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The last Marvel movie I'd seen was The
Avengers, and let's be honest, that was

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amazing. You know, that was every comic
book fan's dream, to see all those

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characters on a big screen.

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$1 .5 billion worldwide, and that's how
much money Avengers made.

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That's one of the most successful films
of all time.

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People love to escape this fantasy.
Marvel is modern myth -making of today.

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When I was growing up, I was the only
guy for probably 500 miles who could

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you that Tony Stark was Iron Man. Now we
all know it, and it's great.

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As recently as two or three years ago,
we all sort of lived under the fear.

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That, oh my God, one bad superhero movie
is going to happen and the whole

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Hollywood industry is going to give up
and not do it anymore.

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That's not the case anymore. Now seeing
all these movies, it's sort of like a

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validation for comic books because the
superhero now has arrived in movies and

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they're actually doing it very well.

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We've built up enough positive momentum.
Marvel has built up enough positive

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momentum where I don't know what's going
to stop them.

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Superheroes today reign as masters on
Hollywood and pop culture.

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But not so long ago, in the mid -90s,
they almost won over by the speculative

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madness of Wall Street.

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First of all, the Marvel Entertainment
Company, home of Spider -Man, Iron Man

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Captain America, was declared bankrupt
on December 27, 1996, before being

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miraculously saved to be reborn from its
ashes.

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Comics in general, and Marvel was no
exception to this, sales were beginning

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decline in the 1980s.

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1986 was the watershed moment in
American comics because that was the

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Watchmen, of The Dark Knight, and of
Mouse.

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These three comics changed everything
about what the American public thought

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comic books were.

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The gritty realism and the fact that The
Dark Knight was clearly created for

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an audience of adults, or at least late
adolescence, but it wasn't kiddie stuff.

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And Marvel at that point was not as
quick to grab that sort of

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brass ring that was being offered of
salvation.

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X -Men was always the best -selling
comic in the late 1970s and all through

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1980s. Same with Avengers, same with
Spider -Man.

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These were still the top -selling comics
in America, but every year they would

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drop another 5 ,000 or 10 ,000 copies
per year in sales.

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And prices escalated to try to make up
the difference.

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So it's an exaggeration to say it was in
free fall.

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That's not the case.

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But there was a slide.

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Well, in order to sell more, we'll do an
alternate cover. So there'll be three

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covers and a retail order more. Or we'll
do a shiny cover. Or we'll do something

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made out of...

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I don't know, uranium.

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I don't know. You know, we just put
anything on the book that we can maybe

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the book to sell more.

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And it started relying on gimmicks. And
when you rely on gimmicks, you start

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losing the soul of the work.

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They began trading comics as
collectibles, less so than enjoyable,

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periodicals. People were buying cases of
Spider -Man number one by Todd

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McFarlane as a special collectible. They
were buying a hundred of these.

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Because they thought that someday, years
down the road, they'd be able to put

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their kids through college based on the
investment they were making. They

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treated them as investable collectibles.
They treated them as bonds and stocks.

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But they're not.

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They're stories.

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From $0 .40 in 1980, the minimum price
of his comics rose to $1 in 1988.

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This fever of collectors draws attention
from the business sector.

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In 1989, Ronald Perelman, heavyweight
from Wall Street, buys Marvel for more

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than $82 million.

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Very quickly, he sets up a complex
holding system, linked to his own

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conglomerate, Back on Rosenfort.

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In 1991, Perelman introduces Marvel on
the stock market and leads it in a

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of acquisitions.

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Mr.

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Perlman is extremely intelligent, a very
good investor, who over a period of

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years had put together what I would call
an empire.

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Also, a man who is not particularly fond
of publicity,

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but runs a very tight ship. He's in
control.

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He analyzes businesses.

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He looks for growth opportunities, and
Marvel was just one part of the empire.

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Most of the presidents of Marvel weren't
interested in comic books. They weren't

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comic book fanboys. They were just
people who were trying to manipulate the

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stock and ownership and what have you.

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I had very little to do with Ron
Perlman. He had a townhouse and his own

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entourage, and he did not come down to
Marvel.

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higher executives like the presidents
came to him and he had no input into the

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day -to -day comic books or storylines
or characters any of that he could have

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cured less the famous story is that
pearlman bought marvel assuming that

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superman was part of the deal and only
finding out afterwards that oh by the

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he's another company they didn't know
what they were They just knew that this

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was a potential profit center for them.
And I don't think it really sank in on

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me at the time, the impact that Ron
Perlman buying Marvel Comics had and was

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going to have.

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At that point, it just seemed like, oh,
well, at least there's some money in the

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coffers. At least somebody's taking care
of the company.

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But I and many of my fellow freelancers
sort of saw as the months and the

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years went on that suddenly.

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Major Wall Street corporations and major
money players were treating the

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companies the same way we treated the
comics in the 1990s, as collectibles.

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idea that they weren't buying these
companies because they wanted good

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come out. They even cared about the
characters.

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The comic book editors that reported to
me, really, I allowed them to think

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that we were in the business of
publishing comic books.

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But we were really in the business of
intellectual properties.

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And the idea was that to publish the
comic books, you kept the characters

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the 5 ,000 or so Marvel characters, and
you kept the copyrights and trademarks

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alive, and you kept them in front of the
public so that we could sell lunchboxes

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and bedsheets and movies and TV shows.

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That's where the big money was.

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Well, there's the dire situation from
the financial point of view.

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Business plan had been for Marvel to
continue to buy companies like Panini.

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Cash flow, no growth. So we bought a
whole series of companies that had cash

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flow and no growth.

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And we convinced Wall Street that buying
flat companies was the same thing as

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growth. There was approximately $500
million of bank debt made up of a

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revolving credit facility and a term
loan.

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and then there must have been something
in the area of a million dollars of

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trade debt and other debt, maybe more.

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But the bank debt was secured. They had
liens on

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essentially all of the assets of
entertainment and entertainment

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including the foreign companies, Panini.
So the bank group...

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basically had liens on all of the
operating assets.

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As we started to have to pay off the
interest, and we felt pressure to make

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and more money, we started to make
really stupid business decisions.

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So we would release more and more
different titles, and we would raise the

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point, and things would look good for
the first month that we would do it, but

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in the long haul, we created this really
horrible downward cycle where we were

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pricing new customers out of the
business.

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And we were doing so many different
books that the storylines got so complex

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that no new readers could come in. So
basically we slammed the door on new

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readers. The challenge was to look
surprised when the circulation numbers

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dropped. But I couldn't look surprised.

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So the first exodus for me was like the
first exodus for a lot of people. We saw

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that the company was going to go
bankrupt. We did our best to be vocal

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what to do to fix it, and we did our
best to fix it. But when it was clear

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that wasn't going to happen, most of the
better people left. We couldn't even

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fathom the idea that Marvel Comics could
go out of business. How is that

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possible? Look at all the books.

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They're all over the world. They're
printed in every language. Like most

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creative people, we...

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We were just worried about making good
books, so we figured somebody else is

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taking care of that. You have to
understand that at Marvel, you had two

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You had the suits and you had the
creators.

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And the suits were the people running
the business, and the creators were the

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people creating the comic books.

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The people creating the comic books
lived in a false euphoria, if you will.

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They thought...

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Everything was fine. The comic books
were coming out. The stories were good.

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Everybody was having a good time. The
suits upstairs are wheeling and dealing

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and fighting for financing and ownership
and control and all kind of

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Machiavellian plots.

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During 1996, as things got increasingly
worse, there

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were defaults under the bank agreements.

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So there were negotiations with the
banks for waivers of those defaults.

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and agreements were reached with the
banks to weigh the defaults for a period

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time.

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And the hope was that before the end of
the year, the economy would come back,

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consumer spending would increase, and
they could reinstate everything.

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As the year progressed, there seemed to
be no real hope that that was going to

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happen.

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So the decision was reaching an
agreement with the bank group.

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That's who we're restructuring.

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And that would be part of what we call a
prearranged Chapter 11.

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And then there was the news of Chapter
11, and we were just like, well, what

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does that mean?

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Ron Perrelman and his advisors thus hope
to save time for the banks, while

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Marvel leads the comics market in its
fall.

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Yeah, the 90s were a funny time. I was
trying to break into the comics industry

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just when it was collapsing.

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It's like trying to get into
international banking in 2009.

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You know, it's like everything had
completely fallen apart.

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Everyone was losing their jobs. Comics
was in chaos, and I was coming in at

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time as a young guy trying to get jobs,
and there was just nothing going at all.

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And Marvel, which used to be the
ultimate aspiration of anyone working in

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comics, was a ghetto. Like, nobody
wanted to work there. I mean, there was

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stories of people, writers and artists,
being sued, this was rumours, you know,

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by people that Marvel owed money to.

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Like, because they couldn't get the
money out of Marvel, they were coming

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the writers and artists and sending them
lawyers' letters trying to get cash.

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So people were getting hit with massive
bills. The place was insane. It was

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nuts. So it's not as if it was a secret
that things were heating up at Marvel,

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that things were dire there.

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And we get stories in about, suddenly
there's no coffee maker in the office

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because they thought coffee would be too
expensive. Or suddenly...

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The FedEx account had been cancelled
because they decided that it was too

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expensive to have a Federal Express
account.

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Another thing was they sold the two
doors to their conference room because

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doors had pictures of Spider -Man on it,
and they managed to find a buyer for

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their doors. And I don't know the
validity of these stories, but stories

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were circulating, and freelancers were
like, you know, how on earth can we work

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for people who can't even afford to make
coffee anymore?

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Half of the people went, well, I better
go get work at DC.

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We just hear things.

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We'd say, well, even if it goes chapter
11, it's still going to be in business.

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That's just some technical thing they
have to do. We didn't understand it.

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Because all we thought was, well, I need
to get the next issue out by Thursday.

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That's not really my problem. I need to
do this.

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So we thought, well, they'll figure it
out. These guys know what they're doing.

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Ron Perlman would come to Marvel about
once a year with his daughter on Bring

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Your Daughter to Work Day and say to his
daughter, Daddy owns all of this, and

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then he would go away.

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He was busy.

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owning Revlon and Coleman and I think
Hummer and all kind of companies, and

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basically using one company to leverage
the other company, which is what got him

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into trouble with Marvel.

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Because what Ron Perlman didn't realize
is that there was a bigger shark than

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him swimming in the waters named Carl
Icahn.

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Who was Mr. Icahn?

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There are various descriptions of Mr.
Icahn.

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And back in the 90s...

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In the 80s, Mr.

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Icahn was probably known as a green
mailer, that he would take a position,

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changes in the company, and to basically
get rid of him, he would be

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paid green mail.

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So if he took a 10 % or 13 % or 14 %
interest in an entity,

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the entity would pay him a premium over
the market value of that stock to go

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away and stop bothering him.

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And he was very successful at it.

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What precipitated his interest is very
speculative.

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My own guess is that he read the
proposed disclosure statement,

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noticed that Mr. Perlman, through his
companies, was going to infuse another

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$365 million and probably came to the
conclusion that if Mr. Perlman was going

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to put in that kind of money, there must
be something here that he knows about

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that nobody else knows about, and it
might be worth his investment.

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So he became active in the Chapter 11
case.

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Now there is an even more supreme
struggle for the fate of Marvel. But it

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00:15:48,450 --> 00:15:53,810
like for us, it is as if we were
watching Galactus and the Silver Surfer

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out above our heads in the skies above,
and we are just ordinary mortals. That

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is the scale at which the battle is
going on.

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00:16:01,310 --> 00:16:05,110
We have no control over it, but we want
to see what's happening next, because

222
00:16:05,110 --> 00:16:07,070
our jobs and livelihoods depend on it.

223
00:16:07,630 --> 00:16:10,230
Between the titans Ron Perlman and Carl
Icahn,

224
00:16:33,930 --> 00:16:37,550
I was always a storyteller.

225
00:16:38,080 --> 00:16:40,080
I find out it made life easier.

226
00:16:41,180 --> 00:16:45,400
Developing toys is very much like
developing a show or a movie.

227
00:16:45,640 --> 00:16:50,540
To tell a story, you have to find a
reason why would someone want to play

228
00:16:50,540 --> 00:16:51,540
it.

229
00:16:51,760 --> 00:16:58,540
When we started talking about Toy Biz,
that I believe initially bought it

230
00:16:58,540 --> 00:17:02,560
for liquidation, just to take it apart
and sell it in pieces.

231
00:17:03,280 --> 00:17:05,700
And then I noticed that he has...

232
00:17:06,300 --> 00:17:09,200
Rights for Marvel?

233
00:17:09,460 --> 00:17:10,819
Wait a second.

234
00:17:11,200 --> 00:17:17,880
This little company have the rights for
the whole Marvel library for

235
00:17:17,880 --> 00:17:19,960
toys. That's unbelievable.

236
00:17:21,460 --> 00:17:28,020
Ike, who is an absolute genius
businessman, but had no interest or

237
00:17:28,020 --> 00:17:34,200
for comic books, the only thing he
always understood instinctively is the

238
00:17:34,200 --> 00:17:35,300
of a trademark.

239
00:17:37,100 --> 00:17:43,980
Ron Perlman had done a deal with Ike
Perlmutter where he got 25 % of

240
00:17:43,980 --> 00:17:50,800
ownership of Toy Biz, but it had extra
voting rights that were equivalent

241
00:17:50,800 --> 00:17:57,360
to about 76 % or so. So basically that
gave Toy Biz an

242
00:17:57,360 --> 00:18:03,980
unlimited royalty -free license to do
Marvel action

243
00:18:03,980 --> 00:18:04,980
figures and toys.

244
00:18:05,590 --> 00:18:06,590
paying Marvel nothing.

245
00:18:06,690 --> 00:18:09,790
But in return, Perlman got controlling
ownership.

246
00:18:10,350 --> 00:18:12,270
So it was a very sweet deal.

247
00:18:13,070 --> 00:18:15,870
They made toys and paid no licensing
fee.

248
00:18:16,150 --> 00:18:20,890
So in order to protect that, they had to
be the winners or else they would have

249
00:18:20,890 --> 00:18:21,789
lost their business.

250
00:18:21,790 --> 00:18:26,310
Keep in mind, while we're talking about
a lot of money, this lot of money was

251
00:18:26,310 --> 00:18:31,790
chump change to Ron Perlman and even
less money to Carl Icahn.

252
00:18:32,130 --> 00:18:33,330
At the time,

253
00:18:34,410 --> 00:18:37,410
Pearl Mutter took over the company.

254
00:18:38,470 --> 00:18:43,690
He had put all of his eggs in that
basket. He had nowhere else to go if he

255
00:18:43,690 --> 00:18:46,530
didn't win the ownership.

256
00:18:46,930 --> 00:18:53,390
It became a David and Goliath because
between Karl and Ron

257
00:18:53,390 --> 00:18:59,850
Perlman, there was power, a lot of
power, a lot of influence on Wall

258
00:19:00,780 --> 00:19:04,540
And we were like these two guys with an
accent. It's different.

259
00:19:06,600 --> 00:19:08,080
Was it a war? Yeah.

260
00:19:17,460 --> 00:19:23,580
So I suggested that it would be a good
idea if all of the parties could get

261
00:19:23,580 --> 00:19:28,260
together and see if we could resolve
this in some amicable way.

262
00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:33,600
So we had this meeting, which was very
well attended by a great many lawyers,

263
00:19:33,720 --> 00:19:37,040
and all of the banks were at the
meeting.

264
00:19:37,900 --> 00:19:42,140
And Mr. Icahn came with some of his
associates.

265
00:19:42,960 --> 00:19:47,400
And the meeting started off, at most
meetings, people expressed their

266
00:19:47,500 --> 00:19:50,380
and the sound volume began to rise.

267
00:19:50,740 --> 00:19:56,920
And then at some point in the meeting,
the senior bank officer from J .P.

268
00:19:57,630 --> 00:20:02,470
got up and said, well, it's a very
interesting discussion here, but I

269
00:20:02,470 --> 00:20:08,130
the banks, and we have $600 million at
stake here, and I want to know how

270
00:20:08,130 --> 00:20:09,130
going to get paid.

271
00:20:09,150 --> 00:20:12,070
And Paul Icahn looked at him and said,
who are you?

272
00:20:12,410 --> 00:20:13,410
And Mr.

273
00:20:13,850 --> 00:20:19,530
Repko explained who he was again, and
Mr. Icahn said, if I need comic relief,

274
00:20:19,650 --> 00:20:22,850
I'll turn on my TV set, which got Mr.
Repko very upset.

275
00:20:23,090 --> 00:20:26,430
And Repko said, I don't have to put up
with this.

276
00:20:26,810 --> 00:20:30,230
And he slammed down the lid on his
attaché case.

