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John Nee was Marvel Comics' publisher from 2018 until 2021, and prior to that, he was an executive at DC Comics and WildStorm, and he was raised in San Diego... so he knows a thing or two about Marvel and California. With the news that Marvel Studios was moving Marvel Comics' long-held NYC offices over to California to be closer to Kevin Feige's offices, Nee is uniquely placed to understand what that means, how it'll affect the company, and what it can do for the company.

"I think that the need to be in New York has diminished as ways of communicating have improved. FedEx was the first wave of innovation where you could live in San Diego and FedEx pages to New York," Nee tells ICv2's Milton Griepp. "Then, the fast modems, ISDN, cable modems and just increasing Internet space has made it so you don't need to be in any particular location."

Nee has extensive experience in that very thing, from back when he was the president of the San Diego-based WildStorm. In the '90s, his and Jim Lee's team FedExed pages to New York for DC and Marvel, then became one of the pioneers in digital conversion of comics to replace such efforts. 

"I can see that having all of Marvel in one place with studios being in Glendale and Burbank makes a lot of sense," Nee continues.

Nee has experience in that; when DC bought WildStorm, WildStorm became the first DC Comics office on the West Coast. And although he left DC in 2010, I have been told that he was part of early talks to move DC's NYC offices to California, which ultimately happened in 2015.

Nee now works as publisher of PUG Worldwide, in which he works with former Marvel editor John Barber as its editor-in-chief. Nee says that Barber has a catchy name for this new era of Marvel, calling it Marvel 818 - a play on the main Marvel Universe of 616, but with 818 being the area code of Burbank, California. 

Want more? Make sure you've read our list of all the best Marvel Comics stories of all time.