Marvel Parlays Character Death Into Mainstream News Coverage

You can read all about which character dies in the latest Fantastic Four storyline and the context surrounding the plot point -- from a straight-forward fan's perspective, basically -- here. That comic book is on sale today, part of Marvel's brand-new effort to turn the day-early release of comic book and the potential healing that can bring the marketplace generally into another way of goosing things in the short term. I can tell without looking that there will be complaints from fans that wished to read the comic book later today or even tomorrow without the events being potentially revealed to them through wider media coverage, and I guess there's a five-minute bar conversation to be had in the space over what serves Marvel best and why: the reader reaction or the press being interested.

The good news, I would imagine, is that they're going to explore the ramifications in a storyline penned by writer Jonathan Hickman, whose work so far with the original Marvel superteam has been widely lauded. There's also a kind of grunt publishing reality on display that with today's ossified market there may simply have to be a drastic, splashy plot point to drive sales upward and away from the comics equivalent of the Mendoza line in any meaningful fashion, and that's only if the comic clicks in that slightly peculiar and very specific fashion hoped for it. As I mentioned yesterday -- maybe this morning in Random News? I don't remember -- I thought Marvel did a pretty good job protecting their storyline and working this particular territory, some years after most people stopped believing these licensing sources will be allowed to stay dead.
 
posted 6:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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