277
00:20:30,490 --> 00:20:33,830
And with that, the other six or seven
banks did the same thing.

278
00:20:34,130 --> 00:20:38,210
And they all got up and walked out. So
now we were left in a meeting without

279
00:20:38,210 --> 00:20:41,230
banks. And the meeting broke up in
disarray.

280
00:20:41,570 --> 00:20:42,830
And nothing was accomplished.

281
00:20:54,700 --> 00:20:56,960
control the operating company, Marvel
Entertainment.

282
00:20:58,120 --> 00:21:02,320
After six months of conflict, Ron
Perlman realizes that he has more to

283
00:21:02,320 --> 00:21:04,500
to win in this battle and decides to
give up.

284
00:21:05,300 --> 00:21:09,640
Carl Icahn, who has not yet repaid the
banks, now claims to have all the rights

285
00:21:09,640 --> 00:21:10,640
to Marvel.

286
00:21:22,220 --> 00:21:28,860
And I sat at the head of this conference
table, catty -corner with Carl Icahn at

287
00:21:28,860 --> 00:21:33,220
the top, and we put our heads together,
and I explained to him how comic books

288
00:21:33,220 --> 00:21:39,720
work. And we talked back and forth,
buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, and that was

289
00:21:39,720 --> 00:21:42,460
his introduction into what he had just
taken over.

290
00:21:44,330 --> 00:21:46,690
Well, listen, Carl is a businessman.

291
00:21:46,970 --> 00:21:50,130
It could have been a comic book company.
It could have been a bra company.

292
00:21:50,470 --> 00:21:53,290
It could have been, I don't know, a
chair company.

293
00:21:54,210 --> 00:22:01,190
For him, part of the ability of Carl

294
00:22:01,190 --> 00:22:07,590
Icahn, who is unfortunately very, very
good in what he does, is that he doesn't

295
00:22:07,590 --> 00:22:08,590
fall in love with anything.

296
00:22:09,370 --> 00:22:11,090
I think if he looked at the...

297
00:22:11,500 --> 00:22:16,360
comic book business and say, well, it's
really a suffering business.

298
00:22:16,680 --> 00:22:18,700
He may have just closed it.

299
00:22:19,080 --> 00:22:22,100
I said, we have the characters. We don't
need the books.

300
00:22:22,620 --> 00:22:27,640
Yeah, you need the books because that's
the Bible. It's keepers of the flame.

301
00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:34,120
And you look at Comic -Con, 150 ,000
keepers of the flames, right?

302
00:22:36,170 --> 00:22:41,810
It was a time where Marvel had to be run
by people who really cared about

303
00:22:41,810 --> 00:22:42,810
Marvel.

304
00:22:44,590 --> 00:22:48,950
It was more than a balance sheet. It was
a culture.

305
00:22:50,490 --> 00:22:55,870
If Marvel had collapsed, the whole comic
book industry would have collapsed.

306
00:22:56,130 --> 00:23:01,870
I controlled over somewhere between 30
and 36 percent of the comic book market

307
00:23:01,870 --> 00:23:02,870
at that time.

308
00:23:03,200 --> 00:23:09,220
And DC controlled probably about maybe
25 at that time. So if Marvel had

309
00:23:09,220 --> 00:23:12,360
collapsed, all the little comic book
stores would have collapsed and the

310
00:23:12,360 --> 00:23:17,080
industry would have collapsed. So my job
was to keep the comic books coming out.

311
00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:23,880
And there was all kind of lawyers and
people fighting up in the clouds above

312
00:23:23,880 --> 00:23:24,960
like Olympian gods.

313
00:23:25,460 --> 00:23:30,660
And they were spending, you know,
millions and millions and millions of

314
00:23:30,660 --> 00:23:31,940
on lawyers, I think.

315
00:23:32,220 --> 00:23:38,620
The estimate was like $40 million on
lawyers alone fighting over control and

316
00:23:38,620 --> 00:23:39,579
ownership of Marvel.

317
00:23:39,580 --> 00:23:42,260
Carl had a cash offer for the banks.

318
00:23:45,540 --> 00:23:51,620
I believe that the bank probably wrote
off the losses in Marvel.

319
00:23:51,820 --> 00:23:55,520
And they had a bank meeting, which was
actually not legal.

320
00:23:57,830 --> 00:24:02,390
Literally, we had to run over to a law
firm and more or less break down the

321
00:24:02,390 --> 00:24:05,890
and say, no, you're not going to have
this meeting without us.

322
00:24:06,170 --> 00:24:11,450
It became like one of these moments that
I looked around the room and all these

323
00:24:11,450 --> 00:24:15,830
bankers basically in their minds were
going to take the cash from Carl Ica.

324
00:24:16,730 --> 00:24:19,850
And I said to them, you don't understand
what you're doing.

325
00:24:20,070 --> 00:24:22,090
Spider -Man is worth a billion dollars.

326
00:24:22,790 --> 00:24:26,190
You're going to take $375 million for
this company?

327
00:24:26,940 --> 00:24:32,040
One character, and I was wrong, Spider
-Man is worth probably $10 billion, and

328
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:33,040
it stopped everybody.

329
00:24:33,580 --> 00:24:40,200
I think the thing that made it work for
us, that even the investment bankers

330
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:45,280
and the bankers, there were a lot of
young people there, you know, kids out

331
00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:50,660
MBA schools, out of law schools, and
many of these kids loved comics.

332
00:24:51,120 --> 00:24:56,040
And when they hear Spider -Man is worth
a billion,

333
00:24:57,040 --> 00:24:58,040
They got it.

334
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:01,760
Very

335
00:25:01,760 --> 00:25:16,920
few

336
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:20,540
people ever won against Carl Icahn. It's
quite powerful.

337
00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:24,800
But this one, it's like you cannot go to
war without ideology.

338
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:29,180
Soldiers without ideology cannot be a
good soldier.

339
00:25:29,760 --> 00:25:34,600
I think, thank goodness, I had a partner
like Ike.

340
00:25:35,380 --> 00:25:38,340
Not only he's tough, he's just so smart.

341
00:25:39,020 --> 00:25:42,520
How to deal with all these business
issues.

342
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:48,760
And our friendship was so strong that it
wasn't even about

343
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:50,420
just...

344
00:25:52,169 --> 00:25:59,110
The Marvel thing, it's just about the
fact that I think I made

345
00:25:59,110 --> 00:26:04,170
him a believer that this thing is very
important.

346
00:26:04,590 --> 00:26:07,950
I'll never forget the first meeting with
him over X -Men.

347
00:26:08,190 --> 00:26:11,890
He said, what do you want to do? I said,
I want to make a show as of X -Men.

348
00:26:12,750 --> 00:26:13,750
What's X -Men?

349
00:26:14,770 --> 00:26:16,570
And it didn't matter.

350
00:26:16,810 --> 00:26:20,250
He said, you know what, you do your
thing, I do my thing. That's why we were

351
00:26:20,250 --> 00:26:21,250
such amazing.

352
00:26:21,580 --> 00:26:22,580
friends and partners.

353
00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:34,000
No one knew what to make of it when Avi
and Perlmutter

354
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:39,000
finally managed to wrest control. No one
quite knew what was going to come of

355
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:39,879
any of it.

356
00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:44,140
There was at least some sense that
things had settled and a little bit of

357
00:26:44,140 --> 00:26:49,420
that came with that, but a lot of
trepidation in the sense that we don't

358
00:26:49,420 --> 00:26:50,420
what this means.

359
00:26:50,540 --> 00:26:54,120
The last place you would imagine you
would want to work is Marvel. But in a

360
00:26:54,180 --> 00:26:57,140
it's actually quite exciting going into
a place where there's nothing left to

361
00:26:57,140 --> 00:27:01,260
lose. As a creator, you know, as a
writer, I love the idea of going in

362
00:27:01,260 --> 00:27:02,260
anything goes.

363
00:27:02,500 --> 00:27:05,640
Like, if you go into something that's
very successful, it's kind of boring

364
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:07,200
because people are scared to take risks.

365
00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:13,040
Whereas Marvel was at such an absolute
nadir, things were just dreadful that

366
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:14,820
they said, let's just try anything.

367
00:27:15,140 --> 00:27:17,860
And that's the kind of Wild West
atmosphere that I quite enjoy.

368
00:27:18,140 --> 00:27:19,220
We wanted to...

369
00:27:19,790 --> 00:27:25,610
resurrect some of our older, more
tattered characters for future use in

370
00:27:26,050 --> 00:27:32,890
So I talked with Joe Calamari, and Joe
suggested that maybe we should do a

371
00:27:32,890 --> 00:27:35,890
deal with Jimmy Palmiati and Joe
Quesada.

372
00:27:36,130 --> 00:27:39,850
Joe and I would go to the cons with our
own company event. We formed this small

373
00:27:39,850 --> 00:27:43,730
company. We put out a couple of titles
like Ash and Painkiller Jane and 22

374
00:27:43,730 --> 00:27:44,730
Brides.

375
00:27:44,970 --> 00:27:48,750
and we self -published it they weren't
great books but they were fun books and

376
00:27:48,750 --> 00:27:54,730
uh them saying we want to see what you
guys would do with marvel comics if you

377
00:27:54,730 --> 00:27:59,630
had the chance and for joe and i we sat
there and said oh my god they're gonna

378
00:27:59,630 --> 00:28:03,570
let us do anything we want i put them up
in the penthouse which was a little

379
00:28:03,570 --> 00:28:09,410
office on roof level well away from my
comic book creators down on my floor

380
00:28:09,410 --> 00:28:14,230
because there was a certain amount of
resentment that i was giving away

381
00:28:14,979 --> 00:28:21,540
four characters to this new group to
create under the name Marvel Knights a

382
00:28:21,540 --> 00:28:23,600
whole new line of comic books.

383
00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:26,440
Me and Joe were like, we have the whole
penthouse? Again, we even had a

384
00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:29,780
separate, you had to go through a
secretary to get up the stairs to go to

385
00:28:29,780 --> 00:28:34,420
penthouse. And Joe and I, of course, we
put TVs in there, we put a couch, we put

386
00:28:34,420 --> 00:28:37,200
drawing boards, and we worked up there
the whole time.

387
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:39,660
One of the characters we gave them was
Daredevil.

388
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:42,600
Daredevil had kind of faltered a bit.

389
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:49,400
And so Joe and Jimmy went out and hired
Kevin Smith, the director, to

390
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:52,940
write the first eight issues of a new
Daredevil line.

391
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:59,940
The whole key to Marvel Knights was the
right writer on the right character, the

392
00:28:59,940 --> 00:29:05,240
right artist on the right character. But
the bigger issue for us was comics were

393
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:06,760
always perceived as not cool.

394
00:29:07,420 --> 00:29:08,420
Okay.

395
00:29:09,060 --> 00:29:13,400
So you would never go in a bar and a
girl goes, hi, what do you do for a

396
00:29:13,500 --> 00:29:16,360
You'd never say, oh, I make comic books.

397
00:29:16,660 --> 00:29:19,760
Okay, that's, you might as well say, I'm
a puppeteer.

398
00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:23,180
You know, the girl's just going to walk
the other way. You know, it's just not,

399
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:27,720
it wasn't cool. And we said, well, if
we're two cool guys and we're doing this

400
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:31,360
cool job, we have to convince everybody
else it's a cool thing. So bringing in

401
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:34,740
Kevin, we said, okay, well, this is a
film guy who loves comics.

402
00:29:35,420 --> 00:29:39,040
And all of a sudden, Kevin's on talk
shows going, yeah, I'm writing

403
00:29:39,060 --> 00:29:41,040
It's Marvel Night books. It comes out in
September.

404
00:29:41,820 --> 00:29:45,120
So all of a sudden, people who never
even thought of looking at a comic were

405
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:48,200
saying, well, Kevin Smith's writing it.
Let me at least check it out.

406
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:50,780
So our thing was to get it to a broader
audience.

407
00:29:51,060 --> 00:29:54,200
And because of that cachet, we sold a
lot of copies.

408
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:59,300
And that brought Daredevil back to the
forefront where we were able to sell a

409
00:29:59,300 --> 00:30:00,300
Daredevil movie.

410
00:30:00,700 --> 00:30:06,920
Now, I apologize that Ben Affleck didn't
do that great a job, but we did get a

411
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:11,480
movie. That was one of the first kind of
Marvel movies that we got by doing

412
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:16,580
that. Having Kevin there in the launch
of Marvel Knights, having us doing MTV

413
00:30:16,580 --> 00:30:20,600
and all these different shows, I think
was the actual start where Hollywood

414
00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:25,060
started to come in, to make its way into
comics, where all of a sudden, if Kevin

415
00:30:25,060 --> 00:30:27,220
Smith is a filmmaker and he's interested
in this,

416
00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:31,520
maybe they'd be interested in making
more movies, or maybe another filmmaker

417
00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:36,180
wants to write a book, or a guy who's a
screenwriter wants to write a comic. I

418
00:30:36,180 --> 00:30:42,040
remember I was at a party with Spike Lee
and Wesley Snipes, and Wesley Snipes

419
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:45,480
came up to me and said, Jimmy, come
outside, I want to talk to you. And he's

420
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:49,620
like, I want to be the Black Panther.
Can you make that happen for me? So all

421
00:30:49,620 --> 00:30:52,620
a sudden, people in Hollywood want to be
the characters they grew up with.

422
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:55,580
It was an exciting time, because we
thought, well...

423
00:30:56,010 --> 00:31:00,130
you know what, the company's having
whatever issues it's having, yet we're

424
00:31:00,130 --> 00:31:03,490
getting this positive press, we're
making some money, and we're also

425
00:31:03,490 --> 00:31:07,510
guys, you know, actors that want to be
involved and filmmakers that want to be

426
00:31:07,510 --> 00:31:11,690
involved. And at the same time, Avi's
running around putting together deals.

427
00:31:11,690 --> 00:31:15,370
know, we're doing the work on our
comics, and we're doing what we're

428
00:31:15,370 --> 00:31:19,010
do is bring attention to the comics, and
Avi's out there able to make deals

429
00:31:19,010 --> 00:31:22,270
based on the fact that people are
getting more attention now to these

430
00:31:22,270 --> 00:31:24,170
characters, and eventually this is the
thing.

431
00:31:24,830 --> 00:31:28,870
that would actually take Marvel and put
it in a great place, in a powerful

432
00:31:28,870 --> 00:31:31,790
place, and in a place it deserved to be.

433
00:31:32,950 --> 00:31:39,310
My biggest issue at the time was that if
you want to unleash the value, we have

434
00:31:39,310 --> 00:31:40,350
to go to Hollywood.

435
00:31:44,390 --> 00:31:46,370
The X -Men showed it fantastic.

436
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:51,760
And one of the things he did so great
was the household grating, which cannot

437
00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:53,060
come just from the kids.

438
00:31:53,380 --> 00:31:59,100
So it was very clear that you had
teenagers and students watching the

439
00:31:59,100 --> 00:32:03,900
was actually at 11, 11 .30 in the
morning, which is perfect for teenagers.

440
00:32:04,460 --> 00:32:08,720
And it took a lot of convincing to get
Fox to make the movie.

441
00:32:10,140 --> 00:32:14,220
I started working with Bryan Singer as
his assistant.

442
00:32:14,750 --> 00:32:19,850
So it was right before Usual Suspects
came out. And Brian wasn't, he didn't

443
00:32:19,850 --> 00:32:22,370
up a comic book fan. He was a big
science fiction fan.

444
00:32:22,630 --> 00:32:28,150
He had the concept of what most people
had about comic books, was that it was

445
00:32:28,150 --> 00:32:32,510
guys running around in their underwear
and not, there was no deeper themes.

446
00:32:33,350 --> 00:32:38,250
So I said, no, no, no, it's not like
that. It's Malcolm X and Martin Luther

447
00:32:38,250 --> 00:32:40,510
and the next wave in human evolution.

448
00:32:41,210 --> 00:32:43,450
And what if sometime next week...

449
00:32:44,030 --> 00:32:49,870
There's a story on the news that there's
a new level of humanity on the planet.

450
00:32:50,790 --> 00:32:55,370
Would we say, oh my God, our children
are going to be stronger and better.

451
00:32:55,450 --> 00:32:59,870
They're going to deal with global
warming and nuclear proliferation and

452
00:32:59,870 --> 00:33:00,829
better planet.

453
00:33:00,830 --> 00:33:05,050
Or would we react with fear in that
Darwinian sense?

454
00:33:05,350 --> 00:33:07,870
And he's like, wow, okay, I like that.

455
00:33:08,530 --> 00:33:11,830
Marvel at that time, even though they
had sold the rights to...

