Someone started a massive rumor this weekend that Disney is planning to shut down Marvel Comics because the return of publishing the comics simply isn’t worth the effort when the real money is to be made exploiting their intellectual properties in other mediums. And as it turns out, the person that started that rumor… was me?!
Heh.
Okay, so as the internet continues to rage about this “rumor” and call for my head on a platter, let me assure all of you — I was just doing what I always do, which is to say, take a press release or puff piece story making the rounds in the comics media — in this case an announcement about Marvel’s SXSW panel — and find an offbeat, exaggerated angle from which to approach it, hopefully getting some laughs and maybe making a few points in the process. Of course I know “a panel is just a panel” and Disney isn’t looking to shut Marvel down (though they might one day in the future decide to just forego all the hassle and outsource the license to another publisher). I was joking about that, but being serious about the underlying criticisms of some of things Marvel does.
If you
read the actual article, and not just the headline, or worse, another site’s inaccurate summary of the article meant to further their political agenda, or just as bds as that, a Marvel Comics executive’s equally inaccurate summary meant to promote their own corporate agenda, you’d see that the Marvel practices actually criticized therein were those
same ones brought up in
Brian Hibbs‘ righteous ComicsPRO speech calling out destructive business practices of Marvel such as flooding the market with similar product (like
14 Peter Parker Spider-Man books shipping in April alone), the overuse of super-mega-crossover events that try to compel retailers and readers to purchase dozens of comics based solely on the hype that they’ll “change the Marvel universe forever” (such as
$110 worth of War of the Realms tie-ins in May alone), and the reliance on gimmicks like variant covers to convince retailers to purchase more copies of a comic than they can sell just to get their hands on one rare variant they can sell on eBay for more than the cost of the unsold comics, thus artificially inflating sales numbers without actually getting more comics into the hands of readers, which should be Marvel’s priority because comic books are meant to be read.
Dozens of incentive variant covers every month aren’t helping to grow the comics industry, they’re just helping to put more money into Marvel’s pocket right now at the expense of frustrated fans in the future. Super-mega-crossover events and number one issue relaunches aren’t solving the problem of attrition on the sales of ongoing series. They’re just putting a band-aid on it, tricking people into buying these comics based purely on FOMO, on the idea that something “important” might happen in them which they don’t want to miss out on. But when these constant promises to “change the Marvel Universe forever,” killing off characters and resurrecting them a few years later, dramatically altering the status quo only to return things back to exactly how they started by the time the next super-mega-crossover event or number one issue relaunch comes around, ultimately prove to be empty hyperbole, eventually people stop buying into it.
These things may work for a short term sales boost, but they don’t grow readership. In fact, they reduce readership while extracting more money from the readers that remain (just like
price increases and “special” five-dollar or eight-dollar comics). That’s not a good longterm strategy. This isn’t done for the benefit of readers or retailers or creators or the industry as a whole. It’s done for the benefit of the next quarterly financial report at Marvel, so they can say, “look how good our sales are!” This is something pretty much everyone who isn’t a Marvel executive should be able to get on board with.
But in the context of the ongoing and increasingly polarizing “culture wars” currently making comics discourse utterly unbearable, Marvel has invested considerable public relations effort into conflating the financial success of Marvel Comics with the validity of progressive values. It’s foolish to buy into this conflation, but people are doing it, and you can see all sorts of people on the internet this weekend zealously defending Marvel’s honor, not one of them bringing up any of the legitimate points above. It’s just “blah blah the comics industry isn’t dying blah blah things are great blah blah only regressive right-wingers would ever criticize the magnanimous Marvel comics.”
And that’s a shame.
Marvel is not a progressive ally. They are a corporation whose primary motivation is to produce profits for their shareholders. Their biggest shareholder, by the way? Marvel Chairman
Ike Perlmutter, a person who literally eats Thanksgiving dinner with
Donald Trump, whose involvement in the Veterans Affairs department as part of Trump’s administration is
currently being investigated by Congress. Does that sound particularly progressive to you?
Of course, there are things that Marvel does that one could consider progressive, just as there are things Marvel does which are the opposite of that. Corporations do not have values. They are not people. Some good people work for them. Some bad people do too. You can give Marvel credit for the progressive things they do, things to reach outside the direct market audience and find new comics readers, broadening the comics readership. And at the same time, you can criticize the things they do which are not good, like relying on gimmicks for short term sales boosts at the expense of long term growth. The two are not mutually exclusive, and not liking incentive variant covers isn’t a political thing.
That’s pretty much all I have to say about this, though I’m sure the e-battle will rage on until the next big controversy captures the attention of the internet, which should be no later than Tuesday at the latest.
Sorry about that folks, had to get it off my chest. If you’ve gotten this far, you might be wondering what this column is about. Well, each week, I buy and read all of the X-Men comics published by Marvel, recap them, and talk about what happened in them, based on decades worth of love for the X-Men franchise. Yeah, I know, definitely the actions of someone who hates Marvel and wants them to fail, right?
Let’s get down to the business of recapping this week’s comics.
TFW the art shows people looting and setting cars on fire and THEN the cops start throwing tear gas, kinda shooting your "Americops are racists who beats blacks for no reason" argument in the foot:
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