Thursday, September 23, 2004 at 10:40 a.m. |
You have to love when someone thinks they can slip a joke or something into a book, past an editor, and have it all printed up nice and sweet looking.

The issue comes out, you pick it up, and giggle non stop to your friends about how clever you are. Then, of course, somes the realization that you're an idiot.

My assumption here is that one of the art team, unhappy with the current choice of assignments, slipped that little nugget of text into the current issue of Weapon X. As Sinister plays around with one of Wolverine's eyeballs in the final issue of the series, his notebook has an interesting statement.

It reads: ""I want this issue to be finished and over with. I don't like slogging through the last issue of a dead book but I'm a pro so I'll do what I have to do and won't blow it off."

As a journalist, you hear about this kind of thing from time to time. We affectionately refer to them as career killers. As a joke, someone down the line has slipped in a bit of text expecting their editor to see it and get a chuckle. More often than not, the joke isn't noticed, no one says anything, and then it winds up in print. That makes the editor look bad, the writer look bad, and everyone else associated with it look bad. The result is that the offending party, and often the editor, are canned.

You see it in cutlines, the first letter of each paragraph that spells out a word, lots of little things. Some of them are quite harmless, but when it becomes offensive or crosses a line to being outright bold then you're in trouble. I have no doubt that the remark was made tongue in cheek, but putting it in the final issue of a series where the writer has been struggling to drum up fan support to ensure that it continues is just a cruel final blow.

If I were Frank, I'd be downright pissed.

How do I know it wasn't Frank? Well, I have a lot of info about what he's up to these days, nor does he actually get access to final drafts of art. It goes from artist to inker to editor and colorist. That's about it. Odds are that the new creative team on the book had something to do with it, though in the interest of not pointing fingers, I'll just say that these things happen.

Man, I'd love to be a fly on the wall of that office when this shit hits the fan. We posted this as an article about two hours ago on the site, and I'm waiting to hear some of the fallout.

I'll write about it when I find out.
Posted by Parallel

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