456
00:33:12,410 --> 00:33:17,530
for X -Men to Fox, they still had
approval rights over anything that would

457
00:33:17,530 --> 00:33:23,430
violate the integrity or damage their
copyright on the character.

458
00:33:23,650 --> 00:33:26,850
So we needed to get the approval of
Marvel in the direction we were going to

459
00:33:27,070 --> 00:33:34,030
So went over to Marvel and met with Avi
Arad and Stan Lee. And for a

460
00:33:34,030 --> 00:33:39,210
kid who grew up, who has 30 ,000 comic
books, who waited for comic book day, he

461
00:33:39,210 --> 00:33:40,330
got to meet the Pope.

462
00:33:40,890 --> 00:33:43,970
You know, and Stan Lee, to any comic
book fan, is the Pope.

463
00:33:44,830 --> 00:33:49,170
And we basically told him what we wanted
to do, which was really go back away

464
00:33:49,170 --> 00:33:54,810
from what X -Men was doing in the comics
with Age of Apocalypse and really

465
00:33:54,810 --> 00:33:58,810
rooted in that burned Claremont. It's a
school era.

466
00:33:59,230 --> 00:34:04,330
So July of 96, Brian and I wrote the
treatment together.

467
00:34:05,210 --> 00:34:06,210
And then...

468
00:34:06,570 --> 00:34:11,469
Through four long and hard years, we
went through development, production,

469
00:34:11,469 --> 00:34:13,530
release in July of 2000.

470
00:34:38,170 --> 00:34:40,090
It was spectacular.

471
00:34:41,170 --> 00:34:47,050
Quesada and Bill Jemas, who had come
from another arm of trading card

472
00:34:47,050 --> 00:34:50,530
or whatever, we didn't know what to make
of that alchemy.

473
00:34:51,050 --> 00:34:53,790
But, oh, my God, they set the comics on
fire.

474
00:34:54,030 --> 00:34:57,950
Well, Bill James actually had a very,
very interesting idea whenever he

475
00:34:57,950 --> 00:35:01,250
became president of Marvel, which was to
start the books over again from

476
00:35:01,250 --> 00:35:04,810
scratch. And it was very, very clever,
actually, because there had been 50

477
00:35:04,810 --> 00:35:08,590
of continuity that made it almost
impossible to read the books, because to

478
00:35:08,590 --> 00:35:12,590
understand this issue of Spider -Man,
you had to have read this issue of X

479
00:35:12,590 --> 00:35:15,650
four and a half years ago and
everything. It was just almost

480
00:35:15,650 --> 00:35:19,250
regular readers to just come in. It was
starting to appeal to a very niche

481
00:35:19,250 --> 00:35:20,250
audience.

482
00:35:20,490 --> 00:35:24,530
the ultimate line, which rather than
being written like a soap opera where

483
00:35:24,530 --> 00:35:30,610
issue related to the past issue, they
were written six -issue story arcs. So

484
00:35:30,610 --> 00:35:35,570
would go to a writer and ask them to
write ultimate Spider -Man or ultimate X

485
00:35:35,570 --> 00:35:38,990
-Men as if they were writing a movie as
opposed to if they were writing a comic

486
00:35:38,990 --> 00:35:43,250
book. We all thought it was an
incredibly stupid idea because we were

487
00:35:43,250 --> 00:35:48,290
to what had come before, and we were all
of the feeling of, well, how do you...

488
00:35:48,710 --> 00:35:51,050
How do you do it better than Stan Lee
and Steve Ditko?

489
00:35:51,490 --> 00:35:53,310
Well, you don't do it better. You do it
differently.

490
00:35:53,570 --> 00:35:57,390
You do it for a new time. You do it for
a new audience.

491
00:35:57,810 --> 00:36:02,390
Fortunately, there were a handful of
writers, most notably Brian Bendis and

492
00:36:02,390 --> 00:36:09,390
Millar, and Joe Quesada, who was running
an imprint called Marvel Knights, who

493
00:36:09,390 --> 00:36:14,930
may not have quite believed that was
going to work, but liked me enough

494
00:36:14,930 --> 00:36:16,590
personally to hope.

495
00:36:17,130 --> 00:36:20,710
These three creators set the tone.

496
00:36:21,490 --> 00:36:22,488
for Marvel.

497
00:36:22,490 --> 00:36:26,250
Joe Quesada phoned me up and he said to
me, Mark, the lunatics are now running

498
00:36:26,250 --> 00:36:26,988
the asylum.

499
00:36:26,990 --> 00:36:30,090
Would you like to come and join us?
Because he'd just been put in charge of

500
00:36:30,090 --> 00:36:33,270
Marvel. And I thought, how can I refuse
an offer like that? And I actually took

501
00:36:33,270 --> 00:36:37,750
a pay cut to go and work at Marvel. I
took a 30 % pay cut to go and work at

502
00:36:37,750 --> 00:36:41,470
Marvel because I just thought, this
looks quite exciting. This is like going

503
00:36:41,470 --> 00:36:44,650
into Iraq after the place has been
bombed or something.

504
00:36:45,890 --> 00:36:46,890
It's nuts.

505
00:36:46,930 --> 00:36:50,030
Or being an oligarch rising up in
Russia.

506
00:36:51,050 --> 00:36:52,930
you know, after the fall of the KGB.

507
00:36:53,470 --> 00:36:57,130
And they had me lined up to do Ultimate
X -Men, which was a reboot of the X -Men

508
00:36:57,130 --> 00:37:00,910
franchise. And I had a great time on
that. I was very, very lucky. It started

509
00:37:00,910 --> 00:37:03,710
number one, it launched at number one
and everything. And that gave me a

510
00:37:03,710 --> 00:37:05,110
amount of credibility at Marvel.

511
00:37:05,370 --> 00:37:10,470
So, like, it was a really exciting time.
And the five years that followed, I

512
00:37:10,470 --> 00:37:13,870
think, is probably the most creatively
interesting at Marvel, I would say,

513
00:37:13,950 --> 00:37:14,950
since...

514
00:37:16,410 --> 00:37:20,890
Maybe the 80s, but even possibly the
60s, whenever everything started.

515
00:37:21,230 --> 00:37:26,910
The first Gemma's years, the sales in
the books exploded, the attention the

516
00:37:26,910 --> 00:37:31,390
books received from the outside media
exploded, and comics were back on the

517
00:37:31,490 --> 00:37:35,770
and people were very excited. You're
watching what Grant's doing with X -Men,

518
00:37:35,910 --> 00:37:38,450
what Brian is doing with the Ultimate
Spider -Man line.

519
00:37:38,930 --> 00:37:41,610
These are must -read comics.

520
00:37:41,910 --> 00:37:42,970
Marvel's all about...

521
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:47,580
If your book sells well, then you can do
anything you like, which is lovely.

522
00:37:47,820 --> 00:37:51,220
It's a great position to be in. So
because my first book had sold so well,

523
00:37:51,220 --> 00:37:52,220
said, what do you want to do next?

524
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:55,120
And I said, I'd love to revamp the
Avengers franchise.

525
00:37:55,620 --> 00:37:58,660
And they said to me, people don't like
the Avengers, and they showed me the

526
00:37:58,660 --> 00:38:02,500
sales figures. I wanted to go in and
make these characters work for the 21st

527
00:38:02,500 --> 00:38:06,540
century. So I wrote an outline for it,
and the guys really liked it. And Bill

528
00:38:06,540 --> 00:38:08,560
said, look, you've made us money on X
-Men.

529
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:12,880
You know, let's see what you can do, you
know. And Joe became very, very excited

530
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:14,980
about it. Joe became a real supporter of
it too.

531
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:17,580
And the guys, they just gave me carte
blanche.

532
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:21,640
Gemma, again, had this notion of, damn
the torpedoes.

533
00:38:22,500 --> 00:38:25,680
Don't tell us what to do. Let's do
things in opposition.

534
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:30,900
Let's push the boundaries. Let's find
new ways of interpreting old rules.

535
00:38:31,260 --> 00:38:37,120
Let's challenge all the thinking that
went before this. And Joe was very much

536
00:38:37,120 --> 00:38:38,860
that same mindset. They were a good
team.

537
00:38:39,260 --> 00:38:45,820
And that momentum, that energy, really
created a new Marvel

538
00:38:45,820 --> 00:38:48,720
renaissance in the early 2000s.

539
00:38:55,370 --> 00:38:59,350
When a big movie will come out, say Iron
Man, people are like, I want to read

540
00:38:59,350 --> 00:39:00,530
Iron Man, number one.

541
00:39:00,910 --> 00:39:05,970
Reading Iron Man, number one, for a
person who just saw the Iron Man movie

542
00:39:06,690 --> 00:39:11,470
Not the same thing. It was in Vietnam.
There were communists. So the Ultimate

543
00:39:11,470 --> 00:39:16,810
Universe and the whole line of books,
it's sort of a way to bring people that

544
00:39:16,810 --> 00:39:23,650
are of this time period into Marvel
Comics and into these characters in a

545
00:39:23,650 --> 00:39:28,350
that they can relate to as opposed to
having to go back and dig through all

546
00:39:28,350 --> 00:39:29,550
continuity in history.

547
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:35,020
So with the Ultimate books, one thing
that you can kind of compare it to is

548
00:39:35,020 --> 00:39:40,380
way the Marvel movies are nowadays, like
the first movies where they're origin

549
00:39:40,380 --> 00:39:41,380
stories.

550
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:47,840
You're going to see stories that are
somewhat familiar to the actual original

551
00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:50,700
story, but they've been updated, they've
changed.

552
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:56,420
An X -Men movie, the very first X -Men
movie, was like the stepping stones for

553
00:39:56,420 --> 00:40:00,480
all comic book movies, not just Marvel
movies. X -Men was like, these

554
00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:04,580
can be real, this world can feel real,
and this is how we're going to do it.

555
00:40:04,900 --> 00:40:08,280
X -Men was, I think, the first movie
for...

556
00:40:08,910 --> 00:40:13,310
my generation, our generation, that
younger generation at the time, which

557
00:40:13,310 --> 00:40:15,270
took comic books seriously.

558
00:40:15,830 --> 00:40:20,430
X -Men was the first step towards being
able to do Spider -Man, being able to do

559
00:40:20,430 --> 00:40:24,630
Captain America, being able to do Iron
Man. That was the seed from which the

560
00:40:24,630 --> 00:40:30,050
whole Marvel movie universe sprung.
Well, I think the first X -Men showed

561
00:40:30,050 --> 00:40:35,470
things. One, you could make these movies
cheap with almost nobodies or very,

562
00:40:35,550 --> 00:40:36,550
very...

563
00:40:37,180 --> 00:40:39,260
low -voltage stars in them.

564
00:40:39,520 --> 00:40:42,900
Hugh Jackman was not the most well
-known guy when that movie came out.

565
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:46,640
You know, Halle Berry as Storm was not
the most well -known actress. Certainly

566
00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:50,540
hadn't been an Oscar -winning actress at
that point. And secondly, you could

567
00:40:50,540 --> 00:40:53,540
make them that they appeal to all genres
and demographics.

568
00:40:53,980 --> 00:40:56,580
Yet those movies were able to make
enough.

569
00:40:56,840 --> 00:41:00,260
They were able to make enough, they were
able to capture the attention of the

570
00:41:00,260 --> 00:41:05,860
public, and they were able to inject
what had been a relatively minor comic

571
00:41:05,860 --> 00:41:11,270
series. in the general landscape comic
book fans knew who x -men was but the

572
00:41:11,270 --> 00:41:15,290
general public was not very familiar
with the x -men you know it was

573
00:41:15,290 --> 00:41:22,090
obby had told me that um uh the success
and this was the week

574
00:41:22,090 --> 00:41:27,270
before we're supposed to open and he
said uh if x -men doesn't do well sony's

575
00:41:27,270 --> 00:41:32,330
not gonna green light spider -man
fortunately we did you know uh amazing

576
00:41:32,330 --> 00:41:37,200
that weekend and that monday There's a
big announcement in daily variety of

577
00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:39,360
Spider -Man getting a screen light.

578
00:41:41,080 --> 00:41:42,540
We see Spider -Man.

579
00:41:43,920 --> 00:41:45,380
Oh, my God, they got it.

580
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:52,500
This was the first time anyone had done
a Marvel property

581
00:41:52,500 --> 00:41:56,780
on television or the movies where they
weren't embarrassed by the source

582
00:41:56,780 --> 00:42:02,110
material. In fact, they embraced the
source material, and they made... What

583
00:42:02,110 --> 00:42:03,630
in the comics that we love worked.

584
00:42:03,850 --> 00:42:04,850
Were there changes?

585
00:42:04,950 --> 00:42:08,010
Yeah, there's always going to be changes
when you move anything from one medium

586
00:42:08,010 --> 00:42:08,868
to another.

587
00:42:08,870 --> 00:42:09,870
You have to.

588
00:42:10,010 --> 00:42:14,510
But, oh my God, they got it right.
That's Uncle Ben. That's the speech.

589
00:42:14,510 --> 00:42:15,850
great power comes great responsibility.

590
00:42:16,270 --> 00:42:17,790
He's sewing his own costume.

591
00:42:18,070 --> 00:42:19,350
He's fighting a wrestler.

592
00:42:20,590 --> 00:42:24,090
There's the burglar that he doesn't stop
to save his uncle.

593
00:42:24,590 --> 00:42:28,450
All the beats were there. All the magic
moments were there. We all walked out of

594
00:42:28,450 --> 00:42:34,330
it knowing if this is the approach
they're going to take, then this is

595
00:42:34,330 --> 00:42:40,190
work. And we all held our breath that
weekend because if that movie had

596
00:42:40,610 --> 00:42:44,550
that would be it. There'd be no more
superhero movies.

597
00:42:44,770 --> 00:42:50,450
And that was the turning point. The
Spider -Man movie, being as good as it

598
00:42:50,810 --> 00:42:53,270
that opened the door for everything.

599
00:42:54,030 --> 00:42:57,850
Spider -Man makes more than $800 million
in the world, just in theaters.

600
00:42:58,210 --> 00:42:59,550
Hollywood receives the signal.

601
00:43:00,070 --> 00:43:01,250
Superheroes attract the crowds.

602
00:43:01,590 --> 00:43:04,230
And thanks to the progress of digital
effects, everything becomes possible.

603
00:43:04,910 --> 00:43:09,550
Between 2002 and 2007, five studios
released about 15 films adapted from

604
00:43:09,550 --> 00:43:14,470
licenses. But the low royalties reverted
on the profits push Arad and Perlmutter

605
00:43:14,470 --> 00:43:15,570
to change their strategy.

606
00:43:15,990 --> 00:43:20,710
Rather than letting Hollywood adapt its
catalog, Marvel takes absolute control

607
00:43:20,710 --> 00:43:21,710
over the films.

608
00:43:32,859 --> 00:43:37,320
The Spider -Man movies made what? The
first two made $1 .6 billion. Marvel

609
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:40,740
made $75 million on that deal. So
that's...

610
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:44,980
That wasn't acceptable to Paul Mulder.
That wasn't acceptable to Rod and

611
00:43:44,980 --> 00:43:49,880
especially Maisel. So they figured out a
way to get this line of credit so they

612
00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:54,060
can make their own movies out of their
own characters on their own terms, which

613
00:43:54,060 --> 00:43:55,800
is what everybody in Hollywood chases
these days.

614
00:43:56,180 --> 00:44:02,460
I felt very strongly that we needed to
start with

615
00:44:02,460 --> 00:44:03,720
familiarity.

616
00:44:05,100 --> 00:44:08,860
And Hulk was in Universal.

617
00:44:10,120 --> 00:44:15,340
And it was an opportunity to start over.

618
00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:22,000
And that's how I went after Louis
Leterrier, and what it took to get him,

619
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:23,240
finally got him.

620
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:26,360
And he'll always say, and then you left
me.

621
00:44:39,370 --> 00:44:44,630
but at the height of 580 million, to
make two films, to make Iron Man and

622
00:44:44,650 --> 00:44:48,690
to reboot Hulk, without making an origin
story, and to respect Anglim's film,

623
00:44:48,690 --> 00:44:55,570
but to make something different, while
reintegrating Hulk inside the

624
00:44:55,570 --> 00:45:01,130
Marvel universe, and then in the logical
sequence of what we wanted to do, and

625
00:45:01,130 --> 00:45:06,450
Avi and Kevin, that is to say, create
the Avengers, in fact. And that, from

626
00:45:06,450 --> 00:45:07,450
start, we know.

627
00:45:07,980 --> 00:45:09,240
Was it a strategy? Yes.

628
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:13,760
Was it a strategy that worked? Yes. The
first Iron Man movie has a lot more

629
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:17,360
jokes than it has him in the outfit
because they're playing for something.

