New Brevoort Formspring

There was a point that Joe Q and Bill Jemas made several years ago, which is relevant to this discussion: the comic book business tends to run an awful lot on nostalgia and momentum. Nothing wrong with that–but it does mean that, on occasion, certain things become dogma out of ennui–they become unmentionables simply because, at one point or another, it was a good idea for them to have been unmentionable.

So it’s not a bad idea every once in a while to examine the things that you’re doing by rote, and to determine whether the reasons you’re holding to that position still hold water–or whether you’re doing it out of some sense of tradition that doesn’t really apply anymore.

On the question of Doctor Doom’s face, it hadn’t been seen before for essentially two intertwined reasons: 1) the overall feeling that nothing that could be shown on the page would be as horrific as what the reader would imagine, and 2) the Comics Code wouldn’t allow you to show anything as gruesome as Doom’s face.

Now, in 2015, that second condition no longer applies, and hasn’t for a decade and a half. So it really came down to the first: would the moment be worthwhile. Up until now, it hasn’t been. But in SECRET WARS #3, given the specifics of the moment that Jonathan wrote, and the way that Esad would handle it–and the fact that it is such a germane plot point to the whole of the series–I judged that the time had come to go ahead and take the mask off and let Doom’s countenance be seen.

(Esad can tell you how many times I had him and Ive tweak and revise that panel–it was a lot.)