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Feb. 4th, 2024 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI've been reading Tom Brevort's substack - he's the Executive Editor over at Marvel for the Avengers and various mags, and taking over the X-men. Right now he's in charge of the Avengers. He's interesting.
This is what he states about the editorial process in comics, and what the Editors do:
"The Editor in Chief exercises broad authority over the entirety of the line, Zach. He’s the person who ultimately decides what projects get published, at least from an editorial point of view. And he can have as granular an impact on any given series as he may want to, though he never edits any series directly. So he reads a bunch of everything, but he’s not scrutinizing every issue or every book. He’s got other things to deal with, including interfacing with all of the other departments of Marvel and the larger divisions of Disney. The person credited as Editor on any given book is the person who exercises direct and immediate oversight and authority on it, backed up by at least one Assistant or Associate Editor typically.
A Senior Editor will oversee the efforts of a number of Editors and Assistants, and an Executive Editor functions as the XO of the division, having oversight on typically about half of the line but also having broad impact on all of it. So an issue of AVENGERS, let’s say, is edited by me; my on-the-books job description is Executive Editor, but on that title, I am the Editor. I hire the creative team, with input from the EIC as well as the Talent Management department, which tracks all of our creators, making sure that our contractual obligations to them are fulfilled and charting when a given creator might be available for a new assignment. I read and comment on the script, as do Associate Editor Annalise Bissa and Assistant Editor Martin Biro to a lesser extent. The three of us track the series throughout its production and look over and okay each page of art at each stage of development.
When it’s time to letter, we’ll wind up reading a given issue somewhere in the neighborhood of four times each, making alterations and catching typos and improving clarity wherever possible. During that same time, an independent proofreading team will read the book twice, and it will also be read by an otherwise-uninvolved Read-Out editor in order to get some fresh eyes on it. If this book wasn’t being edited by an Executive Editor like myself, it woudl typically also be read over by the Senior or Executive Editors above that editor in the chain of command, or often both. And after the entire book is completed, it passes through a final content review that flags any elements that might cause us trouble, either legally or in the manner that it might be misinterpreted by the readership. On an as-needed basis, the EIC may be called upon to review some aspect of the issue at this point to adjudicate whether something might need to be revised or not. And still, despite all of those eyes on it repeatedly, every book we put out manages to find some way to have embarrassing mistakes in them."
You can find more HERE
I'm fascinated by process. How things are created, and the process of putting it together. And what people do for a living and how they do it, fascinates me. Oh, as an aside, David Tennant visited Brevort recently.
And Brevort is a huge Doctor Who fan. At any rate comics go through an extensive editorial process. Passing through a lot of hands.
I can relate, I have to go through just as many people now to get a change order to a contract processed.
Humans are weird.
This is what he states about the editorial process in comics, and what the Editors do:
"The Editor in Chief exercises broad authority over the entirety of the line, Zach. He’s the person who ultimately decides what projects get published, at least from an editorial point of view. And he can have as granular an impact on any given series as he may want to, though he never edits any series directly. So he reads a bunch of everything, but he’s not scrutinizing every issue or every book. He’s got other things to deal with, including interfacing with all of the other departments of Marvel and the larger divisions of Disney. The person credited as Editor on any given book is the person who exercises direct and immediate oversight and authority on it, backed up by at least one Assistant or Associate Editor typically.
A Senior Editor will oversee the efforts of a number of Editors and Assistants, and an Executive Editor functions as the XO of the division, having oversight on typically about half of the line but also having broad impact on all of it. So an issue of AVENGERS, let’s say, is edited by me; my on-the-books job description is Executive Editor, but on that title, I am the Editor. I hire the creative team, with input from the EIC as well as the Talent Management department, which tracks all of our creators, making sure that our contractual obligations to them are fulfilled and charting when a given creator might be available for a new assignment. I read and comment on the script, as do Associate Editor Annalise Bissa and Assistant Editor Martin Biro to a lesser extent. The three of us track the series throughout its production and look over and okay each page of art at each stage of development.
When it’s time to letter, we’ll wind up reading a given issue somewhere in the neighborhood of four times each, making alterations and catching typos and improving clarity wherever possible. During that same time, an independent proofreading team will read the book twice, and it will also be read by an otherwise-uninvolved Read-Out editor in order to get some fresh eyes on it. If this book wasn’t being edited by an Executive Editor like myself, it woudl typically also be read over by the Senior or Executive Editors above that editor in the chain of command, or often both. And after the entire book is completed, it passes through a final content review that flags any elements that might cause us trouble, either legally or in the manner that it might be misinterpreted by the readership. On an as-needed basis, the EIC may be called upon to review some aspect of the issue at this point to adjudicate whether something might need to be revised or not. And still, despite all of those eyes on it repeatedly, every book we put out manages to find some way to have embarrassing mistakes in them."
You can find more HERE
I'm fascinated by process. How things are created, and the process of putting it together. And what people do for a living and how they do it, fascinates me. Oh, as an aside, David Tennant visited Brevort recently.
And Brevort is a huge Doctor Who fan. At any rate comics go through an extensive editorial process. Passing through a lot of hands.
I can relate, I have to go through just as many people now to get a change order to a contract processed.
Humans are weird.