630
00:45:17,540 --> 00:45:20,940
They're playing for type. They're
playing with that character, that

631
00:45:20,940 --> 00:45:24,360
improbability that Downey has that made
it seem so accessible.

632
00:45:24,740 --> 00:45:26,800
That was a lot of what led to that
success.

633
00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:30,840
Were they smart with a second -tier
character? Of course. Were they really

634
00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:33,740
insofar as by that secret ending, they
knew that they were kind of planning

635
00:45:33,740 --> 00:45:35,040
something bigger? Yeah.

636
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:37,060
Was it a Stalinist five -year?

637
00:45:37,530 --> 00:45:38,408
10 -year plan?

638
00:45:38,410 --> 00:45:44,470
I don't know. Arad always had a vision
that the future of Marvel laid in

639
00:45:44,710 --> 00:45:50,590
okay? So basically, there was a falling
out, I think, between Palmiter and Arad.

640
00:45:51,570 --> 00:45:54,790
David Mizell was becoming more of the
favorite son.

641
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:59,220
It's a palm order than a rod. A rod fell
shortchanged. So when he set up the

642
00:45:59,220 --> 00:46:02,180
line of credit for Marvel, he said, you
know what? I'm not going to deal with

643
00:46:02,180 --> 00:46:02,859
this anymore.

644
00:46:02,860 --> 00:46:06,940
I'm not the favorite son anymore. So I'm
going to take $59 million, cash out my

645
00:46:06,940 --> 00:46:10,460
options, and leave the company. And
that's exactly what he did. There were a

646
00:46:10,460 --> 00:46:16,700
of things I wanted to do that would have
been a conflict under Marvel.

647
00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:24,340
And there was a time in my life, in 06,
where I felt it's all in

648
00:46:24,340 --> 00:46:25,340
place.

649
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:32,080
And I think I was tired enough to do the
right thing, to say,

650
00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:38,800
Sophie, got to move on, or got to move
back.

651
00:46:44,300 --> 00:46:46,700
The good news is Marvel was saved.

652
00:46:47,080 --> 00:46:51,800
The bad news is we've been saved by Dr.
Doom, and he controls.

653
00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:58,980
Now, Ike, if you meet him, is a very
short guy who dresses very snappy in a

654
00:46:58,980 --> 00:47:00,960
slick little suit.

655
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:04,440
And he came around and was introduced to
everybody.

656
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:08,640
And then people started disappearing.

657
00:47:08,980 --> 00:47:10,840
He did away with the free coffee.

658
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:13,280
He canceled the Christmas party.

659
00:47:13,520 --> 00:47:17,760
He started haranguing people for
Xeroxing on only one side of the paper.

660
00:47:18,540 --> 00:47:19,760
He's a very...

661
00:47:20,540 --> 00:47:22,020
Tight with a nickel kind of guy.

662
00:47:22,240 --> 00:47:23,240
True story.

663
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:29,420
He would go to the halls, and he would
look at people's offices, and he would

664
00:47:29,420 --> 00:47:35,680
look for paperclips on the floor, and he
would pick them up and hand them back

665
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:39,080
to you and insist that you not waste his
money this way.

666
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:45,600
He would literally go around looking for
paperclips on the floor to reuse.

667
00:47:46,330 --> 00:47:50,590
This is the level of respect that the
editors felt they were getting. That's

668
00:47:50,590 --> 00:47:51,590
absurd.

669
00:47:52,170 --> 00:47:55,330
Talk about feeling micromanaged.

670
00:47:55,710 --> 00:48:02,570
I think have just one photograph of him
ever. If you Google Ike, you will find

671
00:48:02,570 --> 00:48:06,450
this one photo that I think was taken in
1989 or something like that. That's an

672
00:48:06,450 --> 00:48:07,450
incredible feat.

673
00:48:16,030 --> 00:48:20,230
He was in the 10th row, eating popcorn.

674
00:48:20,630 --> 00:48:25,770
Kevin Broussard, who was the producer,
arrived and said, look, it's Ike.

675
00:48:26,650 --> 00:48:27,650
There are legends.

676
00:48:27,850 --> 00:48:29,670
Inside Marvel, there are legends.

677
00:48:30,010 --> 00:48:33,050
Ike always wears a gun on him. Always.

678
00:48:33,610 --> 00:48:35,710
Charged. I don't know why.

679
00:48:39,830 --> 00:48:41,930
Ike Parlementer remains the only master
on board.

680
00:48:42,470 --> 00:48:46,680
Thanks to Iron Man's worldwide triumph,
Marvel Studios is definitely committed

681
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:47,680
to Hollywood.

682
00:48:48,040 --> 00:48:52,000
Between 2002 and 2008, the group's
turnover has almost tripled.

683
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:56,880
It now rests at 80 % on the sale of
derivative products and on the cinema.

684
00:48:57,600 --> 00:49:01,120
In the summer of 2009, Perlmutter
negotiated in the greatest secret the

685
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:04,060
of Marvel by Disney for more than 4
billion dollars.

686
00:49:04,520 --> 00:49:06,620
The announcement was officialized on
August 31.

687
00:49:07,020 --> 00:49:11,240
Perlmutter keeps his position as CEO and
names Kevin Feige as the head of Marvel

688
00:49:11,240 --> 00:49:14,740
Studios. which pulverized the box office
in 2012 with Avengers.

689
00:49:15,380 --> 00:49:19,620
Under Disney and Perlmutter, Marvel
accelerates its mutation into a

690
00:49:19,620 --> 00:49:22,440
empire, controlling its projects more
closely.

691
00:49:25,840 --> 00:49:30,960
It was not

692
00:49:30,960 --> 00:49:36,300
a good feeling at first.

693
00:49:37,460 --> 00:49:41,460
Not that the folks at Disney aren't fine
people. You're going to get me fired.

694
00:49:42,090 --> 00:49:48,250
But that a sense of a corporate takeover
like that always leaves everybody a

695
00:49:48,250 --> 00:49:52,310
little nervous. What happens to the
people who we are working with?

696
00:49:52,770 --> 00:49:56,850
Is there, you know, are there going to
be redundancies in the divisions where

697
00:49:56,850 --> 00:50:00,230
they're going to want to fire people
that we like? Are they still interested

698
00:50:00,230 --> 00:50:03,930
publishing comics? We don't know. We
were able to break what their secret

699
00:50:03,930 --> 00:50:09,670
announcement was, what their secret
movie was for 2014, the Secret Marvel

700
00:50:10,370 --> 00:50:11,990
and it was Guardians of the Galaxy.

701
00:50:12,450 --> 00:50:16,590
So we leaked that out before the
mainstream press. So the mainstream

702
00:50:16,590 --> 00:50:20,870
Hollywood Reporter, Variety, gave us the
credit for breaking that story.

703
00:50:21,210 --> 00:50:25,570
Marvel didn't like that. They didn't
like that this quote -unquote fanboy

704
00:50:25,570 --> 00:50:30,430
broke the news, you know, of their
exclusive before Comic -Con. They were

705
00:50:30,430 --> 00:50:33,930
furious. They wanted to know who our
sources were. They made all sorts of,

706
00:50:33,930 --> 00:50:34,930
made empty threats.

707
00:50:35,450 --> 00:50:40,450
You know, that, you know, if you tell us
what your sources are, we won't

708
00:50:40,450 --> 00:50:43,690
prosecute you. We won't do anything to
you. We won't harm you, basically.

709
00:50:43,850 --> 00:50:47,030
Because not only did we break the
gardens of God, they tried to enforce

710
00:50:47,030 --> 00:50:48,030
tried to bully us.

711
00:50:48,310 --> 00:50:51,770
And then it blew up in their faces
because it was not public. It was

712
00:50:51,770 --> 00:50:56,490
was beautiful. Since then, they've taken
a very, very antagonistic stance with

713
00:50:56,490 --> 00:51:02,050
us. Now, for better or worse, Marvel is
owned by Disney. It's a multinational

714
00:51:02,050 --> 00:51:03,050
corporation.

715
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:11,220
every statement, every interview, every,
you know, everything that Joe Quesada

716
00:51:11,220 --> 00:51:16,680
and editor Axel Alonso and any of these
people do, you know, they have to be

717
00:51:16,680 --> 00:51:22,780
aware that they've got big mouth, you
know, looking at them. They don't want

718
00:51:22,780 --> 00:51:25,100
step over any sort of lines.

719
00:51:27,130 --> 00:51:31,010
kind of almost thinking about closing
his animation division in the 80s to

720
00:51:31,010 --> 00:51:35,490
owning ABC television, to owning vast
resources, to having theme parks all

721
00:51:35,490 --> 00:51:37,270
the world, to buying Pixar.

722
00:51:37,610 --> 00:51:41,210
Then you have the acquisition of Marvel.
And more recently, you've had the

723
00:51:41,210 --> 00:51:46,770
acquisition of Lucasfilms. So Disney is
being a very smart corporate entity.

724
00:51:46,930 --> 00:51:48,530
They're just buying the best.

725
00:51:48,870 --> 00:51:50,930
And they don't have to do half the work.

726
00:51:51,340 --> 00:51:55,560
Because when you buy Pixar, you've got
John Lasseter and his team. When you buy

727
00:51:55,560 --> 00:51:59,800
Marvel, you've got a long history, as
this store and many of them around the

728
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:04,580
world show, of already created
characters with storyboards and

729
00:52:04,580 --> 00:52:07,380
identities and lovers and backstories
and villains.

730
00:52:07,800 --> 00:52:11,860
You're buying Lucasfilms? Well, you
know, you already get Han Solo in the

731
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:15,380
Actually, you get Indiana Jones as well.
Disney's, you know, global.

732
00:52:16,720 --> 00:52:18,480
And with that global comes power.

733
00:52:18,700 --> 00:52:22,160
And I think the idea that you can launch
a film like The Avengers all over the

734
00:52:22,160 --> 00:52:23,160
world at once.

735
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:28,120
I like the idea that in India, The
Avengers is playing and kids want Spider

736
00:52:28,120 --> 00:52:30,980
toys and all this kind of stuff. You
know, so I try to look at it as a very

737
00:52:30,980 --> 00:52:31,980
positive thing.

738
00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:37,100
Where I was around when they were in
Chapter 11, I'm thinking, oh, what's the

739
00:52:37,100 --> 00:52:38,680
chances that that's going to happen
again?

740
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:40,740
You know, probably slim to none.

741
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:45,900
So with this kind of security there, I
think now a lot of experimentation can

742
00:52:45,900 --> 00:52:50,480
come, and I have a real positive outlook
on how it's going to really affect.

743
00:52:51,080 --> 00:52:53,060
It's the best of all possible worlds.

744
00:52:53,780 --> 00:52:59,300
There is no edict that comes down that
says, okay, Avengers made a gajillion

745
00:52:59,300 --> 00:53:02,620
dollars. Now we want the comic to be
exactly that.

746
00:53:03,799 --> 00:53:06,900
Disney's great about that. Marvel's
great about that. They understand that

747
00:53:06,900 --> 00:53:10,620
strength is not in what we're publishing
now. The strength is what we're going

748
00:53:10,620 --> 00:53:13,200
to be publishing six months from now or
12 months from now as well.

749
00:53:13,400 --> 00:53:17,760
In other words, you have to let creative
do its magic.

750
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:23,880
And I've got to say, and I'm not just
saying this to keep my job, so far so

751
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:24,880
good.

752
00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:45,280
In this, we keep our most expensive
comic books in this vault.

753
00:53:46,780 --> 00:53:51,120
Most showrooms you'd go into the world
of comic books, there aren't even any

754
00:53:51,120 --> 00:53:53,960
other showrooms. But if you were to go
in a showroom somewhere else in the

755
00:53:53,960 --> 00:53:59,060
world, maybe they would have a Batman
number one, a Superman number one, maybe

756
00:53:59,060 --> 00:54:00,400
one action number one.

757
00:54:00,960 --> 00:54:05,900
My company, we have two copies.

758
00:54:09,550 --> 00:54:12,910
I'm holding in my hands over a million
dollars worth of comic books.

759
00:54:18,070 --> 00:54:22,870
Comic books in the modern format started
in the early 1930s. And by the modern

760
00:54:22,870 --> 00:54:27,030
format, I mean the staple -bound comic
as we know today.

761
00:54:27,430 --> 00:54:34,310
They were actually created as a way to
reprint material that had appeared in

762
00:54:34,310 --> 00:54:35,650
newspaper comic strips.

763
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:41,700
and didn't actually feature original
characters at the very start.

764
00:54:42,020 --> 00:54:48,520
And the golden age of comics, as we know
it, was started in June 1938 with

765
00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:51,920
Action Comics number one, the first
appearance of Superman.

766
00:54:52,520 --> 00:54:57,840
And then a year later, he got his own
series, Superman number one.

767
00:54:58,140 --> 00:55:01,880
And the reason Superman number one is so
important is...

768
00:55:02,190 --> 00:55:06,890
The entire comic was only devoted to
Superman. There were no other

769
00:55:07,030 --> 00:55:13,970
And it was considered risky because
Superman wasn't a character from the

770
00:55:14,090 --> 00:55:16,630
He was created strictly for comic books.

771
00:55:17,030 --> 00:55:23,110
And when that was a huge hit, that
showed publishers that it could be

772
00:55:23,110 --> 00:55:27,970
to create new characters only for comic
books and that those could be top

773
00:55:27,970 --> 00:55:29,650
sellers. That began.

774
00:55:30,410 --> 00:55:33,670
the comic book renaissance that exists
to this day.

775
00:55:34,110 --> 00:55:40,410
That catapulted DC Comics into being the
forefront, the main player.

776
00:55:40,950 --> 00:55:46,810
Marvel was sort of the second place
company at that point. During the 1940s,

777
00:55:46,810 --> 00:55:53,570
1950s, they were doing knockoff comics.
If Westerns were big, Marvel would do a

778
00:55:53,570 --> 00:55:57,370
bunch of Westerns. If romance comics
were suddenly big, they'd do nothing but

779
00:55:57,370 --> 00:55:58,348
romance comics.

780
00:55:58,350 --> 00:55:59,630
They didn't have a vision.

781
00:56:00,300 --> 00:56:06,140
They just had an imperative to imitate
what other people did. They also had

782
00:56:06,140 --> 00:56:12,020
Captain America, Human Torch, Sub
-Mariner, a few superheroes, but they

783
00:56:12,020 --> 00:56:16,680
have the outreach. Those characters were
not perceived as popular as Superman

784
00:56:16,680 --> 00:56:17,359
and Batman.

785
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:21,580
And so DC held the torch until about...

786
00:56:21,900 --> 00:56:23,280
1960, 1961.

787
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:28,020
So the Golden Age basically means the
World War II era.

788
00:56:28,380 --> 00:56:34,280
As far as their value, at the beginning,
the answer was zero. They were

789
00:56:34,280 --> 00:56:35,780
considered disposable entertainment.

790
00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:38,300
Most of them got thrown away.

791
00:56:38,700 --> 00:56:43,760
And also during World War II, there were
always these patriotic paper drives

792
00:56:43,760 --> 00:56:48,540
where... that encouraged everyone to
bring in old paper to be recycled to

793
00:56:48,540 --> 00:56:50,720
the troops fighting the war.

794
00:56:51,100 --> 00:56:57,080
And so what did all mothers and fathers
think was the worst junk to get rid of?

795
00:56:57,240 --> 00:56:59,300
Comic books were high on their list.

796
00:56:59,540 --> 00:57:05,920
So it's not a matter of 99 % having been
thrown away. It's actually more than 99

797
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:09,040
% that were thrown away.

798
00:57:09,630 --> 00:57:14,130
The concept of teenagers having their
own lives, having their own interests,

799
00:57:14,430 --> 00:57:21,090
this was not a conceit of the 1930s and
1940s. Kids just became grown -ups.

800
00:57:22,370 --> 00:57:29,270
By the time you hit the 1960s, older
kids, teenagers, they are more

801
00:57:29,270 --> 00:57:32,570
than they've ever been in American
society with this generation.

802
00:57:32,830 --> 00:57:35,970
And they're looking for more
entertainment. And they don't want just

803
00:57:35,970 --> 00:57:38,510
stuff like Superman and Batman was
perceived as.

804
00:57:39,370 --> 00:57:44,390
rightfully so, as written specifically
for either eight -year -olds or really

805
00:57:44,390 --> 00:57:45,390
stupid adults.

806
00:57:45,630 --> 00:57:50,930
What happened during the 1960s, during
what we call the Silver Age of comics,

807
00:57:50,930 --> 00:57:57,530
that DC was still publishing
successfully Superman, Batman, comics

808
00:57:57,590 --> 00:58:03,210
but their momentum was slowing down very
quickly because they were still

809
00:58:03,210 --> 00:58:06,530
publishing the same kinds of stories
that they'd been publishing since the

810
00:58:06,530 --> 00:58:09,980
1940s. And America was growing up.
America was changing.

