Before we look at the winning entry, though, let's take a peek at the first runner-up, which was submitted by Erik Weems in comics form:
The winning entry showed up in my email inbox Tuesday morning, and I must confess that I had to keep from spitting out coffee from laughter as I read it. Because the creator of this entry works in the comics industry, in a position that could make his-or-her job more difficult should the person's name be made public, I'm honoring the winner's request that he/she remain anonymous. Here's our contest winner:
Dirk:
You've only got it part right about the monkey. It was actually a baboon named Rocket, and Jemas is the one who finally had the senile bugger put down. That's also the real reason Paul Levitz hates him so violently.
Jemas is what Red Skull would be if he were a media whore with the mind of a sports bookie. It's also rumored that he's addicted to experimental virtual reality game-implants. Apparently he plugs Diamond's numbers, John Jackson Miller's numbers, ICv2's numbers into the game and selects the highest of the three. Then he launches a propaganda campaign to make the only people who give a shit (fans and shareholders) believe they're true. He has no patience for any talk outside of improving Marvel's bottom line, which is his M.O. in the game.
"Fuck those pussies!" Jemas once screamed behind his office door, "just as long as these profits keep me in the game they don't matter dick!"
When Jemas came on board he allegedly killed the baboon and funneled the budget that went into feeding and pampering it into his own VR addiction.
Killing the baboon sent Levitz into a tailspin of grief and filled him with thirst for revenge. His life-long dream was to reclaim the baboon for DC. As the mind of the DC, Paul felt it was his birthright to restore Rocket to his rightful home.
"Rocket lives here," Levitz mutters during private moments in the DC library contemplating the ornate pillow at the feet of the statue of Feral Lad.
Harry Donnenfeld won Rocket the Baboon in a waterfront bet during the winter of '37. He kept it in his office for the better part of his tenure. Donnenfeld always ran with the comic that made Rocket scream the loudest. One look at DC in the thirties and forties is proof enough that it worked.
Sticking with Rocket's nose for success, Donnenfeld built a small palace for the creature in a top level boardroom inside the DC offices. Only he and a caretaker had the key. He passed that key to his son Irwin, but only after reclaiming Rocket from Bill Gaines.
No one I've spoken to is sure about how Gaines swindled Rocket, and the very topic makes all of them turn hostile. One thing is clear: the untold story of the Comics Code is that right as EC's comic line went under, Irwin Donnenfeld recaptured the baboon.
Irwin didn't share his father's respect for the creature. Rocket had also grown bored of comics, or at least of DC comics. After the antics and games he used to have with Gaines, Irwin was a bore.
Rocket didn't scream anymore. Instead he wiped his ass with every comic that came into his room. Irwin pubished the ones least smeared with shit. That's also the reason monkey covers were so popular.
As a young man, Stan Lee knew about Rocket. He met it one night in the forties when Harry Donnenfeld was at a nightclub that Lee crashed his way into. From that first meeting, Stan dreamed of the day he could fulfill his carnival dreams and run the ultimate comic book circus with Rocket.
It broke Stan's corny heart to see Rocket in bad shape at a party in the late fifties. He pestered Irwin to sell him the beast, and after two years he relented. Scant months later Stan and Jack published Fantastic Four #1.
Rocket loved the Marvel house. Stan let his top staff entertain him with drawings and antics. It's rumored that most of Kirby's ideas were hatched during games he and Rocket would play. Kirby got Rocket screaming again, and this time, it was a piercing cackle.
Stan treated Rocket well. He ate the best food and was kept in style. He enjoyed a plush room where music, food, and comfort were constant. In the seventies, Rocket's health began to go, so Stan moved it out to Hollywood where the sun would restore him.
When organizing the move, Stan built Rocket's upkeep into a "Promotion" budget, which has always been Marvel's most expensive and vague expenditure.
