I’ve long been a big fan of Joe Quesada’s decade-long run as Editor-in-Chief at Marvel. A lot of great comics came under his watch- Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, Brian Michael Bendis’s Ultimate Spider-Man and Alias, Greg Pak’s Planet Hulk, and Garth Ennis’s Punisher run are four notable examples. Over the years, as Marvel recovered from bankruptcy and became a media powerhouse again, he’s been given more responsibilities, including the title of Chief Creative Officer a few years back. He’s been more involved with the animation and movie arms of the company, and even designed some of the packaging for the toy line.

Something had to give, and today we found out it’s his publishing responsibilities. As Quesada’s corporate responsibilities grew, he came to rely upon Axel Alonso and Tom Brevoort, his chief lieutenants, more and more. Today, Marvel named Alonso his successor as Editor-in-Chief. Brevoort now becomes a senior VP of publishing.

Alonso came to Marvel from DC, where he was an editor at Vertigo. He was most notable for overseeing such hits as Preacher and 100 Bullets. At Marvel, he eventually took over the Marvel Knights and X-Men lines. It’s long been assumed that either he or Brevoort would eventually be named Editor-in-Chief, and it looks like Alonso won the coin toss.  (I do wonder how Brevoort, who’s been at Marvel for nearly two decades, will take this situation, but that’s pure speculation on my part. As a fellow University of Delaware alumni, I hope he’s happy with the promotion.)

So a hearty congrats goes out to both Alonso as new EIC and Quesada, for being the longest tenured EIC in company history. (And before you say, “What about Stan Lee?”, I don’t believe that’s a title Lee ever held. )

Today’s links:

Information for men about Weight Watchers. I know WW is primarily viewed as a diet for women, but I’ve found it tremendously useful, and this sales pitch for WW for men has some interesting info. Also, the men of Bleeding Cool talk about weight loss.

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer get married. Awwww…congrats to them both!

Flex Mentallo finally is being collected in trade! Proof that if you live long enough, you’ll see plenty of miracles.

That is all.

You can have it

But you’ve gotta learn

To reach out there and grab it

–Weezer, “Photograph”, Weezer (The Green Album)

Today begins the first day of my new adventures. I’ve been having adventures all my life- I just wrapped up an adventure that took me into midtown Manhattan every day, next door to Bernie Madoff’s old place of “business”. I did that for eight months, spending five hours a day on a train. And now that adventure’s done, and it’s time for a new one.

Sure, I was really going to work. And now I’ve changed jobs. Some might not think of that as an adventure. But then, it’s just going to work every day, day after day, and who wants to think of their life as a monotonous chore to be carried out without passion, without daring, without fun? Not me, that’s for sure.

My new adventure is a lot less strenuous. I won’t be spending five hours a day on the train. So that gives me time to finally write, and thus here I am. I used to write more for my old site, whyilovecomics.com. But I found that limiting myself to only writing about comics led to an enormous case of writer’s block, and I stopped writing about anything. Well, no more of that. I’ll still write about comics (and I’ll crosspost those posts over to WILC, I promise), but I want to write about anything I can think of, so that’s what I’m going to do.

There are two strict no-nos I won’t be writing about. I won’t be writing about my jobs, and I won’t be writing about my wife. I have to sign so many contracts for my jobs that writing about my work would probably lead to trouble, and who wants to read about database development, anyway? As for my wife, she’s pretty awesome, but she likes her privacy. Since I happen to love being married to her, I’ll respect that.

I’m going to do my best to write every day, and not just post links and videos (though I’ll do that too). I can’t promise that, but I’ll try my hardest. I urge you to add this site to your feed reader, and post your thoughts in the comments. I promise to try to make this as much of a dialogue as possible.

So let’s go have an adventure together!

Nothing to do with comics, folks. But this is my site.

Chris Benoit, former WCW and WWE champion, was found dead today in his Atlanta home, along with his wife, Nancy, and 7-year old son, Daniel. I found out when I turned on RAW tonight.

I’m stunned. Chris was a fantastic wrestler, but he was also a great husband and father. No one ever said a bad word about him. He was one of the reasons that I’m proud to be a wrestling fan (heck, I’ve always said that if Shakespeare was alive today, he’d be writing for Vince McMahon). His match at Wrestlemania 20 with HHH and Shawn Michaels was legendary. At the end, after winning the match, he embraced his long-time friend and fellow champ Eddie Guerrero. Three and a half years later, both are gone.

I’m still crying. Benoit was only four years older than me. It just shouldn’t have happened. RIP to one of the all-time greats, Chris Benoit.

EDIT (11:19 PM): After I wrote the above, there have been numerous news stories reporting that this may have been a double murder suicide. If I was shocked before, I’m sick now. For the sake of his two other children, I’m hoping this isn’t true.

EDIT (3:41 PM Tuesday) Well, we now know what happened. The details are everywhere. Obviously, what we all thought we knew about Benoit as a father, husband, and a human bring was untrue. I’m going to leave it at that; you can get details from other blogs. It’s a horrible week if you’ve ever been a fan of professional wrestling.