The Death of Reason

So here's your cover for the February edition of Previews magazine. What's the appropriate response? Do you vomit? Do you check out a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook from your local library? Do you grab a bludgeoning tool and wreak havoc across three states? I don't know.

I should probably sit on this and wait for the next show before I vent. That would be the sensible thing to do. But Marvel is actually pretending that they're going to kill Spider-Man....so sensible is obviously out the goddamn window.

First they point-plank LIE about reducing prices, then they cook up that INSIPID "Point One" program which communicates none of what they'd like to communicate and which achieves none of what they need to achieve - new readers.

And now this. The "death" of Spider-Man. How stupid do we look, really? How patently obvious is your marketing bullshit?

Yeah, I know this is just comics, and I ought not allow something so trivial to raise my blood pressure so. But this is so.......aggressively moronic. The death of Spider-Man? You mean the guy that you just had inexplicably sell his soul to the devil? I would not be this angry if you just told me you took a shit on my Secret Six comics.

Fuck you, Marvel.

Fuck. You.

You want to flush the last three grains of your brand integrity down the toilet, fine. Go ahead and embarrass yourselves, children. But also FUCK YOU, and shame on you, because we NEED you, and you can't possibly be this stupid. You can't possibly be thinking of taking dynamite to our future in the name of selling a couple of extra copies to the last five idiots who are so galactically gullible that they would still fall for this shit.

Let me clue you in, kids. Spider-Man is not dying. Nobody in the history of comics has EVER died. Goddamn Bucky is still breathing, folks. This is not storytelling, it is not clever, and it is not funny. If you want to get the effect of the "death" of Spider-Man, folks, just take a stapler, jam it into your ass, and then bounce around a lot so that a couple of staples pop off inside you. It's the same effect, and it's much cheaper. And it won't encourage these pricks to destroy the medium that I love most, because it won't be padding their pockets.

Marvel Comics: WAKE UP. The iceberg is just off the medium's starboard bow, and if you don't start peeling off to port, you're going to sink the whole ship. You greedy, greedy, simpletons. If you need help, gents, just follow DCs lead....they seem to have figured things out nicely.

Disney: WAKE UP. Originally we all cheered the "hands off" policy regarding Marvel. But it has become painfully clear that the inmates are running your asylum poorly. Time to get involved. You need to grab an axe and start lopping off deserving heads quickly, because the situation is officially dire.

I'm going to find something to drink....

-Ryan