Fans of Marvel Comics are protesting that the comic book giant reveals too much in media interviews, ruining the twists of some story lines for comic book fans.
Last week, Marvel spoke to the AP and USA Today before Ultimate Spider-Man #160 hit stores. The comic featured a huge twist in which Peter Parker died.
Some fans were unhappy that they learned the news in the mainstream media and didn’t get to discover it for themselves.
But Marvel says that’s part of doing business.
“First and foremost, the goal of any mainstream media push like this is to help retailers increase sales and get new fans into their stores,” Arune Singh, Marvel’s director of communications, publishing and digital media, told Comics Alliance.
“The Death of Spider-Man news is news all over the world from here in the US to India to Japan – it’s a big story. This is news being read not only by comic fans, but lapsed fans and a lot of people who have never read comics before.”
Singh further explained: “We’re entirely understanding of fans who feel that we’ve ‘spoiled’ something for them and wonder just why we had to do it now – it’s certainly a fair question.
“But the answer comes from – and hopefully this doesn’t sound too blunt – looking at this in a larger business sense.”
Singh said that these major events would be reported on as soon as the books are released, and to ensure the best coverage, it is in Marvel’s interest to break the news first.
While I’m not the biggest fan of spoilers personally, I can certainly understand why Marvel is in favor of this. When the news broke about Peter Parker dying (I’m sorry… Did I just spoil something?) it created a maelstrom of news stories that broke through into the mainstream news media.
Let’s face it… You just can’t buy that kind of publicity!!!