811
00:58:10,460 --> 00:58:11,760
Kids were changing.

812
00:58:12,420 --> 00:58:18,920
1961, Stan Lee, who had been the editor
-in -chief at Marvel forever, he started

813
00:58:18,920 --> 00:58:23,220
at 17 when he was a kid there during the
war years.

814
00:58:23,460 --> 00:58:28,120
So Stan got together with Jack Kirby,
and they created the Fantastic Four.

815
00:58:28,660 --> 00:58:34,520
And I cannot overstate what a benchmark
that was.

816
00:58:35,080 --> 00:58:38,760
in comics publishing, because what Stan
and Jack brought to the table with

817
00:58:38,760 --> 00:58:41,900
Fantastic Four was characters that had
more depth.

818
00:58:42,200 --> 00:58:47,500
Suddenly, we had characters who didn't
necessarily like their powers, who

819
00:58:47,500 --> 00:58:51,520
perceive themselves as superheroes, who
thought of themselves as monsters or

820
00:58:51,520 --> 00:58:55,080
freaks, and in doing so, kicked off the
Marvel age of comics.

821
00:58:55,740 --> 00:59:02,300
The success of Fantastic Four begat
Spider -Man, begat Thor, Hulk, Iron Man.

822
00:59:02,840 --> 00:59:08,220
Captain America becomes revived and
instilled in the 1960s. What Stan and

823
00:59:08,220 --> 00:59:14,740
did, what Marvel did, was they gave this
new audience of teenagers something

824
00:59:14,740 --> 00:59:15,860
they could relate to.

825
00:59:16,080 --> 00:59:20,920
Suddenly these characters had problems
and conflicts that they could

826
00:59:22,100 --> 00:59:27,360
Superman's biggest problem was, I need
Lois Lane to stop trying to figure out

827
00:59:27,360 --> 00:59:31,980
that I'm Clark Kent. This is not a
problem that anyone of any age can

828
00:59:32,970 --> 00:59:39,150
But Spider -Man having to choose between
fighting Dr. Octopus or getting Aunt

829
00:59:39,150 --> 00:59:44,690
May's medicine back to her at home
before she has a heart attack, that's a

830
00:59:44,690 --> 00:59:48,710
problem that everybody can understand
because everybody has a relative in

831
00:59:48,710 --> 00:59:50,270
family who needs care.

832
00:59:50,850 --> 00:59:54,390
And that changed the face of comics in
America.

833
00:59:54,610 --> 01:00:01,170
From about 1968 onward, that's when the
mainstream started to...

834
01:00:01,580 --> 01:00:06,580
become aware a little bit of the
potential value.

835
01:00:06,920 --> 01:00:12,920
And then once the 1970s and 1980s, once
we got into that era, then a lot more

836
01:00:12,920 --> 01:00:14,220
people thought in those terms.

837
01:00:14,460 --> 01:00:18,900
So obviously some people were collecting
them from the start, but I don't think

838
01:00:18,900 --> 01:00:21,860
there was too much communication between
collectors.

839
01:00:22,600 --> 01:00:24,960
Most people who did it were just doing
it for themselves.

840
01:00:25,900 --> 01:00:32,400
One that made news was in the early 70s.
This made national news. A teenage boy

841
01:00:32,400 --> 01:00:38,460
named Mitchell Meady paid, I believe,
about $1 ,300 for a copy of Action

842
01:00:38,460 --> 01:00:39,460
No. 1.

843
01:00:39,500 --> 01:00:41,600
So he was invited to go on talk shows.

844
01:00:41,840 --> 01:00:44,040
They were in national magazines and
such.

845
01:00:44,280 --> 01:00:49,200
But he wasn't showered with praise. Most
people said, this guy must be some kind

846
01:00:49,200 --> 01:00:50,019
of idiot.

847
01:00:50,020 --> 01:00:54,460
He got many letters and calls from other
people who had copies saying, if you're

848
01:00:54,460 --> 01:00:57,200
paying $1 ,000, you know, I'm selling.

849
01:00:57,400 --> 01:01:03,780
But that was sort of one early time that
it registered nationally.

850
01:01:04,620 --> 01:01:08,560
When comics were created in the 1930s,
they were a dime.

851
01:01:09,050 --> 01:01:11,570
But so were most magazines. Everything
was a dime.

852
01:01:12,670 --> 01:01:18,990
40s, 1950s, 1960s, prices escalate.
Sports Illustrated, Life Magazine,

853
01:01:19,390 --> 01:01:23,910
big sellers, 25 cents, 30 cents, 40
cents, 50 cents.

854
01:01:24,210 --> 01:01:30,990
Comics made the deliberate choice to try
to keep the prices low for children.

855
01:01:31,510 --> 01:01:37,490
That was a wise move, except the
backfire was, by the time you get to the

856
01:01:37,960 --> 01:01:42,460
They realized, wait, why am I giving
shelf space to something that costs 10

857
01:01:42,460 --> 01:01:47,040
12 cents and I'm only making two or
three cents per copy? I could use that

858
01:01:47,040 --> 01:01:52,200
shelf space for Playboy or Sports
Illustrated and I can make 50 cents or a

859
01:01:52,400 --> 01:01:58,220
And so almost overnight in the late
1970s, convenience stores,

860
01:01:58,480 --> 01:02:01,980
grocery stores, they just stopped
selling comics.

861
01:02:02,240 --> 01:02:06,820
Sales were plummeting in the late 1970s
and early 1980s.

862
01:02:07,390 --> 01:02:10,330
There were specialty stores that sprang
up that still exist.

863
01:02:10,650 --> 01:02:15,530
And then to try to compensate for those
years of being an underpriced item,

864
01:02:15,690 --> 01:02:20,790
prices rose very quickly in comics.
Suddenly they were 25 cents, 50 cents,

865
01:02:20,790 --> 01:02:25,910
cents a buck. Then these comic stores
that had begun to spring up in the

866
01:02:25,930 --> 01:02:28,970
they took the forefront in sales.

867
01:02:29,270 --> 01:02:35,110
They got the message out to the public
that this is where you buy your comics.

868
01:02:36,040 --> 01:02:42,560
But they began trading in comics as
collectibles, less so than

869
01:02:42,560 --> 01:02:45,880
enjoyable, readable periodicals.

870
01:02:59,660 --> 01:03:05,020
In 1992, the prestigious company
Softbees auctions its first

871
01:03:05,020 --> 01:03:10,220
book Action Comics n°1, which will be sold
that year for $82,500.

872
01:03:10,660 --> 01:03:14,740
After a violent crisis in the years
90, superheroes become again

873
01:03:14,740 --> 01:03:19,500
trend, and on the web, the explosion of
sales sites structure for good

874
01:03:19,500 --> 01:03:20,740
collectors' market.

875
01:03:21,580 --> 01:03:25,100
I'm Barry Sandoval with Heritage
Auctions here to tell you about the

876
01:03:25,100 --> 01:03:28,860
Wright Collection, which is one of the
great Golden Age finds in recent memory.

877
01:03:29,200 --> 01:03:34,720
We're the only company that still holds
the traditional live auctions with an

878
01:03:34,720 --> 01:03:36,500
auctioneer and the people in the room.

879
01:03:36,900 --> 01:03:42,840
But we have added an online element to
it. So you can attend those auctions and

880
01:03:42,840 --> 01:03:46,800
bid in person. You can also bid by
telephone or you can bid live on the

881
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:49,060
watching a video of the auctioneer.

882
01:03:51,180 --> 01:03:55,020
full -color catalogs in the traditional
style.

883
01:03:55,280 --> 01:04:01,160
We always want to create a very
competitive environment with bidders

884
01:04:01,160 --> 01:04:04,800
bidders against each other to get the
best possible prices, and we think

885
01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:06,160
the best way to do it.

886
01:04:13,860 --> 01:04:17,580
Metropolis Collectibles is the largest
dealership of vintage comic books in the

887
01:04:17,580 --> 01:04:19,120
world. In this room...

888
01:04:19,370 --> 01:04:25,690
There's over 150 ,000 vintage comic
books. This is the largest accumulation

889
01:04:25,690 --> 01:04:30,270
comic books from the 1930s to the 1980s
in the world. Our company comprises over

890
01:04:30,270 --> 01:04:33,210
100 years of experience in the
collectibles market combined.

891
01:04:33,570 --> 01:04:36,010
I want to show you a great part of our
office.

892
01:04:36,350 --> 01:04:37,308
Come on in.

893
01:04:37,310 --> 01:04:43,210
Now, many people would think, you know,
okay, I'm going to this office. The

894
01:04:43,210 --> 01:04:44,850
showroom is filled with beautiful stuff.

895
01:04:45,610 --> 01:04:47,530
But even when they come into the
bathroom.

896
01:04:48,910 --> 01:04:54,130
We want them to feel like a pop culture
king when they sit on the throne. This

897
01:04:54,130 --> 01:05:00,170
bathroom is filled with over a half
million dollars worth of original art.

898
01:05:00,170 --> 01:05:06,270
have pages from the first appearance of
Thor by Jack Kirby, a page from Avengers

899
01:05:06,270 --> 01:05:11,130
number one, and here you have a classic
scene, Submariner running through the

900
01:05:11,130 --> 01:05:12,130
streets of Manhattan.

901
01:05:12,230 --> 01:05:13,330
Moment of truth.

902
01:05:14,070 --> 01:05:15,390
What's going to happen next?

903
01:05:16,360 --> 01:05:21,620
By Bill Everett, the creator, because
he's my favorite artist in comics. He

904
01:05:21,620 --> 01:05:26,880
not only great superhero art, he also
did fantastic horror covers.

905
01:05:27,100 --> 01:05:31,320
If you see his horror covers from Venus,
they're mind -blowing.

906
01:05:31,540 --> 01:05:32,660
Just fantastic.

907
01:05:33,420 --> 01:05:38,040
The buyers of these comic books are from
every different walk of life. I always

908
01:05:38,040 --> 01:05:39,500
tell people there's a budget.

909
01:05:40,000 --> 01:05:43,780
for every comic book and a comic book
for every budget. So whether you can

910
01:05:43,780 --> 01:05:48,960
$50 or $50 ,000, a million dollars, we
can find the right comic book for your

911
01:05:48,960 --> 01:05:53,860
collection. So you have people who are
garbage men, lawyers, doctors,

912
01:05:54,360 --> 01:06:01,000
CEOs, Fortune 500 businessmen,
stockbrokers, advertising executives,

913
01:06:01,660 --> 01:06:04,620
filmmakers, every different walk of
life.

914
01:06:05,200 --> 01:06:08,680
You have people buying comic books. You
have to remember that almost every

915
01:06:08,680 --> 01:06:12,860
person in this country has read a comic
book at one time or another in their

916
01:06:12,860 --> 01:06:17,520
life, has watched a cartoon with
Superman, Batman, Spider -Man, has seen

917
01:06:17,520 --> 01:06:21,840
something, played a video game. And when
they have that in their minds,

918
01:06:21,980 --> 01:06:24,360
eventually they're making money.

919
01:06:25,200 --> 01:06:27,340
Hmm, I have some extra money.

920
01:06:27,900 --> 01:06:29,680
Maybe I should go buy a comic book.

921
01:06:30,400 --> 01:06:31,880
I say yes, you should.

922
01:06:33,160 --> 01:06:38,360
Well, our role as an auctioneer is
really to give our customers what they

923
01:06:38,360 --> 01:06:39,360
already want.

924
01:06:39,420 --> 01:06:43,020
Especially when you're getting into
expensive things, it's hard to convince

925
01:06:43,020 --> 01:06:47,220
somebody to spend thousands of dollars
for something that they haven't already

926
01:06:47,220 --> 01:06:48,820
decided that they want.

927
01:06:49,140 --> 01:06:52,340
So condition, of course, is a huge
factor.

928
01:06:52,980 --> 01:06:59,040
A mint copy of the same comic can be
worth a thousand times a beat -up copy

929
01:06:59,040 --> 01:06:59,919
the same comic.

930
01:06:59,920 --> 01:07:02,700
So I advise them.

931
01:07:03,120 --> 01:07:08,300
on which comic books to buy, and then
they decide, they buy, some hold for a

932
01:07:08,300 --> 01:07:11,920
long time, and they do very well, some
hold for a little bit of time, sometimes

933
01:07:11,920 --> 01:07:15,360
they do well, sometimes they don't, and
they invest.

934
01:07:16,160 --> 01:07:17,180
It's become...

935
01:07:17,480 --> 01:07:21,380
Almost commoditized, and a big part of
that is because of these plastic holders

936
01:07:21,380 --> 01:07:22,500
you see the comic book in.

937
01:07:22,920 --> 01:07:29,700
CGC has become a form of reassurance to,
let's say, the average person

938
01:07:29,700 --> 01:07:33,680
on the street who does not know how to
grade a comic book, who doesn't know how

939
01:07:33,680 --> 01:07:34,720
to check for restoration.

940
01:07:36,160 --> 01:07:40,180
They pay this company to do it, and they
go, ah, 8 .5.

941
01:07:40,760 --> 01:07:45,020
Perfect. I know what it is. They can
look up online how much does an 8 .5

942
01:07:45,020 --> 01:07:51,360
for, and they can go and buy it. So the
concept is that the comic

943
01:07:51,360 --> 01:07:57,860
is reviewed by three different graders
who are neutral. It's a different

944
01:07:57,860 --> 01:08:01,960
company, so they have no affiliation
with the people who submit the comics.

945
01:08:02,300 --> 01:08:08,740
And the people looking at it don't know
the identity of the owner. So three

946
01:08:08,740 --> 01:08:09,740
different graders.

947
01:08:10,430 --> 01:08:15,870
review the comic, and assign it a grade,
and then they take the consensus of

948
01:08:15,870 --> 01:08:22,630
those three grades. They seal up the
comic book in a plastic holder.

949
01:08:22,850 --> 01:08:28,109
So the idea is that as long as that seal
has not been broken, the grade remains

950
01:08:28,109 --> 01:08:29,109
valid.

951
01:08:52,819 --> 01:08:57,380
Gotta make sure I look pretty. The
wife's coming today.

952
01:09:19,240 --> 01:09:23,180
We hold an auction in Beverly Hills once
a year and in New York City once a

953
01:09:23,180 --> 01:09:25,120
year. This is a consignment comic.

954
01:09:25,540 --> 01:09:27,840
This will be sold in our December
auction.

955
01:09:28,180 --> 01:09:33,740
The catalog is coming soon, and people
from all over the world will be bidding

956
01:09:33,740 --> 01:09:34,740
on this comic book.

957
01:09:34,880 --> 01:09:37,500
So nothing here is actually for sale
right now.

958
01:09:37,819 --> 01:09:42,479
It's all just a preview of items that
will be auctioned in November.

959
01:09:43,529 --> 01:09:48,490
And so that's why the numbers we put on
there are just our best guesses right

960
01:09:48,490 --> 01:09:55,170
now. But a comic with nice eye appeal
can, I wouldn't be shocked if it sold

961
01:09:55,170 --> 01:09:57,550
10 or 20 % more than this.

962
01:09:57,830 --> 01:10:02,110
So what's really amazing about comic
books is that you can have a comic book

963
01:10:02,110 --> 01:10:05,810
one condition and it's worth one price.
And you can have a comic book in a lower

964
01:10:05,810 --> 01:10:07,910
condition and it's worth something
completely different.

965
01:10:08,660 --> 01:10:12,220
Case in point, let's take one of the
most popular comic books around today,

966
01:10:12,420 --> 01:10:14,000
Incredible Hulk number one.

967
01:10:14,560 --> 01:10:18,840
What I'm going to show you is I'm going
to show you a very low -grade copy of

968
01:10:18,840 --> 01:10:23,380
Incredible Hulk, and show you the
defects, and then I'm going to show you

969
01:10:23,380 --> 01:10:24,039
-grade copy.

970
01:10:24,040 --> 01:10:28,920
So here you have a 2 .5 graded copy of
Incredible Hulk. You can see the creases

971
01:10:28,920 --> 01:10:32,240
and the color loss over here. You can
see the rusted staple.

972
01:10:32,640 --> 01:10:35,840
And you get down to the bottom staple,
you can see there's actually some paper

973
01:10:35,840 --> 01:10:36,840
missing.

974
01:10:38,170 --> 01:10:42,590
You're not looking to spend $100 ,000 on
a comic book. This is a very affordable

975
01:10:42,590 --> 01:10:45,210
copy, and it looks nice for its
condition.

