Why don't more people read Iron Man or Captain Marvel?

[megladon8]

Two of my absolute favorite heroes ever since I was a kid were Iron Man and Captain Marvel.

To my surprise, most non-comic-readers have never heard of either (Captain Marvel doesn't surprise me...but I always thought Iron Man was pretty common knowledge), let alone know anything about them.

Why do these books have such low sales?

And is there ever going to be another Captain Marvel series?

[Ghost Writer]

I've always liked Captain Marvel. The thing is, outside of any Thanos activity, I'm no fan of the cosmic stuff.

As for Ironman... Boring imo. I've always liked the character mind you, but the premise for his series have always been borderline yawn for me. I would love to get into him a bit more as he is one of Marvels most developed characters, I just can never get beyond the story itself.

Perhaps you can recommend a few arcs or single issues that I can check out?

[Armless Penguin]

And is there ever going to be another Captain Marvel series?

Probably not anytime soon, considering there's not even a definite Captain Marvel right now, just Phyla running around feeling incapable in Annihilation. We are, however, getting a Nova ongoing and a couple other cosmic minis.

[MakeMineMarvel]

I agree that while Iron Man is a great character he just doesn't cut it as a solo act. He works great with the Avengerse but by himself is usually a boring story.

As far as Captain Marvel goes I am not a big fan of cosmic stuff. I enjoyed some of the last Marvel series and would definitely check it out if he had another run.

[milly3cat]

When iron man was with warbird a couple years ago, the iron man series was good, but the next 40 issues after were poor, and now he is the enemy of captain america and hero mutants, and that isn't a good character change.

Civil war issues may be big, but not popular with fans.
The sooner it ends the better, for iron man anyway.

[Mark (nonick)]

For me, Iron Man is an uninspired character. He's almost like Batman, but without the angst, detective-ness, or real motivation. Why's he do it? What's the cost?

Admittedly, I have not tuned into Iron Man's solo book in many years, but it always read like a Power-Ranger type book to me. Get up, invent something, see bad guy, fight bad guy with invented something.

[Jeff-E]

I've always thought that Ironman needed to be more a throw back to the older days of comics, i.e. 60's and 70's. Combine it with todays character driven stories, and plot lines, but add in more old school SuperVillians trying to take over the world. Slight Revamps of his Rogues are needed, but the potential is there. It's just not real viable for him to fight drug lords, or non superpowered/non armored people because of his suit. Ironman vs Electro or villians of this vein just isn't a good read because you know all Ironman has to do is walk up and flick him on the forehead knocking him out. Keep the politics of the old books out to some degree, and by this I mean since the cold war is dead don't change Titanium man from Russian to a Taliban, but maybe give him a different motivation rather than a conflict between two countries. Controller, Grey Gargoyle, and some of the others were great characters with good concept but have degraded, and faded over the years. Bring those style characters back, throw in some good action, make it a little just a little less story driven and a little more action and I think he'd be back in the top tier sellers of Marvel.

As for CaptMarvel, it's just hard to sell cosmic stories, personally I love them. Thats my favorite type of stories, sadly this doesn't extend to everyone. Annihilation is a good example of this, almost (I said almost) everyone who has read the first issue or two has stated it's better than CW however CW outsells it like crazy. For somereason people just don't like the cosmic stuff.

[Jmacq1]

For me, Iron Man is an uninspired character. He's almost like Batman, but without the angst, detective-ness, or real motivation. Why's he do it? What's the cost?

Admittedly, I have not tuned into Iron Man's solo book in many years, but it always read like a Power-Ranger type book to me. Get up, invent something, see bad guy, fight bad guy with invented something.

Iron Man's actually a -lot- deeper than that.

Why's he do it? Because he feels he has a responsibility to use his genius to make the world a better place, particularly since he was an irresponsible jerk when he was younger, and thought nothing about the ramifications of inventing/manufacturing/selling horribly destructive weapons to various governments and organizations. It just so happens he's also a bit of an adrenaline junkie, and so he's decided the best way to do that is to strap on the most powerful personal weapon system on Earth (at least of Earthly design) and fight supervillains. ;) He feels like he's only truly "free" when he's Iron Man. So in a nutshell, he's a combination of "Power and Responsibility," Driven by Guilt/Remorse" and "Thrill-Seeker." Or even more succinctly, he's got some of the most complicated motivations of any comic-book superhero.

