Nuff Hype, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #113

February 1, 2011 Arthur Tebbel 2 Comments

Dear Art,

We killed of a member of the Fantastic Four this week. Just in case someone in your audience is unaware of which member we killed I’ll refrain from naming that person in this letter but as I expect you to talk about this development in your response those spoiler sensitive readers should probably stop reading now. It was big news, covered by the Associated Press and, as such, a number of major news outlets last week. The issue even came out on Tuesday, a day ahead of the normal comics release date. Did it get you to pick up the book? Do you think it will increase the public awareness of the Fantastic Four? What about long-term sales growth?

-Dan Buckley, Publisher, Marvel Comics

Dan,

You have to have the best publicist in the world (that isn’t related to me by blood). That or the person in charge of these stories for the AP is kind of an idiot.  This is the biggest superhero comics story since the death of Captain America. If I were writing this story I would look into that and notice that Steve Rogers is already back. How do these stories keep getting coverage? Is P.T. Barnum running the entertainment sections of every newspaper in America?

I didn’t pick up the issue. If I were ranking the Fantastic Four in order of my interest in them Human Torch would probably come in fourth. I also only like Fantastic Four when the diehard fans seem to be hating it to death. I loved it under McDuffie and then Millar and dropped it after that. It’s very well regarded but I just don’t think I have a long-term interest in the Fantastic Four in me. You can blame my DC Comics upbringing for that. Give me The Challengers of the Unknown any day.

I don’t think is going to get the non-comics-buying public into the shops on a regular basis. The stacks of this particular issue were huge at my store last week and I’m sure it’ll be the number one book for January. I would bet good money that upwards of 85% of copies sold will be to people who already collect. The absence of Human Torch from the 1970s cartoon series probably hurts this a lot. I doubt this is going to be long-term growth and it would seem you know this as you only plan to publish one more issue of Fantastic Four before renaming the series FF and starting over with a new issue #1. Changing the title and numbering of the title doesn’t exactly scream new reader friendly to me. What would be really refreshing is if you and DC would stop pretending you care about getting new people to read comics or at least that you don’t expect anyone to buy into these deaths as permanent. I won’t be holding my breath; neither will I be doing whatever you would call the opposite of that that Aquaman does while on land.