Marvel’s newest Editor-in-Chief, C.B. Cebulski, spent his first day at the company’s New York offices on something a little stranger than filling out his direct deposit form. As Rich Johnson reports at Bleeding Cool, Cebulski admitted, after years of unconfirmed rumors, that he had created an alternate identity as a Japanese comic book writer named Akira Yoshida in the early 2000s. At the time, Cebulski was on staff at Marvel, and the company had a policy forbidding staffers from writing or drawing comic books, stemming from a past system where staff editors had often hired each other, which was seen as corrupt.
According to Cebulski, he adopted the pseudonym to establish himself as a comic book writer before leaving Marvel, using the identity to book “Yoshida’s” first work as a writer on Darkstalkers, a series based on a Japanese video game at another publisher. But when Yoshida’s work caught the eyes of other publishers, Cebulski continued the fiction, eventually being hired on a freelance basis to work at his full-time employer Marvel. There, Yoshida worked on high-profile Marvel limited series like X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, Elektra: The Hand, and Thor: Son of Asgard. (At press time, the Wikipedia page for Thor: Son of Asgard still has quotes from “Yoshida” about its conception.) Cebulski’s claim that this was simply a matter of skirting an unfair policy from a company he planned to leave soon anyway rings a little hollow in light of this 2005 interview “Yoshida” gave to Comic Book Resources in 2005, in which he gave a detailed account of his background:
… Yoshida grew up in Japan reading manga. Since his father was in international business, he spent parts of his childhood living in the U.S. where he learned English by reading superhero comics and watching TV and movies. As a child, the writer said he always wanted to work in either the Japanese manga or American comics industry. Fortunately, he’s had the privilege of doing both as an adult.
In fact, although Cebulski had lived in Japan as an adult, this was entirely fictional—which didn’t stop (presumably unaware) Marvel executives from describing Yoshida at the time as the rare writer who could bring an international perspective to American comics. Rich Johnson began pursuing this story in 2006, but was unable to verify that Cebulski was Yoshida, in the face of flat denials from Cebulski. (Cebulski told Johnson that he’d heard the same rumors, but they weren’t true.) Other executives at Marvel either deliberately misrepresented the facts or confused Yoshida with a Japanese translator who had once visited the offices, because for many years they claimed to Johnson to have met him personally. Around 2006, Cebulski killed off Yoshida, and got a new contract with Marvel that allowed him to write under his own name—but he did this without Marvel knowing he had used the pseudonym.
The rumors surfaced again after Cebulski was named the new EIC of Marvel thanks to a viral tweet from David Brothers of Image Comics:
In the face of social media pressure, Cebulski finally publicly admitted on Monday that he was Yoshida, a fact he reportedly confessed to Marvel early in 2017 as the selection process for the new EIC began. Here’s his statement to Bleeding Cool:
I stopped writing under the pseudonym Akira Yoshida after about a year. It wasn’t transparent, but it taught me a lot about writing, communication and pressure. I was young and naïve and had a lot to learn back then. But this is all old news that has been dealt with, and now as Marvel’s new Editor-in-Chief, I’m turning a new page and am excited to start sharing all my Marvel experiences with up and coming talent around the globe.
Judging from the nonplussed reaction on social media, where people are pointing out the many ways “Yoshida” packed his work with Japanese elements, a lot of other people are eager to hear more about Cebulski’s “Marvel experiences,” too.