Which ironically (no pun intended) may actually turn readers off of him. He's not really a character that can be easily "summed up" in just one issue, at least not while gaining a full understanding of him. The fact that he doesn't seem to have a "defining moment" that forces him down the superheroic path (ala Uncle Ben's Death for Spider-Man, or Bruce Wayne's parents dying, Steve Rogers volunteering for Operation: Rebirth, etc...) makes him a little less accessible.

Though in truth, Iron Man's "defining moment" is the first time he straps on the suit...

[Alan2099]

Ironman tends to suffer from Tony Stark standing around in a suit talking way too much about thinks nobody cares about. I agree that I'd like to see a more action based Ironman book.

Plus a lot of writers seem to look at the guy and go, "he's a buisnessman so he MUST be extremely manipulative." Really that's the least interesting part of the character.

It doesn't seem to help that every new artist wants to give hima different suit of armor either. He's changing too much to keep up with.

[rick]

The problem with Ironman is thatwith the brief exception of Mike Grell a couple of years back, there hasn't been a single writer who has managed to come up with a good story featuring the character in his own book.

The character has been a cardboard cutout for at least a decade, and all you really have to do is look at the brilliant work that Layton and Michelinie did to see that in fact, it has been years since Ironman has had anything even remotle resembling a "character driven" stroy or plotline.

So what's wrong with Ironman?

Simple the same thing that's wrong with most current Marvel characters, bad writing.

As for Captain Marvel, the biggest reason that he is and will remain a big loser for marvel is mostly because the vast majority of comicfans know exactly who Marvel is and recognize that the character that they want to see, was killed back in 1983.

And while I admire Marvel comics attempt at keeping him dead, this is the Captain Mar-Vell that the fans would buy a book starring, not the crappy revamped son.

[Ghost Writer]

As for CaptMarvel, it's just hard to sell cosmic stories, personally I love them. Thats my favorite type of stories, sadly this doesn't extend to everyone. Annihilation is a good example of this, almost (I said almost) everyone who has read the first issue or two has stated it's better than CW however CW outsells it like crazy. For somereason people just don't like the cosmic stuff.

I can't say how much I agree on these points here. I hate the cosmic stuff, but after reading the first issue of Annihilation, I was astounded at how much action was thrown into just one issue. The pacing is absolutely incredible. I loved it so much so that I recommended it to all of my collector friends. I even bought the second issue when it came out. Indeed, it is better than CW.

[lordlad]

i only like (loved) the original Captain MArvel (Mar-Vell).........not so hot about his sons.

[Expletive Deleted]

Let's not start random message board wars, m'kay?

[Sean Whitmore]

I don't know if Mar-Vell will ever be back, but we''re sure to see another Captain Marvel title again before long. If for no other reason than for Marvel to show they're rigorously protecting the copyright. Otherwise, DC will snatch up the opportunity to finally stop naming their book Shazam.


SEAN

[brundlefly]

Iron Man's solo book went off the rails during "The Crossing," with the nonsensical "the Tony Stark you've been about all these years was a spy for Kang; now he's dead so meet All-New Teen Tony" nonsense, and then just never got back on track again (Busiek's work being the exception, most of the rest was not very good). Prior to that, IRON MAN had a lengthy history of classic stories with some excellent creative teams, but like any ongoing book there were always creative highs and lows. After Busiek left the post-HEROES REBORN rebooted series, it was mostly just lows (as rick noted, it's not the charcter; it's bad writing that's the problem). Recently though, I thought Ellis' EXTREMIS and Casey's INEVITABLE were excellent Iron Man solo stories (though EXTREMIS suffered from delays), but I think the current perception of Stark as the villain of CIVIL WAR will hurt any attempts at an ongoing IRON MAN solo series the same way "The Crossing" did.