: Blackest Night kicked our ass, and even Bendis couldn't figure out how to keep tying into Bendis-run events.

JOE QUESADA ON WHETHER DISNEY WILL INTERFERE IN MARVEL'S INNER WORKINGS:

“Marvel runs as Marvel runs.”

TRANSLATION: The second there's a dip in the box office returns, we're toast.

BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS ON AVENGERS:

"The writer then brought up the fact that every story dealing with Kang has characters worrying about the space-time continuum. “Well, Kang breaks it,” Bendis said with a grin. He added that as a result of this break, readers are going to see characters like Maestro, Next Avengers from the “Avengers” cartoon, Spider-Girl, and folks from the Age of Apocalypse."

TRANSLATION: "I'm doing a remix of Avengers Forever. It's not too soon to do that, is it?"

JOE QUESADA ON THE CAPTAIN AMERICA/TEA PARTY ISSUE:

"What I said was that we made a mistake in identifying a group as an actual existing group in America…and that’s really the truth."

TRANSLATION: "We got caught."

"But the thing that upset me was that when the media ran with it, it was like ‘EIC of Marvel Apologizes” but they didn’t read the remainder of the apology.”

TRANSLATION: "The Media is suppossed to give me a fair shake! Who do they think I am? An internet commenter?"


ED BRUBAKER ON THE CAPTAIN AMERICA/TEA PARTY ISSUE:

"I grew up in the ‘70s reading ‘Captain America’ comics, where Captain America and the Falcon were always talking about race relations – I don't know if we could do that today with the way the media works. For me, I just try to write the characters the way that I perceive them. I just wanted to show that the mood in the country has shifted this way. That's all I wanted to say.”

TRANSLATION: "Everything else worthwile in my Cap run was borrowed from Englehart's run, so I figured I could do this too."


OK, and that's that for this round. I tried finding some similar DC announcements, but couldn't find any that the Translator could make any sense of whatsoever. However, if you like the idea, send me some links and I'll see if I can make this a new regular feature.