Go, Read: Two Clues As To Marvel’s Way Out

Here are two recent Internet-accessible articles that are perhaps worth putting together in a think-about-it way. First, Axel Alonso explains to Kiel Phegley how the publisher is mixing up their story arcs within various series to include more one-shots and two- and three-issues stories. Second, Todd Allen over at The Beat speculates on an expected writer/creative team shake-up at the publisher that may seek to energize things at the publisher in more of a line-wide fashion.

These are potentially interesting glimpses/possibilities for a bunch of different reasons. One is I think both moves if they play out as describe come from Alonso's strengths as a systemic-style editor -- someone who tweaks and improves and reinforces existing models rather than creates new ones. Mixing up a potentially routine story structure seems like a progressive move to me in the context of the way those companies usually operate. Another thing that intrigues me is that I think Marvel has been forced by virtue of wider company orientation to react to the surprise degree of DC's initial New 52 success at a time when they seem creatively happy with a lot of what they do at the company. It's my perception that they like a lot of their writers as long-term creative partners, for instance. Given their success in building various comics back up to the top of the DM charts over the last seven or eight years -- books that at one time seemed like box-office poison taking turns in the top five -- it's easy to see why they'd think this. And while that's a very specific kind of comic book that I know not everyone likes, I happen to agree that Marvel has a good team in place in a general sense. To use the now-ending Ed Brubaker run on Captain America as the example so as not to irritate anyone who thinks I'm fond of the wrong ongoing, it's hard for me to imagine a more solid treatment of that character if I were inclined to suddenly want to read Captain America comics (and yes, I realize the critical opening that statement provides) than what Ed and his artistic partners provided on a regular basis. I think a lot of Marvel's books are pretty good, in other words, certainly far better for what they're trying to achieve than a similar group of Marvel's book from the 1990s, say. I realize that's arguable.

The flipside of Marvel's moves intrigues me as well. While it would be gratifying to see the company double-down on its current creators, it could be argued that Marvel has structural problems that solid work can't solve, not with a bunch of folks switching chairs and maybe with nothing short of direct, sustained attention away from editorial. My hunch is that increasing prices on their books was a terrible move for them, and one that's going to be hard for them to ever see as damaging because it plays out in much more subtle ways than wholehearted market refutation of one book over the other. I think Marvel also suffers like everyone suffers from a lack of direct market coverage they themselves kickstarted in the 1990s when they raised minimums in a way that some stores were bled to death, a digital strategy that isn't quite all the way locked in yet and a trades program that doesn't funnel people back into the serial comics. My dad would call creative moves in the face of some of those kinds of things "moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic" although I'd have to inform pop were he still around that this frequently works in comics, at least in the short term. We'll see if anything long-term comes of these moves, and the shape of what's to come, soon enough.

tweaked to reflect accurate provenance of quotes; my apologies
 
posted 8:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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