Dear Marvel Comics

Hey, guys, it's been a while. What's up? You seem to be doing okay. Lots of folks are talking about a good number of the comics you publish, which I imagine makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. I mean, if I were selling tons of comics I'm sure it'd cheer me up. And movies! Ghost Rider is definitely on my list to see. And 300 is bound to get more folks into comics stores, which means can only be great for comics in general, right? But I'm just not the Marvel fan I used to be. I don't care about things like Civil War, but I also don't care about Civil War "destroying characters" or "ruining the Marvel Universe" or "touching young children in their bathing suit areas" (I read about that last on on scans_daily). I want good and fun stories, which Marvel is more than capable of producing as evidenced by the MODOK issue of Marvel Adventures: The Avengers or Runaways. The characters will bounce back. They always do. Right now Dwayne McDuffie, writer of Beyond!, probably the best example of mainstream Marvel superheroics in quite some time, is working his ass off on Fantastic Four to bring some semblence of order to what's happened over the last fifty years or so of Civil War. And I hold out hope that someday there'll be a Spider-Man comic worth reading again.

But I'm mostly writing to you, Marvel Comics, to ask you this:

Do you have editors any more? I see the title in the credit boxes and in interviews on comics "news" sites, but I have to wonder when I see things like this from the train wreck New Avengers: The Illuminati #2:

Reed Richards says "Uh"? For real? I've seen the dude have a good time and kick it with the fam, that's no big whoop. I've seen him stammer. But I haven't seen him display Beavis-level sarcasm when dealing with something like the goddamn Infinity Gauntlet. And then there's this bit of wisdom from Captain America in the recent Civil War Colon The Confession Comic Book for Reading:

"The moral compass of us"? Is this The Sentinel of Liberty yelling "YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!" at Iron Man? And, yes, while Iron Man technically is not the boss of Cap, someone at Marvel should be the boss of phrasing, grammar, and dialogue and clean this stuff up a bit. These comics are being pushed very hard, and I assume fellows like Brian Bendis and Mark Millar are being paid handsomely for their work and I doubt your editors are eating ramen in a sinkhole somewhere. Do your job. Please. 'cause if I have to read this crap—and I don't—it should at least sound like the writers didn't crib all their dialogue tics from Friends reruns.

Sincerly,
Mark Hale
Nitpicky Jerkass