976
01:10:45,470 --> 01:10:50,590
Here you see a spectacular specimen, one
of the highest -graded copies in the

977
01:10:50,590 --> 01:10:53,930
world, a 9 .0 Incredible Hulk No. 1.

978
01:10:54,390 --> 01:10:59,030
What you'll notice about this copy right
off the bat is it's got incredibly rich

979
01:10:59,030 --> 01:11:01,790
colors. It almost looks like it was
printed yesterday.

980
01:11:02,190 --> 01:11:04,330
This comic book looks almost perfect.

981
01:11:05,640 --> 01:11:09,760
It has a slight abrasion right here. A
year ago, you could have bought this

982
01:11:09,760 --> 01:11:14,400
comic book for about $75 ,000 to $100
,000.

983
01:11:15,140 --> 01:11:20,960
This comic book should sell for close to
$200 ,000 in one year.

984
01:11:21,200 --> 01:11:24,840
You have to understand the Hulk market
has exploded over the last few months.

985
01:11:25,100 --> 01:11:30,940
About three months ago, we made an
announcement. We sold a 9 .2 for $300

986
01:11:43,880 --> 01:11:46,220
I want to talk to you about that book we
were talking about the other day.

987
01:11:49,180 --> 01:11:51,580
Let's talk about the Detective 27.

988
01:11:52,220 --> 01:11:53,260
Okay. Yeah.

989
01:11:54,600 --> 01:11:58,140
So, you know, you've been really tough
about the price on this. Yeah, this is

990
01:11:58,140 --> 01:11:59,059
what happened.

991
01:11:59,060 --> 01:12:02,320
And I understand why. I mean, it's the
first appearance of Batman.

992
01:12:03,620 --> 01:12:05,360
It's in a 9 .4 condition.

993
01:12:06,000 --> 01:12:08,460
You know, of course, moderately
restored.

994
01:12:09,200 --> 01:12:11,780
But I need this book.

995
01:12:12,280 --> 01:12:13,400
And I need it for a client.

996
01:12:14,300 --> 01:12:18,040
And you got a little tough with me
yesterday, but I want to come back and

997
01:12:18,040 --> 01:12:20,900
you a second chance. Give me a second
chance. See if we can figure something

998
01:12:20,900 --> 01:12:21,900
out.

999
01:12:22,260 --> 01:12:23,520
What's your bottom line on this?

1000
01:12:25,440 --> 01:12:28,940
I'd like to make you an offer.

1001
01:12:29,360 --> 01:12:31,220
And I can write out a check right now.

1002
01:12:31,700 --> 01:12:33,000
If you want to do the deal.

1003
01:12:34,440 --> 01:12:37,620
400 grand. I think 400 grand is a really
nice offer.

1004
01:12:40,220 --> 01:12:41,620
You and I know that...

1005
01:12:41,870 --> 01:12:46,370
It's a great book, but it's not the
easiest thing to do is finding somebody

1006
01:12:46,370 --> 01:12:48,970
half a million bucks to buy a comic
book.

1007
01:12:49,530 --> 01:12:52,290
And you came here to the show to try to
sell it. I did.

1008
01:12:54,470 --> 01:12:55,470
But be gentle.

1009
01:12:59,170 --> 01:13:06,170
Five is not going to let me do what I
need to do with it. Five is

1010
01:13:06,170 --> 01:13:08,910
going to be way too tight for me to make
something happen. That's why I came in

1011
01:13:08,910 --> 01:13:09,789
at four.

1012
01:13:09,790 --> 01:13:13,270
I gave myself a little bit of room to
negotiate. I can come up to $4 .25. What

1013
01:13:13,270 --> 01:13:14,270
do you think about that?

1014
01:13:18,870 --> 01:13:19,870
$4 .75.

1015
01:13:21,550 --> 01:13:26,470
I think I know where this is heading.

1016
01:13:26,970 --> 01:13:27,970
Where's that?

1017
01:13:28,450 --> 01:13:29,490
Do it at $4 .50.

1018
01:13:31,690 --> 01:13:36,190
All right. Great.

1019
01:13:36,830 --> 01:13:39,030
All right. I will be right back with a
check.

1020
01:13:39,530 --> 01:13:40,530
Thanks so much.

1021
01:13:41,550 --> 01:13:46,770
What I've done is I've just made sure
that our company is constantly buying

1022
01:13:46,770 --> 01:13:47,770
these first appearances.

1023
01:13:47,950 --> 01:13:51,910
And what's been really amazing is for
years we've had a lot of these comic

1024
01:13:51,910 --> 01:13:53,730
that we couldn't sell. They were slow.

1025
01:13:54,330 --> 01:13:59,270
And now they mention that they may be in
a movie and explosion of prices.

1026
01:13:59,870 --> 01:14:03,810
So we've seen the first appearance of
Ant -Man, Doctor Strange, Miss Marvel.

1027
01:14:04,400 --> 01:14:08,820
Nova, who the Nova Corps appeared
prominently in the Guardians of the

1028
01:14:08,820 --> 01:14:13,220
movie, and now Nova number one sells for
$200. This is a comic book we couldn't

1029
01:14:13,220 --> 01:14:14,960
give away just a year ago.

1030
01:14:25,420 --> 01:14:31,280
We were the first company to auction a
comic for $1 million, and that was in

1031
01:14:31,280 --> 01:14:36,280
2010 when we sold Detective Comics
number 27, which is the first appearance

1032
01:14:36,280 --> 01:14:41,560
Batman. At the time, the auction record
for a comic was about $300 ,000, and so

1033
01:14:41,560 --> 01:14:47,120
we had advertised the comic as being
potentially worth half a million

1034
01:14:47,180 --> 01:14:49,840
and it actually then sold for $1
million.

1035
01:14:50,650 --> 01:14:56,930
But something like an Action No. 1 or
Superman No. 1, there's high demand, but

1036
01:14:56,930 --> 01:15:01,370
also a very small supply that isn't
going to get higher. I would think it

1037
01:15:01,370 --> 01:15:05,870
be hard for Silver Age to ever get to
that level just because it's more

1038
01:15:06,350 --> 01:15:11,090
The Silver Age comic that everybody
wants is Amazing Fantasy No. 15, which

1039
01:15:11,090 --> 01:15:12,650
the first appearance of Spider -Man.

1040
01:15:13,070 --> 01:15:18,310
And there has been a copy that sold for
a million dollars of that.

1041
01:15:19,680 --> 01:15:23,180
But what creates value is always the
combination of scarcity and demand.

1042
01:15:23,780 --> 01:15:29,020
So Amazing Fantasy number 15 isn't
scarce by any means, but the demand is

1043
01:15:29,020 --> 01:15:31,820
extremely high, and that keeps the value
high.

1044
01:15:32,160 --> 01:15:38,020
We sold a 9 .6 copy of Amazing Fantasy
15, the first appearance of Spider -Man,

1045
01:15:38,160 --> 01:15:40,100
for $1 .1 million.

1046
01:15:40,620 --> 01:15:42,480
That is a world record.

1047
01:15:42,680 --> 01:15:44,980
Nobody has even come close to this.

1048
01:15:45,340 --> 01:15:48,200
And the reason we did, we were able to
do this because...

1049
01:15:48,430 --> 01:15:53,490
9 .6 was one of one. There was only one
known to exist.

1050
01:15:53,770 --> 01:15:57,790
And the owner of the comic book was a
very wealthy individual.

1051
01:15:58,290 --> 01:16:02,910
And I said to him, literally, this is
how I negotiated the deal. I said, would

1052
01:16:02,910 --> 01:16:04,530
you sell it for $500 ,000?

1053
01:16:04,810 --> 01:16:09,870
He goes, no. I said, I'm not offering
this, but would you sell it for a

1054
01:16:09,870 --> 01:16:10,870
dollars?

1055
01:16:12,190 --> 01:16:15,490
And these are his exact words. He says,
I'd sell it for a million dollars

1056
01:16:15,490 --> 01:16:17,630
because that way I could give the money
to charity.

1057
01:16:19,280 --> 01:16:20,280
I said, fantastic.

1058
01:16:20,640 --> 01:16:26,180
I called up my buyer. I said, it's very
aggressive price. It's very expensive,

1059
01:16:26,500 --> 01:16:30,140
but you would own the best copy in the
world.

1060
01:16:31,260 --> 01:16:37,380
And I put a 10%, not even, a little less
than 10%. I sold it to him for $1 .1

1061
01:16:37,380 --> 01:16:39,640
million, and he was happy.

1062
01:16:39,880 --> 01:16:41,340
The seller was happy.

1063
01:16:41,920 --> 01:16:46,280
The world was happy, everybody was
happy, and I got to be part of the

1064
01:16:46,280 --> 01:16:47,640
sale of my favorite superhero.

1065
01:16:47,980 --> 01:16:49,420
It was a very exciting day for me.

1066
01:17:11,580 --> 01:17:14,340
I don't believe that the comic book
market is a bubble.

1067
01:17:14,860 --> 01:17:20,900
This is a market built up by thousands,
tens of thousands, millions of people

1068
01:17:20,900 --> 01:17:25,580
all over the world. Anytime somebody
buys a comic book, they're part of the

1069
01:17:25,580 --> 01:17:30,280
market, and they're part of what's
feeding the market, pushing the market

1070
01:17:30,280 --> 01:17:34,880
forward. So I'll give you a for
instance. This week, my company, Comic

1071
01:17:34,960 --> 01:17:38,200
had their event auction. This was our
spring event auction.

1072
01:17:38,730 --> 01:17:44,050
Five full days of people bidding on
comic books and original comic art and

1073
01:17:44,050 --> 01:17:45,050
and memorabilia.

1074
01:17:45,790 --> 01:17:51,110
I cannot tell you how many new people
were bidding in our auctions.

1075
01:17:51,520 --> 01:17:56,060
I didn't recognize the names of half the
bidders and winners of the most

1076
01:17:56,060 --> 01:18:01,040
expensive items. People I'd never talked
to before were spending over $100 ,000

1077
01:18:01,040 --> 01:18:06,460
with us. We had the action number one go
for $175 ,000. We had Captain America

1078
01:18:06,460 --> 01:18:10,880
number one, the first appearance of
Captain America, sell for $307 ,000.

1079
01:18:11,220 --> 01:18:17,340
A coverless copy of the first appearance
of Batman in Detective Comics 27 sold

1080
01:18:17,340 --> 01:18:20,200
for $30 ,000. A coverless copy.

1081
01:18:21,320 --> 01:18:26,140
This market is strong. This market is
here to stay. Just like the coin market,

1082
01:18:26,320 --> 01:18:30,560
the stamp market, and the stock market.
Comic books are here to stay, and the

1083
01:18:30,560 --> 01:18:34,340
market will continue to get stronger and
stronger as time goes on. I have no

1084
01:18:34,340 --> 01:18:40,540
concern that prices will go down over
the next decade for

1085
01:18:40,540 --> 01:18:42,200
comics and comic art.

1086
01:18:42,800 --> 01:18:48,240
Beyond that, it's hard to say if the
kids buying comics today will have the

1087
01:18:48,240 --> 01:18:49,900
nostalgia for...

1088
01:18:50,540 --> 01:18:55,240
their things as my generation and older
generations uh did when they were

1089
01:18:55,240 --> 01:19:00,300
growing up one thing that's certainly a
concern is that these days if a new

1090
01:19:00,300 --> 01:19:04,800
comic sells a hundred thousand copies
it's one of the best -selling comics for

1091
01:19:04,800 --> 01:19:10,620
that particular month back in the 1960s
they would cancel comics that sold less

1092
01:19:10,620 --> 01:19:12,180
than 200 000 copies

1093
01:19:13,480 --> 01:19:19,240
So it's a smaller pool buying them when
they come out.

1094
01:19:19,560 --> 01:19:23,840
And the thing that people always pay the
most for is the things that they're

1095
01:19:23,840 --> 01:19:26,180
nostalgic for from their childhood.

1096
01:19:26,620 --> 01:19:32,040
So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see.
It's hard to predict whether the

1097
01:19:32,040 --> 01:19:34,380
generational shift, how that will change
the market.

1098
01:19:36,010 --> 01:19:41,030
One of my jobs is I'm a protector, a
guardian of nostalgia, of American pop

1099
01:19:41,030 --> 01:19:46,850
culture, and I am the person who is able
to bring back the fondest memories a

1100
01:19:46,850 --> 01:19:50,350
person has of their life, which is
usually their childhood. When they were

1101
01:19:50,350 --> 01:19:56,810
exposed to comic books and they first
had this realization of this other world

1102
01:19:56,810 --> 01:20:02,050
and this creativity and fantastic art
and stories where anything was possible.

1103
01:20:02,800 --> 01:20:06,540
You have to remember, this is before
CGI, this is before computer -generated

1104
01:20:06,540 --> 01:20:08,580
effects and incredible video games.

1105
01:20:08,880 --> 01:20:10,740
Comic books were that world.

1106
01:20:11,380 --> 01:20:16,000
We're able to bring those memories back
to people in a way that makes them happy

1107
01:20:16,000 --> 01:20:19,480
when they're holding them, when they're
smelling them, when they're reading

1108
01:20:19,480 --> 01:20:20,480
them.

1109
01:20:44,000 --> 01:20:48,220
Marvel is so wrapped up with New York
that I can't even fathom a New York

1110
01:20:48,220 --> 01:20:49,640
without Marvel there.

1111
01:20:50,440 --> 01:20:54,340
For so many of us, this was our first
impressions of New York.

1112
01:20:55,720 --> 01:21:00,940
I lived in a small town in the Midwest
where a water tower was one big

1113
01:21:00,940 --> 01:21:01,940
on the edge of town.

1114
01:21:02,100 --> 01:21:07,500
I was stunned when I first came to New
York and saw the water towers because

1115
01:21:07,500 --> 01:21:12,240
suddenly there was this thing that I
knew about even though I had never seen

1116
01:21:12,240 --> 01:21:16,820
because they were in the comic books.
That had a tremendous impact on me. It

1117
01:21:16,820 --> 01:21:18,440
made the heroes real.

1118
01:21:18,960 --> 01:21:23,560
Of course we know it's fiction and it's
comic books and it's fantasy.

1119
01:21:24,220 --> 01:21:30,300
But you still, you know, when you come
to the city and see the buildings and

1120
01:21:30,300 --> 01:21:35,800
that, you are actually expecting to see
guys playing, you know, around the

1121
01:21:35,800 --> 01:21:39,260
buildings and that. That's what makes
New York so special.

1122
01:21:39,600 --> 01:21:45,020
When Ron Prenz and I worked on Spider
-Man, I was very confident to let Ron

1123
01:21:45,020 --> 01:21:46,740
handle the city because...

1124
01:21:47,260 --> 01:21:49,940
Ron is a maniac when it comes to detail.

1125
01:21:50,160 --> 01:21:51,440
He pulls out reference.

1126
01:21:51,740 --> 01:21:57,040
He studied the city skyline. Just make
sure that everything was realistic.

1127
01:21:57,120 --> 01:22:02,940
Because Ron often told me that he
learned about New York City by looking

1128
01:22:02,940 --> 01:22:03,940
Marvel Comics.

1129
01:22:04,060 --> 01:22:08,600
I think that that's something that, you
know, little kids who aren't from New

1130
01:22:08,600 --> 01:22:14,240
York, it's a whole layer of what Marvel
superheroes are. Instead of Gotham City

1131
01:22:14,240 --> 01:22:15,520
or Metropolis.

1132
01:22:16,170 --> 01:22:20,370
They're reading these really wonderful
adventures about some place that

1133
01:22:20,370 --> 01:22:25,490
exists. When the Marvel Comics first
started that universe, one of the key

1134
01:22:25,490 --> 01:22:28,790
things they did that was part of that
whole level of reality, establishing

1135
01:22:28,790 --> 01:22:33,630
believability, creating the human
connection with the characters, was the

1136
01:22:33,630 --> 01:22:34,850
that unlike DC...

1137
01:22:35,280 --> 01:22:40,600
They didn't set their superheroes in
versions of New York City like Gotham or

1138
01:22:40,600 --> 01:22:42,920
Metropolis. They just said, no, it's New
York City.

1139
01:22:43,200 --> 01:22:46,680
Look out your window if you live in New
York. Maybe Spider -Man will be swinging

1140
01:22:46,680 --> 01:22:51,280
by. That was one of the main keys to
making Marvel so attractive and so

1141
01:22:51,280 --> 01:22:54,120
appealing. These were heroes right
outside your window.

1142
01:22:58,280 --> 01:23:02,600
When the Human Torch and the Sub
-Mariner first...

1143
01:23:03,040 --> 01:23:04,200
crossed over with one another.

1144
01:23:04,420 --> 01:23:05,960
They were wrecking Manhattan.

