There was the alleged statement to then-Marvel-editor-in-chief Bob Harras that if his children turned out to be gay (like Marvel exec Eric Ellenbogen) that he should kill them (it would later be alleged that he (possibly mock) attacked Eric in the offices after firing him, only for Eric to keep coming into the office, per his contract). There were the stories about shouting in the office about wasting money – from leaving on light bulbs, wasting paper clips, notepad paper and coffee pots, – but also this was done very publicly, to make a point. And carried over into his decision to restrict trade paperback stocks for the publisher and repeatedly fire people just to see if the company could continue without them, his battles with Bill Jemas that came to a head over the Rawhide Kid series, claiming that kind of project was akin to stealing from him, and a claim made to one person interviewing for a job that he had banned couches from the office to save people’s marriages, seemingly ignorant of what people can get up to on desks. As he moved into Disney, with similar cost-cutting zeal and belligerent bravado, he encountered some who would not put up with him, cue the legal suit launched against him by three female black Disney executives. There was also the cancellation of the Fantastic Four comic and licensing, and the reduction of the prominence of the X-Men due to his falling out with Fox Studios in negotiation over the film rights they owned, the Sony leak over female superhero discussion, and over his issues with Drew Goddard… but with all the controversy came the acknowledgement that, with his success the success of the publisher and studio, that Perlmutter had done something really right, and that it was hard to bet against him.
