At Mr. Brevoort's

Online Holmgangs #01

This is the start of a regular series where I chronicle some of my more colorful and interesting online exchanges on a variety of platforms. My intention is to document them clearly, while also providing commentary. Bear in mind that this commentary will be subjective, and my own viewpoint but my hope is to curate this discussion so that readers can choose to read it against the grain.

Over the last month, on Substack as it stands, I got into a back-and-forth exchange with Mr. Tom Brevoort, formerly Executive Editor at Marvel and Senior Vice President of Publishing. As of 2023, he is Marvel’s longest serving employee, having begun work at the company in 1989. In addition to his work in Marvel Offices, Mr. Brevoort is also a scholar of comics lore and trivia. His blog(s) and website(s) are a fount of information, something that I’ve been able to use to my benefit in compiling my investigation on the origins of Spider-Man (see here).

Among fans of Spider-Man, Mr. Brevoort became notorious for writing what became the Brand New Day Manifesto, a document that in the eyes of many critics has become a rigid straitjacket of dubious assumptions which has handicapped and restricted the kind of stories told in Spider-Man subsequently. The Brevoort Manifesto, such as it is, was something I addressed in my very first post on my Wordpress Blog (see here) where I set about demolishing many of its core arguments as well as its supplementary justifications. One of the main points that I have driven home in multiple posts over the decades is that Marvel Editors have rarely been asked follow-up questions that challenges many of their (unaddressed statements). The fact is Marvel Editors have a platform to make their claims without being challenged/questioned/critiqued on this front. Especially given that several of which do not in fact bear scrutiny when measured against the facts on record.

Mr. Brevoort started a Substack where posters can make comments which would be addressed personally the following week. For a while I lurked following the posts, wondering if it was possible to address it. But not being familiar with Substack I assumed it was open to “paid” members and not to the public at large. One day with some amount of free time set aside to understand how Substack works, I found out that I could make comments perfectly fine. I thought I’d see if I could comment on something and see if he would respond. Seeing Mr. Brevoort discuss the Kamala Khan 2023 controversy felt like a moment that I could address, even if at the outset I didn’t think Mr. Brevoort would respond. I decided to find a moment to intervene and this led to a series of very interesting exchanges with Mr. Brevoort which have proven far more revealing than I believe even he’s aware of. It also provoked a fierce backlash from third parties, including someone I have had a falling out with (the subject of a future post in fact).

So between July 30, 2023 to August 27, 2023, I made a series of comments there which I now would like to curate here for whatever passes for posterity these days. It’s possible these comments will be scrubbed off the internet someday so I thought it’s worth making a backup that helps preserve it somewhat.

PRELUDE

Before I get to the Substack posts. For the sake of full disclosure, I think it’s important I make it clear that July 23 was not my first back-and-forth exchange with Mr. Brevoort. I’ve tried a few times before to have these points raised to Mr. Brevoort but they’ve never caught on. Some of these tries were indirectly done. Others were me taking the direct approach.

So the first time I crossed paths with Mr. Brevoort, it was before I began my blog. He had conducted an interview with the Podcast Channel Amazing Spider-Talk headed by Mark Ginocchio and Dan Gvozden. This was a two-part episode in 2020, where in the second part, Mr. Brevoort discussed his time on Spider-Man with Gvozden at around the 12 minute mark.

In the course of this interview, Mr. Brevoort reiterates claims made in the 2008 Manifesto not acknowledging the new research that had come since as well as the original public backlash he faced at the time. This bothered me and I wanted to see if others felt the same way. On twitter, Mr. Brevoort hosted the link and was criticized for his statements. Seeing that as a sign I wasn’t alone, I stepped into the fray. Here’s the link to the tweets in question:

https://twitter.com/SupSpiderTalk/status/1248025875833995266

2020 Exchange with Brevoort

I attach here the screenshots in case the link fades or gets deleted as it happens with all things.

