Does Marvel Fear Flashpoint?

[Sabrewulf]

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/01/...-of-dc-titles/

Im a Marvel fan at heart. Or at least I used to be. But all I see now is a bunch of books and characters I like been written by a bunch of writers I don't. And a whole lot of pointless one shots and minis designed to grab at marketshare. A lot of this is down to Alonso so Im really hoping that DC will dominate the market with Flashpoint and get Marvel or Disney to pay more attention to how things are being run.

Fear Itself so far holds no interest for me. It feels like an Avengers arc that has been forced into an event. So far there has been nothing anounced to grab the reader and make this any different from Chaos War which sold badly.

Flashpoint on the other hand is going to restart possibly all it's titles witha number one and redesigns and twists and turns galore. Akin to AOA.

Now lets be honest here which event is more likely to make an impact on the paying public. DC are now taking chances Marvel used to take and each of its titles will be made fresh again, headed up by DCs (arguably the industrys) best writer. These books will be prices at $2.99

Marvel pits the usual tired overused suspects against a mianly unknown villain Sin and a previously unknown character. Headed up by the guy who screwed up the X-Men even more than Chuck Austen did. In fact in a recent interview lower list characters have been cut from the plan to make way for more of the A list characters. So this isn't even a MU wide crossover, it's just writers favourite characters in a battle with two bad guys for seven months. It's looking likely these books will be charged at $3.99.

Right now I can see DC dominating the Sales chart right up until the end of the Flashpoint Crossover.

[alexforever]

Yeah, DC has it's stuff together in recent years. I'm pretty impressed. Look at Batman Incorporated. It seems to have a plot and everything. It reminded me of that thing that never happened even as it was happening when the magical resurrected Spider-man revealed his identity to the world and instantly it became apparent that they didn't care about doing it as an actual story. It was just tossed off like it wasn't important. It was pure hype. Think of all the books they could of have sold with the right writers and right concept. Potential new readers were left with nothing to read about this Spider-man who lives in a big building and is fighting some war that wasn't incredibly great either. DC deserves its recognition.

[Moose967]

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/01/...-of-dc-titles/

Im a Marvel fan at heart. Or at least I used to be. But all I see now is a bunch of books and characters I like been written by a bunch of writers I don't. And a whole lot of pointless one shots and minis designed to grab at marketshare. A lot of this is down to Alonso so Im really hoping that DC will dominate the market with Flashpoint and get Marvel or Disney to pay more attention to how things are being run.

Fear Itself so far holds no interest for me. It feels like an Avengers arc that has been forced into an event. So far there has been nothing anounced to grab the reader and make this any different from Chaos War which sold badly.

Flashpoint on the other hand is going to restart possibly all it's titles witha number one and redesigns and twists and turns galore. Akin to AOA.

Now lets be honest here which event is more likely to make an impact on the paying public. DC are now taking chances Marvel used to take and each of its titles will be made fresh again, headed up by DCs (arguably the industrys) best writer. These books will be prices at $2.99

Marvel pits the usual tired overused suspects against a mianly unknown villain Sin and a previously unknown character. Headed up by the guy who screwed up the X-Men even more than Chuck Austen did. In fact in a recent interview lower list characters have been cut from the plan to make way for more of the A list characters. So this isn't even a MU wide crossover, it's just writers favourite characters in a battle with two bad guys for seven months. It's looking likely these books will be charged at $3.99.

Right now I can see DC dominating the Sales chart right up until the end of the Flashpoint Crossover.

I respectfully disagree. Fear Itself is designed to shine a light on Captain America and Thor due to their movies. Flashpoint, though it may be good, won't be as big a seller as Fear Itself I think. Mainly because of Johns.

[Dog]

My word, I hope the folks complaining about the Thor renumbering aren't DC fans. Exploded brain matter everywhere.

[Nite-Wing]

Put Geoff Johns on any Marvel title and he'll still probably be telling some of the best stories in comics.
Did Marvel need another event.........well the Heroic Age so far has been a pretty big dud imo but pasting over stagnation across the line with false hype isn't going to really solve the problem now is it.

[Beast]

Sounds really more like House of M than Age of Apocalypse. Since it'll be more or less line wide rather than contained.

And I doubt Marvel fears it. Even when DC manages to come out on top, they still lose in total sales.

[SpideyCzar]

Flashpoint is of no interest to me, and Geoff Johns is starting to bore me to death on GL. So his name attached to a title doesn't make it a automatic hit for me. Flashpoint seems to be just another alternate universe title.

I like whats going on with Marvel with writers like Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Dan Slott, and Jonathan Hickman.

Only DC titles that I'm reading now is Batman Inc. & Superboy the rest hold little interest to me. SO sign me up for Fear Itself and color me disinterested for Flashpoint

[Sabrewulf]

I respectfully disagree. Fear Itself is designed to shine a light on Captain America and Thor due to their movies. Flashpoint, though it may be good, won't be as big a seller as Fear Itself I think. Mainly because of Johns.

I also respectfully disagree. Movies have not increased comic sales. I understand the pressure to make titles accesible to new readers when movies are released but It has never worked. Hence the fact comics sell less and less every year. Maybe it pays off in graphic novels sales as gifts for fans of the movies but still there has yet to be a correlation between movie success and increased comic sales.

