Last time I said I’d be doing some hardcover reviews, but I ended up not getting anything done, and then some things came out that warranted reviewing, so those hardcovers will have to wait. This 
week, I want to start off by making a point. And not just my usual point that Batman is awesome. You know how sometimes you’re just astonished by a really stupid mishandling of things by a giant corporation? Like Pizza Hut tossing out decades of name recognition to change their name to “The Hut”, which invokes a certain Jabba. Or the way NBC ceded five hours of prime-time programming to Jay Leno, which (whatever you think of Leno) indicates a certain desperation and lack of faith in their own line-up. Just stupid, right? Now here’s the thing you might not realize – the comic book industry runs on those kinds of decisions. A while back, I mentioned how Marvel fumbled their handling of the Barack Obama appearance in Amazing Spider-Man, leaving the retailers to deal with the fallout. Well, last week they did it again.
week, I want to start off by making a point. And not just my usual point that Batman is awesome. You know how sometimes you’re just astonished by a really stupid mishandling of things by a giant corporation? Like Pizza Hut tossing out decades of name recognition to change their name to “The Hut”, which invokes a certain Jabba. Or the way NBC ceded five hours of prime-time programming to Jay Leno, which (whatever you think of Leno) indicates a certain desperation and lack of faith in their own line-up. Just stupid, right? Now here’s the thing you might not realize – the comic book industry runs on those kinds of decisions. A while back, I mentioned how Marvel fumbled their handling of the Barack Obama appearance in Amazing Spider-Man, leaving the retailers to deal with the fallout. Well, last week they did it again.Captain America 600 (Marvel) – See, we have to address this on two fronts. First, the botched marketing. Stay with me here, because I think this is actually interesting. Marvel announced that this issue of Cap would be available on Monday, two days before the industry-wide standard Wednesday release. Retailers were informed that there would be a major press release with mainstream coverage built around that issue, with no other details. So retailers had to roll the dice on whether it was worth paying the extra shipping to get this new issue two days earlier. Many stores don’t even open on Monday – seriously, Monday is the dead zone in this industry. So this could be a lot of money and bother for nothing, or else you run the risk of being closed when another Spidey/Obama bomb drops. It was a rough position to be in.
