So if you’ve been following along with the CAP #600/REBORN #1 news, you know that CAPTAIN AMERICA #600 goes on sale TODAY, not Wednesday, because Marvel has been planning a big news release that, hopefully, will turn into major media coverage and people flooding into stores to see what it’s all about. So what’s the deal? A Google news search for Captain America as of this moment reveals such headlines as:
Sikhs ask U.S. Army to drop ban on turbans, beards
I can’t survive without Test cricket: Tendulkar
Soldier’s $7 book purchase may bring huge windfall
Ah, wait here we go!
•CNN International: Captain America, thought dead, comes back to life
•NY Times: Captain America Back From the Dead
• And what seems to be the main story from the Daily News: Captain America is coming back to life in a comic near you.
So….let’s say the news is spreading fast.
Robot 6 has been keeping up with all the breaking news, including all the news releases from Marvel. Rich Johnston is also keeping up, and even has an early, spoiler-filled review.
Todd Allen takes the cynical road and notes that the Daily News story, which broke first, doesn’t actually mention Cap #600 or that you can buy it in stores today, although subsequent stories are a bit clearer on that.
And what is the actual NEWS revealed today? Steve Rogers is coming back as Cap! WHOA! Didn’t see that one coming! I just pee’d my pants!
Okay, we’ve all had our fun, now the question is did this promotion succeed? We won’t know this for a long time. It seems to us that Marvel did make a good effort to allow retailers to order and sell as many books as they could, but given that drawing all this attention to an “upcoming” mainstream news story made everyone figure out what the “story” was, and the sad fact that resurrection just doesn’t sell as well as death unless you’re starting a religion, it will be hard to duplicate the “Death of Cap” frenzy.
So this could still be a goldmine for retailers…or it could be an average, everyday comic book hero coming back to life thing. Developing.
ART: Top, John Cassaday cover to REBORN #1, middle, Alex Ross variant cover, bottom, Joe Quesada variant cover.
UPDATE: Via CNN’s Twitter:
Captain America — not so dead? http://bit.ly/12LlPR
So, they are doing their part!
didn’t DC try this with superman a decade and a half ago?
Fibre! FIBRE!
It’s not just for Gampy!
//oo/\
Just got our copies. A few people came in right at opening, but UPS didn’t show up until 12:30. Sold a few so far. Only one phone call. Most of the regular Wed customers said they’d just get it on Wednesday.
Is the tiny, glowing, screaming skeleton going to be permanently embedded into the new Captain America’s abdomen and crotch? Because if so, I have a new favorite comic.
The news itself, that’s no big deal. (And the Daily News gets a cricket bat for their “Comic Relief” headline.) I’ll wait and see how the story evolves. Perhaps with the resurrection of Steve Rogers, the U.S. Government will finally figure out the Serum, creating an army of Super Soldiers. How will this effect Steve Rogers and the rest of the Marvel Universe? (Something similar is happening in DC’s Superman titles.) Since he died and came back, Marvel Jurisprudence would say he is absolved of his crimes. (Magneto used a similar argument at the World Court.) How does Cap react to the Dark Reign storyline? Does the Green Goblin’s serum technology affect the Super Soldier serum?
And there’s a second assassin?
Cap’s return is the 4th most viewed story on CNN.com today as I write this, so hopefully that counts for something.
Nothing will ever be the same again!
We got our books at 11:30am via UPS and I got them to all of our stores across town by 2pm. It’s been moving pretty well….
The best thing for us is that Roger Stern will be coming into our Northside location on Wed. for a signing as he’s got a story in it. So I expect to sell a ton of them on Wed of course….
Pete
Wait … wait … WAIT!
Some soldier’s $7 purchase makes a huge windfall?
HOT DIGGITY DOG!
So… Marvel kept retailers in the dark because of this?! Way too over-hyped (I’m sure Marvel got more orders, but lets hope retailers don’t get stuck with too many copies or they’ll be making some new store furniture!). Oh, well, I am glad that they plan (hopefully) on bringing back Steve Rogers.
And for that Alex Ross cover, where are Cap’s legs? They not grow yet on the cloned body?
i hate to say it but this was an epic fail promotion wise. regardless the series will be great as everything brubaker does is.
“didn’t DC try this with superman a decade and a half ago? ”
Yes, but this will be different: Instead of the real Cap just showing up alive, there will be four characters, each claiming to be Captain America. Bucky, 1950s Cap, a friend of Tony Stark in an armored suit, and a young clone of Steve Rogers will fight it out in Battle for the Shield. Finally, Thor will strike the foundations of Midgard so hard that continuity shatters, and the real Steve Rogers will be plucked out of the timestream at the moment before his death, and it turns out he was never married to Mary Jane! The public will eat this up like… pickled beets.
Who cares… we knew he was coming back. This is why I stopped reading mainstream superjock books over 5 years ago. It’s all shit. I’ve already been there and done it. Can we have some original ideas here? It’s bad enough we had Knightfall II, I mean Battle for the Cowl….
I am still predicting a Colbert appearance by Joe Q (unless Colbert is still in Iraq this week).
lame!
It could also be a huge loss for retailers. If they bought into the hype, ordered a whole bunch of books and they don’t sell through. Which is the last thing they need right now.
That first picture doesn’t suggest Captain America’s erect penis at all.
It’s entirely to soon to declare this promotion a success or a failure.
The interesting variables, to me, are:
1) The early street date, conceivably making the book stand out on its own against everything else. Did retailers experience any add-on sales from the Wednesday crew who hadda have it today? Will having this be the only new book for two days create more signal than noise for tomorrow’s customers responding to tonight’s stories?
2) Taking advantage of the Monday/Tuesday slow spot in the entertainment news cycle to send customers out for something to buy. Will the impact of hitting the news between the box office post-mortems and new DVD/record day make any difference.
Either way it’s an interesting experiment, and I don’t think we’ll be able to call it til Thursday at the earliest.
Kerry, yeah I keep looking at it and thinking, “What a boner.”
I agree with everything you posted in this blog, I’m a loyal follower so please keep updating so often!