Marvel

I happened across Iron Man 2.0 Vol. 1: Palmer Addley Is Dead at the library and thought I'd give it a go. I'd given the monthly version a look, but it hadn't held my attention. Sometimes, a comic reads better as a book and I've enjoyed Nick Spencer's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Infinite Vacation.

I don't know about you, but when the holidays come around and the relatives want a cheap-ish gift, I usually send them some links to Marvel Essential volumes on Amazon. They're relatively inexpensive, my relatives don't have to figure out where the comic shop is (in rural areas, this can be an issue) and they like the thickness of the volumes when they wrap them. Imagine my shock Thursday night as I was online and noting the massive amount of Essential volumes that were out of stock. Marvel's inability/unwillingness to keep tpbs in print has been a hot button topic in recent months, but this is a bit beyond anything I would have expected. This doesn't mean Diamond doesn't have some copies in the warehouse for the DM, but my experience with Amazon has been if they think it will take a few weeks to restock, you'll see a 4-6 weeks to ship notation and they'll take your order. Here's a list of major Essential series, how many volumes are out and then the ones where the only purchase option on 12/1 were the "used & new" 3rd party resellers. I'm not listing Dazzler/Ant-Man/Human Torch.

Marvel has updated its iOS app with a bunch of new features -- however, the App store tells me that you will have to restore all your purchases after the upgrade. The new features sounds worth it, however. What could go wrong? To entice you, Marvel is running a big sale on stuff like SCHISM, ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN, and other recent releases. That's a nice way to get people up to speed with the current goings-on for future print or digital purchases.

Bon Alimagno is leaving Marvel to take a job with software company The Apollo Group. At Marvel Alimagno worked closely with Senior Vice President, Business Affairs & Talent Management David Bogart on freelancer scheduling and handling. He was formerly the editor at Harris Comics, overseeing the adventures of Vampirella.

We're not sure if this Russian Avengers teaser was ever found to be "official" or not, but it doesn't matter, because artist Kevin Bolk has given it a gender swap, with the male characters showing the kind of twisting butt-and-face pose that is usually reserved for The Black Widow. It's called Avengers Booty Ass-emble :

Marvel is going through some odd times, of late. Cancellations, accelerations, and a complete focus on the bottom line seem to be the order of the day. Axel Alonso and Tom Brevoort have been talking.

“Venom by Rick Remender Vol. 1” is not the flashiest title ever conceived for a book (pun intended). There’s a trend of breaking up titles runs by creator. Over at Marvel, you’ve got “Ultimate Comics Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis,” “Moon Knight by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev,” and so forth. Over at DC, You’ve got “Tales of the Batman” volumes for Gene Colan and Don Newton. I suppose it’s good for branding the work of a particular creator on a series, though it’s the rare title like Moon Knight that’s spreading the love between both writers and artists. We’ll see how long this naming trend sticks around and whether more heavily promoted storylines are collected under the creators’ names (as of this writing, it’s Spider-Man: Spider Island, not Dan Slott’s Spider-Man Vol. *.*”) Venom by Rick Remender has Remender on writing chores, with the art split between Tony Moore and Tom Fowler, and a variety of inkers on Moore. I pulled this volume out of the library on a lark and it turned out to be a much deeper read than I was expecting.

Spider-Man on Broadway (No, not Times Square, Herald Square!) Spider-Man and friends at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! 2011, 1987, 1989! And look closely for one of the first ever webcams!

The business side of Marvel has been quite a wild ride lately. First you had layoffs. Then you had cancellations. Then iFanboy wrote a piece about what other titles were falling into roughly the same sales range on the Diamond estimates, and could conceivably be in danger of cancellation. Then Ivan Brandon got worked up about such talk of sales levels and cancellation. Right on cue, a title on the iFanboy watch list (Daken: Dark Wolverine) got cancelled. Bickering ensued. Now Kiel Phegley is stepping back and taking a more measured look at Marvel's line and business factors than we've seen, thus far. I'd like to add a few factors into the discussion of what goes into deciding a book's fate.

Welcome to month two of Bizarro World! This was quite a busy month for Marvel, with the "Fear Itself" crossover continuing, the relaunch of INCREDIBLE HULK, and the first issue of new title WOLVERINE & THE X-MEN. But once again, the big story in October was the continued success of the DCU relaunch. DC's lead over Marvel in September may have been narrow, but in October it was massive. Helped by hefty re-orders on virtually the entire September DCU line, DC led Marvel by 42% to 29% in dollars and a remarkable 51% to 30% in units. That market share is partly due to massive reorders on DC's September line. It seems reasonable to assume that this won't be a regular event, and that the gap won't be quite so large in future. But the possibility that Marvel might have to readjust to life as the number two publisher cannot be ruled out. Not that it's doom and gloom by any means. DC's sales are up, but not at Marvel's expense. If the DC relaunch has brought new readers into stores, or old readers back, then in theory Marvel should be able to take advantage of that too. On the other hand, it also makes it rather harder for Marvel to argue that its books are losing sales because it's a tough market. DC has just proved that declining sales are not inevitable. Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

One of the major -- if not THE major -- reasons that Disney purchased Marvel two years ago for $4 billion was that the House of Ideas supplied a ready-made audience of material aimed at boys under 18 -- the one quadrant Disney has always had the toughest time reaching. Disney does princesses and Pooh great, but they had to create a whole cable network that could be specifically branded for boys -- Disney XD, which already airs various Marvel cartoons. So this look at just how Disney has used the Marvel universe by Mike Gold is quite interesting as he points out that Marvel TV shows in development at Disney include the Hulk, AKA Jessica Jones (ALIAS), Cloak and Dagger, and a possible Miley Cyrus vehicle based on Mockingbird:

Marvel's culling continues, with both GHOST RIDER and BLACK PANTHER reaching their final issues.