Saturday, September 10, 2011

Pimping My Stuff: Marvel.com Trifecta

I wear many hats in my role as Associate Editor of Marvel.com (not actually true, I don't generally wear hats unless on vacation to protect my scalp from the ravages of the sun). These days, much of my time is spent programming content, organizing my freelancers, supervising interns, editing stories and helping to produce, direct and occasionally host our video and animation efforts. I dig all this stuff and getting to constantly incorporate new responsibilities and roles into my job is an awesome perk to an already great gig.

However, at the end of the day, I'm still a writer at heart, as the lengthy treatises on pro wrestling, Subway and Adam-X that have hopefully wasted many of your evenings go to show.

It's not every week I get the opportunity to sit down and just write at my day job, but this was one of those weeks. I worked on three pretty cool pieces over the past few days, and if you'll indulge me (if you've made it this far you kinda already are), I'd like to share them with you.

Up first, I spoke with designer and letterer Jared Fletcher about coming up with the new logos for the post-Regenesis X-Men titles. I've never covered this kind of topic with anybody of Jared's skill, so it was neat to get into his process and also see all the sketches and tests that got him to his final product. Check out more at his web site. Sorry they nixed the lower case "e," Jared!

Next, I had the pleasure of chatting with my old buddy and one of the most uniquely talented artists working in comics, Juan Doe. I can't divulge my history with Juan, lest I shatter shrouded-in-mystique persona, but it was awesome to catch up with him and hear about all the recent triumphs in his personal life and then dig into his work on Legion of Monsters, the first limited series he's ever tackled (he's previously stuck to covers and one shots). Juan is ever the wordsmith, explaining the lure of the series and how he's recently altered his style, but the sketches are the real gem. Creepy Morbius! Hit his deviantArt gallery.

Finally, I'm not sure who he is, but somebody sure is keeping painstaking track of the developments in Spider-Island, adding them to a super cool and ever-evolving map on Marvel.com. Nice work, guy!