Marvel's Tom Brevoort stirs debate with his comments on using AI-generated art in comics Widespread backlash from creators and artists over ethical, legal, and creative concerns with AI Industry figures question Marvel's policy on generative AI and its impact on creative jobs Commentary highlights fears of AI replacing human creativity and eroding cultural progressYesterday, Bleeding Cool looked at Marvel Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Tom Brevoort's take on artificial intelligence in his Substack newsletter, playing with image generation in a purely personal fashion before posting the results on Substack, while also acknowledging the various issues around it. That column, as well as Bleeding Cool's take on it, seems to have exploded rather. We rather lightheartedly cited Supervising Storyboard Director on The Simpsons, Matthew Schofield, and his response to Brevoort in our original piece, but he had a serious point to make and he has returned to make it, adding;
"In my opinion, the problem of AI and its threat to the livelihoods of workers in creative industries (like myself) lies not so much in the tool itself (though I believe it is a problem, ethically and environmentally) but in corporations' willingness to embrace the technology at the expense of human labor and creativity. It was disappointing, and admittedly triggering to me, to see Tom, a long-time Marvel editor, working in a creative field that is under threat from the adoption of AI technology, express the sentiment that this technology was inevitable. We all have the choice to use the technology or to avoid it as much as possible, so in my opinion, it's only as inevitable as we all choose to make it. The companies developing this tech have sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into AI at this point with very little ROI, so they need to convince the public that this tech is the next big thing in order to keep investors interested. They need us to believe we have no choice but to embrace it. A public endorsement from figures like Tom, which is what his post seemed like to me, only helps further the "it's inevitable" narrative. I think we all, as humans, and especially as writers, artists, editors, filmmakers, etc, need to resist using and endorsing the use of AI whenever possible."Former Marvel colourist and staffer Gregory Wright also replied on that thread, saying "I used to play with AI when It was first coming out and YES…it was fun…until I realized I was recognizing where much of the generated images I was getting were originating from. There ARE uses for it in conjunction with actual artists…in some cases more artist are hired to work WITH the AI stuff than without which confuses me, but that's when it is being utilized as a tool instead of a replacement for an actual human being."
And Mark Paglia asked; "Since you brought up generative AI, what is Marvel's policy regarding its use? I don't want to kick off a whole debate here, but I hope the answer is "completely forbidden in the creation of comics.""As far as I understand it, and I am sure Brevoort will elucidate, it is. Not for any moral reason, but because the courts say that you can't own AI-generated work, and Marvel does insist on owning everything. But maybe I am wrong. Outside of the Substack responses, Cheryl Lynn Eaton makes a major point about that, saying, "Anything produced by AI is stolen work. It is utilizing existing art without credit or payment. Google is scraping the hard work of creative professionals and remixing it. If a musician did the same thing without credit or payment, they would be sued into oblivion. They HAVE been sued into oblivion. Ask Sisqo how much money "Thong Song" made for Ricky Martin. Here's where it gets VERY interesting. What is stopping Disney or Warner from creating a bespoke AI program that only pulls from work owned by the company? Work that they have already paid for? What is stopping Disney from creating new X-Men comics from Jim Lee's old Marvel work? I don't think there is anything stopping them legally. And they may find it to be appealing financially. However, it would be the death of a culture socially. Because nothing new reflecting the existing society would be produced. No advancement. Just a never-ending sifting through a bigoted past."
Replies to Brevoort's thread on Bluesky, also included the likes of; Scott Gray: Tom, I'm sure you don't mean any harm, but you're a senior editor at Marvel – posting "AI" images is not a good look for you. It's all just plagiarism software. Zak Simmonds-Hurn: Gross. Gen AI steals from real artists. By using it you are endorsing the theft and devaluation of the work of your artist colleagues. Incredibly disrespectful. bluexy: Massive canary in the coalmine. A Marvel editor saying AI art usage is inescapable? Every single artist — every single creator — for Marvel should be panicking and demanding Marvel address this subject now. On f-cking Labor Day, of all days. Illmatic on JK Rowling: Tom I need you to understand this is the equivalent of taking a meeting with one of your creatives and breezily spinning the loaded barrel of a revolver as you talk to them. Guildmarm: Oh cool, a public endorsement to steal marvel comics from one of their top editors! That's sure to go over REAL well. lol. lmao even. BreadCat: For the sake of every artist at Marvel please retire, or resign.
