Princeton resident helps resurrect venerable Marvel Comics.
By: David Campbell
For Bill Jemas, character is what’s driving the renaissance at Marvel Comics. And the Spider-Man sneakers and dental floss dispensers don’t hurt, either.
Mr. Jemas moved to Princeton when he worked for Marvel in the mid-1990s as liaison for Mount Laurel-based Fleer Trading Card Co., a new acquisition by Marvel at the time. He returned as chief operating officer in January 2000 to oversee the publication of the comics, Marvel’s Web page and consumer promotions.
"We sort of came to Princeton for the good commute," said Mr. Jemas, 44, who lives on Riverside Drive with his wife and two sons. "Let me put this in a word balloon for you. We came for the commute, we stayed for the community. We fell in love with the town."
The spectacular box office success of "Spider-Man" certainly helped put Marvel back on the map, but one industry analyst said the company’s resurrection began earlier with some savvy executive calls by Mr. Jemas.
Milton Griepp of Icv2.com, an online trend spotter for the pop-culture industry, said Marvel’s revival really began when Mr. Jemas hired artist-writer Joe Quesada as his new editor-in-chief.
"I think most people would date the turnaround to Joe Quesada as editor-in-chief," Mr. Griepp said. "Most people feel he’s done a great job of attracting good talent."
He credits Mr. Jemas for resourceful use of public relations at a time when the re-emergent company’s market leverage is not at its strongest.
Mr. Jemas was "right in the middle" of Marvel’s $1 million contribution to the Twin Towers Fund in the wake of Sept. 11, a hefty contribution for a company Marvel’s size, Mr. Griepp said.
"Overall, I think their business has improved dramatically, despite some severe balance-sheet issues," he said.
Marvel topped the comics market in April with a 36-percent market share, compared to the 24-percent share held by top competitor DC Comics, according to Diamond Comics Distributors.
In addition to "Spider-Man" and "X-Men" in 2000, Marvel has several movie projects in the pipeline, including a "Spider-Man" sequel slated for 2004 and a film version of "The Incredible Hulk" in 2003.
According to Mr. Jemas, chief operating officer of Marvel Enterprises, the box office success of "Spider-Man" has given Marvel the confidence to take chances again.
Marvel, which went bankrupt in 1996, recently launched "The Call of Duty," a series where the heroes are New York City’s police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel. And Mr. Jemas said software firm THQ Inc. is willing to risk a two-year, $3 million deal to develop tie-in properties "because they believe in Marvel."
The Harvard Law School graduate said the revival of Spider-Man and indeed of Marvel as a whole has been about "getting back to character."
This is evident in Marvel’s re-spin of Spidy’s origins beginning with teen everyman Peter Parker’s fateful irradiated spider bite in "The Ultimate Spider-Man" series, which Mr. Jemas co-authors.
"Really good writing is really based on human events and human experiences; the worst is always derivative. This runs through the history of Marvel," he said. "When Marvel went awry as a publishing company, it was because we were writing in between the cracks. We were doing comics about comics."
In every way that you can lose your way, he said, the comic book industry was going down the wrong path. The industry was top-heavy with layers of intricacy Marvel’s stock characters, Spider-Man among them, were at least 40 years old that could only appeal to the esoteric tastes of comics afficionadi.
"The books were not well-written anymore. We stopped trying to recruit the best possible writers with a fresh, interesting voice and the real stories to tell," Mr. Jemas said.
The result was that a new reader could not pick up a comic book and read it, which translated into a diminished mass-market audience. "We lost a generation of readers," Mr. Jemas said.
He said the most important thing going on today at Marvel and one of the things Mr. Quesada does best is recruitment. At least six new writers at Marvel hail from the motion picture and television industries. Some of the best writers are novelists.
Then, of course, there’s the licensing of Marvel properties. Like the deal Mr. Jemas cut with Buster Brown shoes as a tie-in with the "Spider-Man" movie. He’s also working on a dental-floss dispenser that spins floss from Spidy’s wrist.
"Synergy sometimes gets a good name, sometimes gets a bad name," he said. "Do the movies make the comic books big, or vice versa? Or is it electronic games?"
The key, Mr. Jemas said, is a consistent marketing plan with long-term property management as its foundation.
This means that the young Peter Parker, resurrected flaws and all, will be with us for the foreseeable future to draw new generations of comic fans to Marvel.
"The basics of character, that’s what (Spider-Man creator) Stan Lee brought to the comic book business," Mr. Jemas said. "The first ‘Batman’ movie was about Bruce Wayne. The last was about Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy all these characters. It wasn’t about Bruce Wayne anymore," he said.