Editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics
Joe Quesada is best-known as the
editor-in-chief of
Marvel Comics. He succeeded to this position in 2000, following
Bob Harras's separation from the company. Joe Quesada is the first
Hispanic editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics and one of the few Hispanics in the American industry to have achieved prominence for work other than his own draftsmanship. As editor-in-chief of one of the two largest publishers in the comic book business, his decisions are influential and have had, and continue to have, reverberations outside the world of comics. He has been the subject of much praise and derision from commentators both inside and outside the industry, due to his headstrong management style and far-reaching effects on Marvel books and the industry at large.
Quesada became editor-in-chief at the same time that controversial personality
Bill Jemas succeeded to the presidency of the company. The two enjoyed enormous success together and enjoyed a seemingly warm personal relationship. The fruits of that relationship culminated in the establishment of the
Ultimate line of Marvel titles, which were aimed at teenagers, took place outside of the restrictive
continuity of the
Marvel Universe, and heralded Marvel's - and the industry's - climb back to prominence. Jemas, after a series of discussions and changes in his role as a Marvel executive, separated from the company.
Quesada, however, was retained as editor-in-chief; Jemas's separation had the unexpected result of confirming the company's, and subsequently the industry's, confidence in Quesada's stewardship. During his partnership with Jemas, and more so afterwards, Quesada became an industry mover and shaker.
Joe Quesada is credited with supervising Marvel Comics during a revival and a period of growth in which Marvel Comics recovered from the
bankruptcy of the late 1990s. Throughout the 1990s, Marvel Comics relied chiefly on its large stable of popular characters and considered its creators to be replaceable, hired laborers. With
Avi Arad heading up Marvel's licensing division, Quesada was free to focus on hiring capable talent and matching them with compatible titles, characters, and other creators. Examples of this among writers include
J. Michael Straczynski on
Amazing Spider-Man,
Mark Waid on
Fantastic Four and
Brian Michael Bendis on
Ultimate Spider-Man,
Daredevil, and
Avengers. Quesada considered comic-making to be Marvel's core function and focused on the quality of Marvel's key titles, not allowing Marvel simply to rest on the laurels of decades-old comic creations. His tenure has seen many worn-out titles rise once again to prominence in the sales charts, due to creative team changes, changes in creative and editorial direction, and relaunches, the most successful as of August 2006 being
New Avengers.
Quesada dislikes
comic book deaths and, early in his editorial career, imposed a moratorium on the comic-book practice of creatively bringing back a character thought to be dead, though this ban was almost immediately done away with. Quesada changed his view, saying the continuity should not stand in the way of telling a good story. He also banned the use of editorial footnotes in comic books early in his tenure, though like the case with comic book deaths, this ban has since become relaxed.
Quesada has also banned Marvel characters from smoking, including
Wolverine, the
Thing, J. Jonah Jameson and
Nick Fury. This stems from his own father's death from lung cancer and his feeling that these characters, whom kids look up to, should not be seen smoking. Although this has been common practice in recent television shows, films, or commercials, the decision attracted criticism because the characters are seen as
icons and
Marvel is largely not child-friendly in its most well-known comics.
Joe Quesada's predecessor as Marvel editor in chief,
Bob Harras, cancelled and restarted all of Marvel's titles that were not either
X-Men-related or at fewer than 100 issues already. This was an effort to shore up sagging sales with a new #1 issue for each of Marvel's popular titles, issued at a time shortly after the bust of the comic book collecting industry, and when Marvel was in the throes of bankruptcy. Quesada reversed this policy first by showing the "old", combined issue numbers beside the "new" numbers on covers (the difference between the two issue numbers shown on the cover would always be the number of issues that the series had before Harras restarted it), and then definitively restoring the "old" numbers for
Fantastic Four,
Amazing Spider-Man and
Avengers when they each passed the 500 mark .
Joe Quesada has been involved in the creation of three successful imprints:
*
Marvel Knights, aimed at older readers (before his tenure as editor-in-chief)
*
MAX, aimed at adult readers, with
Brian Michael Bendis
*
Ultimate, aimed at teen readers, with Brian Michael Bendis and
Mark Millar
Quesada has advocated he is personally not a fan of
comic book creators signing exclusive contracts with Marvel or DC Comics instead of
freelancing, yet he understands that it is simply how the market works in this day and age.
Under Joe Quesada's guidance, Marvel Comics became an aggressive publisher of
trade paperbacks, changing Marvel's marketing of them from a quiet aftermarket to a primary means of content delivery. Before Quesada's time, Marvel comic book collections were sporadic, releasing only tried-and-true stories from ages past and presented in such a manner to hide that they were ever monthly comics, without any clear indication of the individual titles or issue numbers. Under Quesada, Marvel publishes more trade paperbacks as an alternative to the monthly series they reprint, getting comic book collections into mainstream bookstores as well as speciality comics shops, often releasing weeks after the final collected issue, and as complete as the monthly issues, covering every issue of popular titles and released with volume numbers on the spine. This allows greater ease for casual readers to collect.
Critics charge that trade paperbacks cannibalize monthly comic book sales, because readers may opt to forego monthly series in order to wait for the cheaper collections, not realizing that monthly sales are an indicator to publishers of interest in such collections. Another criticism is that writers may be forced to extend a serialized story until it is long enough to fill a trade paperback, and that, by being in mainstream bookstores, they hurt the speciality comic shops that are Marvel's financial manistay. However, Quesada's policy of complete and well-presented trade paperbacks was one of the central pillars that brought Marvel back from the brink of bankruptcy following the disastrous years of the late 1990s.
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