Axel Alonso on leaked spoilers

Axel Alonso on leaked spoilers

fuse.tv/2016/07/marvel-axel-alonso-interview-riri-williams-diversity

Zach Dionne: Shifting gears: How does it feel when stories like major deaths and developments show up online before people can even buy the issue? It's happened at least a few times with Civil War II already.

Alonso: We can't control...this is an industry in which there will always be predatory sites who are able to use the system to their advantage. They're able to find people, in certain cases retailers, who are willing to turn over information that's not yet public and post it. That's the world in which we live right now. The creators spend a lot of time working on an idea and they'd like to have at least some semblance of control about the way that it's told to the world. By going to a larger media outlet, and a strategic media outlet, we can get the right bang for our buck, get the right message out and control the message. There's instances where that's taken out of our hands, and a lot of people applaud those outlets like they've done them a favor, when it's actually hurting the market and it's mean-spirited because it hurts the creators. No one resents that more than the creators. And I hope I'm clear and I hope this gets into the article, 'cause it's a bad thing.

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Dionne: It's tricky. I do often feel conflicted about whether to cover a big, spoiler-y story that's circulating. If it's a case like Riri, it's about a character who's coming soon, Brian Michael Bendis gives an interview about it, it feels fine. Then there's stuff like that recent major Civil War II death, or Captain America saying "hail Hydra." Once it's everywhere, we as a site usually do want casual fans and fans of the movies to have a chance to know about this cool or shocking thing.

Alonso: You make an important distinction here, which is the fact there are hardcore comic readers and there are casual fans and new fans. There are even hardcore comic readers who don't pay attention to websites, you know? True comic fans, everyday fans who don't really want to go to the Internet because they don't care about the peripheral news, they don't want that. They just want to read the comic book. But there will always be gossip page-style reporting in our field, that's part of it. As long as that's there, we have to reconcile our plans against that.

>predatory sites
Fucking kek

Alonso: There are occasions when we have to, and we work with our creators, to get news out a little in advance, simply because we know that if we don't, someone else will. I want to be very clear, we're very strategic with how we do that. But for a book like Civil War II, which is selling somewhere around 300,000 copies, a book that a lot of people count on to keep revenue generated in the arteries of this business, it's very important to us that we control that message and that everyone benefit from it, not a site that is ultimately only benefiting from it by getting hits. It's the same thing as piracy. The day a comic book comes into a store, which is the day before it's released to the public, there are people that consider themselves heroes because they'll take that comic book, scan it and post it online. And who hurts from that? Pretty much everybody. Some people get to read it for free, but the long and short of it is that book ends up flirting with cancellation a lot quicker if not enough people are actually buying it. Who's hurt the most? The creators. We hear from them all the time. No one is more bitter when that happens than the creators.

>The creators spend a lot of time working on an idea

And then Rich Johnston responded to Alonso:

bleedingcool.com/2016/07/29/marvels-axel-alonso-shoots-an-arrow-to-bleeding-cools-head/

>Is he talking about me? Possibly. But let’s take a look at those Civil War II spoilers he’s talking about.

>The first big one was when someone who read the script to Civil War II #1 posted on the Neogaf forums. It revealed the death of Jim Rhodes and the possible death of She-Hulk. They were able to do this because one of the creators Axel Alonso is talking about wasn’t as careful with who they let read the script as maybe they should have been. Predatory outlet? Retailer? No, one of Marvel’s own employees.

>The second big one was the death of Bruce Banner at the hands of Hawkeye which Marvel chose to spoil in the New York Daily News website.

I see what you're doing there with the related pic, OP

>The creators spend a lot of time working on an idea

That's a laugh and a half

>Bleeding Cool had indeed run that story previously, but only because we’d guessed it from the promotional materials that Marvel had put out. Marvel asked “Who Will Fall?”, Bleeding Cool looked at the evidence and said Hulk, at the hands of Hawkeye with the lead pipe arrow. So in this case, the culprit is Marvel PR – their challenge for the readers to work it out, and their tools for us to do so.

>And as for the verdict of the Hawkeye/Banner trial, while again Bleeding Cool guessed that from the promotional material, the week before publication Marvel revealed it in a preview they released for Totally Awesome Hulk.

