Marvel 616 on Disney+ takes fans behind the scenes of the comics business, and some fans don’t like what they’ve seen.
Marvel 616 is a documentary series on Disney+ that shows fans how the Marvel sausage is made. That includes an episode all about the “Marvel method,” which was pioneered by Marvel luminary Stan Lee back in the ’60s, when he was writing pretty much all of the company’s comics. Lee would send artists a rough outline of the plot and let them fill in the panels with their imagination, later adding dialogue according to what they drew.
Today, writer Dan Slott still uses that method, although times have changed. He’s not writing the bulk of the company’s comics — the episode in question follows him as he struggles to come up with a plotline for the first issue of Iron Man 2020, blowing deadlines and coming down to the wire as editor Shannon Ballesteros, artist Pete Woods, dialogue writer Christos Gage and letterer Joe Caramagna sit on the edge of their seats waiting to be able to do their jobs, and then having to rush at the last minute when inspiration finally strikes Slott.
The whole thing is played for laughs — oh those wacky Marvel people scrambling to finish their book — but some of it sounds inordinately stressful, with Caramagna talking about “begging and pleading” for pages so he doesn’t have to kill himself finishing days before press. Ha ha.
*I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE voice* does nobody see how absolutely fucked this is pic.twitter.com/rXkhdd8DB4
— Matt Sibley / Every WAVELENGTH Second (@Matt_Sibley) November 21, 2020
Naturally, some folks online were aghast, wondering how this kind of work process is still allowed — for the record, most of the comic book industry has moved away from the Marvel method to the “full script” method, with writers giving their colleagues more detailed descriptions of what to put in the panels, together with dialogue.
Because colorists have to color more than one book to survive, 1-2 weeks was the ideal amount of time to do a book.
— Christina Strain (@christinastrain) November 22, 2020
Once, I got 11 pages the day before a book was due.
And so on.
On the other side of things, people in the industry have rallied to Slott’s defense:
Latest outrage on Comix Fan Twitter: writer responsible for some of Marvel's all-time best-selling and most influential books and ideas is allowed to work under looser deadlines, because his bosses recognize and value his consistent contributions to the company's success.
— Andy Ihnatko (@Ihnatko) November 24, 2020
The people involved in the actual episode defended him, too, including dialog writer Christos Gage:
3) That's what I put in...the dialogue. Sometimes before the artist draws, sometimes after. When Dan does this himself, he misses deadlines because he obsesses over the PERFECT words. I write until it's time to turn it in, then it's like, well, this is what it's gonna be.
— Christos Gage (@Christosgage) November 22, 2020
A couple of them, including Slott himself, emphasized that the depiction of his slow work speed was played up for the cameras:
I've scripted books down-to-the-wire, but I think anyone who understands how comic books are made knows plotting a book down-to-the-wire is not only silly, but kind of impossible. As was most of the time frame of the episode. But that and (many) liberties were taken for fun TV.🙂
— Dan Slott (@DanSlott) November 22, 2020
And finally, poor Joe Caramagna laughed things off by telling a story about a time he had to letter an issue of a comic while his wife was in labor…wait, what?
If my part of the Marvel Method process in #Marvel616 gave you anxiety, imagine if they hadn’t cut the story I told about lettering an issue in the delivery room while my wife was in labor...
— Joe Caramagna 🍩🏒🇺🇸🚀 (@JoeCaramagna) November 22, 2020
Wait, is that a reason to let the whole thing slide or a reason to look at it closer?
You can watch the entirety of Marvel 616 on Disney+ now.
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h/t CNET