I've become increasingly frustrated with comics publishers milking properties by expanding the number of titles published in a given month for those characters or teams. While both Marvel and DC have a long history with this practice it's only become worse in recent years. Looking through the July Marvel solicitations I see how harsh this reality truly is.
The Avengers, once supported two books a month - the Avengers, and Avengers West coast. That seemed reasonable. Two branches of the same team seperated by an entire continent. In July we have Avengers, Avengers Academy, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Avengers: The Children's Crusade, and Avengers: The Origin plus eight or nine more if you include the Captain American, Thor, and Iron Man books. X-men books account for 14 current continuity books, more if you add alternate reality / ancillary books. It also doesn't include Deadpool who gets seven (yes 7) books in July. Does this seem like madness to you?
For an excercize let's say I'm being selective. Say I've decided that I will be following Captain America. What books would I be buying this month if I wanted to buy books related to Cap?
- Captain America #608
- Captain America: The 1940's Newspaper Strip #2 (not an actual strip from the 40's, it's a new retcon tale by Karl Kesel - I'm tempted to get this and I DON'T follow Cap these days)
- World War Hulks: Wolverine versus Captain America (which now puts me on the hook for World War Hulks most likely)
- Steve Rogers: Super Soldier #1 (the original Cap and he's back, how can any Cap fan NOT purchase this?)
- Avengers #3
- Avengers Academy #2
- New Avengers #2
- Secret Avengers #3
- Avengers, Thor and Captain America: Official Index to the Marvel Universe #3. At this point I might as well throw that in.
Granted, Cap and Steve are only featured in TWO Avengers books, but if I'm following Avengers, it'd probably be nice to get the whole story. They might be seperate for now but in 6 months when the next big event happens, and everything that happened in every Avengers book comes into play, I'm gonna be missing out. Can't have that. So there's nine books, following Captain America pretty conservatively. A lot of those books have strong ties to other events and characters so chances are I wouldn't be able to stop there.
Since I have a World War Hulks book on there that could easily lead me to another 4 books. Avengers could easily pressure me into getting the Iron Man books. Wolverine's involvement in the WWH book and the Avengers means I'll probably want the context of Wolverine's current circumstances, which are detailed in seven or eight other books and that turns into an even bigger mess with the X-men family. All because I wanted to follow Captain America. I've been reading comics religious for twenty years and even to me this seems like an impenetrable mess. My solution?
For now I'm sticking to Marvel's cosmic books, which in most months means Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy, maybe a mini-series or two. And there's a LOT of diversity among that small handful of books. This month that happens to mean one book: The Thanos Imperative #2.
No comments:
Post a Comment