Whenever the next big superhero movie comes around, you tend to see the comic book publishers place more focus on characters set to appear on the silver screen. In the case of Avengers: Infinity War, it only makes sense that Thanos be given the spotlight. And, in this rare instance, the guy who created the Mad Titan, Jim Starlin, is still in the game, so who better to pen the books, right?
Well, as you may know, Marvel isn’t always aces when it comes to things outside of the movies. In fact, editorial often makes creative decisions that can rub even the most stalwart of True Believers the wrong way. Hey, Brian Michael Bendis must’ve had some reason to switch to DC, right?
The latest shakeup, which came as a shock to me, saw Starlin packing up and leaving the House of Ideas, thus leaving his baby, Thanos, behind. And while we’re sure this was a tough decision for him to make, it seemed that a misunderstanding between him and editor Tom Brevoort was the cause of it all, as Starlin had this to offer:
“What I objected to and what will keep me from doing any further work for Marvel Editorial was Tom Brevoort approving a plot for the current on-going series, which was pretty much the same as the Thanos story arc in the graphic novel trilogy Alan Davis and I have been working on for Tom for close to the past year. He had 200 pages of script and 100 pages of pencils on this project when he gave the green light to a strikingly similar plot. The on-going will be in print before the graphic novel trilogy. TO avoid spoiling anyone’s enjoyment of these two stories I will not be summarizing the striking similarities.”
But wait, it gets better:
“At first Tom denied giving his approval to the plot. When that turned out to be false, he switched to claiming there was nothing similar about the two plots. When that didn’t fly he changed his story to it was all an accident. These changes of excuse and other bits of procrastination ate up a month, by which time the current Thanos on-going art team was too far along for anything to be done about the situation. Too bad for me. So, I am moving on.”
On top of that, Marvel twice passed over the man when it came to deciding who’d write the Thanos ongoing. Thankfully, Avengers director Josh Whedon supported Starlin in a classy move, saying “His work is as important to the MCU as anyone’s.” And being the one who brought Thanos to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the first place, it’s nice to see someone like Whedon giving credit where credit is due. Either way, we wish Mr. Starlin all the best in his future endeavors.
