King In Black Conquers The Marvel Universe This December

I've been waiting for this to go down, it's been a fun road, I love this arc, and I'm really excited for these books, it's going to be awesome!

No interest in having more symbiote version of characters

6 minutes ago, abnuggler said:

No, I dont think that's the case with selling toys or making merchandise, I just think that some times this new focus and practice lends itself perfectly to create more merchandise of things that otherwise wouldnt be waranted, I dont think Marvel's comic division thinks too much of making stories,characters or designs just to sell toys and merchandise, but I do think that these "events" that now happen too often make it easier for companies who have merchandising rights to tie into these events, in the case of toys its clear that even though toy companies dont influence the comics directly they are kept in mind when coming up with these events cause toys usually take about 2 years from planning, logistics and production to see the light of day so its reasonable to think that these toy companies know what's comming down the line from the comics in advanced cause it seems like those times between when the comics come out and toys "inspired" from those comics has been shortened a lot. In any case I think one thing is the toy part of the problem of fatigue created by milking characters and another is the comic side by the editorial seeing potential in a storyline and making it bigger than it should was originally planned by the creative team behind that book, just to create more sales in crossovers. In any case one feeds the other and in some cases it works but in most cases it just creates a fatigue in the consumer's mind (maybe the storyline isnt that bad but youre reading it and all of a sudden the next big event is already announced and its just one after another)

Yes, the time between new story elements popping up and the merchandise being made has been getting shorter, but I believe that if these story elements were being created in part with merchandise in mind, the gap would be closer to non-existant. Just take for example the synergy between Marvel Studios and Hasbro in the production of toys for a movie.

It sounds counterintuitive that Marvel would keep merchandise in mind but not ensure the merchandise comes out faster than two years. A two-year gap is a long time. In addition to that, a lot of newer stories or story elements haven't even gotten merchandise at all. For example, the 2018 eventInfinity Warshad this concept of the Infinity Warps, which was a new group of characters that each was the fusion of two heroes (Iron Man + Thor = Iron Hammer, Captain America + Doctor Strange = Soldier Supreme, etc.). The potential in merchandising of that idea was off the roof, but it's been two years and not even Funko Pops have been made of them.

And as for the final part of your comment, that's the part I meant when I said that I

9 minutes ago, ADour said:

I agree with part of the sentiment, but I think it's cynically overboard to think that milking the crap out of an idea and putting thought into it are mutually exclusive, especially in this specific case here. Both Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman have proved that they've put care into their plans with Venom, and they have been building it up since 2018. Like many other events in recent years (AXIS and War of the Realms being two examples), what editorial does is see a storyline with a potential and blow it into a full-fledged event.

The quality of the story can be affected (in the case of AXIS, negatively) because of it, but it's far from being some cookie-cutted focus-group approved laundry list of things that sell. And Marvel doesn't put out merchandise specific to events in a significant way like you're making it sound to be, so the idea that Marvel is making events to sell toys has really nothing to back it up.

No, I dont think that's the case with selling toys or making merchandise, I just think that some times this new focus and practice lends itself perfectly to create more merchandise of things that otherwise wouldnt be waranted, I dont think Marvel's comic division thinks too much of making stories,characters or designs just to sell toys and merchandise, but I do think that these "events" that now happen too often make it easier for companies who have merchandising rights to tie into these events, in the case of toys its clear that even though toy companies dont influence the comics directly they are kept in mind when coming up with these events cause toys usually take about 2 years from planning, logistics and production to see the light of day so its reasonable to think that these toy companies know what's comming down the line from the comics in advanced cause it seems like those times between when the comics come out and toys "inspired" from those comics has been shortened a lot. In any case I think one thing is the toy part of the problem of fatigue created by milking characters and another is the comic side by the editorial seeing potential in a storyline and making it bigger than it should was originally planned by the creative team behind that book, just to create more sales in crossovers. In any case one feeds the other and in some cases it works but in most cases it just creates a fatigue in the consumer's mind (maybe the storyline isnt that bad but youre reading it and all of a sudden the next big event is already announced and its just one after another)

10 minutes ago, abnuggler said:

I think marvel has been just grabbingwhat they see ispopularand just going overboard, it happened with Spiderverse, later with Deadpool now its Venom, it seems like if some story or character or storyline suddenly is seen popular on its own they grab it and make it global in all their titles/characters and beat the horse untill its dead just to sell as fast and as easily as possible rather than really putting some good thought into storylines, this is mainly what has been affecting comics over the last years, they seem to care less about developing good intresting stories and more on just selling as much as possible with as little effort as they can, this practice also helps in creating more and more merchandise to sell (specially on toys) that otherwise would feel gimmicky or dumb

I agree with part of the sentiment, but I think it's cynically overboard to think that milking the crap out of an idea and putting thought into it are mutually exclusive, especially in this specific case here. Both Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman have proved that they've put care into their plans with Venom, and they have been building it up since 2018. Like many other events in recent years (AXIS and War of the Realms being two examples), what editorial does is see a storyline with a potential and blow it into a full-fledged event.

The quality of the story can be affected (in the case of AXIS, negatively) because of it, but it's far from being some cookie-cutted focus-group approved laundry list of things that sell. And Marvel doesn't put out merchandise specific to events in a significant way like you're making it sound to be, so the idea that Marvel is making events to sell toys has really nothing to back it up.

I think marvel has been just grabbingwhat they see ispopularand just going overboard, it happened with Spiderverse, later with Deadpool now its Venom, it seems like if some story or character or storyline suddenly is seen popular on its own they grab it and make it global in all their titles/characters and beat the horse untill its dead just to sell as fast and as easily as possible rather than really putting some good thought into storylines, this is mainly what has been affecting comics over the last years, they seem to care less about developing good intresting stories and more on just selling as much as possible with as little effort as they can, this practice also helps in creating more and more merchandise to sell (specially on toys) that otherwise would feel gimmicky or dumb

Marvel is riding on a momentum of events...empyre, swords of x...now this one..can't decide fund toy hobby or comic hobby???

lol.