There are one or two questionable "facts" in this vid, but otherwise a fun distraction to your day:
Here's that curious resignation letter:
That Punisher issue sounds tailor-made for a What If? tale, doesn't it? And you have to be mildly curious as to how Marvel would look by now if Michael Jackson had been calling the shots.
I remember thinking at the time how oddly that letter read. For one thing, it didn't read at all like Edwin Jarvis, who generally hasn't been known to speak bitterly about anyone or anything. For another, Jarvis' dispute with Stark had nothing whatsoever to do with the Avengers, least of all their morale. And while the "showing the hired help who's boss" comment may ring true as far as relevance, it wasn't made within the context of any matters having to do with the Avengers, but rather a one-on-one (and one-sided) conversation with a drunk Anthony Stark.
The artist in question turned out to be Dave Cockrum, who resigned his staff position in 1979 (clearly with grievances). As a prank, his own letter of resignation was substituted for the letter meant to be submitted by Jarvis. To my knowledge, the identity of the prankster has never been discovered (or, if it has, released). But in a subsequent Iron Man letters page, writer David Michelinie explained and apologized for the confusion:
By the way, please don't let me know any details about the Reagan incident. That's an image I need to jettison from my head immediately.
Well, I don't know about this "Reagan thing", but yeah, the "Nixon thing" happened. But whoever wrote that letter apparently had a certain sense of disgust about Marvel in general. I can kind of guess why. It was a case of what Iggy Pop called "here come the @$$#0!&s they can smell the money." But it was always like that, of course. There was just a little window there where nobody was paying much attention. I'm not even sure if it was better, it was just that I was a kid and impressionable.
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