by Sean Howe
* The Comics Journal quoted Stewart as grumbling candidly from the stage, “You’re moved from position to position, and you’re really not sure what your job is and what your responsibilities are. . . .”
* David Schreff, who had once worked at Disney, suggested the staging of a “Marvel Macarena” production, which would feature a dancing Spider-Man.
* Before this deal was completed, there was the matter of settling Claremont’s claims of unpaid royalties.
* The new-universes strategy had been introduced in the courtroom before Icahn took over. “Okay, who are these new characters going to be?” asked a skeptical lawyer for the banks. “What are these new twenty-one comic books going to be about? Zip! They have no answers. We think there will be a descent into chaos, and there will be no plan here, if these people come in.”
* At Halloween, a member of the sales team dressed up as the Mount Rushmore of 1990s Marvel presidents, affixing blown-up head shots of Terry Stewart, Jerry Calabrese, David Schreff, and Joe Calamari (the costume-wearer’s own head took up one spot) to a piece of corrugated cardboard. Calabrese, president once again, was not pleased.
* “He was making faces whenever I’d look in his direction,” Wolfman said of Byrne’s appearance in the courtroom. “Because the comments I had to make referred to him, he would start to make faces. He would move up and down. There was a wall in front of him, a couple feet high where the witnesses are behind. He would, like, lower himself so I couldn’t see him then raise himself up. He would start shaking his head no as if I was making a mistake, and he flustered me, because I’m trying to remember specific events. He was acting very much like a two-and-a-half-year-old child who has not had any Ritalin.”
* Simon and Marvel settled out of court, once again, in September 2003.
* At Joe Quesada’s request, Chris Claremont had recently agreed to collaborate with John Byrne on an alternate-reality, one-shot X-Men story called “The End.” It would have been their first pairing on the characters in twenty years.
* A third title, the Batman-and-Robin pastiche Ultimate Adventures, written by frequent Howard Stern guest Ron Zimmerman, was later added to the contest. Peter David’s Captain Marvel was the winner.
* Jemas offered the job of scripting Marville to Steve Gerber, who declined because of the book’s portrayal of DC’s Paul Levitz. “I wasn’t prepared to participate in the character assassination of someone I’d known for thirty years and whom I value as a personal friend,” Gerber wrote later.
* Shortly afterward, Meth wrote that the royalties had stopped, but in a 2011 email he stated that “every dime” of the “generous settlement was paid by Marvel to Dave Cockrum.” The terms remain confidential.