1145
01:23:06,260 --> 01:23:09,360
They were obliterating bridges and
tunnels.

1146
01:23:09,640 --> 01:23:14,800
They were fighting, and you could trace
their fight all along the geography.

1147
01:23:15,320 --> 01:23:19,980
And, you know, there's a couple things
that are really important at that moment

1148
01:23:19,980 --> 01:23:25,500
because there's not just the New York
underpinning, but there's also you have

1149
01:23:25,500 --> 01:23:30,660
these two characters that are created by
different people.

1150
01:23:31,350 --> 01:23:36,790
and they are brought under one roof. And
that set the stage for New York City

1151
01:23:36,790 --> 01:23:40,450
being the center of the Marvel Universe.

1152
01:23:40,710 --> 01:23:45,590
And from then on, all of these
characters were going to be integrated.

1153
01:23:46,170 --> 01:23:52,930
They're packed in in this small city,
and that's going to set the tone for the

1154
01:23:52,930 --> 01:23:54,010
next 75 years.

1155
01:23:54,310 --> 01:23:59,970
And I think that's what hooked me to
Marvel Comics, was this...

1156
01:24:00,240 --> 01:24:06,160
window to a whole world you read dc
comics you read superman and batman and

1157
01:24:06,160 --> 01:24:10,180
the time you didn't need to pick up the
next issue to find out what happened and

1158
01:24:10,180 --> 01:24:13,460
you didn't need to pay attention to
superman if you wanted to read batman

1159
01:24:13,460 --> 01:24:19,660
but once you get into marvel comics once
you once you decide that you're going

1160
01:24:19,660 --> 01:24:26,480
to give yourself over to that to that
world uh you have to go in all the way

1161
01:24:26,480 --> 01:24:33,370
marvel really got lucky that Metropolis
was taken, or Gotham City

1162
01:24:33,370 --> 01:24:39,470
was taken, or Central City, because what
could be better than having a real city

1163
01:24:39,470 --> 01:24:40,389
as your setting?

1164
01:24:40,390 --> 01:24:42,690
And somehow they cornered the market on
that.

1165
01:24:43,010 --> 01:24:49,810
Marvel almost trademarked New York City
as a fictional adventure

1166
01:24:49,810 --> 01:24:51,050
land.

1167
01:24:51,850 --> 01:24:55,890
When we watch the very first episodes of
Superman, we recognize neighborhoods in

1168
01:24:55,890 --> 01:25:00,110
New York, we recognize street names,
there are indications of waves,

1169
01:25:00,930 --> 01:25:04,270
there is what we call the skyline, there
are building silhouettes, we recognize

1170
01:25:04,270 --> 01:25:08,810
that it is supposed to happen in New
York. And then, it's an idealized way to

1171
01:25:08,810 --> 01:25:12,910
solve society's problems. That is to say
that every day is barely enough, but

1172
01:25:12,910 --> 01:25:18,830
every episode, we talk about car risks.
Superman goes to see the car

1173
01:25:18,830 --> 01:25:21,430
manufacturers and tells them, but be
careful, you have to be careful. Stop

1174
01:25:21,430 --> 01:25:26,530
building cars in which people die. You
have to do your job better. There is an

1175
01:25:26,530 --> 01:25:30,790
episode, you will see the directors of
casinos explaining to them that they

1176
01:25:30,790 --> 01:25:34,570
to stop whitewashing the money of the
peasant. This problem of Superman who

1177
01:25:34,570 --> 01:25:37,590
into the city and denounces corruption,
makes that very quickly from here he

1178
01:25:37,590 --> 01:25:40,610
will turn to a generic city that we will
call Metropolis.

1179
01:25:40,930 --> 01:25:44,450
And then at Batman's we will call it
Gotham. Because when the superhero

1180
01:25:44,450 --> 01:25:50,450
and then says the police is corrupt or
there is a problem of crime in Rome.

1181
01:25:52,869 --> 01:25:58,210
The fact that the stories occurred in
New York City didn't really occur to me

1182
01:25:58,210 --> 01:26:00,730
the time as anything important.

1183
01:26:00,970 --> 01:26:05,490
But as time went on, that became more
and more important to me. Because in

1184
01:26:05,490 --> 01:26:10,430
certain comics like Spider -Man and
Daredevil, New York City was actually a

1185
01:26:10,430 --> 01:26:11,830
character in those books.

1186
01:26:12,230 --> 01:26:15,870
The characters were constantly
interacting with the city.

1187
01:26:16,250 --> 01:26:19,090
You know, Spider -Man would go over the
Queensborough Bridge.

1188
01:26:19,450 --> 01:26:21,690
Spider -Man would be taking the subway.

1189
01:26:22,050 --> 01:26:25,550
Spider -Man would be going down to Grand
Central Station.

1190
01:26:25,930 --> 01:26:30,810
New York City was, you know, kind of his
best friend in Daredevil. New York City

1191
01:26:30,810 --> 01:26:34,270
was really an intimate part of what was
going on.

1192
01:26:34,730 --> 01:26:38,730
Daredevil was bouncing around Hell's
Kitchen, which at the time, I really

1193
01:26:38,730 --> 01:26:40,890
know what it was, but it sounded like a
scary place.

1194
01:26:41,270 --> 01:26:44,070
You know, the Fantastic Four have the
Baxter Building, of course,

1195
01:27:01,400 --> 01:27:07,940
If we make the comparison between Marvel
and DC, accidentally,

1196
01:27:08,300 --> 01:27:10,960
maybe, DC's characters are more notable.

1197
01:27:11,800 --> 01:27:17,660
We rather have the billionaire or the
top journalist of the best newspaper in

1198
01:27:17,660 --> 01:27:20,260
the city, Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, all
that.

1199
01:27:20,480 --> 01:27:26,120
At Marvel, we rather have the little
guy, let's say the typical Marvel hero.

1200
01:27:26,570 --> 01:27:29,610
When he is human, we have a kind of
pulpo who would have become an adult.

1201
01:27:29,810 --> 01:27:34,730
And typically, it's the example of Steve
Rogers, Captain America, whose legend

1202
01:27:34,730 --> 01:27:40,030
will be muscled over the decades by
telling his childhood in favorited

1203
01:27:40,030 --> 01:27:41,250
environments, in the streets, things
like that.

1204
01:27:42,090 --> 01:27:47,690
Typically, we also find this in the
Fantastic Four. There is Benjamin Grimm,

1205
01:27:47,690 --> 01:27:53,830
The Thing, who had his childhood in a
fantasy street called Yancy Street,

1206
01:27:53,830 --> 01:27:55,390
is harassed by the Canailles.

1207
01:27:55,850 --> 01:28:01,170
of Nancy Street, who doesn't stop
blaming him for having forgotten his

1208
01:28:01,170 --> 01:28:05,690
in the lowlands and making him jokes and
stuff like that. And above all, there

1209
01:28:05,690 --> 01:28:10,030
is the contribution of screenwriters
such as Joe Simon in the 40s and Stan

1210
01:28:10,030 --> 01:28:16,430
in the 60s, in terms of superheroes in
any case, which gives an argot to these

1211
01:28:16,430 --> 01:28:20,830
characters. That is to say, when you
read the dialogues of the thing, even if

1212
01:28:20,830 --> 01:28:25,370
is at the end of the galaxy, fighting
against the terrible Galactus, The thing

1213
01:28:25,370 --> 01:28:26,470
is expressed as a New Yorker.

1214
01:28:50,170 --> 01:28:54,290
In the 70s, New York was a dirty,
dangerous place.

1215
01:28:55,130 --> 01:29:01,790
And I believe that certainly in the 60s
and the 70s, the

1216
01:29:01,790 --> 01:29:07,570
writers who were on those books really
reflected New York because they all

1217
01:29:07,570 --> 01:29:08,570
in New York City.

1218
01:29:08,750 --> 01:29:14,090
Jerry Conway, at the time he was writing
Spider -Man, he was about Peter

1219
01:29:14,090 --> 01:29:15,090
Parker's age.

1220
01:29:15,980 --> 01:29:19,480
A lot of the things that were going on
in Peter Parker's life were things that

1221
01:29:19,480 --> 01:29:25,040
were going on in Jerry's life, not so
much with the supervillains, but the

1222
01:29:25,040 --> 01:29:30,060
dramas. You know, Jack Kirby grew up on
the Lower East Side, and that was a very

1223
01:29:30,060 --> 01:29:33,040
famous, you know, Bowery Boys kind of an
atmosphere.

1224
01:29:33,540 --> 01:29:39,640
And I think that the personality of the
city and the personality of the people

1225
01:29:39,640 --> 01:29:45,140
who were making the comic books were,
you know, they grew together.

1226
01:29:45,690 --> 01:29:49,450
Again, I don't know that it was one of
those things where there was a conscious

1227
01:29:49,450 --> 01:29:56,010
urge to replicate New York attitude in
the comic books so much as it just

1228
01:29:56,010 --> 01:29:59,210
organically occurred. It was an
intuitive connection.

1229
01:30:02,710 --> 01:30:07,790
You have to start with the fact that in
the first half of the 20th century, New

1230
01:30:07,790 --> 01:30:10,610
York was the gateway city for
immigration to the U .S.

1231
01:30:11,390 --> 01:30:17,160
And the tribes that were coming in, at
that time to New York, were

1232
01:30:17,160 --> 01:30:23,020
disproportionately the Jews of Eastern
Europe, the Russians, what was called

1233
01:30:23,020 --> 01:30:28,440
Pale of Settlement, and to a lesser
extent, the Italians who had finally

1234
01:30:28,440 --> 01:30:31,160
the right to leave southern Italy and
migrate.

1235
01:30:32,040 --> 01:30:35,180
Those were the new poor people coming
into New York.

1236
01:30:35,400 --> 01:30:41,680
Some of those Jews became founders of
the first comic book companies, rising

1237
01:30:41,680 --> 01:30:43,620
through printing and magazine
distribution.

1238
01:30:44,330 --> 01:30:48,170
Because those were new and kind of
scruffy businesses.

1239
01:30:48,750 --> 01:30:55,370
The establishment groups, the white
Anglo -Saxon Protestants, even the more

1240
01:30:55,370 --> 01:30:59,430
established Catholics, didn't have a big
presence in them, looked down on them,

1241
01:30:59,590 --> 01:31:02,630
and were happy to leave them to the
lesser people.

1242
01:31:02,890 --> 01:31:07,430
When you look at the superhero part of
the story, you're in the Depression.

1243
01:31:08,030 --> 01:31:12,610
You're in a time of enormous pressure on
these people's lives.

1244
01:31:13,610 --> 01:31:20,390
And there's a real dream of what a
better world can be. They've come across

1245
01:31:20,390 --> 01:31:22,510
globe in miserable conditions.

1246
01:31:22,870 --> 01:31:28,070
So they wanted something better to
happen, and they knew it wasn't going to

1247
01:31:28,070 --> 01:31:29,029
happen easily.

1248
01:31:29,030 --> 01:31:34,630
So it was very easy to imagine that some
miraculous figure would have to come in

1249
01:31:34,630 --> 01:31:37,430
and do something that would change the
scheme of things.

1250
01:31:37,830 --> 01:31:41,610
When Joe Simon first came to New York in
1939,

1251
01:31:42,620 --> 01:31:46,640
There was a fellow he was working with
who said, you ought to try this new

1252
01:31:46,640 --> 01:31:49,280
that they're just developing. It's
called comic books.

1253
01:31:49,580 --> 01:31:54,140
And that really only happened because
Joe came to New York. Most of the comic

1254
01:31:54,140 --> 01:31:58,320
book writers and artists would be in New
York because they needed to be able to

1255
01:31:58,320 --> 01:32:01,700
bring their material in to the office
and it would be published.

1256
01:32:02,080 --> 01:32:08,680
I think the magic of New York City is
that it's the aspirational capital of an

1257
01:32:08,680 --> 01:32:09,720
aspirational country.

1258
01:32:12,780 --> 01:32:18,540
still believe it's a country of dreamers
where you can change your life and

1259
01:32:18,540 --> 01:32:24,960
whatever your gifts are, you can find a
way to use them and bring them to life

1260
01:32:24,960 --> 01:32:26,520
and make the world a better place.

1261
01:32:26,980 --> 01:32:31,540
The people who are natural entrepreneurs
in America have disproportionately

1262
01:32:31,540 --> 01:32:37,020
moved to New York over the years just as
the people who were natural actors and

1263
01:32:37,020 --> 01:32:40,740
beautiful people moved to Los Angeles to
go into the movie business.

1264
01:32:41,390 --> 01:32:45,170
New York was the place you came if you
dreamed of starting a business, if you

1265
01:32:45,170 --> 01:32:46,430
dreamed of changing the world.

1266
01:32:47,170 --> 01:32:52,170
So it pulled from this enormous country
in America the prime talent who were

1267
01:32:52,170 --> 01:32:56,050
dreaming of making things better. And
that was a very natural fit for the

1268
01:32:56,050 --> 01:32:57,050
superhero dream.

1269
01:32:57,310 --> 01:33:03,470
The relationship between Marvel and New
York also goes through a relationship

1270
01:33:03,470 --> 01:33:04,470
with the United States.

1271
01:33:04,710 --> 01:33:07,710
Marvel started very quickly in
patriotism.

1272
01:33:07,990 --> 01:33:14,750
At a time when the United States did not
yet have the idea to join the

1273
01:33:14,750 --> 01:33:19,750
Second World War. Marvel just started
publishing Captain America comics.

1274
01:33:20,050 --> 01:33:23,870
On the cover, the patriotic hero breaks
the figure to Hitler.

1275
01:33:24,170 --> 01:33:26,150
It did not please everyone at the time.

1276
01:33:36,730 --> 01:33:42,090
The second point is a moment that will
touch, of course, all New Yorkers and

1277
01:33:42,090 --> 01:33:43,550
well beyond, of course.

1278
01:33:45,240 --> 01:33:46,440
on September 11, 2001.

1279
01:33:46,700 --> 01:33:50,100
And you have to understand that the
Marvel offices are in the center of New

1280
01:33:50,100 --> 01:33:54,660
York, that they will see the attacks,
the collapse of the towers, practically

1281
01:33:54,660 --> 01:33:55,660
from their windows.

1282
01:33:55,700 --> 01:34:01,420
The Marvel staff is part of the people
who are evacuated during the day.

1283
01:34:02,380 --> 01:34:08,120
And of course, with heroes who
themselves live in New York, it is

1284
01:34:08,120 --> 01:34:09,300
keep quiet about it.

1285
01:34:09,540 --> 01:34:13,600
And two to three months later, there
will be an episode of Spider -Man where

1286
01:34:13,600 --> 01:34:14,599
see the towers collapse.

1287
01:34:14,600 --> 01:34:19,760
We see the reaction of Spider -Man and
the other main characters of Marvel in

1288
01:34:19,760 --> 01:34:22,640
front of this sad spectacle.

1289
01:34:41,690 --> 01:34:43,050
New York City's rich history.

1290
01:34:43,310 --> 01:34:47,310
Everything you know about the 20th
century in New York City, there's an

1291
01:34:47,310 --> 01:34:49,190
with the Marvel Universe.

1292
01:34:49,790 --> 01:34:55,490
And so you can look back and you can see
the early 60s, the Mad Men era, as

1293
01:34:55,490 --> 01:34:59,050
people like to say. You can see that in
the Fantastic Four comics.

1294
01:34:59,310 --> 01:35:06,290
Just going back and looking at the back
issues of Marvel Comics can give you a

1295
01:35:06,290 --> 01:35:09,250
history lesson of what city life.

1296
01:35:09,760 --> 01:35:11,220
was like over those years.

1297
01:35:11,520 --> 01:35:17,140
There's also just, there's the fact that
people come to New York and they come

1298
01:35:17,140 --> 01:35:21,500
from all different backgrounds and
somehow have to figure out how to live

1299
01:35:21,500 --> 01:35:26,980
together, which, you know, how could
that be, you know, any more

1300
01:35:26,980 --> 01:35:30,440
prevalent in the Marvel universe?

1301
01:35:31,230 --> 01:35:37,670
Aliens are trying to work with one
another and find common ground.

1302
01:35:38,710 --> 01:35:43,670
There's also the excitement of urban
living, and

1303
01:35:43,670 --> 01:35:50,410
it's all right there in the pages of
those

1304
01:35:50,410 --> 01:35:54,690
comics. It's something that I think is
carried forth into the movies.

1305
01:35:55,230 --> 01:35:59,330
That's something that's been really
great to watch, is the way that the

1306
01:35:59,330 --> 01:36:00,330
Comics movies

1307
01:36:01,170 --> 01:36:03,090
celebrate in New York City.

1308
01:36:03,750 --> 01:36:08,890
And it's a really great tradition.