This exchange with Mr. Brevoort was more than a little terrifying to me. Something I recorded with Dan Gvozden, who was the host and interviewer of the Amazing Spider-Talk podcast. At that time, Gvozden and I were on cordial terms (Subsequently we have had a falling out). Gvozden in an exchange with me admitted that the likes of Brevoort and Wolfman were hard and set in their ways and not likely to change their opinions. The only way was to get their opinions on the record and let it stand, admitting that the hypocrisy of their attitudes would shine through all the stronger.

These words stuck in my mind a good deal longer. In many ways they rebounded in a variety of ironic ways in the exchange the previous month.

July 30

In his post titled 70: Obviously in his Substack, Mr. Brevoort addressed a variety of topics and responded to some reader questions:

#70: "Obviously"

One of the readers addressed the controversial resurrection of Kamala Khan and advanced a theory online that based on the light-skin features of the comics panel showing Kamala’s resurrection in Hellfire Gala #1 (2023), perhaps originally it was Mary Jane and then swapped to Kamala at the last moment. Brevoort dismissed this as conspiracy theories on twitter, and used his substack post to vent about reader complaints and so on.

Obviously that’s Mr. Brevoort’s prereogative to do so. At the same time, I felt that there was a larger issue that I thought I could use the occassion to raise.

My argument was that Marvel chooses to not be transparent in any significant way under Mr. Brevoort’s supervision, when in fact his vocation as a comics scholar depends on transparency. It was my opening intervention.

August 06

#71: Sea Change

A week later, Mr. Brevoort responded to my comment

Mr. Brevoort’s comment took me a bit off, because from the way he described me it sounded like he knew me or had followed me before. I remembered our earlier exchange back in 2020 but given it only got one tweet at the time, I doubt Mr. Brevoort remembered me from then. At the same time, I noticed that he had not addressed the main thrust of my argument. And in the same message he at one hand claims to be more accessible than anyone before while also confirming more or less to be withholding information, citing how audiences aren’t entitled to know behind the scenes production details of most works of art.

I responded to him the following way.

My exchange led to an interesting discussion with Roadshow, who was courteous and polite. For the full discussion which had lengthy posts, I suggest reading the full comments page.

August 13

#72: I'm the X

In this exchange, Mr. Brevoort once again ignored the thrust of my claims and called me a “conspiracy theorist”.

This led me to make the following reply.

This exchange went to the edge of decorum but I had no other way to give voice to what I felt was the obvious attempt to dodge and evade the questions that Mr. Brevoort consistently dodged out of self-righteousness.

Then came a response from someone with no sense of decorum. This was a post by a commenter named Chris Sutcliffe. To my knowledge, I had no interactions with Sutcliffe before but the hostile tone with which he replied to me betrayed a sense of familiarity, i.e. he knew me and barged in specfically to attack me.

Sutcliffe gave a petulant reply to this which struck me as petty, annoying, and off-topic. Unlike Roadshow who expressed criticism and opposition but did so politely, this person came in spoiling for a fight. I even reported the comment to the moderator who in this case was Mr. Brevoort himself. The fact that he let this comment stand made me feel less regretful about notions of decorum.

August 20

#73: Drinking

A week later, Mr. Brevoort responded to my message again.

To be honest, this was a rather graceful response and in retrospect I maybe should have called it quits then. But a certain tendency in me, call it a character flaw, made me focus on the body of Mr. Brevoort’s post where I picked up a nugget that I couldn’t resist bringing up then and there. Not when I had the audience there on Mr. Brevoort’s substack, all of whom were his peers, and ultimately all I was doing was the work that many in the comics press had long neglected to do. Hold him to account against the factual record.

To this I responded.

Holmgang Round One - Versus Sutcliffe

I cited the fact that according to the Postal Records Data (by general consent the most reliable information about comics sales and profitability of monthly single issue comics), the era of Brand New Day has the lowest numbers on record. This triggered a response not from Mr. Brevoort, but my newly acquired online nemesis, and this triggered an online holmgang between us where the (unspoken but implicit) idea was to argue another person to the bitter end.