>It’s generally not retailers who reveal such information to Bleeding Cool, certainly we don’t “find” retailers as Axel Alonso states. It’s usually the creators themselves who, deliberately or accidentally, spill the beans. The rest of the time, it’s Marvel’s own promotional activity, again sometimes on purpose, sometimes quite by accident.

>I’m reminded of the time John Byrne screamed in a retailer meeting that Marvel had revealed the upcoming death of Guardian in Alpha Flight in preview pages that had been shown off, only for the retailers to react with even greater surprise as they presumed the pages were a dream sequence… until John Byrne started shouting about it, that was.

>Still, it’s always fun to hear from the people in charge…

Of course, Rich was speculating that Mary Jane was going to get killed off at first. Some people at Sup Forums had already guessed Hulk would die around that time, though.

How would you know? You don't shit, fuck off. These people work so hard.

>The creators spend a lot of time working on an idea
didn't you guys admit to shitting CW2 out in 3-4 months when most events have like a year of build up

>Predatory sites
Didn't they specifically tell sites that Banner would die?

Honestly, fuck the creators at this point. Fuck new comics--especially from Marvel. They get all the shit they deserve.

fuck off Alex.

>we can get the right bang for our buck, get the right message out and control the message.

I don't know why they think the fans give a shit about them controlling the messge

>These people work so hard.

I just realized that Hulk would look a lot more menacing without pupils

I didn't read all that shit but is that Amadeus ripping Tony in half?

Seriously. "controlling the message" is the antithesis of art.

It's allegedly a "future vision" from Ulysses that may or may not come true during the course of the comic.

cause it's not about fans

if marvel gives a site permission to leak something like they did with hulk's death, they try to spin in their favor via interviews and make it seem good

if somebody other than them leaked, they can't really control what that person says

They did, day after.
Right?

>It’s generally not retailers who reveal such information to Bleeding Cool, certainly we don’t “find” retailers as Axel Alonso states. It’s usually the creators themselves who, deliberately or accidentally, spill the beans. The rest of the time, it’s Marvel’s own promotional activity, again sometimes on purpose, sometimes quite by accident.
Well he has a point. If Marvel wants to get anally devastated by this, maybe they should stop giving away everything in their promo materials.

Nah, it was like within hours of Slott and Brevoort getting flustered on Twitter over Rich posting the solicitations.

like GMK Godzilla right?

What was the verdict of the trial?
I dropped Benis book.

why does marvel complain about sites posting spoilers but will release spoilers for their comics before events are even finished.

because they want to control the message.

And they think the fans should sympathize with that, or something.

...

>>I’m reminded of the time John Byrne screamed in a retailer meeting that Marvel had revealed the upcoming death of Guardian in Alpha Flight in preview pages that had been shown off, only for the retailers to react with even greater surprise as they presumed the pages were a dream sequence… until John Byrne started shouting about it, that was.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

>actually getting rekt by Rich

Marvel on suicide watch

"Controlling the message" often means "presenting the idea to make it easier to swallow whether you like it or not".

They don't want people to react to the ideas themselves, they present events, storylines and what not in a way to provoke particular reactions.

IIRC, PAD is the one who brings up that story (because he worked in marketing and was the one who was trying to sell Alpha Flight to retailers in that meeting). Byrne denies it ever happened, and when people asked Denny O'Neil (who was editor of Alpha Flight at the time) if it happened, O'Neil said he couldn't remember. Or maybe he was just being diplomatic by doing so.

I didn't Shalvey was such a cuck.

Reminder that Marvel literally told everyone that Hawkeye would kill Hulk when they released that one cutesy variant cover in solicits

You don't know what leak mean, right?

WALKEYE. Free as... something free.

...

If your story is only good because of a twist, and nothing else, it isn't a good story.
Remember how everyone turned on M. Night?

Thank you

If they actually cared about spoilers that never would have been a cover, sounds like they are damage controlling because sales weren't as good as they wanted them to be (and compared to Secret Wars' numbers last year CW2 is definitely underperforming).

>Honestly, fuck the creators at this point. Fuck new comics--especially from Marvel. They get all the shit they deserve.

Yeah if retailers didn't hate your fucking guts and fans didn't hate your fucking guts and your employees didn't hate your fucking guts maybe they wouldn't spoil your shit

It's the old "Pirates are the reason we can't sell our products!" excuse.

