Word Balloon Comics Podcast "My Four Days At Marvel" Diana Schutz pt 2
Feb 14, 2026
01:05:06
Part two with Diana Schutz picks up right where the real war stories begin.
This time, Diana pulls back the curtain on her Comico years , stepping into the editorial trenches at a publisher that, for a moment, looked like it was riding high. She talks candidly about the challenge of wrangling the Robotech comics line,but also the joy of editing Johnny Quest, working with the legendary Doug Wildey and the always inventive William Messner-Loebs. She breaks down why that book worked .
Then comes the sobering part: Comico’s collapse. Diana explains that it wasn’t simply bad luck — it was a fundamental misunderstanding of how the newsstand distribution system actually operated. In the early direct-market dominance era, that mistake was fatal. A harsh lesson in the business side of comics that too many creative-driven companies learned the hard way in the ’80s.
From there, Diana recounts her earlier blink-and-you’ll-miss-it four-day stint at Marvel Comics as an assitant editor for Ann Nocenti , working under Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter. She doesn’t hedge. The rigid, top-down editorial structure simply wasn’t a fit for her.
Diana closes this segment by giving heartfelt credit to her then-partner Bob Schreck for helping her land back on her feet, find new opportunities, and stay in the industry after some serious professional gut punches. It's a compelling look at the pitfalls of trying to survive the comic biz in the 80s and 90s.
Part 3 tomorrow.
This time, Diana pulls back the curtain on her Comico years , stepping into the editorial trenches at a publisher that, for a moment, looked like it was riding high. She talks candidly about the challenge of wrangling the Robotech comics line,but also the joy of editing Johnny Quest, working with the legendary Doug Wildey and the always inventive William Messner-Loebs. She breaks down why that book worked .
Then comes the sobering part: Comico’s collapse. Diana explains that it wasn’t simply bad luck — it was a fundamental misunderstanding of how the newsstand distribution system actually operated. In the early direct-market dominance era, that mistake was fatal. A harsh lesson in the business side of comics that too many creative-driven companies learned the hard way in the ’80s.
From there, Diana recounts her earlier blink-and-you’ll-miss-it four-day stint at Marvel Comics as an assitant editor for Ann Nocenti , working under Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter. She doesn’t hedge. The rigid, top-down editorial structure simply wasn’t a fit for her.
Diana closes this segment by giving heartfelt credit to her then-partner Bob Schreck for helping her land back on her feet, find new opportunities, and stay in the industry after some serious professional gut punches. It's a compelling look at the pitfalls of trying to survive the comic biz in the 80s and 90s.
Part 3 tomorrow.