Marvel must not want you to read the book (Fantastic Four #587)

In another announcement to along with The Death of Captain America and Spider-Man’s public unmasking during Civil War, Marvel Comics has taken the approach of revealing a major story point to the public before fans can even read the source material. It’s Tuesday, comic books normally ship on Wednesday but Marvel even went so far as to permit retailers to sell copies of Fantastic Four #587 a day earlier in anticipation of today’s press release. Unfortunately, the press release came at 7:32AM this morning and I don’t know of many comic book stores that are open at that hour.

It was no secret that a character death was coming in this issue. It’s the conclusion of a Fantastic Four story titled “3” and Marvel has been hyping that one of the founding members of that team was going to die. While I completely understand fans not wanting to read the news in this way rather than reading the book itself, I get that Marvel is trying to make headlines. I can tell you though, trying to avoid news like this can be next to impossible. I don’t know how the press release will affect sales in this instance, but the previous examples definitely brought people into the stores I frequent and made the books in question a little harder to come by.

As far as what the news is, I’m only upset with Marvel’s handling of the information in this case. I don’t read Fantastic Four, even though I’ve heard great things about what writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Steve Epting are doing with the book. I read the SPOILER-tastic press release and it’s not something that will get me to pick up the book even if it does come in a 90’s style black “body bag” which Marvel actually promoted as being done to protect people from spoiling the contents.

Tags: Fantastic Four, Marvel, press releases, spoilers

KevinMLD said,

This is a dumb reveal on Marvel’s part. I wonder if it will result in less sales due to the world’s complete apathy for that character.
Angelique said,

There is a reason Apple makes announcements at 1pm EST. Businesses across the entire continental US are open at that point.

Why would marvel reveal something at 4:30am to their readers in California…they clearly don’t have anywhere to read the book at that point.

Unless Marvel wants people to be reading things illegally? OR were they hoping it would cause the same commotion as Captain America dying? Because seriously…everyone cares about some fantastic 4 nerd as much as Captain America?
ptb said,

Kev, I really don’t know what to expect from it, but it’s a little underwhelming. I was trying to decide which character’s death might have the most impact and it was hard to make a case for any of them.
ptb said,

Angie, the timing of the press release is the worst part of this in some ways. No one who wanted to read the book would have had any opportunity to unless they had an advance copy.

It’s funny you mention Captain America. I remember avoiding the press around that as best I could, but when people know you like comic books it’s only a matter of time before someone asks what you think of the news. It happened at 2:20PM today, and I wouldn’t have gotten to a comic book store until at least 7PM if I were trying to pick up this book.
jaydee said,

I could even understand if they broke the news sometime TONIGHT, even though that would still be spoiling it for the people who had to wait for the regular Wednesday comic batch..
but on the morning of the day BEFORE Wednesday?
so aggravating!