Dan Slott Career-Spanning Interview

Dan Slott drops by The Comics Cube to talk about his career, from starting out as an intern, writing Batman: Arkham Asylum: Living Hell with Ryan Sook on art, working on She-Hulk and The Thing, of course working on Spider-Man with the Brand New Day team and on Big Time and Superior Spider-Man (with a special discussion about Marcos Martin), how he stacks up to Brian Michael Bendis, his Silver Surfer run with Mike Allred, and his current run on The Fantastic Four, culminating in The Reckoning War! (This interview was conducted in March 2022, prior to the announcement of Dan Slott leaving Fantastic Four and taking on a new "Spider-Man" comic with Mark Bagley in October.)
Dan Slott on Amazon:
Spider-Man: amzn.to/3ApvtES
Superior Spider-Man: amzn.to/3OMV8vl
Fantastic Four: amzn.to/3bKERII
She-Hulk: amzn.to/3R3ukst
Silver Surfer: amzn.to/3IeJVBf
Arkham Asylum: Living Hell: amzn.to/3nV48Tz
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Host: Duy Tano
Intro and Outro theme: ChrisCorny

[@pay7232]

Whoa! Someone posted a link to this interview on Twitter. Five minutes in and I am an instant sub. You guys have so many awesome interviews from top tier talent I can’t wait to go through. Hopefully smashing the thumbs up and ringing the bell will help you get out there more. 🤘

[@TheComicsCube]

We're on Spotify too! And thanks! I just love comics.

[@Spiderweb444]

One of my favorite interviews and just affirms like why dan is one of my favorite writers ever.

[@ericlongo5020]

Awesome video Duy. Great interview! Love this kind of inside information.

[@ElvingsMusings]

42:00 - I actually followed the Batman Adventures and Justice League Adventures titles that Slott worked on, before he became a big name. I really liked that "final" Batman Adventures issue by Templeton. And those are still my favorite comics by Slott. 45:15 - Bit rich that Mr. Slott instantly married Ben/Alicia but complains about the Spider-Marriage's buildup. 1:01:28 - Late issues of Avengers with Stern? Janet learned Iron Man's identity during the Jim Shooter run preceding Stern's official beginning, since they started dating after her divorce with Hank, and Cap insisted that Tony tell her to avoid group disunity. Iron Man/Tony was hardly featured in "late issues of Avengers with Stern" like UNDER SIEGE, FIRE FROM OLYMPUS. 1:08:11 "Spider-Man existed for a long time without Mary Jane in the book". 25 issues isn't a "long time". As for there were long times in the book without Mary Jane...she was already among the top three most recurring Spider-Man characters before the marriage, and the "long time" written out was some 40 issues between Wolfman's final issues and ASM#238 of Stern's run, which was generally considered a weak period in the character's history. Unless he wants to talk about Howard Mackie's run in the late 90s which "killed" her off and which had supremely low sales. 1:08:59 Dan Slott is a poor historian.The announcement of the newspaper wedding happened at a Chicago Convention a year before the wedding in both the strip and the comic. He's making it as if the newspaper wedding an the Mets promotion happened at the same time. It didn't. The Wedding Annual was always supposed to co-ordinate with the newspaper strip wedding and copies of the Wedding Annual were handed out at the Mets event itself. 1:09:11 The original version of Kraven's Last Hunt didn't even have Spider-Man in it. It was at various times a Batman/Joker story, a Batman/Hugo Strange story, a Wonder Man story. We can keep going "ab ovo" endlessly. The fact is JMD absolutely agreed and welcomed the marriage, but Mr. Slott doesn't want to acknowledge that so he keeps dismissing it and acts as if KLH wouldn't be the same story without the marriage. And furthermore there are tons of other great stories with the marriage. 1:09:41 The chaos surrounding the period before the wedding under Jim Owsley/Priest's editorship including much chaos and inconsistency, including the Hobgoblin/Ned Leeds reveal, so the stuff with Felicia conning and lying to Peter and then being written out in Peter David's satellite title was always set up before the proposal and wedding anyway. 1:11:00 Slott trails off there, very weird to me "Mary Jane" is that a cut or something?