To make a comic new reader friendly outside of what they used to do in the 80's turns away the hardcore collectors and in the long term damages sales more than increases them.

The new reader at this point doesnt exist. Or is at least minimal. To be honest when I started to collect Marvel comics 25 years ago I didnt need a jumping on point and didnt thave the internet. I just loved comics and muddled my way through.

Did X2 create the market for a Nighcrwler book. Did X3 create the market for a Beast book. Did the Fantastic Four create bigger FF sales. No, it doesnt work. It only works in marketing theroy and that more often than not falls down in execution. I know because thats the area in which i work.

Was Wolverine the most populat character after the X-Men films. Maybe? But was that because that was all that was offered as the best option because he was popular in the comic books.

I call it Boba Fett marketing. Nobody expected the character to be big, but he hit a note with the fans. But to be honest at the time every other character but Boba Fett was pushed. It was a pro-active strike and the reaction to that character at the time was never really capitilised on.

Right now Marvel as a comics company need to be trying to replicate the buzz that got people excited back in the day about characters like Cloak and Dagger or the Punisher, Alpha Flight or more recently Thunderbolts, or Runaways.

Diversity is the way forward and I know that this mentality which you have has kinda killed that but still for me as an old schoool fan it was always about what comes next that got me excited and no re-hashing the old. Change and not for the sake of shock value but for the sake of characterisation and storytelling.

[Sabrewulf]

Flashpoint is of no interest to me, and Geoff Johns is starting to bore me to death on GL. So his name attached to a title doesn't make it a automatic hit for me. Flashpoint seems to be just another alternate universe title.

I like whats going on with Marvel with writers like Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Dan Slott, and Jonathan Hickman.

Only DC titles that I'm reading now is Batman Inc. & Superboy the rest hold little interest to me. SO sign me up for Fear Itself and color me disinterested for Flashpoint

Id like to hear you back up what you like about those writers.

To me well Brubaker lacks humour and irony. Aaron I like but at the same time he seems a bit too lose with storytelling.

Fraction seems to make every book into a decompressed indie talky book, lacking the sub-plots that made Marvel make me come back month after month.

Dan Slott is in my eyes is one of the only Marvel writer that captures the magic that keeps old school fans around.

Hickman is so far pretty good but doesnt seem to be able to let go of his over analytic nature of his plots so much he has become a cliche of himself.

[Hulk_Is]

Dedicated Marvel fans will by Marvel's books priced @ $3.99 (I'm one of them), so I don't think they have anything whatsoever to fear from Flashpoint; an entirely different brand.

[turtlefood]

I'm actually more excited about Flashpoint after reading that...i wasn't too thrilled with it being a mainly flash centric story, but if they are going to let DC's writers go to town with wacky concepts for their books? Yes please. Too many events have tie-ins that are mainly ____ fights X. Blackest Night and Secret Invasion in particular were just round robbin match-ups between heroes and skrulls/zombies, it was boring quite frankly.

[Skaddix]

Its Johns vs Fraction, if i was marvel, i would be terrified seeing as how polarizing Fraction's Uncanny X-men run was. And the fact that while Johns was locking up three top ten books a month (BD double counting) in the run up to Flashpoint, Fraction was busy dropping UXM out of the top ten.

[md62]

Dedicated Marvel fans will buy Marvel's books priced @ $3.99 (I'm one of them), so I don't think they have anything whatsoever to fear from Flashpoint; an entirely different brand.

This is what Marvel counts on. That their "dedicated fans" will pay for their books no matter what they charge. I think in the long run they are hurting both themselves & the industry in general. Personally I hope DC kicks Marvel's butt in sales to show Marvel that some of us fans that read books from a variety of companies (I'm one of them!) are fed up with Marvel's smug attitude.

[Jack J Napier]

Put Geoff Johns on any Marvel title and he'll still probably be telling some of the best stories in comics.
Did Marvel need another event.........well the Heroic Age so far has been a pretty big dud imo but pasting over stagnation across the line with false hype isn't going to really solve the problem now is it.

Geoff Johns Avengers line sucked. Plus Heroic Age isn't an event, I thought we went over this months ago. Back to square one I guess.

[Jack J Napier]

Its Johns vs Fraction, if i was marvel, i would be terrified seeing as how polarizing Fraction's Uncanny X-men run was. And the fact that while Johns was locking up three top ten books a month (BD double counting) in the run up to Flashpoint, Fraction was busy dropping UXM out of the top ten.

All that matters is where Johns' Flash book is in the ranking. I could careless about his GL books, being this is a Flashcentric event.

This is what Marvel counts on. That their "dedicated fans" will pay for their books no matter what they charge. I think in the long run they are hurting both themselves & the industry in general. Personally I hope DC kicks Marvel's butt in sales to show Marvel that some of us fans that read books from a variety of companies (I'm one of them!) are fed up with Marvel's smug attitude.

How are they hurting themselves and the industry? That doesn't make sence. They 99% of the time beat DC in the market. They in no way are hurting themselves. What smug attitude? You clearly don't have a clue what is going on.