And it only goes downhill from there on that thread. But there is more commentary of note across social media… Kevin Newburn: Love seeing AI artists get thrown out of an artist alley the same day the most tenured editor at Marvel is like "hey AI is kinda fun, and probably inevitable". Comic Book Herald: Gotta love the executive editor and longest tenured leader of Marvel Comics talking about AI with the same clueless energy as a grandparent making an AI happy birthday dinosaur for a grandchild Michael Scally: Seriously, at least three of his current X-Office writers were found to have their works stolen by Meta to feed their LibGen LL. Setting workplace ethics aside, how is anyone supposed to take the Mutant Metaphor of the X-Men seriously when you're happily using artificial intelligence routinely used by bigots and hate groups to generate racist slop? Aaron Meyers: What a weird take for Tom Brevoort to have. The ozone burning plagiarism machine can be fun but you have a duty to the human creative experience. To recognize that the medium you claim to love exists because of artists. You don't have to embrace slop just because its there. Adrian Barker: Tom, I'm a huge fan, but that's pretty sh-tty to dismiss the concerns of artists just so you can "have fun". Rah-Rah-Ramona: Ai is embarrassing and an insult to the writers & artists you work with daily. You expect to be the House Of Ideas while using a stale, generic system built off of unmoderated plagiarism, which will make YOU replaceable before any other creatives. Do f-cking better. Mark: As an editor at one of the big two, you should have more respect for the artists you work with rather than spit in their face using ai. Patrick@derbycomics: I wonder how Marvel's creative teams are feeling after seeing one of the publisher's top editors posting this endorsement of AI
Traditional-Tax-5291: This is especially funny coming from an X-Men editor who came on board right after a 5-year status quo that went pretty hard on how A.I. is a greater threat than any differences between the inhabitants of Earth.I normally try to find comments that go both ways when doing this sort of thing, to give some kind of balance. It's just a lot, lot harder this time. But graphic novelist Ibrahim Moustafa may have made the most cutting comment… Ibrahim Moustafa: It's F-CK Ai, but y'know what it can probably do a lot better than "create art"? Manage or "edit" a project; respond to emails in a timely manner, act as a go-between when compartmentalizing communication between collaborators (for some f-cking reason), abstain from giving arbitrary notes… It too can have an encyclopedic knowledge of a specific comic book universe; it can find spelling and punctuation errors. That's not the f-cking point. The point is not to replace people with machines just so shareholders can have another vacation home while poisoning the Earth."Now of course, all of Brevoort's posts on Substack are his own opinion and should never be mistaken for Marvel Comics policy. But I bet it will make for an interesting conversation or two in Manhattan this week…
*gulp*...you're telling me that the work being out out by Marvel right now ISN'T generated by A.I.?AAAAAHHHHHHHHH Lowe be using that shit for the letters columns on god frfr.
Marvel is going to fire all of artists and writers and replace them with ChatGPT.
>>150172069>>150172088I legit don't get these people. AI image generation tools are going to be normalized. There is really no fighting that. Playing the moral outrage card has no meaning at this point.
>>150172273>I legit don't get these people>Groomsky>peopleDon't you make me ecksdee, ecksdee boy
>>150172052>Just a never-ending sifting through a bigoted past.>a bigoted past.They really can't help themselves, can they?
Well he tried pissing off fans and that didn't work so now he's pissing off employeesBold strategy cotton let's see if it pays off
>>150172896Arent the artists and writers just independent contractors with no benefits associated with an employee.
>>150172088>how is anyone supposed to take the Mutant Metaphor of the X-Men seriouslyIs this guy retarded?>artificial intelligence routinely used by bigots and hate groups to generate racist slop?I guess that answers the question.
DESU, this is EXACTLY why I wish Tom had lost his job when Geber did the Savage Dragon/Howard The Duck crossover
>>150173052They're all freelancers, yes. But the quotes above aren't even from the actual artists, just a lot of randos from social media. They probably can't find any quotes from actual Marvel artists, they'd be risking getting blacklisted if they talked to Fat Fedora Man like that.
I like penis
Wonder how Marvel feels about this guy completely tanking them for decades by being a retard Then again I doubt they care much considering all he has been allowed to do
>>150173529Brevoort famously said that "controversy creates sales" and Marvel was pretty much the only game in town with DC a distant third (and I say this as DC fan growing up and still kind of am), so he was probably allowed to and encouraged to get away with such behavior
>>150173442Brevoort...Lowe...Slott...Bendis...Miles...White...Wells...Kelly...>>150173754He also said continuity doesn't matter and during NYCC he barely even considered people who read during BND preferred comics before OMD.Also reading Avengers Vol 3, his editor note is quizzical about Busiek digging up old Avengers comics to then tie into the story as if that is a foreign concept.
