Tom Brevoort got his start in comics as an intern at Marvel. Although an artist by training, he went on to become an editorial assistant and even worked as as a writer (FANTASTIC FORCE, SECRET DEFENDERS). Soon, Brevoort, known for his photographic-like memory of all things comics, became an editor at Marvel. A busy guy, Tom has also become known for having a lot of titles on his plate at any given time. In the past, he has edited FANTASTIC FOUR, AVENGERS, and a whole lot of Spidey titles. He also recently handled the blockbuster JLA/AVENGERS mini-series.

As of IRON MAN, Volume 3, #46--a special 100 page monster--Tom replaced Bobbie Chase as the regular editor of Shellhead's solo adventures. His other current editorial credits include: CAPTAIN AMERICA, NEW AVENGERS, THING, MARVEL TEAM-UP, and many more.

The Armory interviewed Tom Brevoort in late 2005, just prior to our big 10th anniversary. Below are his responses, as typed by his hands.

1. How would you pitch Iron Man the character and concept to a writer who has never read an issue of Iron Man? 

I don't know that I would--I'd like a prospective writer to have at least some idea as to who he's writing about. But boiling the character down today, I'd say something along the lines of Tony Stark is a millionaire industrailist, the ultimate self-made man, a determinist who created the identity of Iron Man in order to save his life, and maintains it because of his quest for a better future.

2. In your opinion, what's the key to having a good Iron Man story?

Well, to start with, the same things that make a good story with any other character: an interesting plot, compelling, relatable characters, having something to say. Beyond that, I think most any strong Iron Man story is in some way a reflection of the worlds Tony Stark walks through--futuristic technology, big business, upper crust social circles, etc--and has some point of view to put forth about them.

3. People generally associate characters with their writers and artists, but obviously editors have a big impact on shaping the characters; how does your Iron Man compare/contrast with others?  Or to put it another way, the Brevoort era IM is characterized by what? 

Crazy change for one thing, not all of it my doing, but all of it on my watch. For a variety of reasons, we've never quite hit the ball right with IRON MAN since it's been in my office, resulting in any number of stops-and-starts and changes of direction. Even the Warren and Adi run has been plagued by delays that've hurt readers' enjoyment of the storyline.

4. You're somewhat legendary for your memory and knowledge of Marvel lore and history, but I also know you've stated that you're interested in moving forward/telling new stories.  That said, beyond Joe Casey's upcoming mini, what's your opinion on bringing back/revamping some of Shellhead's rogue's gallery? 

If somebody has the right idea for them, then sure. I've got nothing against the older Iron Man villains per se. I do think that any number of them come from backgrounds that are now dated, either because of the Cold War perspective the series had when it began, or because they were very much a product of the eras in which they were created. You wouldn't see a character like the Mandarin created that way today--he's a product of a whole strata of culturally-insensitive literature, the "Yellow Peril" thriller. Also, a number of Iron Man's old foes seem to have been involved in stories that took them to the end of the line in a satisfying way--for instance, I don't know that anybody's really clamoring for another Obadiah Stane story.

5. Follow-up: It's been literally years since old-school super villains graced the pages of Iron Man, any chance we'll see some soon (again, beyond Joe Casey's mini)?

I don't know that I think it's been as long as you do, but the short answer is yes. Daniel and Charlie Knauf are going to be using a number of Iron Man's old sparring partners in their first storyline.

6. As a comic book editor you are the managing/technical editor of the nuts and bolts of the mag, but you're also the key project developer of the title, how does a story get to your desk (generally)?  That is, do you approach writers and ask them to pitch ideas to you, or do you have stories in mind and pitch Iron Man and/or concepts to writers?

Depends on the circumstances--and IRON MAN has been plagued by odd circumstances almost since I inherited it. Which is to say that, at various points along the way, as personnel at the top changed, so too did the desire for a certain direction on IRON MAN. In most cases, though, I hire a given writer because I think, given what I know of his or her past work, that they'd have a good aptitude for the character, and would do something novel with him. From there, I'd talk with the writer about his ideas, and we'd go back-and-forth a bit until we had a story that we both liked.

7. Related to above: I'm sure it varies with each creative team, but how involved are you in shaping an arc, the plot, the themes, the details, the characters involved, the big moments? 

Depends on the writer, but I'm involved in all of these things every time out, it's simply the circumstances that change, because each writer's approach to putting together a story and a script is different. For example, in the first Temugin three-parter, Mike Grell's initial outline for Temugin's first confrontation with Tony was initially different, and I believe I was the one who said, "Wouldn't it be cool if Iron Man said that there was no way he was going to fight Temugin, that such a fight would be completely one-sided. And then, Temugin would agree--and take off his rings and throw them aside." More often, though, the key moments come from the writers and artists involved.

8. This may be like asking you which child do you love the most, but what is your favorite IM arc or story from your tenure?

I'm maybe the only one, but I really liked IRON MAN #50.

9. Can you talk a bit about the decision to reload Iron Man with Ellis's run?  First, why restart at number 1?  Second, what were the major issues you faced when reloading?  (I'm thinking: Tony's age, supporting cast, integrating his past into the new stories, etc.)

The reload/renumbering decision was purely about attracting audience attention. We were already going to be transforming AVENGERS into NEW AVENGERS, so that gave us the excuse to do the same thing with IRON MAN and CAPTAIN AMERICA if we so desired. And after the struggle the series had been through up to that point, it seemed like a good idea in order to maximize the impact of the Warren & Adi run. But it wasn't specifically intended as a break with the past, any more than CAPTAIN AMERICA or NEW AVENGERS were--the emphasis and direction changed somewhat, same as with those books, but all of the previous stories still "happened." The one caveat there was the need once again to update the timeframe in which Iron Man's origin took place--which had been done at least twice before that I can think of. But really, what we were trying to do was give readers a strong jump-on point, and a crisp story not overly encumbered by the character's history. And the thing that went wrong more than anything else was that it wound up taking Adi a lot longer to produce pages than we'd originally estimated.

