Netflix’s incredible Beef is an exploration of anger and rage, showing how a tiny incident can quickly spiral into something with life-changing implications for all concerned. One stand-out star is artist, musician, and actor David Choe who plays Isaac Cho, the low-level criminal cousin of Steven Yeun’s Danny Cho. Throughout the series, he’s a volatile element with his actions taking the drama to new heights.
It sounds like he’s good casting, as Choe’s own life is also fascinatingly chaotic. Choe is currently in the headlines as a result of a 2014 podcast interview in which he claimed to have sexually assaulted a masseuse, with his defense that he was playing a character at the time and the incident is fiction. We’ve also just explored the bizarre story of how he became a multimillionaire overnight following a series of unlikely coincidences relating to art he did for Facebook in 2005.
But, prior to all that, Choe was once engaged in a truly fierce beef of his own with Marvel Comics. Here’s how it went down.
Project NYX
In the early 2000s, Marvel Comics was preparing to launch its new MAX imprint. These were comics solely aimed at an adult audience, with none of the restrictions on violence and subject matter present in their regular line-ups. They proved to be a hit, with Garth Ennis’ Punisher MAX perhaps the best-known result.
David Choe, then an up-and-coming Los Angeles artist known for his graffiti work, had made a name for himself in the comics world with his graphic novel Slow Jams. After a 200-copy self-financed run, it was selected for the Xeric Grant and a second 1000-copy run was produced.
This turned heads at Marvel, and Choe and writer Brian Woods pitched ‘Project NYX,’ an X-Men comic focusing on Gambit, Rogue, and Jubilee. Woods and Choe began work and it was intended to launch the MAX line. In an interview with PopImage, Choe said:
“It’s gonna be out in August under Marvel Comics new Mature Line. Wood’s writing, I’m rocking the covers, and my boys from 38th street and the Crabshack Project will be taking care of the guts with my help. It’s taking place in New York, and Rogue, Gambit and Jubilee are the key players, that’s all you get for now.”
Woods said, in a post on his forum (as chronicled here):
“We were to mix normal humans in with the mutants, and explore that relationship. How do mutants and normals that aren’t part of the whole Xavier/Magneto equation act around each other? If they are all living under one roof, depending on each other, how do their differences play out?”
But it seems that what they delivered wasn’t to Marvel’s taste, with then editor-in-chief Joe Quesada passing on the project and saying on Marvel’s forums that:
“NYX was not canceled, it wasn’t even a book yet, it was a proposal! An idea that we were digging into! We have hundreds of proposals that come down the line and near hundreds that get rejected. Brian gave us a treatment and we passed, it happens all the time. I’ve got unused proposals on my desk from some of the best creators in the industry sitting on my desk, it’s part of the biz.
So now we have fans hating books before they’ve read the actual stories and at the same time hating us for canceling stories they’ve never read. You can’t win in this biz, folks!”
Woods called foul, replying to the thread:
“This confuses me even more, because not only were we talking to colorists for the book, it was also placed on the publishing schedule for late September and I was asked to write the plot for the first issue (as well as an outline for the first 6-issue arc and notes for the next arc). In my experience those things aren’t typical at the initial proposal stage.
We were all moving ahead with this project with every indication that it was approved. If it was in fact NOT approved, no one I was in contact with seemed to know anything about it.”
Quesada would then go on to write his own NYX comic, which ran for seven issues between 2003 and 2005. It’s safe to say Choe did not take this well.
The open letter
Choe promptly wrote an open letter to Quesada, emailed it to hundreds of people in the comic book industry, and didn’t mince his words. You can read Choe’s whole furious and sexually explicit letter here, but below are a couple of excerpts that we can just about publish:
Joe is a Liar because: This F**king book was his and Bill Jemas’ idea, and they talk real big. But hey f**kface, don’t go around talking big willy styles, if you’re gonna shrivel up like a scared little turtle when it’s time to perform. Don’t f**ing approve books, and then pu**y out, and especially don’t go online and spread lie’s on how it’s a f**king “proposal” . Can you tell me why if it’s a f**king proposal, how come we got a colorist, how come I’m sitting in my room with stacks of”MARVEL” paper . I mean how easy is it to just say, hey look I’m canceling a book, because it’s too harsh for our Marvel Zombie’s. how easy is that, it sucks but it’s much better, than beating off in the f**king bush. Yeah sure it still make’s you a pu**y, but at least you’re an up front pu**y. Just face it you’re a pu**y, and a liar. Go look in the mirror, look at what you are, own up to it and let the healing process begin.
And on his take on these classic mutants:
“Show me someone at Marvel Comics that has ever drawn a better Jubilee or Rogue, than the one’s I presented and then show me the idiot who’s gonna sleep on that. Show me the idiot who passed on that book and I bet you an Orangutan’s shriveled up nut s**k that that f**ker looks a lot like a fat Italian dude who is the editor in chief at Marvel.”
And it’s rounded off by the sound of bridges being burned for good with Marvel:
“In closing I’m sorry if this whole thing comes off as juvenile and immature, or like an angry postal worker manifesto, but I just REALLY REALLY hate it when people waste my f**king time, and people who f**king spread bulls**t lie’s . and so in closing , the point of this whole response I guess is pretty simple, I just wanted to say to Joe, F**K YOU, and if anyone of you f****t’s out there who are too blinded by Mr’ Quesada’s j**m in there eye’s has anything they want to say about that, a hearty F**K YOU too you too. Oh and as far as the ultimate line is concerned. Mark Bagley still draws like a b**ch.”
Hey! Leave Mark Bagley out of this! Ultimate Spider-Man looked great!
As you would expect, this ended Choe’s brief official relationship with Marvel (though he has gone on to produce his own art of their characters). But Marvel’s loss was DC’s gain, as Choe has since gone on to produce a number of very cool-looking variant covers for Superman, Batman, and The Joker: A Puzzlebox.
So, yeah, if you want real-world Beef, look no further than one of its stars.