[A bit of information about Sutcliffe that I was able to glean was that he has a YouTube channel called “Every Spider-Man Ever” which consists of short videos where he reads issues from the Lee-Ditko’s run and mostly wastes everyone’s times (and presumably his own talent) recapping the plot summary. The enterprise consists of a glorified exercise of “read this comic so you don’t have to” and amounts to a rich kid showing off all his wares and acquisitions and the great amount of free time they have in posting things so insubstantial].

The discussion was petty and mean on both sides I will say. There was no way to back down without being shown to look as “weak”. Still I do think there was an element of substance in the following posts.

The discussion boils down to the question of numbers of the sales of Brand New Day. Sutcliffe tried to overwhelm the discussion by an extended listing of numbers to impress and drive home meaningless statistics without any context. I will admit that for a minute or so I was worried that I had faced a defeat and I had to consult some friends to run the numbers past them. But luckily my instincts proved correct and I was able to carry the debate. This is apparent in Sutcliffe’s barely coherent replies which amounted to a series of petty insults.

Holmgang Round Two - Versus Dan Gvozden

It seemed that my hands were full putting out one fire, only for someone to unfurl a flamethrower on gasoline. This in the form of Gvozden, who I had once been cordial with, but have subsequently fallen out of favor from.

Gvozden responded with an extremely long, highly self-aggrandizing blog which amounted to an overly convoluted plug for his podcast. Near the end of the matter he addressed me and indulged in a series of ad hominem claims.

At this point, I was in a situation where after a month of discussing comics and aspects of research, I was now being staked to defend my reputation. Not by people who want to discuss my argument but people who want to essentially ward people away from anything I must see. The nature of such posts is purely contaminating. Since the very act of defending oneself takes the post off-topic and makes you come across as the cause of strife rather than the people who go off-topic. Given what Gvozden told me in 2020, it struck me as supremely hypocritical on his part. Even if he disagreed with his earlier viewpoints or changed his mind, given the burnt bridges between us, the right thing might be to leave away. Of course it wasn’t just Gvozden, there had to be one of his minions around to chip in.

Anyway I had to be content not with one holmgang but two holmgangs, all set for a warm-up act with the main event.

August 27

#74: Odds and Ends

In response to the discussion in the comments section the previous week, Mr. Brevoort decided to ignore me. On one hand this makes sense. The comments section the previous week had become quite a fracas. On the other hand the refusal to acknowledge the numbers for Brand New Day being foggy was something he simply did not want to acknowledge.

By now I was convinced that Mr. Brevoort had either banned me, or was content to ignore anything I said. So feeling quite free to speak, I picked and isolated a nugget to discuss:

Holmgang Final Round - Mr. Brevoort

This led to the Holmgang with Mr. Brevoort himself. This one could only ever end in Mr. Brevoort’s favor but it was still remarkable to see the things he was going to grit his teeth and ignore.

I challenged the assertion that people in Spider-Man’s Editorial were against the marriage from Day 1. This nostrum has been repeated a few times in a few places which always struck me as unbelievable simply because the marriage could not have lasted long had that been true. In response, Mr. Brevoort tried to claim that Mr. Defalco and Danny Fingeroth who have said the contrary publicly were in favor. I offered video evidence of Mr. Defalco contradicting him and in response, Mr. Brevoort resorted to the claim of being Marvel’s editor and top brass and I am indulging in “gotcha” behavior (criticisms of so-called “gotcha journalism” has devolved from reasonable doubts to simple hostility to any form of accountability) and threatened to ban me for going further.

Having gone further than anyone in challenging Mr. Brevoort’s assertions I am happy to have this all on the record for everyone to see.

Mr. Brevoort’s self-righteousness and refusal to concede anything extends to the truth presented before him. Too much is at stake for him to give ground to any criticism, any rebuttal, any form of fact-checking whatsoever.

Ultimately in the conflict between Mr. Brevoort, company man of Marvel, and Mr. Brevoort the comics scholar, the former will win out every single time when it’s put to the test.

CONCLUDING FOR NOW

Anyway, that’s how it ended the past month. A lot of huffing and puffing, a lot of bruised egos.

Ultimately, I don’t regret using any platform available to press a case and take a stand, no matter where that leads me.