Marvel Studios promotions
As Marvel’s Iron Man movie heads into production this week, we get word of a lot of promotions and changes of job titles at Marvel Studios. At the top, David Maisel is now Chairman of Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige is President of Production. Maisel, who joined Marvel in 2003, is credited for the conception and execution of the new film production effort, including establishing the strategy for self-financing the endeavor. Feige has worked on all of Marvel’s movies since 2000, and is currently producer on Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. In his expanded role, Feige will now also oversee creative for the studio’s animated projects for TV and DVD, as well as video games.
Additionally, Marvel Studios has recently added and promoted a number of executives in senior management, including:
- Tim Connors as EVP/Business Affairs and Operations
- Ross Fanger as EVP/Physical Production
- Michael Brown as SVP/Marketing
- Charlie Davis as SVP/Post Production
- Rod Smith as SVP/Production Finance
- Elizabeth Lynch as VP/Business and Legal Affairs
- Jean-Claude Boursiquot as Director/IT and Studio Technology
- Matt Finick as SVP/Studio Finance and Corporate Development
- Ryan Potter as Associate Counsel.
- Eric Rollman as EVP/Animation and Television
- Ames Kirschen as SVP and Executive Producer/Video Games
- Craig Kyle as SVP/Animation
- Jeremy Latcham as VP/Development and Production
- Stephen Broussard as Creative Executive
- Joshua Fine as Story Editor/Animation
With everybody moving up a notch or two, someone has to make way at the top — in this case it’s Michael Helfant, President and COO, who will "pursue other opportunities."
Yesterday, Joe Pruett announced on the 
Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, has emailed industry professionals an update on their efforts to 
Despite my first claim to “fame” being a self-published zine in the ’80s called INSIDE JOKE, I admit to having a limited tolerance for deconstruction and meta-winks in storytelling. To me that sort of linking and meta-footnoting belongs in essay-writing and blogging; in fiction, more often than not it becomes a form of cultural cannibalism largely practiced by creators (a) with only a surface knowledge of comics history who believe it’s cooler to point back to a story which readers recall fondly than to come up with original story ideas themselves, or (b) who believe not so much in writing stories as in structuring gags which they’re betting will amuse their audience and editors as much as the setups and punchlines amuse themselves.
As someone whose first reaction to the news about 
More good news for all those teen readers! Meg Cabot, author of the popular Princess Diaries series, will be making the foray into comics with Avalon High: Coronation, a manga sequel to her novel Avalon High brought to us by the ever-expanding Tokyopop (which also answers the question "whatever happened to Jinky Coronado?", as Coronado is set to draw the graphic novel). This should hit stores in July.
Now that comics have earned mainstream respectability, can videogames be far behind? Henry Lowood, curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University, is at the forefront of gaining recognition of this hobby and industry as having "a history worth preserving and a culture worth studying."
