Tom, reading the final volume of Superior Foes and I have to ask, when an editor approves something like them making Mach VII into a total joke, do you guys think thats a good thing for the character? or just it'd be good within the book? because as a fan of the character, its a massive minus to my enjoyment of the series...
Well, the thing is, not every creator and not every editor feels fondly about every character. Having helped to turn the Beetle into MACH-1 in the first place, I have some legitimate fondness for him, and so I don’t especially want to see him treated as a joke. But I’m also aware that these characters are all very flexible, they can survive an awful lot. And also, that a great deal of what we do is fundamentally ridiculous. So, yeah, after awhile it starts to become difficult to take, say, M.O.D.O.K. seriously as a threat, since he’s been made out to be a punch line for so long. But then, it only takes a single story in which he’s characterized as legitimately creepy and formidable to reverse that opinion. You can be too precious with things and suck all of the life out of them.
