Record: Joe Quesada

Now, here’s a wee bit of serious mistakes made by Marvel’s insular editor-in-chief, Quesada, comic artist and would-be writer who undeservedly ascended to the high position he’s currently got, where he allowed for discrimination to pass as legitimate in a couple items in past years. For example:

• He allowed for J. Michael Straczynski, until recently the writer on Amazing Spider-Man, to tarnish the memory of Gwen Stacy in the abominable “Sins Past”, and even justified all this in a rock-bottom interview with Newsarama in 2004. He said: “Changing some of the Gwen backstory does little to affect the Peter/Spider-Man world outside of watching Peter grow as a character and the cast grow as people. It changes our way of thinking about Gwen, but she's been deader longer than many of our readers have been alive. Also, I think that when the story is finally told it makes her that more human to us and especially to Peter.” No more than this needs to be told, except that it just symbolizes the exceeding dishonesty to which many in comics have sunk to these days.
• He allowed for Brian Bendis to perpetuate the sterotype of Hank Pym as a wife-beater in Avengers: Disassembled when he had Tony Stark, in one of many out-of-character moments, sarcastically ask, “don’t you got a wife to beat?” ECH! That was by far one of the ugliest cracks I’ve seen come down the pike as of recent.
• He allowed for Scarlet Witch to be misused, turned into a lurid plot device in Avengers: Disassembled, all for the sake of Brian Bendis’ personal ideas of how to write a team book, rendering the book unrecognizable from it’s original conception. That she was more or less exonerated of any wrongdoing in the House of M crossover doesn’t excuse what came earlier, nor does it make the story any more readable.
• His defense for using a manga-like cover for Heroes for Hire's 13th issue, which featured three girls tied up while menaced by tentacles was simply lethargic.
  

And there’s at least a handful of some of Quesada’s worst works as an editor. His departure from office is long overdue, though we must remember that this doesn’t mean that a better EIC will come along next. That’s only if we as fans do our part to work towards it.