Exactly

Sixth Sense is actually more interesting to watch when you know the twist to see all the clues

Are you talking about Alonso?

Actually, the Sixth Sense makes no fucking sense once you know the twist. Awful movie.

Agreed, which is why his best movie is and always will be Unbreakable.

Does anybody have any pics of slott's tantrum?

I didn't get the problem with the new titles being spoiled, the catalog was coming out less than a day after that anyway
it's not the same as spoiling a plot twist

It's always been possible to get spoilers if you want them. Kurt Busiek recalled that he came up with the idea of how to bring Jean Grey back in 1980, because even before the issue came out there were rumors in the fan community that she was being killed off.

The internet has made it much easier to get spoilers, but it's really not as hard to avoid them as people think. A lot of people don't read any of these websites.

If companies wanted to avoid spoilers the first thing they should do is just not release preview images of covers online. The publicity they get doesn't necessarily outweigh the fact that upcoming covers are spoilers. Release the upcoming comic information to stores and tell them not to leak. Some will, but don't make it official.

>He disagrees with me on something
>he's cuck

you're a fucking cuck user.

It's moreso that you defend shitty business practices for what is basically ass-kicking.

Being an ass-kisser indeed qualifies you as a cuck.

Sup Forums, is Alonso the worst Editor-In-Chief in comics? If not, who was worse and why?

This really blew my mind too. Especially the scans from the catalog themselves. They literally got triggered by an ad getting spoiled.

bob harras at two different companies

I don't know how good or bad he is because I don't know what he does. Like I don't know what Harras currently does. When there's someone above them who used to have the job (Quesada, DiDio) I don't know if they have any power.

Alonso is absolutely terrible in interviews though - Brevoort is much better at actually saying things, whether or not you agree with them.

And the worst Marvel EiC might be Gerry Conway, who lasted like 3 weeks on the job, made tons of enemies, drove at least one major writer out of the company and admits he should never have taken the job.

Bob Harass doesn't have his creators make fools of themselves in social media though. Jim Lee just passes the time posting sketches and live streaming himself drawing. Johns barely even tweets anymore. I think Didio's accounts have been made private or he deactivated them. Snyder mostly just shares stuff like him working out. Simone is really the only one who often gets into internet slap fights. Though I remember when Lobdell used to shill himself on Comicvine.

There wasn't a leak about Hulk getting killed. People just put 2 and 2 together based on solicitations. Blame your own fucking marketing department.

DC seems to have a more button-down culture than Marvel. They prefer their creatives not to get into online fights if possible. Marvel people seem to enjoy it, at least some of them - Wacker, Slott, Spencer. Quesada used to enjoy trash talking.

Why is Alonso still allowed to talk

They've basically spoiled that Ulyssiss sics Carol's side on Miles for the possible murder of Captain America. The solicits and covers say as much.

In the case of CWII they quite literally said they just whipped it up to catch some of the movie hype though.

Actually, they whipped it up because durring lunch, Alonso and Bendis wondered what a CWII would be like, and how it would reflect whats going on in the world today. Then they started working on it to grab SJW points. The possibility of a movie cash-in just seeded the idea

What a fucking faggot. "Oh no, people will know all the stupid stuff before it's released the dumbfuck goys aren't allowed to make informed decisions!"

Also this:

>True comic fans, everyday fans who don't really want to go to the Internet because they don't care about the peripheral news, they don't want that.

Yes, goy. Don't read any news, don't inform yourself about things you would like. To do so makes you a baaaaad comic fan. You don't want to be a bad comic fan do you? Of course not, you want to be a true fan and to be a true fan you must BUY BUY BUY unquestioningly my sweet little gentile friend.

Like he's straight up telling customers that they're terrible people for spoiling themselves and not blindly buying whatever garbage Marvel shells out. What a fucking asshole. I'd say I can't wait until he leaves but it's obvious they'll replace him with Amanat and the forced diversity, constant events, etc. that's pushing away readers will get worse. Especially since most of it is likely being pushed by the people above the EIC.

Alonso is just a Vertigo guy forced to pretend he likes superheroes.

I wonder if Brevoort really believes he's doing good work at this point, though. It's hard to tell because he gets so hostile when fans accuse him of not doing good work, and sometimes they're wrong.

