Christopher Priest on behind the scenes editing 80s Spider-Man

>>92108154
Jim Shooter era is the last of strong continuity.

>>92108236
This

I thought Priest was the pseudonym

Priest's blog is always interesting to read.

>The New Deal: Mark Beachum and Peter David completely re-envisioned Felicia Hardy, The Black Cat,ho obsessed over Spider-Man while we obsessed over her. From Spectacular #115.
>ho

Ayyyyy

>>92110622
>Priest's blog is always interesting to read.
And Shooter's is fucking amazing, both for the history and for the lessons.

History, start here:
http://jimshooter.com/category/02-early-life/?order=asc
I genuinely thought he was from Texas, not Pittsburgh.

Storytelling, start here:
http://jimshooter.com/2011/04/198-storytelling-lecture-part-1.html
About 5 pages into this you'll get his take on current storytelling methods in comic books even if he doesn't name names.

Yesterday I read the two issues of Wonder Woman Priest wrote back in 1994. I had always thought they were mostly just Priest doing the scripts as a favor to Bill Messner-Loebs, and they probably were, but I noticed some things I hadn't before.

For one I noticed, I think for the first time, Priest has a really distinct writing style that I can't describe. Everything I've ever read from him uses some of the same "ticks", things that I've long had in my own writing style, and I wonder now if I somehow unknowingly adopted some of it from reading his work in the 90's as a young'un.

Another is that Diana's characterization is a lot stronger and more true to herself than it had been for several issues before. Diana had basically gone postal and was bashing up parts of Boston, but showed little remorse or restraint, while in Priest's issues she acknowledged repeatedly that she was acting out of character and had been somewhat unstable.

This website is so great, but a bit confusing to navigate around.

>>92108154
>He compares the insane office politics to NewsRadio, and the anecdotes bear it out

hilarious to watch but not a work environment I would ever want to be stuck in

>>92111363
>Everything I've ever read from him uses some of the same "ticks", things that I've long had in my own writing style, and I wonder now if I somehow unknowingly adopted some of it from reading his work in the 90's as a young'un.


Mmm, yes. Speak on that.

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>>92112816
Probably the most notable is opening stories like this. The sentence fragments.

File: Wonder Woman V1987 #89 - Home (1994_8) - Page 2.jpg (764KB, 1988x3056px) Image search: [Google]

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>>92112947
And this. You can see this in his Green Lantern, Black Panther, and recently his Deathstroke.

>>92108236

And of consistent quality.

>>92110485
It's legally his name now, but it sure wasn't back then

>>92108236
The three best comics publishers ever are First Comics, Shooter era Marvel, and Stan Lee era Marvel. Nothing else even come close.

>>92113356
So much truth in this thread.

>>92113356
In terms of consistency, yeah. If you ignore consistency and just include publishers that were putting out the most quality crap then 80s DC and 90s Dark Horse could arguably be on that level.

>>92113356
>First Comics
Mah nigga. If only they reprinted these books. A couple of Grimjack omnis isn't enough.

>>92113356
>not Roy Thomas era Marvel
>not O'Neil era DC
>not Vertigo

Missing a lot of good stuff there, buddy.

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>>92108154
I remember that there was some conflict over the Spider-Man vs Wolverine one-shot. Fans already complain that it's pretty bullshit that Spider-Man struggled so much, but it was originally going to be worse since Priest was going to have Wolverine win decisively.

>The fight was re-drawn at the ninth hour because of the raving of Marvel staffers who were, themselves, divided over how that fight should have gone. As originally approved, written and drawn, Spidey got the webs kicked out of him by Wolverine, essentially on the strength of Spidey ignoring his own Spider-Sense (due to other fish-out-of-water circumstances in the story, a hesitation that was foreshadowed in the very first scene in Times Square). I really liked that story until we were ready to turn the book in and all the office in-fighting started.

>Ultimately, I believe the then-EIC caved in to a particularly loud voice who kept arguing that Wolverine could never land a glove on Spider-Man. This was the simplistic, Crayola colorforms through-line of thought this particular voice was famous for, and it was a way of thinking that totally worked against the complex story we were telling. It was applying Baywatch rules to Schindler’s List. The whole point of SVW was to pull Spidey out of his element and confront him with hard doses of reality that made him question who he was, what his purpose was, what his methods were, etc. All of that was designed to play into the moment of the brawl where he’s facing a ruthless killer while no longer capable of trusting his own instincts, hence a Wolvie slice-‘n-dice.

>>92113808
>Rules are no fun unless you break them. And you need the craft and the respect for the character to know when and how to break them. SVW was all _about_ breaking rules, and breaking the rule (that Spider-Man cannot be hit) was set up with _great_ effort in many ways throughout the story. Spider-Man absolutely *can* be hit, but you have to set it up properly and work within the established rules of the character.

>Every scene in SVW was about how wrong Peter’s instincts were, from the opening scene in Times Square, to Peter’s midnight romp across Berlin with Logan (as Peter Parker, using his web-shooters and paranoid he’d be spotted). From his fear of commitment to Mary Jane to his complete mis-reading of Ned Leeds. *Everything* was there for one reason: to enable Wolverine to hit him at the end of the book. To properly set the stage for a vitiation of the Basic Rule About Spider-Man: that he can’t be touched.

>Changing the fight ruined the book, IMO, because the B-story was all about Spidey not trusting his instincts, and that story went nowhere because somebody parroted a “rule” and banged a drum and held his breath until the EIC caved.

>>92113808
It looks like Christopher Priest and Bendis are of the same school of thought when it comes to fights. Power levels and previous feats don't matter if you want someone else to win to show how badass he is.
The idea that Spider-Man couldn't beat Wolverine without killing him is absurd. And so is the whole "without his spider-sense Spidey is defenseless". Also, Spider-Man has fought ruthless wild killers before, like Kraven and the Lizard.

>>92113829
>From his fear of commitment to Mary Jane to his complete mis-reading of Ned Leeds
Ah yes, the infamous Ned Leeds dies and turns out he's the Hobgoblin clusterfuck.