I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Marvel Now! campaign. Mostly because for the first two days after reading the press release I thought it was “Marvel WOW!” and couldn’t stop picturing Cap in a Buddy Christ pose. After I realized the correct title and moved on from the imagery, I started concentrating on Marvel’s motivation. It is consistent with Marvel’s annual fall saga, but it’s also a major overhaul of teams and characters and costumes with, interestingly, very few overhauls in names on covers.
This new marketing is justifiably getting a lot of comparisons to DC’s “New 52,” and the skeptic in me – the one that started with 15 of those titles and only continued two past issue ten – is wondering what the publisher’s endgame is with this Editor-in-Chief proclaimed “new beginning.” All involved are cringing at and denying the word “reboot,” but I definitely see some sort of jolly, candy-like red button involved.
Publishers are constantly reaching for new readers, and I certainly can’t fault them for that. But I can say how wildly successful Marvel has already been in that area. The genius decisions made in casting and creating all the recent movies has spawned new, mostly digital readers. If you doubt me, I can tell you that I’m friends with a lot of young chicks online (which seemed way less creepy in my head than it does in print) and their blogs and Facebook pages are covered in Marvel comic art. They are not only reading current titles but going back to archives to read famous sagas, and discovering Lee and Kirby as well as Remender and Bendis. So why the overhaul with the same creative teams? Was it broke? Is it being fixed?
It is not my intention to sound like the bitchy fanboy that stays way too late at the LCS after they close. I am frankly giddy over a few of these titles, namely the Fraction penned “Fantastic Four” and “FF.” I’ll give “Deadpool” a try, even though I’m not a current reader, because Brian Posehn makes me laugh. It breaks my cold little heart that “Uncanny X-Men” is a dead title but I will still read “All-New X-Men,” because yes, I am a chick, and yes I am a giant sucker for Marvel’s most killed/resurrected character, one Miss Jean Grey. “Avengers” is going to have 18 or more members, all drawn by Stuart Immomen, so yeah I’m pretty antsy for that one, too. My file will probably increase by three to five Marvel titles.
So, the cynic in me is feeling somewhat manipulated and is not holding out for this to be any kind of new frontier. The idiot in me would pay $50 for a TV Guide if Matt Fraction wrote it, so there’s that. And the old school little kid in me is honestly a little excited and very ready to talk to the community about your perceived motivations behind the event, and what titles you will see in your file.
This guest post was written by Kathleen Coyle.