The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman opened up about his time at Marvel Comics and admitted that things weren't always rosy. In a recent interview, Kirkman said that he felt like he was "treated like crap" at the House of Ideas while revealing most of the problems were centered around editor Joe Quesada.
As Kirkman was experiencing breakthrough success with his Image Comics titles Invincible and The Walking Dead in the early-to-mid 2000s, the talented writer was working at Marvel as well. Most famously he was known for penning Marvel Zombies, as well as Ultimate X-Men and The Irredeemable Ant-Man. However, he left the company after becoming a partner at Image in 2008. This week, Kirkman spoke about his time at Marvel in an interview with the ComicTropes YouTube channel, where he revealed that he grew frustrated with the comic publisher.
In the interview, Kirkman said that he had a good relationship with executive editor Tom Brevoort, but didn't get along with Quesada. Kirkman said Quesada blamed him for things that didn't happen while expressing frustrating over a word balloon showing up on a cover of The Irredeemable Ant-Man without his prior notice as well as Marvel's hesitance at him promoting his own work when they didn't. He said Marvel saw him as arrogant when he tried to sell his own books - which culminated in a "big fight" with Quesada, about over the hardcover collections of the Ultimate books. Kirkman said Quesada messaged him about his concerns suggesting that he was worrying about royalties over stories and told him to focus on writing. That didn't sit well with Kirkman.
Kirkman said he was doing really well with his sales at Image Comics and was making much less from his work at Marvel. He said that he thought the issue boiled down to Marvel resenting the fact that he didn't need them to succeed in comics.
And my response, I don't think I said this, but my response was like, 'I'm making nickel and dime from you a—holes,'" Kirkman said. "I'm making crazy money, at the time, from Invincible and Walking Dead, my collections are doing great. I'm working for nickels over here at Marvel and I get treated like crap and I get yelled at all the time for just trying to put an extra level of care in the books. So that's really what it got down to: I think they resented the fact that I didn't need them, and it was a constant problem.
It's no surprise if Kirkman felt like he was being mistreated that he decided to eventually stop working with Marvel. Working on a project that he felt was getting the right marketing and promotional push was understandably a big deal. With Image, he could put the time and effort in. However, at Marvel, he was getting paid less and allegedly getting treated like crap all for caring about his books on more than just a story level. Robert Kirkman decided to leave and it's safe to assume based on his success at Image Comics, that it was absolutely the right decision.
Source: ComicBook.com/ComicsTropes