ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur spoke to Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum about The Folio Society‘s Marvel: Unforgettable Stories. Oswalt and Blum discussed picking ten of their favorite Marvel Comics issues to be included in the collection, what makes comic books great, and much more.
“Published to celebrate Marvel’s 85th anniversary, this collection, curated by Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum, offers a deeply personal glimpse into Marvel’s legacy,” the synopsis reads. “Patton Oswalt, comedian, actor, and ardent advocate for comics and pop culture, teams up with Jordan Blum, renowned comic book historian and illustrator, to present ten extraordinary stories cherished by the authors themselves. Each story is meticulously reproduced from the original comics or using Marvel’s archival files. This volume also includes a captivating new introduction by Patton Oswalt, who delves into why he chose these stories and explains why they remain truly unforgettable.”
Marvel: Unforgettable Stories is now on sale at The Folio Society. Click here for more information.
Brandon Schreur: Can you guys tell me a little bit about how this project came together? Did you approach Marvel with this idea to put this together or did they come to you saying, ‘We specifically want you guys?’
Patton Oswalt: The Folio Society approached us! Which is a big deal for me. I love, love The Folio Society so much. I’ve visited their offices in London. Seeing them put their books together, it’s like my Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory without all the danger. When they asked me to do this, I could not have been more excited.
Jordan Blum: What comic fan doesn’t want to give their opinion in a beautiful, hardcover book?
No, definitely. I have to imagine that the selection process was not easy. Ten stories total; I’m curious, did you each pick five and go from there or did you work together to pick ten you could both agree on?
Oswalt: We just slapped together our lists separately and then put them together. I think we had around 30. I mean, it was very easy for us to assemble our lists. That wasn’t the problem.
Blum: Yeah, and I think there are definitely where it’s like, ‘Oh, this is a personal favorite of mine, this is a personal favorite of mine.’ But most of them were like, ‘Obviously, that goes on there.’ Or, ‘Oh, I didn’t think of that, that’s a surprising one and I love that story.’ There was very little, ‘Trust me, I know you don’t like it.’ There was never any of that. It was always, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes,’ and excitement.
Sure. I’m sure it’s such a long process, too. Like you said, I’m sure coming up with a list of 50 or 60 of them wouldn’t be hard, but narrowing them down, especially with two people to ten. How long did it take you guys to do that?
Blum: A long afternoon.
Oswalt: Yeah, a long afternoon.
Blum: A heavy discussion.
Oswalt: It wasn’t like a heated argument because it wasn’t like I was going, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to concede.’ The stuff we put in there — if I let Jordan put one on the list, it’s still a great story, it wasn’t like I was going, ‘Oh, I’m letting something not as good go on.’ They were all fantastic. That wasn’t the problem. It was the fact that we only have ten, but they’re all going to be good. I’m not condensing anything right now, it’s an amazing list.
Oh, you guys did great, by the way. You picked ten great ones.
Blum: I think it started to take shape, a little bit, as we were going through it, where we started off, ‘This has been reprinted, this is a classic story.’ But you have to start with something that’s the core of Marvel. Spider-Man lifting the heavy thing, right? Then, I think as you go, we were trying to find ones that were slightly contained. You could read it — not a one-and-done, completely, we have the end of a Fantastic Four story and the beginning of a Runaways story. I think, like, they show you all the different facets of the Marvel universe and show you what they’re capable of doing in the storytelling of comics, specifically, in Marvel.
That touches on something I was going to ask you, too. I think about if I was going to put together a list like this, what would that look like? And I have to imagine it’s hard because so many single issues play into a larger storyline. And you can’t put all of Infinity Gauntlet in there or something like that.
Blum: Right. That was the hard thing, staying away from full storylines. We tried to be like, ‘If I gave you a single issue, you could walk away and feel like you got a whole meal.’
That’s almost a different thing. I mean, you could do a whole different book of full storylines but, single issues, I bet that’s almost harder in some ways.
