Word is already circulating that Marvel’s presence at the San Diego con is non-existent. I can’t say I’m entirely surprised. Understand, this is purely speculation on my part; I’ve no inside information. But if you’ve ever been to SD, you know the DC booth is a thing of beauty. About three times bigger than my first apartment, with monitors and a logo you can see from Pasadena. If Marvel shows up with about what they can afford–a 3 x 6 table–immediately the reaction is gonna be, “Keee-rist, did you see the pathetic display Marvel has compared to DC’s?” Especially considering the repeated contempt with which Marvel has referred to its crosstown rival. It may well be the reasoning was that if they couldn’t afford to do it right, better not to do it at all. My understanding is that Marvel has some small presence as part of the Wizard display.
If I’m right, Marvel may well have the right idea. Better to do nothing than do something half-assed. Still…it’s kind of sad.
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What it seems to be ocurring is that Quesda’s policy of hiring top notch creators and turning them loose was a temproary policy and they’re reverting to their old policies of emphasizing characters over creators.
If only it were so, but assuming that you missed the news about Mark Waid’s firing from my favorite title, the Fantastic Four, because Bill Jemas wants to force an idea on it that doesn’t ring true to the tone of the series, the truth is that they’re not trying to emphasize characters and that they’re doing it at the expense of alienating the core fans, supposedly because a writer of their choice can bring in much more than just 100,000 readers. But of course, it makes no sense as to how an audience full of people who go out to see action movies like Star Wars wouldn’t be interested in an adventure book like the FF.
What’s more, by supposedly saving money for paying writers, which is actually being proven false by Waid’s firing and even Geoff Johns’ alienation, Marvel is actually sending a signal that they’re not doing as well as we’d like them to. In fact, when it comes to sales, DC, last time I looked at some charts, it actually making more money, if not entirely. How can they actually be doing well if they’re “saving money”? Considering the profits they made off of Spider-Man and Daredevil in the movies, I would think that they were better off than that, yet they continue to miss hundreds of opportunities in taking advantage of their successes, and continue to take steps that not only alienate the readers, but that can also discourage new ones from taking interest, and thus, the X-books did considerably less well following the X2 movie. Sales went down below 100,000 copies a month for both of the main X-books and were little helped by the movie, if at all. Grant Morrison and Chuck Austen really killed much of the enthusiasm with their writing, to say the least. Of course, the former is now leaving to work with DC in an exclusive contract.
New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men were #5-7 in the Diamond Top 300 for June. Not bad for books where the writers are supposedly “killing…the enthusiasm.”
I’m mentioning this for posterity, since the thread is pretty much dead at this point: Marvel’s released their latest financial statement, which says that they did indeed have a strong second quarter thanks in part to Hulk merchandising. Meaning that their long-term debt only exceeds their holdings by $7 million at this point. Remember this when you read all the comments about “Marvel’s rolling in the dough from their movies”: Marvel also went bankrupt and hasn’t paid off their debts yet.