>It's the same thing as piracy. The day a comic book comes into a store, which is the day before it's released to the public, there are people that consider themselves heroes because they'll take that comic book, scan it and post it online. And who hurts from that? Pretty much everybody.
The only ones who get hurt are those producing bad comics. Produce good comics and they'll want to support it. That happened here with Lieber's stuff. Pirating is how I get into buying comics. Someone just storytimed the Luther Strode trilogy and I loved it so I'm going to buy the TPBs.

To me pirating the is the same as renting. I can try a comic out and decide if it's something I want to put money towards to continue supporting. Sadly for Marvel, 99% of what they put out is shit so I read it, am able to articulate why I think it's bad, and then no longer think about it. If books are flirting with cancellation thanks to piracy, it's because the books being put out are bad.

Yeah man, I read a Brian Michael Bendis comic and I think "wow, I bet the writer worked really hard on this".

Hell, in some cases it's not even a leak, it's just that the combined brainpower of every comic nerd online can usually figure out how a plot is going to play out. Like what happened with Red Hulk.

Hell, Simone's slap fights are usually pretty tame. Remember when Waid tried to pick a fight with her?

No I don't, pls post info about it

And even then a lot of Simone's slap fights come off more as trolling

And then the last time I remember a dc creator who isn't Simone and got into a serious slap fight was Snyder vs Liefeld a few years ago

>That happened here with Lieber's stuff.
Underground was the first comic I ever bought because of that storytime. Dude was a bro and he deserved my money.

Everything surrounding comics just sucks so much.

I really need a new hobby.
But it might just be a grass is greener type situation and everything else sucks just as much.

I'm on my phone, but basically Waid started bitching on Twitter about some promo page for Harley Quinn's ongoing that showed her attempting suicide in various cartoonish ways. Simone came in and tried to calm him down, he kept getting angrier and angrier about DC "sexualizing suicide" or something. In the end it took Kurt Busiek to calm him down.

I think that deep down he knows what they're peddling is complete trash which is why he gets so hostile. Wouldn't you be pissier than normal if you had to constantly defend shit like Civil War II, Captain America: Nick Spencer's Twitter Feed, Hellcat, etc.?

I mean some times good books don't sell but a lot of that comes down to Marvel themselves too. They'll promote the fuck out of Iron Man or Civil War II or Black Panther (because of the diversity cred and big name writer) but did you see them ever going full force on the advertising and promos for something like Carnage? Fuck no, and that's something people have been bitching at them about since I started regularly buying comics and reading comic book message boards 12 years ago.

Their defense is basically a bunch of circular logic too; I consider it Batgirl Logic. That being that when DC made Barbara into Batgirl again with the reboot, the reasoning was that she's the character people identified with Batgirl. Why? Because Steph and Cassandra were never used in any outside material like TV shows, movies, video games, cartoons, etc. It's always Babs. So it's reinforcing: you use Babs because people know Babs. People know Babs because you use Babs. Same logic with Marvel. They promote their big stuff so people only know the big stuff which means promote the big stuff which means... etc.

so she hulks not going on a bloody rampage over the death of her cousin

That page where she finds out they killed Bruce and she almost double-hulked out made me hard enough to cut glass

so I'm not the only one who thinks she hotter with the scars

She looks a bit bigger than usual too.

also hot

That's the impression I'm getting. A lot of terrible decisions go over his head since Quesada, Alonso, and Perlmutter rank higher than Brevoort.

I don't even know how much of that goes on Alonso. I'm betting a lot comes from the people above him and he's just the middle man, the same way Harras/the group editors were in the mid-'90s.

Quesada hasn't been involved with the comics side in a long time. He's basically in the role that Stan Lee had from the '70s on in that he's a public face and liason for the outside stuff.

Yeah but most of the fighting came from Liefeld though. They still sometimes talk on Twitter.

>Quesada hasn't been involved with the comics side in a long time.

He hasn't but Brevoort worked under him back in the 00's.

>they'll take that comic book, scan it and post it online.
>Some people get to read it for free
>Some people
>...
>but the long and short of it is that book ends up flirting with cancellation a lot quicker if not enough people are actually buying it.
If a book is cancelled but you admit only some people read it for free, you're pretty much saying that there wasn't enough people wanting to read your shit book, you retard.

>there are people that consider themselves heroes because they'll take that comic book, scan it and post it online. And who hurts from that? Pretty much everybody.

nah famb pretty sure it just hurts you