Blum: It was, but I think it was a lot of going back to that moment where you put it down. You just finished it and you’re like, ‘Wow.’ And then it imprints on you. For some of them, people are like, ‘Why that one? Why the X-Factor one?’ And it’s like, ‘I read that and it changed the way I thought of what you can do in comics.’ I know, Patton, for you, that Untold Tales of Spider-Man one, it’s such a great way to convey that type of story.
Were there any — again, you had a huge list — but were there any heartbreaking ones where you really wanted to put this on but you didn’t have room for eleven?
Oswalt: One of the heartbreaking things was that whole story, “Severance Package,” it’s from a series called Tangled Web of Spider-Man. There are so many single-story issues that could have easily been. Severance Package is so good that it didn’t really hurt that much, but there was a lot in that series. That’s, like, some of the best stuff that Marvel has ever done, Spider-Man’s Tangled Web. It’s amazing.
Blum: I’m a huge X-Men guy and mutant-related books. Not having a New Mutants Claremont Sienkiewicz one on there was a hard one to kill. But the mutants are properly repped in this book, I think.
You still have some Claremont on there. I’ve got to say, though, I like what you picked, but I like how it represents so many different eras of Marvel Comics, too. You got the classic Stan Lee’s in there, but you’ve also got the Jonathan Hickman Fantastic Four. Was that a conscious thing, when you were deciding? Did you want to hit all these different eras or did that just kind of naturally happen because there’s so much good stuff to pull from everywhere?
Oswalt: This was a very natural and organic pull. These are things that truly just stuck with us. We weren’t trying to think of, ‘Well, we’ve got to represent this.’ You’ll notice there’s nothing from the Bronze Age, nothing from the 70s. Yeah, we went with our gut.
Blum: A lot of Jim Starlin fans have told me how much we screwed up by not putting in any Bronze Age. But I just didn’t read a ton. It’s kind of when we were readers and what we’ve gone back to. It’s nothing against the Bronze Age. Maybe we should have put that one in where Luke Cage goes to get $20 that Doctor Doom owes him. That one is pretty fun.
We kind of touched on this a little bit but, of the ten stories that are in there, is there one you guys feel like you have a personal connection to? Like, is there one you remember reading all the time growing up and have gone back to again and again and again?
Blum: Mine, I mentioned that X-Factor one. As a kid who was in a lot of therapy as a child, seeing my favorite mutants having to go through the same thing and talking about inadequacy issues and loneliness. All that stuff, I thought was so, ‘Wow, this just hits to my core.’
The collection is called Marvel: Unforgettable Stories. Which, there are so many unforgettable stories. But what do you guys think truly makes a comic unforgettable? Do you think it’s specifically the writing, the art, or a combination of all of that? When you think about your favorite ones, what are the parts that really stand out to you?
Oswalt: The moment where you feel like the writer is surprised. Where they are writing a character and the character gets away from them and does something that even they didn’t expect them to do. If they’re surprised, you’ll be surprised. Those moments, even if it’s only for a frame, where it’s like, ‘Oh, a real moment of chaotic humanity just crept through here.’ Those are the moments that I never forget.
Blum: I think, on the art side, it’s pushing the art forward. I think that Barry Windsor-Smith Wolverine one, there’s nothing like it. It kind of changed the way you can tell stories and draw comics. The same way that “Pizza Is My Business” is, like, so unique and so something you can only do in comics and that artform.
That one was such a good pick, too. I was so excited to see you got Hawkeye in there. I’m a fan.
Oswalt: Yeah!
Blum: Yeah, we’re big Matt Fraction and David Aja fans.
Sure. So, obviously, this is not the first time that either of you has worked with Marvel, for Marvel, or in that whole realm. I know this was The Folio Society and everything, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that you guys made the M.O.D.O.K. series. I was such a fan and so hoping for a second season.
Blum: Aw, thanks. So were we.
Oswalt: We definitely were.
I’ve probably watched that first season three or four times, now.
Blum: Oh, that’s so cool. Thank you.
