—
This is kind of lame of Marvel. Yesterday Johanna Draper Carlson drew attention to another of the publisher's less-than-noble marketing efforts, pointing out that Marvel was claiming that they wouldn't be publishing a second printing of
Siege #1, when they have a
Siege #1: Director's Cut scheduled for release in March. The "director's cut" adds eight-pages of content described as "choice extras," for an extra $1. So they
are having a second printing of the comic, they're just adding a subtitle and some extra material and calling it something different, so it just depends on how technical you want to be about what constitutes a second printing, I guess.
—
This is very cool of Marvel. Yesterday retailer, critic and pundit Brian Hibbs complained publicly about a problem at his store, in which a plumbing problem above his shop lead to a swathe of his Marvel comics being ruined. David Gabriel, one of the folks in Marvel marketing, offered to replace Hibbs' stock. I just thought I'd list that here given all the invective I poured their way
yesterday. As perplexing and damaging to the medium/industry as some of their moves are, it's not like they're a bunch of devils actively seeking new and creative ways to work evil in the world all day. (Well, there are probably
some devils on staff doing that...Mephisto, for instance, whom I believe is a VP in the company).
—
This is very weird of Marvel. I had expressed curiosity and concern over the apparent end of their Marvel Adventures line in the past, most recently when
talking about the latest collection of
Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, which I really enjoyed, in large part because of how writer Paul Tobin managed to make a new Spidey story that was at once classic and unique.
Well, Marvel is relaunching their
MA books with two titles,
Spider-Man and
Super Heroes. The former will have the exact same creative team as before, which means the relaunch must be direction-oriented (
the cover does have a redheaded classmate looking out the window at Spidey, and Mary Jane wasn't in any of the
MA Spider-Man comics I had read).
The latter is still being written by Paul Tobin, but it's apparently going back to its rotating star format, which it had
just been shifted away from to become a new all-ages Avengers series.
So new #1, but same writer (and, in one case, same artist). I guess I'll have to wait for the comic to see if something about the contents necessitated the re-boot, or if Marvel just decided to spruce up the line with new #1's a few months after giving the books new directions.
At any rate, as a reader, I'm glad to hear that Spidey team is going to be staying on Spidey, and I'll be looking forward to future collections of it.
