Marvel Comics' senior vice president of publishing/executive editor Tom Brevoort wants to play a game - a game of comic book editing.
The House of Ideas' top hands-on editor has launched an 'Editorial Simulation' game on his personal blog. Like a tabletop RPG or a revised version of fantasy football, players of Brevoort's Editorial Simulation will take weekly turns, with the game expected to run for three months.
In this game, five players will act as group editors - three at Marvel, one at DC, and one at Image Comics - with the goal of successfully managing their titles commercially and critically.
"The goal of all of the players over the course of the next ten weeks is to increase your sales, put out crowd-pleasing, well-produced comic books, meet your financial obligations to your respective companies and get the books out on time," Brevoort explains. "As the editor, you can try anything you can think of more-or-less, provided that such actions get approved by the brain trusts of your respective organizations (played by me.)"
Earlier this month Brevoort issued an open call for interested fans to play, with the chosen players (and their assignments) as follows: Kurt Onstad (Spider-Man), Kyle Ross (X-Men), Sal Brucculeri (Thor and Captain America), Erik Merk (Image Comics), and David Oskutis (DC's Superman line).
"All moves will be played out and posted here, on this site on a weekly basis," Brevoort explains. "There is nothing at stake other than the opportunity to get some insight into the process as to how things operate editorially within the industry."
Brevoort is Marvel's longest-serving editor, having started with the company in 1989 as an unpaid intern with an illustration degree and slowly worked his way up to be the company's top day-to-day editor, second only to the Editor-in-Chief, since the early 2000s.
Brevoort has run two previous versions of this simulation previously on his now-defunct Marvel.com blog. Years ago, DC's current publisher/chief creative officer Jim Lee assembled a similar comics/fantasy football tournament while running WildStorm.
You can follow along to Brevoort's Editorial Simulation over at his blog, with weekly updates planned.