[@TheComicsCube]

That cut was me. I interrupted and it digressed into something irrelevant

[@ElvingsMusings]

@@TheComicsCube Am curious where that tangent digressed to

[@TheComicsCube]

No, I cannot emphasize this enough. Dan was really really good at avoiding spoilers. I got nothing out of him even off the record.

[@dkamphaus43]

Dan Slott is a despicable person.

[@ElvingsMusings]

01:27:35 "I created the name Spider-Verse". Nope. Closing Caption of Spider-Man #56 (aka Adjectiveless) did that already. Maybe the hyphen though. 01:46:40 Slott has said contradictory stuff about this and it doesn't explain why if this was planned out that Christos Gage and not him wrote the finale. Spider-Verse was originally planned with Superior Spider-Man as protagonist but editorial said it should be the real Peter.

[@AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Duy and Dan. This will take a day or so to get through.

[@TheComicsCube]

Thank you as always, Anzan. It's up on Spotify as well!

[@AnzanHoshinRoshi]

@@TheComicsCube and miss your and Dan's super-heroic visages? Never.

[@BudjetteTan]

"The girl who held the bridge and fought off a thousand goblins..." what a great scene! I would've loved to read that!

[@theinitiative3139]

Y’know, a similar scene kinda ended up happening in Clone Conspiracy but with the revived Gwen clone instead of Spider-Gwen. 👀

[@GrandGeneralKukov]

This is an amazing, in-depth, detailed, and very specific interview. Amazing work, as always, Duy!

[@theinitiative3139]

Finally finished listening to this! Loved what Slott had to say about Ben Grimm, Flash Thompson, and Spider-Man’s insults near the end of the interview. Powerful stuff. Hope Ben stays married and as a good father figure for a long time. Great interview!

[@SrFinnegan]

This is such a great interview, one of my favorites so far

[@AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Finally finished. A great interview.

[@bartosgyorgy]

This is a great interview, good job! Any chance you might do one with Nick Spencer? I grew up on the 90s/00s Amazing Spider-Man & Ultimate Spider-Man, but One More Day really made me quit it for a long while until I read Slott's Red Goblin storyline and then Nick Spencer's run really reignited my love for the ocmics. His attention to detail, harking back to the 90s and 80s, the comics I read growing up, really spoke to me and is currently my favorite Amazing run ever since OMD. Keep up the great work!

[@TheComicsCube]

I confess I haven't read much of Nick's work to really be able to do a good interview with him. Maybe down the line?

[@bartosgyorgy]

@@TheComicsCube thanks for the reply! That would be amazing.

[@sarawelling5271]

The mere scope of this interview is awe-inspiring. Thank you so very much.

[@galactic85]

I love that story from Dan about the kid talking his adult father down after they finished reading amazing spider-man 700. It's a sad say when a child can show more emotional intelligence then hundreds of grown men.

[@jasongarza3383]

3 hours.....yes! Dan Slott....hell yes!

[@ceedubya4634]

Huge fan of Dan. Looking forward to more Spidey.

[@theinitiative3139]

So excited to listen to this. Huge fan of Slott’s work. ♥️

[@dkamphaus43]

You must have low standards.

[@beverlyjohnson2318]

🤗 ｐｒｏｍｏｓｍ

[@dkamphaus43]

He's still perpetuating the same misinformation about MJ and her importance in the Spider-Man mythos just like how he keeps perpetuating political misinformation on Twitter all day. He hasn't changed, he's still the same deplorable and insufferable person he's been for the past decade.

[@codywilson6140]

You must be fun at parties

[@dkamphaus43]

@@codywilson6140 I'm just being truthful.

[@dkamphaus43]

@Cheap Finish Productions And a much worse person.

[@miguelorozco4445]

That is Dan Slott for ya. He will never learn. He can hide behind Renew Your Vows all he wants. But the way he treated MJ in his run since Otto took the body of Peter will always be the worst thing that marvel has done to MJ since One More Day ( also Zeb Wells character assesination of MJ is the other one that its added to the list) @@dkamphaus43