(via Marvel Editors Literally Killing Anyone Who Mentions X-Men or Fantastic Four)
Even in parody form, it’s nice to see so many people and sites pointing out the exact same thing I’ve mentioned and complained about for several years, both for Marvel as a whole and Polaris specifically. Marvel’s current course helps nobody except Fox and specific people working on the Avengers franchise.
Note I said people, not the Avengers franchise itself. It hurts the Avengers franchise too, far more than it could ever help.
Marvel’s taking on Base Breaker style changes not just for specific
properties, but for all of Marvel. If you want to see how that worked
out, look at Soul Calibur. Soul Calibur V’s changes, kicking out major
beloved characters and replacing them with random new ones, literally
cut that game’s sales in half. Soul Calibur only exists today as a free
to play online game that people hardly talk about.And there isn’t an audience Marvel is gaining as a result of mistreating the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises.They’re only losing fans they don’t need to lose, and the money and positive buzz that comes with them.
This behavior puts a block on good stories that could be told, like Polaris and Scarlet Witch as sisters. It turns Marvel fans against each other, fuels a toxic environment. People that love the pedestal given by Avengers and those put down by it will fight with each other, and that infighting does not breed intrigue. It breeds avoidance. On sight of this kind of infighting, how many people are really going to think “Yeah, I want in on that action”? Most potential new fans will instead think “THAT’S what being a fan is like? Nope, nope, I’m outta here.”
The Marvel universe has so much potential. It deserves better than petty corporate sabotage and ego trips.
Please read this article it’s fantastic.
Oh and Salarta’s commentary is good too.
The phrase “Cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face” comes to mind. Again. Still.
Also: I like how they’ve put lockjaw riiight up there in the front, in a desperate, and not totally transparent push to get someone– ANYONE– to give a shit about the Inhumans. “Look! We have puppies! People like dogs, right? The X-men never had a dog. C’mon! READ it!”
lol if Inhumans were worth shit they wouldn’t have to be turned into Nu X-men.
This is precisely one of those cases that I think proves my point about how Marvel is only hurting themselves.
I firmly believe any character or franchise has good qualities in its own right, it’s all a matter of understanding what those qualities are and then effectively presenting them to the world in a way everyone can see them. This includes the Inhumans. I think the Inhumans have their own meaningful and unique aspects that, if handled properly, could make for some great work.
Marvel trying to turn the Inhumans into “Nu X-Men” tosses nearly all of that in the bin. The Inhumans will never be as popular as the X-Men if they’re turned into “Nu X-Men,” and they’ll be even less so if the rumors about Marvel trying to turn the X-Men into “Nu Inhumans” turn out to be true. Both efforts make X-Men fans hostile toward the Inhumans and any potential they might have in their own right.
There’s a damn good chance that even if Marvel somehow gets everything they want, a good chunk of X-Men fans will never accept the Inhumans now. And it’ll be a direct consequence of Marvel’s efforts to undermine the X-Men.
Marvel might think upsetting a few hundred thousand comic book fans is a drop in the bucket, but it has a Streisand effect that can result in non-readers spending much less on Marvel merchandise and films than they otherwise would have. Between complaints about Black Widow’s writing in Age of Ultron and Renner’s sexist remarks, complaints about whitewashing the Maximoffs, lack of representation of women on merchandise and now the pissing match with Fox all becoming big mainstream news, Marvel’s going to be hurting soon.
In fact, they already are. They’re still “on top,” but Age of Ultron has been behind Avengers for sales despite its greater hype, and it fell into third as soon as some real competition hit theaters.
the article itself states this:
How this is supposed to affect a movie franchise that reaches tens of millions of people when comics readership as a whole consists of like 100,000 people who will probably go see X-Men movies regardless of whether Marvel is selling lunchboxes, nobody knows
I’ve really lost a lot of interest in Marvel. There’s no new series I can think of that I really care about. Like I enjoy Uncanny Avengers and there are a couple of others but I’m starting to get dangerously close to just dropping them altogether
I think when it comes to comics, the “speculator bubble” fucked the big two over.
Or to be more accurate, the companies not realizing the speculator bubble WAS a bubble.History lesson for younger folks or non-comics-history geeks in general.
See in the 90s the really old comics started fetching super high prices at auctions, because they were majorly significant characters and they were rare due to people throwing them out when they stopped reading and all.
So some people saw these old comics getting super high prices and got this idea that they’d buy new comics NOW and these would be worth tons of money down the line.
This lead to the comics companies making comics for these collectors.
You make a new #1 it’s gonna sell out, you make it with 7 different covers and it’ll sell out even fastr because the speculators had to get every single cover.Hologram covers, tin foil covers, yadda yadda yadda.
This made it where comics could raise their prices, stop being sold in as many places (no supermarkets or convenience stores) and still make money.
Then, eventually, the speculators figured out that most of these special issues they’d been buying were probably never gonna be worth more than the paper they were printed on and stopped buying.
This left comics with only the comic shops and the faithful fans to make money….but those weren’t/aren’t enough to make as much as they used to.
This is part of why Marvel went bankrupt once, which incidentally lead directly to the current MCU stuff (They sold off the rights of the characters, then saw just how much movies based on them could make, then made the MCU basically out of the characters they couldn’t sell off)
But when it came to the comics directly, they realized they’re in a catch 22 situation.
When comics were sold in supermarkets and convenience stores you could bank on the fact that some new kid would pick up an issue evry so often and become a fan.
But with comics only sold at comic shops, they no longer have that new fanbase coming in.
So they’ve turned to more and more desperate means to get “new” fans in.
Most of the ways they’re trying to get new fans in directly pisses off old readers, so they’re dwindling their own fanbase.Now, if I were in charge of the comics wing I’d be DESPERATELY trying to lower the price to where things can be an impulse buy and get them back out in non-comics-stores.
Or at least be putting them up online at a pretty large discount (again, impulse buy) so that people who wanted to try out an issue for a buck or two could do it.But sadly, that’s not the direction those in charge seem to be wanting to go.
If I were in charge of Marvel and generating interest, there are a LOT of things I’d be doing that Marvel and really no comic book company yet has even DREAMED of doing. There are some major amazing, innovative ideas yet to be tapped into that would bring in all new revenue streams.
I rarely or never say them openly because those ideas might trickle down to Marvel itself through the grapevine, and I don’t want Marvel to get wind of those ideas unless they’re ready to stop trying to ruin things fans love. I want Marvel to be a good company that cares about its IPs and its fans, and while Marvel getting wind of these innovative ideas won’t prevent it from spiraling into self-destruction, it could delay that process to a point where it could take an extra decade or two for Marvel to have to start acting better.
salarta 