1309
01:36:09,730 --> 01:36:12,890
So that connection with New York is a
vital one.

1310
01:36:13,390 --> 01:36:16,650
Not just in terms of the fiction, but
also the reality.

1311
01:36:16,870 --> 01:36:20,830
People that are Marvel fans know very
well the stories surrounding the

1312
01:36:20,830 --> 01:36:24,470
who lived in New York and made those
characters in New York City.

1313
01:36:24,770 --> 01:36:28,430
There are entire books written just
about the story of Marvel itself.

1314
01:36:28,770 --> 01:36:32,830
All those larger -than -life people who
were just real people, but they've

1315
01:36:32,830 --> 01:36:37,910
become heroes in a sense to many fans
worldwide who lived in New York and

1316
01:36:37,910 --> 01:36:40,890
created these characters. And now here
we are at the New York Comic Con.

1317
01:36:41,660 --> 01:36:45,400
which has become one of the largest
events of its kind, certainly in this

1318
01:36:45,400 --> 01:36:52,360
country, and brings together fans of all
generations, people that love comics,

1319
01:36:52,540 --> 01:36:57,540
movies, television, all kinds of media.
They get to meet Marvel creators up

1320
01:36:57,540 --> 01:37:01,940
close. They get to see the actors from
all the latest films appearing on stage

1321
01:37:01,940 --> 01:37:03,580
in front of them and presenting it.

1322
01:37:03,840 --> 01:37:09,200
And that sense of intimacy, that
connection with the reality, with that

1323
01:37:09,200 --> 01:37:10,320
that they so love.

1324
01:37:10,830 --> 01:37:15,210
The conventions are a huge part of that
because it brings creator and audience

1325
01:37:15,210 --> 01:37:19,490
together in a way that even an
individual film or a TV show can't do.

1326
01:37:19,770 --> 01:37:21,550
It's part of a sense of community.

1327
01:37:21,830 --> 01:37:25,710
And that's something that's fueled these
comics in this universe since the very

1328
01:37:25,710 --> 01:37:29,650
beginning. And New York is a huge part
of that. It's a huge part of Marvel's

1329
01:37:29,650 --> 01:37:30,650
identity.

1330
01:37:41,740 --> 01:37:46,920
San Diego, which is an amazing Comic
-Con, but there wasn't a show like that

1331
01:37:46,920 --> 01:37:51,340
all in New York, which just didn't make
sense, considering all of New York's

1332
01:37:51,340 --> 01:37:55,580
rich publishing, comic book history.
It's media clout.

1333
01:37:56,100 --> 01:38:02,780
It's culture, you know? So we took it
upon ourselves to create this idea and

1334
01:38:02,780 --> 01:38:06,440
launched it in 06, and we had no idea
what we were doing.

1335
01:38:07,280 --> 01:38:12,220
And we expected about 10 ,000 people,
and 25 ,000 people showed up.

1336
01:38:12,520 --> 01:38:19,300
And the fire marshal shut the event
down, and it was an unmitigated

1337
01:38:19,640 --> 01:38:20,640
basically.

1338
01:38:21,640 --> 01:38:27,840
And now, nine years later, we have 150
,000 people, and we still don't know

1339
01:38:27,840 --> 01:38:30,340
we're doing. So, you know, we've at
least been consistent.

1340
01:38:36,420 --> 01:38:41,360
It is a 10 -minute walk to DC's offices,
a 15 -minute walk from here to Marvel's

1341
01:38:41,360 --> 01:38:45,960
offices. So, you know, you have a
certain pride in your hometown show.

1342
01:38:46,420 --> 01:38:49,900
Those two big publishers don't do a lot
of events, really.

1343
01:38:51,080 --> 01:38:54,740
But they did a show like New York Comic
Con from the first year when we really

1344
01:38:54,740 --> 01:38:58,340
had no track record, but they supported
it. And I think that has a lot to do

1345
01:38:58,340 --> 01:39:00,820
with the fact that it's in Gotham, it's
in New York.

1346
01:39:05,610 --> 01:39:12,310
I know that DC Comics is moving to
Burbank in the coming year.

1347
01:39:12,610 --> 01:39:17,790
And I know that's very disruptive to the
staff and certainly the creative

1348
01:39:17,790 --> 01:39:20,170
community surrounding the staff.

1349
01:39:20,950 --> 01:39:25,190
Some people wonder whether or not Marvel
will eventually move to the West Coast.

1350
01:39:25,390 --> 01:39:27,870
And all I can say is it's possible.

1351
01:39:28,130 --> 01:39:32,590
The companies, I believe, were
originally here because this is where

1352
01:39:32,590 --> 01:39:33,950
was located.

1353
01:39:35,290 --> 01:39:41,090
and the comic book publishers were
former pulp publishers, and that's

1354
01:39:41,090 --> 01:39:44,490
know, they started in New York, they
stayed in New York.

1355
01:39:44,830 --> 01:39:50,990
Now with the focus on the movies, I can
understand the need to move everybody to

1356
01:39:50,990 --> 01:39:52,170
the West Coast.

1357
01:39:52,510 --> 01:39:59,490
It tells you a lot about where the comic
book industry is going

1358
01:39:59,490 --> 01:40:00,490
a little bit, right?

1359
01:40:02,040 --> 01:40:06,860
It's not just DC and it's not just
Marvel. A lot of even medium -sized

1360
01:40:06,860 --> 01:40:11,200
publishers are doing the same thing,
which is they're developing IP,

1361
01:40:11,500 --> 01:40:15,540
intellectual property, for multimedia
platforms.

1362
01:40:16,320 --> 01:40:23,160
And comic books may be the original
format for that

1363
01:40:23,160 --> 01:40:29,560
IP, but the idea is film, television,
toy, home apparel, video

1364
01:40:29,560 --> 01:40:30,560
games, right?

1365
01:40:31,100 --> 01:40:34,980
And that world isn't as rooted in New
York, per se, as the publishing world.

1366
01:40:35,960 --> 01:40:42,640
So I think it's a physical sort of
manifestation of the changes that have

1367
01:40:42,640 --> 01:40:48,640
going on in publishing period, not just
comics, but in comics as well, for quite

1368
01:40:48,640 --> 01:40:49,619
some time, really.

1369
01:40:49,620 --> 01:40:53,520
In the early days of comic books,
certainly in the early days of Marvel...

1370
01:40:54,600 --> 01:41:00,680
The creative people, the writers, the
artists, they all lived in New York City

1371
01:41:00,680 --> 01:41:05,640
because you had to deliver your work by
hand.

1372
01:41:06,200 --> 01:41:12,900
As time has gone on, people started
delivering work through the mail.

1373
01:41:13,500 --> 01:41:18,860
And then came Federal Express, and now
it's all email.

1374
01:41:19,360 --> 01:41:22,660
You can live wherever you want and
deliver your work.

1375
01:41:23,150 --> 01:41:28,010
I work for publishers in Europe, and I
work for non

1376
01:41:28,010 --> 01:41:31,610
-publishers on the West Coast.

1377
01:41:32,250 --> 01:41:37,810
And it's all the same to me, because all
I have to do to send it is hit a

1378
01:41:37,810 --> 01:41:40,410
button, and the script is gone.

1379
01:41:40,890 --> 01:41:45,930
You have to remember that Jack Kirby
moved to Los Angeles and was one of the

1380
01:41:45,930 --> 01:41:49,250
first people who actually worked away
from New York.

1381
01:41:49,690 --> 01:41:52,030
while still working for New York
publishing companies.

1382
01:41:52,290 --> 01:41:56,770
Because of modern communications, the
writers and artists no longer have to be

1383
01:41:56,770 --> 01:41:59,490
anywhere near the offices of the
publisher.

1384
01:41:59,970 --> 01:42:06,490
And in a way, that's opened the world up
much more broadly, and it has taken

1385
01:42:06,490 --> 01:42:07,490
them out of an epicenter.

1386
01:42:07,790 --> 01:42:13,950
Even when most of the talent that works
for Marvel, we don't live in the city.

1387
01:42:14,980 --> 01:42:20,920
It's always, I don't know, makes you
feel like part of the

1388
01:42:20,920 --> 01:42:26,840
community, knowing that the office is
still in New York, you know,

1389
01:42:26,880 --> 01:42:30,300
still has a New York address and that.

1390
01:42:30,760 --> 01:42:37,060
So I would like Marvel to stay here for

1391
01:42:37,060 --> 01:42:38,980
longer, forever, you know.

1392
01:42:39,620 --> 01:42:41,420
If Marvel decided...

1393
01:42:41,640 --> 01:42:47,320
to leave the city at some point because
of a business reason. Well, you know, my

1394
01:42:47,320 --> 01:42:48,700
work doesn't change at all.

1395
01:42:50,240 --> 01:42:56,980
But I think we all love to know

1396
01:42:56,980 --> 01:42:59,060
that Marvel will stay here for us.

1397
01:43:00,760 --> 01:43:06,100
Nostalgia is a tricky thing, you know?
Like, you want everyone to stay in New

1398
01:43:06,100 --> 01:43:09,980
York where they came from, but, you
know, things change, times change.

1399
01:43:10,780 --> 01:43:12,160
There's now lights at Wrigley Field.

1400
01:43:12,400 --> 01:43:15,200
I mean, you know, the Washington Post
has color photographs.

1401
01:43:15,500 --> 01:43:20,080
Like, you know, my CDs are worthless.
Certainly my cassettes aren't. Like, the

1402
01:43:20,080 --> 01:43:21,080
world changes.

1403
01:43:21,440 --> 01:43:24,600
There's a part of you that says, man, it
would be cool if it stayed that way

1404
01:43:24,600 --> 01:43:28,140
forever and that sort of nostalgia could
live on.

1405
01:43:29,020 --> 01:43:33,240
But the world is changing and how we do
business is changing and how people

1406
01:43:33,240 --> 01:43:35,100
consume content is changing, you know.

1407
01:43:40,460 --> 01:43:46,740
New York being a character in comic
books won't change because of where the

1408
01:43:46,740 --> 01:43:48,460
publisher's offices are based.

1409
01:43:48,680 --> 01:43:54,780
When DC moves to Burbank, I don't think
that Gotham's going to change to be a

1410
01:43:54,780 --> 01:43:58,600
flat city by the sea with lots of
highways.

1411
01:43:59,060 --> 01:44:01,500
That history remains.

1412
01:44:02,000 --> 01:44:03,220
I'm a New York boy.

1413
01:44:03,960 --> 01:44:07,600
I came into comics hanging around the
offices of...

1414
01:44:08,080 --> 01:44:12,100
than many different comic book companies
that were in New York in the early

1415
01:44:12,100 --> 01:44:18,320
1970s. DC, Marvel, Warren, Gold Key,
Archie.

1416
01:44:19,400 --> 01:44:23,420
I was up at them all after school on
different afternoons.

1417
01:44:24,100 --> 01:44:29,820
So each time one of them closes or moves
their door somewhere else,

1418
01:44:29,860 --> 01:44:34,460
I feel sad because that's a piece of my
childhood moving away.

1419
01:44:36,300 --> 01:44:38,460
You can run a great business from
anywhere.

1420
01:44:39,100 --> 01:44:45,680
I'm sure that D .C. and Los Angeles will
still be a magical company and will do

1421
01:44:45,680 --> 01:44:50,460
wonderful things and be magic for the
young people who are working there who

1422
01:44:50,460 --> 01:44:51,460
just starting out today.

1423
01:44:53,180 --> 01:44:58,600
My magic time was a few decades ago, and
I get to keep that.

1424
01:45:05,000 --> 01:45:09,080
But it is in California that the most
decisive pages of the future of

1425
01:45:09,080 --> 01:45:10,080
superheroes are now being written.

1426
01:45:11,880 --> 01:45:16,180
To reach a wider audience, Marvel has
also implanted itself in Hollywood.

1427
01:45:26,160 --> 01:45:31,040
Since the first Iron Man in 2008, Marvel
Studios has produced a world -class box

1428
01:45:31,040 --> 01:45:33,820
-office without mistakes in ten films,
all produced by your care.

1429
01:45:34,330 --> 01:45:38,270
Mais son aventure au cinéma aura
nécessité 8 années de tâtonnement et

1430
01:45:38,390 --> 01:45:41,750
en amont, une réinvention par l 'éditeur
de ses propres comics.

1431
01:45:42,090 --> 01:45:43,650
Dès 1999...

1432
01:45:43,980 --> 01:45:50,320
Since 2000, there's this realization
that there will be movies, big movies,

1433
01:45:50,320 --> 01:45:53,860
as Spider -Man, such as X -Men, and that
we have stories, perhaps, in the

1434
01:45:53,860 --> 01:45:57,720
comics, which are loaded with 30 or 40
years of continuity, which are perhaps a

1435
01:45:57,720 --> 01:46:01,740
little too complex, and we tell
ourselves that we're going to invent a

1436
01:46:01,740 --> 01:46:06,500
start, parallel to the hero in place,
and we're going to launch the Ultimates

1437
01:46:06,500 --> 01:46:12,340
range, which is mainly based on three
titles at the beginning, which are...

1438
01:46:13,389 --> 01:46:15,290
Ultimate Spider -Man and Ultimate X
-Men.

1439
01:46:15,680 --> 01:46:20,320
which are connected with a certain
cinematographic expression.

1440
01:46:20,540 --> 01:46:26,620
And we will arrive at this third series,
where people will say to themselves,

1441
01:46:26,620 --> 01:46:31,220
why make a series called The Short
Ultimates, which takes back the members

1442
01:46:31,220 --> 01:46:36,580
the Avengers, but in a new context, and
also much more cinematographic.

1443
01:46:36,860 --> 01:46:41,300
And in this new context, which is led by
the screenwriter Mark Millar, who is

1444
01:46:41,300 --> 01:46:45,670
Scottish, and his father -in -law Brian
Hitch, the director... which has a big

1445
01:46:45,670 --> 01:46:49,990
importance in narration, we will
reinvent codes.

1446
01:46:50,620 --> 01:46:54,580
Re -inventing codes means asking
yourself the question of why in

1447
01:46:54,580 --> 01:46:57,720
characters there are no black decision
-makers.

1448
01:46:58,240 --> 01:47:02,900
We will decide that Nick Fury could be
black, he could have, why not, the face

1449
01:47:02,900 --> 01:47:03,900
of Samuel Jackson.

1450
01:47:04,860 --> 01:47:10,300
And we will make choices that will be
decisive for the future because we

1451
01:47:10,300 --> 01:47:15,780
the aesthetics, the behavior of heroes a
little more potash maybe, but also a

1452
01:47:15,780 --> 01:47:16,840
little more political.

1453
01:47:17,120 --> 01:47:19,540
And we create the blueprint.

1454
01:47:20,110 --> 01:47:23,990
of what will be the Marvel Studios four
or five years later.

1455
01:47:24,530 --> 01:47:30,550
It's in there that there is the DNA of
this Captain America, of this Iron Man,

1456
01:47:30,710 --> 01:47:33,390
of this Thor, and of course of the
Avengers movies.

1457
01:47:34,210 --> 01:47:39,630
So it's ready to adapt, it's thought to
speak to the cinema audience. And the

1458
01:47:39,630 --> 01:47:44,370
day when Marvel will say, we're going to
the cinema, these series will serve as

1459
01:47:44,370 --> 01:47:45,450
warplanes.

1460
01:47:46,570 --> 01:47:52,030
DC had an advantage in filmmaking in
that they were tied intimately with

1461
01:47:52,030 --> 01:47:55,230
Brothers. And so you had Superman the
movie and Batman.

1462
01:47:55,590 --> 01:48:00,230
And you had the Wonder Woman television
show. And all of them were based upon

1463
01:48:00,230 --> 01:48:03,750
three of the most iconic characters in
existence.

1464
01:48:04,470 --> 01:48:09,190
Marvel had essentially two properties
that were that iconic.

1465
01:48:09,570 --> 01:48:14,270
Spider -Man and the X -Men. In that day,
Marvel had no specific...

1466
01:48:14,680 --> 01:48:15,940
studio tie.

1467
01:48:16,180 --> 01:48:22,460
And so those two properties were
developed with Sony and 20th Century

1468
01:48:23,620 --> 01:48:28,280
There were a lot of secondary characters
who were not going to be developed

1469
01:48:28,280 --> 01:48:33,880
because they didn't have that icon
status of Spider -Man and the X -Men or

1470
01:48:33,880 --> 01:48:35,580
Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

1471
01:48:36,040 --> 01:48:41,360
And I think that the Marvel film
division

1472
01:48:42,240 --> 01:48:46,040
grew because there was a frustration
that there were all of these really rich

1473
01:48:46,040 --> 01:48:49,900
characters who weren't being used as
film.