>>150173754This is pretty much why he got away with it for so long, the problem is he kept doing it when Marvel ended up in even more vulnerable states.Like when retailers were complaining about Marvel and DC's poor performance (this was around the DCYou era and the ANAD era) DC began to set up Rebirth and Brevoort was taking jabs at DCBut then Rebirth did well, while Marvel continued flailing with HydraCap and Civil War II and Marvel Now 2
>>150173813The thing is I think he used to think continuity matters. Otherwise he wouldn't have done some things like that one story setting up a reason for Sandman to have gone evil during Byrne's run. I think the Quesada era just made him stop caring.
oh but it's completely okay for Greg Lmao
Best possible outcome : Marvel uses to much AI. AI is not copyrightable. Marvel looses copyright to those works.
>>150173953That would be hilarious.
>>150173872Yep. He probably got buckbroken by Quesada into not caring about the product and only care about the money. That blog he runs is just him coping and trying to justify the doublethink existence he leads.I haven't read Byrne's run yet but I assume the Wonder Man/Wanda stuff in vol 3 was before evil Sandman returning. Was there any other forced things he had a hand in way back then? Or was the Vol 3 stuff the first time he was intentionally forcing writers to enrage fans and became a known person to fans?
>>150173872That Sandman story wasn't a "continuity" thing and probably more about Spider-Man editorial just wanting to do damage control on a really unpopular story, but not enough damage control as to actually undo Sandman becoming a villain, Marvel were still going to do what John Byrne wanted over what fans wanted. So we just got a short story to give the change a better explanation, and Brevoort volunteered to write it.If you actually look at the books he was editing before Quesada was EIC, a lot of the continuity deep dives he and the writers under him were doing were all about imposing their will on the canon, retconning away things they didn't like, rather than treating the continuity like it mattered even if they personally didn't like it.He was always the guy who was deliberately trying to make readers angry, most people just didn't notice until Civil War and OMD when it started affecting bigger characters with more fans.
>>150174243>I haven't read Byrne's run yet but I assume the Wonder Man/Wanda stuff in vol 3 was before evil Sandman returning.Yes, that started in Avengers in 1998, and is the first known case of Brevoort attempting to make readers of a book angry, while Byrne turning Sandman into a villain was in early 1999.He didn't really get widely known for being a big fat troll who wants to make you mad until the mid 2000s, when he started messing with bigger fandoms, which is why the narrative built up that he used to be a good guy until having to work with Quesada and Bendis broke him, but that's not true, he was always that guy.
>>150172017Comics care so little about their own product that they are now using AI. A medium that traditionally always existed due to the artists making their every piece of work, and became famous for their artist and designs, are now going to remove artists from the entire equation. While somehow still expecting people to buy their product any damn way.
>>150172052So wait, his only argument against AI is the fact that it might steal pics from decades ago, the era of which all men were evil bigots? That's his only problem with it?
>>150172069I kind of wonder who is going to be that first guy that just looks at all the grifting liberals and just says>Whelp, that too goddamn bad. AI is cheaper than artists and it doesn't slip political messages in there on a random whim either. Learn to code assholes.
>>150172273>>150173108These guys have been hardwired a decade ago into thinking that the only way to win any kind of an argument is to make it moral and call the other guy racist, regardless of topic.
>>150172017All these sordid years Tom's been an unabashed clueless shit stirring retard carried by the misplaced blind loyalty of Stockholm syndrome victims, so everyone involved is getting the future they strived for.
>>150174532Learn to vibe code
>>150172017Five bucks says within a year Marvel will be utilizing AI for super-duper-1:100 variant covers to test the waters on AI generated interiors. Readership is dwindling as evidenced by retailers freaking out about DC changing their variant incentives, the talent pool is shrinking even faster now that they can’t hire writers who’ll work for next-to-nothing just so they can get their political message out there they’re gonna be forced to use AI
>>150175170I'm sure "you send us your scripts and you will get paid nothing" will get people to send them if it is known about.
>>150172017Fuck him.
If they didn't want to be replaced, they shouldn't have acted like spoiled children.
>>150176981Isn't the writing/editorial level where most drama comes from? The art guys are usually just mercenaries.
>>150177575Yes, which is why >>150176981 doesn't know what he's talking aboutIn fact a lot of the drama also comes from the editor at Marvel talking about AI that OP is talking about
>>150176981>not wanting to write editorial's shitty plots and demanding to get paid for your work is badI didn't know Brevoort went on /co/
>>150177575All the drama comes from Brevoort and Cebulski. Writers take the blame over and over again for bullshit initiatives (like the current state of Amazing Spider-Man for the last 20 years or the X-books since Hickman left) that the editors impose on them.
>>150172017This is the face of a man who can not only estimate weight on sight but calculate the amount of chloroform necessary, and has had to apply this knowledge
>>150178509>CebulskiWhat drama has he caused?Other than the Shogun Yoshida saga, I haven't really heard anything about Cebulski once he took on the EiC role.I have been checked out over the past year, though.
