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Feige’s contract ends in 2018, and I’m sure Disney will move mountains to keep him around, especially if it lines him up to take over the chairmanship. Though, one has to wonder if there’s some stiff competition between him, John Lasseter (or Jim Morris), and Kathleen Kennedy over who might ascend. It’s hard to imagine, after 10 years of what sounds like a pretty exhausting job, he’d want to continue doing the same thing indefinitely…

Between Oct & Nov Previews, Marvel has 282 variant covers. Does anyone seriously believe the market needs or can support that amount?

Whenever buyers of variant covers will be bored and will go to the next trend, don’t expect me to have any tears for all those top publishers with suddent declininng sales and who planted the nails of their own coffin.

Two things:

1) This level of excess is a natural and native result of supporting variant programs all along. When retailers change behavior to get variants OF COURSE they’re going to try to find out just how far you’ll let them push it — that’s capitalism. That is to say that retailers who have been happily playing these variant games for years are the architects of their own petards.

2) Having said *that*, I don’t think that some/most of those requirements are Too Much — I certainly think that I will sell, say, 150% of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 as part of a line-wide relaunch as I did of ASM: RENEW YOUR VOWS #2 — an ASM #1 tends to have much much much longer legs than the second issue of a mini-series. *Conceptually* Marvel’s relaunch could function as well or better as DC’s New 52 reboot, and if THAT happens — with the lapsed returning to look, even for an issue or three — these projected numbers will be a tiny fraction of what the market might need. I remind you that the *last* ASM #1 sold-in 560k copies just two years ago, and ASM:RYV #2 sold-in 93k. Giving the market a target of ~140k doesn’t seem all that preposterous under that circumstance?

-B

These numbers don’t really seem insane. There’s nothing saying you MUST chase the variants. You literally aren’t required to fulfill that option.

I think there would be a far greater interest in variant covers if Marvel released very few of them, but made them easy to access. For instance if each month a different series or a milestone issue had one, or maybe two, variants and made them 50/50 in the orders you might see more interest. Instead of the 100 plus a month that nobody can afford all of or even keep track of.

So…if I’m reading this right, issue 1 was so big they had to make a $5 book; issue 2 was so big they had to make it a $6 book, and issue 8 will be so big they have to make it two $4 books and ship them a month or more apart…or an $8 book. Maybe a $9 or $10 one, since they didn’t release price points yet. So glad I finally hopped off this train.

Shame you hopped off as it’s been a great conclusion to a great story.

Re: Hickman’s Avengers, I honestly can’t believe I read the whole bloody thing. I appreciate the tapestry he was weaving, but all I remember are plot points, usually the same ones ad infinitum. Or maybe my tastes were changing as it was being released; it happens. By the time Secret Wars started shipping, my financial situation had changed as well. Why would I continue to spend money on a story that’s lost me? It’s a shame Marvel keeps upping the price and adding story beats for the sake of page counts, because I’ve hit my threshold with their mainline super-books (to say nothing of other types of disdain their editorial staff has been demonstrating, but that’s a whole other story).

He really knows how to write the Fantastic Four and Doom and this book has really become about those core characters. If you liked his F4 run and read through Avengers, I would recommend checking this out once it hits your local library, I would also suggest Marvel Unlimited, $10 a month for most of their comics and all new ones 6 months or older.

“That means one more month of the suspense, action and game-changing storytelling that fans and retailers have been clamoring for since the final incursion started”

As I said on comicbloc, we’ve been clamoring for it because we haven’t GOTTEN it yet. This pseudo intellectual clap trap disguised as storytelling is moving at a pace glaciers would find slow. We’ve been reading a main book where NOTHING happens and a universe full of What If? stories that 99% of which won’t matter when the universe is reborn.All so we can get Miles morales in the 616 and bring back a Logan character?

Marvel and DC need to look back at the original Secret Wars and CoIE and see how events were done right. CoIE had similar stakes to what this event is purporting and IMO the readers were NEVER bored or waiting for things to happen. In this case, 5 months in and there’s been one action scene in the main book? And for what? Old victor “can’t seem to win for losing” von doom will again screw it up and again give up his ultimate power and again slink off to curse Richards again.

Yawn.

Wake me when the universe reboots.