Broken Frontier

The life of an online comic book journalist/columnist isn’t as luxurious as it might appear. It’s not like Joe Quesada is inviting me to his place every week to play Wii. Not even all the comic con press passes and free comics could ever fill the void in your heart that can only be plugged up by having your own comic published. But hey, having the opportunity to talk to some of the people you admire is more than your average comic fan could ask for. One of the cooler things we get to do from time to time is participate in Marvel’s conference calls. Have you ever wondered what goes on when everyone’s on the phone? I thought I’d offer a behind the scenes look for those who were curious.

Let me break it down for those of you who are unfamiliar with Marvel’s conference calls. Whenever Marvel has a new comic event planned, they will invite a bunch of folks in to talk to various Marvel people and whatever creators are working on the books. The call starts out with an overview of what the event is about and then typically turns into a Q & A for whoever is on the line. It really was a brilliant idea on Marvel’s part. If there aren’t any major cons going on to announce the events at, why not talk to the media directly and control the flow of information that comes out, rather then have to deal with all those pesky internet rumors?

What happens is Marvel will announce they are doing a conference and send out all the invitations. The day of the call they send out preview art that we are supposed to use with the piece we write, but they explicitly tell us it cannot go on-line until the call has happened. Marvel uses a conference call service, so you call in, enter the code, and then join the room. It’s not like a bunch of people calling Marvel and they put everyone on speakerphone. This kind of thing might be common knowledge to those in the business world, but I had never heard of this service before.

I have participated in a handful of these conference calls and they’re always a lot of fun. Sometimes when I’m not familiar with the books being discussed it could be difficult, but I’m such a Marvel junkie that that is a rare occurrence. My first conference call was for House of M, and it was lots of fun. Joe Quesada hosted it and Brian Michael Bendis was on too. I was surprised how relaxed and friendly everyone was.

When I was first asked to do the first conference call for Broken Frontier it was pretty nerve-wracking. And I can honestly tell you I still get a bit nervous when participating. It’s just such a thrill to get to talk to a group of people that you usually only get to read about. What’s difficult is explaining the significance of the call to a friend that doesn’t read comics. It’s a half hour affair, and their eyes usually glaze over in disinterest within the first two minutes. But for me it’s an honor and it’s always lots of fun. And it’s obviously good press for the site so that’s a bonus as well. We love doing what we do here at BF, but it’s always nice to be recognized by the big guys.

There is always a variety of participants when it comes to listeners. There will be folks from other sites like Newsarama and Pop Culture Shock. Then you have retailers like my old friends Coliseum of Comics in Central Florida. Then there is the guy from Wizard who makes you feel inadequate. And there are always one or two folks that the Marvel people know pretty well and share inside jokes with and make you green with envy. What’s great though is that many of the listeners come in with good questions, and that’s what makes for an interesting call.

My two most current conference calls have dealt with Avengers: The Initiative and the events leading up to Secret Invasion. I’ve done the first two and there is a third next week. These calls are different because they make them shorter and then later turn then into podcasts. Being a big podcast nerd I really geeked out for this premise, because I would love to hear myself on a podcast. But when Marvel finally posted the first one I found out the edited out all the questioners and let just the answers. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to wait until we start a Broken Frontier podcast.

It’s really fun to hear some of these big time creators interact with the fans. I took part in a call for Spider-Man: The Other in which Peter David was the main attraction. That dude is quite a talker. One listener apologized for talking so quietly because he was ill and Peter David went on for twenty minutes on how much chicken soup helps when you’re sick, and why. It was pretty amusing.

Keep all of this in mind the next time you read an article about a Marvel conference call. People might think it’s all fun and games, and for the most part they would be correct. But more then anything else it’s a group of people getting together to talk about this love of comics, and the great things Marvel has planned.