10. It seems that Shellhead's creation in Vietnam--and therefore dating him to the 1960's--has been a thorn for Marvel for about 10 or 15 years now. His origin's been tweaked and changed a few times--so why link Tony to a new time and place with this new origin (in Ellis's relaunch)?  Why not go with a less specific, timeless origin?

There's certainly the school of thought that says we should have gone with a more generic setting for Iron Man's origin this time out, and I can understand that. But IRON MAN, I think, has always been a strip that's much more a reflection of the world around it--whether the Cold War of the 60s or the Vietnam blowback of the 70s, or the greed-is-good corporate shenanigans of the 80s. Plus, Warren wanted to write about something meaningful to him, and so asking him to set his tale in some fictitious country, and base it around some fictitious event, seemed too much like blowing the legs out from under the creator before he'd even gotten started.

11. There are a lot of long-time fans who complain about all the restarts, relaunches, and redesigns of major characters over the last few years, why do you think Marvel has continually reworked some of its major characters so often?  Were previous relaunches not working, and if so why not go back to the cannon as it were? 

I don't think you can make this so general as you state it--at least without stating which characters you're talking about. So let's talk about IRON MAN. There have certainly been changes of writer and changes of direction since I've had the book, but only one true relaunch--and that was mostly a marketing decision. In terms of redesign, Iron Man's armor has been pretty much the same since IRON MAN #50 (with one or two specialty suits along the way.) But none of this stuff is really in violation of "the canon" per se. That said, every strip has to evolve in some way, for good or ill. When most fans talk about "the canon", as often as not they seem to be asking for the same stories they got when they were first introduced to the character. I think that's especially hard to do with Iron Man, as he's always been a bit more timely than, say, Thor.

12. One criticism of the book--and this goes back a couple of years and continues in Ellis's run--is that the supporting cast has all but disappeared from IM (not even to be replaced by new characters), how would you answer that?  How do you think a supporting cast fits into comics in general?

I like the idea of a supporting cast, but a supporting cast exists to support the lead character. This is a problem that some writers face, such as Dan Slott over on SHE-HULK. Dan's got so many supporting players, and so many ideas for each one of them, that you constantly have to remind him that She-Hulk needs to be the star of the book. I think in the case of IRON MAN, the problem has been that we haven't had any one writer for very long, so there hasn't been as much attention paid to building up a cast of characters--every writer had their own ideas about what they wanted to do, and which characters they wanted to feature. And so, many of the supporting players ended up as hold-overs from previous writers who didn't have all that much to do. I think you could say this of Happy, Pepper, and Rumiko among others. By that same token, SPIDER-MAN's supporting cast is pretty much non-existent these days, and I think that's a much greater problem.

13. The last few Iron Man arcs have been very self-contained--that is, they haven't really impacted each other, events in one haven't led to the next, a number of unresolved plot lines haven't even been mentioned by the next writer, etc.--is this the result of deliberate shifts to accessible, quicker story arcs?

No, it's more a question of the shift from writer to writer, and specifically what each writer was being asked to accomplish, or wanted to accomplish. That said, Daniel and Charlie's run, which starts with #7, is utterly dependent on the first six issues that Warren and Adi produced, so hopefully that kind of shift is a thing of the past.

14. Regardless of the whole are they/aren't they argument about whether Marvel and DC are publishing stories with the trade paperbacks in mind, hasn't the market changed to a arc-based strategy?  Which is to say, regardless of the trade market, haven't market/audience forces changed from years ago, where now we've got a new kind of readership, not just in demographics but in behavior, too?  A readership that gravitates from (for lack of a better term) one big thing to the next?  So rather than trying to satisfy a monthly, year-in-year out audience, the push is to get a reader for an arc, knowing he might move on after a while anyway?  Is this trend (self-contained story arcs) the new "normal" for the industry?

I think there's no denying that most of the growth the field has seen in the last five years has been from sales of the collections, so it's foolish not to consider the collection in your plans for any given title. And yes, with rising cover prices and more competition among titles, it does seem to take the "next big thing" to attract a reader's attention--gone are the days when books would slowly pick up or lose an audience. Readers today seem to need a feeling that what they're reading is vital not only to the character but to the whole publishing line in order to justify their purchase. But with all that, the push is really to get a given reader AT ALL--and striving to make sure that, once you've got him in the door, the stories you're telling will be strong enough to satisfy him and keep him around. I don't know that six-issue story arcs are any more or less successful at that than anything else, though.

15. On a regular monthly, how long is it from the time a creative team is contracted until the issue is on the stands?  (In other words, on average, how long does it take to make a comic these days?)

We're on sale every thirty days (unless, of course, we're talking about IRON MAN), so thirty days is the barometer. But we're usually working a number of issues ahead. For instance, right this moment, Dan and Charlie have written IRON MAN #7 and #8, Adi is working on #6, the artist on #7 will be starting that any day now once a prior commitment is finished. On THE INEVITABLE, Joe Casey just turned in #3 this past week, and Frazer is well into #2. And there's another IRON MAN limited series for which the first issue has been written, and that one won't see the light of day until the middle of next year.

16. How long is an issue done before it's available on the stands (i.e., if an issue is on the stands the second week of August, when did it leave Marvel for the printer)? 

These days, not very long. On the average, an issue is sent to the printer about a month in advance of it being shipped, but these days it can sometimes get down as close as two weeks.

17. Finally, anything else you'd like to say to the Iron fans out there?

Thanks for your patience--we'll try to get it right.