Which Marvel events leaned too heavily on it's tie-ins?

[ImmortalIronFist]

I would say Secret Invasion was the worst offender. The thing about Fear Itself was that mos of the tie-ins were so much better than the actual series that it was distracting.

[XPac]

How about absolutely all of them, except perhaps House Of Meh, because they hadn't learned yet how to maximise greed yet?

There is a positive spin you can put on tie-in's though.

They do tend to generate a sales bump for the books which are struggling to get sales. The upside of people buying books that they don't normally buy because of an event is that people are giving new books a chance that they normally don't read. And it helps to give them a fighting chance in an otherwise tough market.

THe downside for AvX for example, is that it's largely contained in the Avengers and X-Men book... titles which already get solid sales. So unlike previous events, this one isn't really going to help out the rest of the line. It might even hurt the other books a bit because they'll be spending more money on Avengers/X-Men stuff.

[USERNAME TAKEN]

Honestly, i couldn't make head or tails of House of M or Secret Invasion until i read the tie-ins.

[XPac]

Honestly, i couldn't make head or tails of House of M or Secret Invasion until i read the tie-ins.

I can kind of buy that for Secret Invasion (the Bendis tie-ins at least), but I felt the House of M tie-ins were entirely skippable. That's not to say some of them weren't good.. but IMO they were completely unecessary as far as the main story goes.

[carabas]

There is a positive spin you can put on tie-in's though.

They do tend to generate a sales bump for the books which are struggling to get sales. The upside of people buying books that they don't normally buy because of an event is that people are giving new books a chance that they normally don't read. And it helps to give them a fighting chance in an otherwise tough market.

There's less and less of that. Nowadays, most tie-ins are seperate mini-series and one-shots, aren't they?

[XPac]

There's less and less of that. Nowadays, most tie-ins are seperate mini-series and one-shots, aren't they?

It depends.

Fantastic Four or X-men might get a seperate mini... but those are books that will sell well enough and don't need to worry about getting an event sales bump.

But something like Black Panther for example almost certainly wouldn't pass up a chance at tying into an event if it means a possible sales bump. And if their on-going isn't selling all that great, odds are marvel wouldn't green light a seperate mini anyways.

[marvell2100]

Fear Itself. They could have done the tie-ins and left out the main book and it would have been a little better. And really, there was nothing to be afraid of. Walt Simonson's Surtur was a bigger threat to Asgard and the Nine Worlds than Odin's brother.

[XPac]

Fear Itself. They could have done the tie-ins and left out the main book and it would have been a little better. And really, there was nothing to be afraid of. Walt Simonson's Surtur was a bigger threat to Asgard and the Nine Worlds than Odin's brother.

Yeah... conceptually and structurally that was sort of a flawed event from the ground up.

You can argue things like Civil War and even World War Hulk weren't huge threats... but the stories made up for that on a personal level at least.

[Will.S]

There is a positive spin you can put on tie-in's though.

They do tend to generate a sales bump for the books which are struggling to get sales. The upside of people buying books that they don't normally buy because of an event is that people are giving new books a chance that they normally don't read. And it helps to give them a fighting chance in an otherwise tough market.

THe downside for AvX for example, is that it's largely contained in the Avengers and X-Men book... titles which already get solid sales. So unlike previous events, this one isn't really going to help out the rest of the line. It might even hurt the other books a bit because they'll be spending more money on Avengers/X-Men stuff.

They've done that tactic a lot over the years and while it worked for books like Civil War and Secret Invasion, with Fear Itself I think they hit a saturation point that yielded diminishing returns on event labeled tie-ins. Not a whole lot of the tie-ins did all that well save for stuff like Avengers so I think that's among the reasons why they scaled back on the tie-ins.

Plus the plot's kind of too thin to try that with AvX anyway.

[XPac]

They've done that tactic a lot over the years and while it worked for books like Civil War and Secret Invasion, with Fear Itself I think they hit a saturation point that yielded diminishing returns on event labeled tie-ins. Not a whole lot of the tie-ins did all that well save for stuff like Avengers so I think that's among the reasons why they scaled back on the tie-ins.

Plus the plot's kind of too thin to try that with AvX anyway.

Act 1 seems to think to try that with AvX. Act 2 might be a tad more meaty... but we'll have to wait and see.

For what it's worth, I am sort of curious on how teams like the Fantastic Four view all of this. Doesn't necessarily justify an entire tie in or anything... but those sort of questions do arise when major things like this occur. Though I think we'll get some Reed later on in this event too, so I guess that will be answered as well.

[Will.S]

Act 1 seems to think to try that with AvX. Act 2 might be a tad more meaty... but we'll have to wait and see.

For what it's worth, I am sort of curious on how teams like the Fantastic Four view all of this. Doesn't necessarily justify an entire tie in or anything... but those sort of questions do arise when major things like this occur. Though I think we'll get some Reed later on in this event too, so I guess that will be answered as well.

Perhaps Reed will have his say on this in the Illuminati themed Avengers tie-in but yeah this would be an event worth contacting the FF for even if for a consultation.