For most of the 80's Rocket lived in L.A. enjoying the pool, sun, and glamour of the city. After a life in offices, he sprawled freely on the lush property behind Lee's mansion. From Stan's point of view, Rocket was retired. He was still on the budget, so Shooter met him once. In 1985, Lee allegedly invited Jeanette Kahn to meet Rocket. It's said she charmed Stan into letting her show some samples to the creature, just for old time's sake. Stan didn't think much of it, and paid more mind to Jeanette's figure.
Over the decade Rocket grew more difficult and senile. Stan returned it to the company, where it arrived in Terry Stewart's office late in '89. Perelman thought Rocket's history was pretty funny, so he built a room for it in the Marvel offices, mostly to annoy Terry.
By then Rocket had deteriorated pretty badly. Under the circumstances, Stewart did the best he could by tacking Marvel's submissions to Rocket's walls and publishing the ones to which the baboon's shit stuck.
Since his earliest days of learning the company lore, Paul Levitz dreamed of getting Rocket back. Paul knew he was old and useless, but he felt that he owed Rocket the respect he deserved in his old and failing moments. Levitz set up a large enough corporate structure to easily conceal the chimp's upkeep. The only problem was the acquisition.
When the industry consolidated under Diamond, the rumor is a secret deal was struck. Geppi was certain that he would get Marvel back in the future, and offered Paul the ability to buy Rocket after that occurred.
When Marvel did come back to Diamond, Steve believed that, however frail, Rocket may be Marvel's only shot at making the comeback it needed. He built it a small cottage in White Plains where he, Rocket, and Bill Schanes decided on the format of Previews.
The deal was that Marvel paid to maintain Rocket after the cottage was built. After Marvel's eighteenth consecutive month of profitability, Geppi would have the option to buy Rocket. This also protected Steve's investment, because Levitz wasn't eligible to buy Rocket for 7 years from the DC exclusivity contract date. Should Rocket have died in that time, Geppi would have eaten all of its upkeep costs.
When Jemas started he saw no value in keeping the mangy, decrepit beast. "There's gotta be a better way of turning a buck than keeping a fucking monkey alive," he said. It's rumored he sold it to a gun nut in Seattle who promised to shoot it the next time he took some boxes of unsold porno comics out to the range.
Bill didn't know about the deal between Levitz and Geppi when he sold Rocket, but he was giddy when he found out. Comics was just another part of the VR game for him, and sentimentality over a senile monkey was a hilarious detail.
(I have to digress and say that no one knows what goes on in Bill Jemas' head. Anyone that meets him as the game is switched off sees a reasonably smart, weird fellow with a voice not unlike a computer programmed answering machine greeting. But there are moments, when his door is closed, that he flies into screaming profane tirades. While Marville is much derided, it is, in fact, a clinically accurate picture of the world in which Jemas lives.)
Jemas' VR world is a first person shooter where his targets are the standing comics industry. He calculates each business move by deciding what will inflict the best damage in his hallucinatory world. As long as he keeps scoring profits, nothing else matters. His preferred method of scoring profits is performing acts of psychological business sadism. They yield the most grisly game hallucinations.
After killing Rocket, Jemas took his first public blast at Paul by pulling the comics code. In doing so he took major steps towards destroying the pillars of Paul's comics business.
"Why is he intent on killing everything that makes this hobby great!" Levitz said to Mike Carlin after the now legendary Code meeting.
Since then the baboon is a thing of comic book past that is fading into lore. As slim tribute, Mike Richardson named his new comic line in his honor.
Jemas, meanwhile, makes his numbers decisions, and all his decisions, to terrorize the comics industry's traditionalists. It doesn't have to be true, it just has to contribute to the bottom line and annoy others. Bill Jemas' numbers are just another sign of the virus he's elected to spread over the conventional comics industry.
Well done! The book hits Fed-Ex Monday afternoon, Sir-or-Ma'am; you earned it. Thanks to everyone who participated in our little contest.
