‘Captain America’ Writer Chip Zdarsky Says Marvel Offices Have Become “Very Siloed Off Because There Hasn’t Been A Bendis”
In offering a telling bit of insight into the abysmal state of Marvel Comics’ operations, Captain America Vol. 14 writer Chip Zdarsksy says that the former House of Ideas is currently suffering from a significant lack of team communication, with the absence of a Brian Michael Bendis-style overseer having resulted in each of its creative offices essentially doing ‘their own thing’.
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Zdarsky, who prior to helming the Star-Spangled Avenger’s latest run was in charge of Daredevil’s Devil’s Reign era, made public note of this crack in Marvel’s production style during the debut episode of Chip Chat, a new series which will see him sitting down for monthly interviews with Off-Panel podcast host David Harper.
Speaking to his work penning the publisher’s upcoming Armageddon event, Zdarsky told his host that when it came to such companywide arcs, “My favorite events come out of story.”
[Time Stamp: 21:45]
“I think World World War Hulk is one of those where it’s like Greg Pak just wrote like an amazing Hulk story, did Planet Hulk stuff and then like it just felt like a natural end to that, the Hulk coming back for revenge, essentially. And that was big, and it was huge, and it followed on you a couple years worth of really solid stories.”
Pointing to his aforementioned Devil’s Reign for a concrete example of his creative approach to events,, Zdarsky explained that the stress-level story “kind of felt a bit like that.”
“I remember when I was kind of pitching what was coming up in Daredevil, as soon as I kind of started to talk about those events, you could just see it in like the eyes of like the editors where they’re like ‘Oh, okay, this is actually this could be bigger
than just contained within the pages of Daredevil. And then you kind of you rewrite based on that a little bit, you include more characters and kind of make the stakes a little bit bigger.”
Turning to Armageddon itself, which promises to shake-up the entire Earth-616 line “in a way not seen since Avengers: Disassembled“, Zdarsky explained that the upcoming event was always planned as “its own thing”, telling his host, “It wasn’t in Captain America and I pulled it out to turn it into this, this is like writing Captain America and realizing, ‘Oh, after this, this could spring something out over here that’s bigger.'”
“So, we just went ahead and did that. It’s kind of it’s weird and fun to just kind of come back to Marvel with Captain America, which is not normally, you know, a top selling title, and then kind of quickly just kind of like basically present story ideas that build off of it that kind of become bigger, and then Marvel just kind of trusts me with taking that forward.”
His gameplan met with praise from Harper, who favorably compared it how Marvel Comics’ Brian Michael Bendis-led 2003-2010 era near-seamlessly flowed from “Avengers Disassembled, then it goes into New Avengers, and then House of M, then Civil War, etc.”, Zdarsky then turned to recall a recent discussion between himself and new Iron Man Vol. 8 scribe Joshua Williamson regarding Marvel’s current lack of a similar vision.
“I had an interesting conversation with Josh Williamson when he was starting out on Iron Man, trying to figure out Iron Man. And I guess at one point he just kind of asking around, like, ‘What’s what’s the Marvel book that I should be reading that like lets me know what’s happening in Marvel books?’ And there wasn’t one really. Everyone’s a little bit siloed off. The X-Men stuff’s very much X-Men, Spider-Man is Spider-Man, Jed [MacKay] doing Avengers stuff that felt very siloed off as well.”
Presently, Marvel’s has four main offices, as respectively centered on the Avengers, Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the soon-ending Ultimate universe (with another existing solely to handle their Star Wars efforts) and under whose banner other heroes are variously assigned; For example, the Hulk’s comic book adventures currently fall under the purview of the Spider-office, while the Fantastic Four are assigned to the X-office.
And in Zdarsky’s opinion, this lack of cooperation between the four teams is at least partially due to how “there hasn’t been” someone like Bendis, who “was really good at that, being the guy whose New Avengers you could read to know what’s kind of happening.”
“And Hickman as well, when he was kind of building up his FF and Avengers stuff leading to Secret Wars, like those are the books that you read to kind of know where the Marvel universe is heading. And it’s not to take away from any of the other books, like you have like great stories happening elsewhere, but when you kind of want the overview of where everything’s going, there’s usually a book to kind of lock into and and and read.
“[For Armageddon], I kind of pitched it a little bit as Captain America, because the the second arc that’s starting up is
very much bringing back S.H.I.E.L.D.m and it’s like post-One World Under Doom, and he state of the world for Marvel, and that arc leads into Armageddon. And the Weapons of Armageddon tie-ins, these are the titles that, if you want to know what’s happening and what we’re building towards, these are the books that you read. You’ll see all the characters and they’ll all come together and figure things out.”
Wrapping up his thoughts on the topic, Zdarsky ultimately asserted, “There are things in Avengers: Armageddon where when I pitched it, people’s eyes lit up in the room and they’re like, ‘Oh, okay! All right, that’s great!’ And a lot of it’s just stuff, I think when it happens, people will be like, ‘Oh, of course.’ But also, no one’s going to see it coming.”
“So, it’s my favorite kind of like comic book story thing.”
