Robserecaps Two – episode 32 the Cable Guy
by Joe
This one is gonna be a bit longer as I did a more ‘stream of consciousness’ notes as I listened live, took time to rewind back to make sure I heard what I heard. But don’t let me skew you, go listen to Friday’s episode and hear for your self!
– I do like that the Rob resets the premise of the show every week
– there are people who hate 90’s comics and you can spot them by talking about ‘the crash’ which is much more complicated than you imagine
– The Rob does an impression of Jim Salicrup (who he likes!) that is very sleepy/Droopy Dog like, was actively trying to recruit him to be on Spectacular Spider-Man
– the Rob states Wolverine was given to John Buscema as a reward for years of good service but the Rob and his peer group wanted on the book
– He also states that Conan and Wolverine have many similarities, “berserker rage, lot of fantasy settings, gangsters, pirates, mysticism”
– The Rob was bouncing around X-Titles, Bob Harris had promised him New Mutants, but the Rob, admittedly, was playing hardball
– The Rob was also offered Doctor Strange, Marvel wanted Strange to be more like Kolchack the Night Stalker and the Rob did not
– we’re 15 minutes in and a lot of this episode is the Rob naming people in Spider-Man books
– Ralph Macchio (the editor) said to the Rob when he turned down Doctor Strange “who do you think you are, we’re offering you regular work!”
– Bobbie Chase offered him Incredible Hulk, turned it down as he didn’t want to follow Todd, which he also says is the reason he didn’t go to Spider-Man
– The Rob befriends Jim Valentino, they shared their love of Jack Kirby. At this time, a pitch called ‘Young Avengers’ is floating around the Marvel offices that they both wrote a two year pitch for, which would become New Warriors
– The Rob really wants to do Young Avengers/New Warriors, but it’s not ready to launch for another 9 months. Mark Gruenwald pleads with the Rob to take New Mutants
– Bob Harris wants the Rob on New Mutants because they want the current writer off the book
– “Mark Silvestri and Rick Leonardi are drawing the sexiest Rogue ever”
– the time line gets a bit funky here, as athe Rob says the negotiations to get him on New Mutants is 1988, but all the work he’s being offered and turning down is from 1990
– New Mutants was, on average selling 1/6th of what the main X-titles were
– the Rob hated the designs on the New Mutants, too close to the MTV generation from five years prior, cites Madonna and Billy Idol as inspirations for their looks
– we are 40 minutes in and Cable is mentioned for the first time
– the biggest problem with New Mutants is the art style had too much of a “feminine line” and needed to be more of a MACHO book
– The look of Cable comes from “the Six Million Dollar Man”, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger
– Around this time, the Rob gets an offer from Danny Fingeroth to WRITE and DRAW Alpha Flight
– Jim Lee, who was on Punisher War Journal at the time, had lines of ‘bikers and Marines’ coming to get signatures from him. This taught the Rob to NOT draw realistic guns
– the Rob’s favorite Avengers villain is Kang the Conqueror so he’s OK with me
– Bob Harris was pissed the Rob was even considering the Alpha Flight offer
– Back then, you needed to negotiate to get Wolverine in your book, not like now
– Louise Simonson (the current writer on New Mutants) wanted to name Cable ‘Commander X’ which would have killed the character
– the Rob does an interview in Wizard #10 with Patrick Daniel O’Neill who was very hostile with him, citing the Rob and Bob Harris re-writing Louise’s scripts over the phone without her OK
– What the Rob and Harris did was in New Mutants #89, right before the book went to the presses (the mutant books were the freshest books to market) they changed the pace of the story, changing it from Cable saving the kids from Freedom Force, the flipped so the New Mutants saved Cable to change the pacing of the book
– the Rob was not credited for the layouts on X-Force #8 (drawn by Mike Mignola) who called the Rob and said “your layouts are really special I would love to work over them”
– the Rob raised sales on New Mutants from 30/40 thousand to 700,000 by the time he got full writer credit
*Please note* the thoughts and ideas in this post do not reflect those of my co-host, Todd. He doesn’t care about any of this.
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