I’ve always kind of wondered what it’s like to write and be involved in a show like that, especially in the initial phases. Do you start by finding every comic that M.O.D.O.K. has ever been in and read them all? How do you go about that, especially with a character who has such a long history?
Oswalt: Yeah, we knew the character, we knew the issues. It was more about, ‘How do we expand his story within the universe, now?’ Being aware of his past. We didn’t want to just do nothing but nod to his past stories. We wanted to do something new with him. That’s kind of where we ran that way.
Blum: There’s something interesting with a character like M.O.D.O.K. where he’s not Spider-Man. Spider-Man is a very consistent character. Peter Parker is cemented. M.O.D.O.K. is kind of, during some of those earlier appearances, he would change from writer to writer. Or he’d be retconned to this and retconned to that. I always like the Grant Morrison way of writing where it all counts. It all happened. Now, let’s tell a story that makes sense of this character, who can be this or be that, and kind of merge those personalities and traits.
Totally. I think about how you have such involvement with M.O.D.O.K. and then you put out this Marvel: Unforgettable Stories. I feel like there are so many ways you could go with doing a collection like this. Like, I think about what if you did Marvel: Unforgettable Stories: M.O.D.O.K. Edition and it’s just the ten best M.O.D.O.K. stories. Would you guys ever be interested in doing something like that, for a specific character?
Blum: We are very available for that.
Oswalt: Yeah. Although, Marvel kind of already did that. There is a M.O.D.O.K. collection that is really, really good. It goes over his history that’s kind of fascinating.
Would you want to do one about M.O.D.O.K.? Or is there another character in Marvel Comics that you feel needs their moment to shine?
Blum: Oh, that’s an interesting one.
Oswalt: They’ve done all the really major ones.
Blum: You know who I would want? I would want The Thing. I would want all the best Thing stories.
Oswalt: Oh, yeah. He’s had some really good ones.
Blum: I think he’s sometimes looped into just the best Fantastic Four stories, but I’d want one just centered on The Thing.
There was a press release that went out and you mentioned that, if this is a popular thing, you might be interested in doing another one. Is that something you guys are talking about, where you’d pick another ten stories?
Oswalt: Oh, we easily have ten more stories we could do here. Easily. Hopefully, this book will sell very well, fingers crossed, and we’ll get to do another one. And another one and another one. We could do a whole series of these.
Blum: That’s the beauty of it, right? You can’t catch up. By the time the next one comes out, there’s like 20 new amazing things that are out there.
That leads to what I was going to ask you, too. I know you guys are so busy doing all kinds of stuff, but are you guys currently keeping up on Marvel Comics? Do you have any recent favorite runs or stories you’d want to include?
Oswalt: Oh boy. A lot of the Gerry Duggan stuff I feel has been really brilliant. Again, there’s so much. There’s so much.
Blum: We were talking recently about what is one of the most recent, ‘Oh, this is an all-timer story?’ And I think House of X and Powers of X. We haven’t even begun to unpack how important of a story that was and its influence. That would be, like, the most recent, stone-cold classic to me.
Sure. Hickman’s stuff just in general; I mean, he’s doing the Ultimate Universe and everything now and that’s really cool
Blum: Yeah, Ultimate Spider-Man has been incredible.
This project is out there for the world to see. What are you excited for, when it comes to the fans? Are you hoping new people or people who aren’t as familiar with Marvel Comics can pick this up and read these stories for the first time? Have you seen that kind of response?
Oswalt: Both. We’d love it if people who are already Marvel fans are like, ‘Wow, I’ve got to dig even deeper. There’s more stuff that I didn’t know about.’ And obviously, yes, new people who start exploring this universe. Not just the past, but knowing there’s other stuff coming down the path that’s going to be really good.
Blum: Yeah, we want to lead people, I think. Like, maybe not everyone has read the Mark Gruenwald Captain America run, and this is just a taste. Or they’ve read The Death of Elektra, but they never read the epilogue. I think we tried to pick a few that weren’t on everyone’s top ten list.
Thanks to Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum for discussing Marvel: Unforgettable Stories.
