So some fans are flipping out because it was revealed that newly minted Marvel editor in chief, C.B. Cebulski, back in 2010, violated Marvel’s rules against editors also writing comics. It’s being considered outrageous because he violated Marvel’s rules and because he adopted a Japanese pseudonym and wrote stories that played off Japanese backgrounds.
You know: the way that hundreds of people have used fake names when writing, for any number of reasons. Female SF writers adapted male pseudonyms. Even Jo Rowling chose a gender neutral name of J.K. Meanwhile C.B., who lived in Japan for many years, was inspired by his background to let it influence what he wrote, not to mention his hiring practices for bringing Japanese creators into the fold. Honestly, it’s really not surprising that he adapted a Japanese persona. These days, fans only seem comfortable with specific folks writing specific characters. Women are preferred for titles with heroines, African Americans are typically drafted for Black Panther. It’s probably felt that only creators who share the specific backgrounds of the characters are truly qualified to write their adventures, even though all the characters were typically created by white men.
As for the rule of editors not writing, when the hëll did THAT happen? Back in the 1980s when I first started writing, editors were EXPECTED to write comics. It was felt that that was the best way for them to remain in touch with the process and be emotionally in touch with what the full time writers had to deal with. If C.B. violated it, well, it was a stupid rule and I would hope that Marvel has done away with it since.
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Unless he was writing comics as Akira and Edited them as C.B., which is the rule and is verboten, at least from Shooter’s day forward, then no rule was broken. Shooter hated Editors who wrote the comics under their stewardship and so once all the Writer-Editor arrangements between Marvel and his direct predecessors ran out, he said, “Editor on Book X cannot write Book X. They can write for Book Y because Book Y has another editor.” That’s not a direct quote BTW.
I just think that this is another case of Urban Legend-ism. After all, Jim Lee is still known for creating Juggernaut. *chuckle*
Or: “Most important, this has to be a humiliating, angering moment for so many people that have worked in this area of comics. Comics gigs are tough to land, period, and historically elusive at the executive level for people that aren’t straight white males. For someone to get such a job without a commanding list of point-to successes and accomplishment opens Marvel up to a re-examination of every person who is not an affable white man that managed to avoid being given a lottery-win level job despite what I’m guessing is a more standard history of not defrauding their employer with a barrage of barely professional work.” — Tom Spurgeon
I wonder how they feel about David Wong…
Three words come to mind: conflict of interest. Editor of ‘x’ publishing in ‘y’ is fine, but what is the potential legal repercussions of a disgruntled writer/artist being turned down by an editor who buys his own material? Sounds silly, but in our ridiculously litigious modern society, I could see someone trying to cause trouble. I’m not a lawyer and I doubt they’d succeed, but it is possible (just) that the ‘suits’ don’t want to take the chance? Just one far-fetched explanation. And, no, I don’t agree with the rule.
> You know: the way that hundreds of people have used fake names when writing, for any number of reasons. Female SF writers adapted male pseudonyms. Even Jo Rowling chose a gender neutral name of J.K.
Those writers adopted pseudonyms to break into male-dominated markets that were inhospitable or closed off to women. Similarly, Jewish and PoC creators took on Anglo sounding names because employers and audiences balked at people with “different” sounding names. If CB had adopted a Japanese pen-name in order to break into the Japanese comics market because he was being held back by his background as a Westerner, that would be more equivalent and more understandable. But how was being a white man holding him back in the American comics industry?
A member of the majority taking on a minority persona is, at best, tone deaf and, at worst, taking opportunities from minority writers (specifically Asian ones) in a field that hasn’t historically done a great job hiring them.
I expect what was meant here was that Cebulski adopted a Japanese pen-name not because being a white guy was holding him back, but because the kind of stories he wanted to write would have been met with unfair resistance if it was widely known they were written by a white guy. This is, of course, not nearly as much of a problem as non-white folks and women not being able to break into the industry, or not having their contributions valued, but it’s related, and it’s still unfair. There is the persistent tribal mindset that you have no business writing about people who aren’t like you, at least if you’re a white writer. Obviously, we want to give more opportunity to more non-white and female creators, but it seems counterproductive to tell white male writers “we want more female and non-white characters, but not from you.” People STILL ask white writers why they don’t create more minority characters, and the answer is frequently that a lot of people don’t seem to want minority characters written by white writers. You may respond “then just hire more minority writers” which, of course, should be done, but it’s still wrong to tell ANY writer, of any race, what characters they should or should not write.
Per Brian Cronin: “Quesada changed it, because he didn’t like editors hiring their editor friends”
I’ll admit, rules from above or not, I’m not sure what makes this a career-wrecking scandal. However, if the current rule at Marvel really is that no current Marvel editor may also write for the company while remaining in that capacity, I’m not sure how Mr. Cebulski thought that he would remain un-outed (unless he also thought it would not be that big a deal).
Back in the 70s/80s, the BBC had a similar rule regarding Doctor Who. Several scripts were written by the show runners/script editors under pseudonyms.
Yeah, that editor rule change happened when Joe Quesada took over. He didn’t name names, but it’s not too hard to figure out. Some editors were hiring editor friends to write bad comics. That led to more Bad 90s Comics.
And while editors-who-can-write was a good rule in the 80s, by the 90s, it started to become an exception. Editors became more traffic managers and less creative. And when one of them started getting the writing itch and could convince their editor friend down the hall to give them an Annual (or, worse, more), too many bad things happened.
I doubt there are very many editors at Marvel and DC today who could craft a good script. Many might be good idea people (and they often hamstring their writers with those ideas), but their job is coordinating company-wide events, handling internal politics, and bugging artists to finish their books faster while assigning extra inkers to finish the book on time.
(Similarly, I suspect the number of professional inkers who could draw a comics page on their own today as compared to the 80s and early is probably on a similar trend.)
Nope. Sorry. Lying about your race for professional gain is despicable. Rachel Dolezal certainly didn’t get a pass, and she wasn’t even in it for money. I have no qualms with the other controversial issues on this story, but it’s kind of gross for anyone to get a pass on the race thing.
I wonder how many people commenting here have any personal knowledge of what actually happened and the motivations of the people involved.
None, which is why I said the “if” statement above.
Though CBR’s now got an opinion piece which is throwing a hissy fit because Akira had a whole fake history. And yet it ignores history that there have been other hype machines that have made up histories for authors, moviemakers, etc. in its moral indignation.
Look, anyone who’s being offended just because editors weren’t encouraged to write comics ’cause “JoeyDaQ” said so and Cebulski was using an ASIAN (specifically, Japanese) pseudonym to try to get around that frowning upon and created a fake history to back up that pseud and feels lied to, then you don’t understand how the entertainment business works. Truth is subjective as long as you were entertained.
I think that this will eventually blow over. Not right away, but in a few months, because quite frankly, the comic book community has bigger things to worry about with Marvel than their new E-I-C wasn’t really Japanese, but played one on TV.
You wanted to understand why Cebulski is a probelm. Watch ‘The Problem on Apu’ which seems to air every other day on TruTV.