TOM BREVOORT responds

At least three different pro friends of mine have called Tom Brevoort the "best editor Marvel has," which is pretty high praise, considering the often volatile creator/editor relationships in comics. Tom has edited "Thor," "Iron Fist," "Avengers," and "Thunderbolts," as well as the upcoming animated Avengers tie-in book. Plus, his letter had no misspellings and the margins were all nice and neat. (GS)

Well, I think, first off, that this isn't a problem that's only common to female characters. I'd hazard a guess that if you were to line up all of the black characters in comics, all of the Jewish characters in comics, or all of the left-handed characters in comics, you could put together a similar list of dire things that had happened to them.

And most of that is due to the fact that what we're writing is serialized fiction. In such a medium, contentment is boring. Stories occur when bad things happen to good people. And, given the monthly demand for new stories about these fictional characters--never mind those folks who are in series that carry more than one title--sooner or later everybody is going to be put through the ringer in some way.