This is what happens when you time your articles to come out when the new books do. Oh, you off putting holiday shipping schedules!

Though there have been worse things. Because I know something you don’t know… or at least hoping you don’t. I know it because when the store manager was told by the owner over AIM (our preferred method of communication at the store), that same store manager yelped out a “WHAT?!” the likes of which you only hear when someone’s been shot.

And in a way, we were. Because the catastrophe involved the word ‘allocation’ and since we’re a small one-shop town private business, this wasn’t going to be pretty. On top of that, it involved Marvel Comics.

I love those guys. I love the characters, the worlds they create, the theme of the books they produce; like many comic fans, I have fond memories of reading epic storylines and watching characters change and wow me over the years. I’m not saying that the Distinguished Competitors don’t do a fine job, but I butter my bread on the Marvel side of things. Sure, I might not like certain company decisions, like revealing Spider-Man’s identity, but I still stand by my man so to speak and keep watching to see where the story will take everyone in the end.

Though, they say the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference and I, for one, am certainly not indifferent to the major mistakes my favorite comic company has been making this past year. 2006 has seen a lot go by, popping right out of the gate with end of House of M and on, one thing after another has rocked the Marvel Universe to its core and to be perfectly honest, I’m starting to get a little motion sickness. Decimation through Civil War, Marvel has taken this year to radically change their landscape; even the Wedding of Black Panther and Storm has had an impact on the entire Marvel Universe when, as far as I can remember, crossover epic events used to be once a year.

Quick aside: yes, like it or not, Black Panther marrying Storm has changed the way the Marvel Universe looks at Wakanda and gave the book a sales push that the book has run with to take T’Challa all over the world with his new bride and placed him in a prominent position in Civil War. I’m not saying that he wouldn’t have done it all without Storm at his side, but having a popular character from a popular series in your solo title does not hurt. Ask anyone who’s had a cameo with Wolverine.

Now, such a breakneck pace would actually be kind of exciting, if not a little dizzying, if the books arrived in a timely fashion. Civil War should have been over by now, prepping us for this all new, all different world for our heroes to exist in, but whole batches of comics have been delayed in order to make way for one lone book’s delay in shipping.  Iron Man’s signature title only recently caught up to the events of Civil War and has given information that would have softened the blow of his character … we’ll call it ‘massaging’, since ‘assassination’ is really rather negative and he hasn’t starting kicking puppies and pushing little old ladies into traffic.  Astonishing X-Men had a six-issue fight break out for over nine months, Joss Whedon’s current arc already over pacing-wise in the other regular titles, leaving those writers to hope that nothing drastically changes over in Astonishing that they’re ignoring.  Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk was a huge hit in my store and people still ask for it to this day; unfortunately, there’s not much I can tell them. When customers came back after the rather shocking Civil War #4, I had to explain the delays and do damage control for new readers that had no idea that comic books aren’t really guaranteed to come out on a regular schedule.

And yes, Watchmen didn’t come out on time either and it’s a celebrated work and yes, artists and authors run into personal problems with health and whatnot, they’re only human and shouldn’t we want the best product possible for that trade collection? But books that hold up multiple titles that were ready to go and issues that are a year late or more (never forget Daredevil: the Target, folks, though I’m sure Marvel would like you to do just that) are so hard to explain away to customers who are coming in from the phenomenal marketing that the company’s been doing.

Paul O’Brien over at said it best in his year end review, that this kind of general acceptance for late books by Marvel is unacceptable:

From all appearances, Marvel (and many of their higher-profile creators) feel differently, because they’ve been cossetted for years by a cottage industry that thinks it’s a publishing giant, and encouraged by fans so desperate to believe that Comics Are Art that they’ll accept the most ludicrous delays on the most absurd action comics as a sign of artistic integrity.

Mind you, not only is this particular article late so I’m not throwing stones from my own glass house, but you have to admit, every year it’s always something, isn’t it? Wasn’t last year’s complaint over decompressed storytelling? This is not a perfect business; if it was, there would be far more professional people than Yours Truly writing articles like these. But it has come leaps and bounds from where it’s been, thanks in part to the marketing juggernaut that Joe Quesada and the Marvel suits have come up with. There is incredible media attention thanks to fantastic movies and TV appearances; magazines like Entertainment Weekly and the New York Times are mentioning Marvel casually, the way they’d talk about the new line up on NBC or the new Harry Potter book. Marvel’s got the lock on mainstream writers from TV and movies, going so far as to grab a five-star writer like Stephen King for a mini-series (or at least a very popular series he wrote, if he’s not going to be writing it himself).

There are so many wonderful opportunities going on right now that is simply sucks to see deadlines detract from the achievements of this past year (and yes, suck is my professional opinion). Again, they say the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference and as much as I love what Marvel puts on the shelves, I hate to see it slip away to something that could be so easily fixed through some bootstrap pulling and tighter editing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 4th, 2007 at 1:00 pm and is filed under The Fifth Color, Version 1.0 Blog@. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.