Well Isnt This Interesting?

This story is courtesy of poster IMJ over at the Advanced Iron forums.

IMJ attended the Wizard World Chicago event over a three day period and one of the things he attended was the Marvel panel. One of the things they talked about was the current and future arc of Iron Man. They expected there to be a a good reaction to the new arc Tony Stark Disassembled (I cover this in a later post) and what they got was silence. In order to break said awkward silence one of the panel said "this arc won an Eisner for a reason!" (or something along that line according to IMJ).

That's really the story, but those last two things are very significant: the silence from the announcement and that Marvel's response was winning the Eisner.

Silence can be golden as they say, and it was definitely the case here. Marvel thought they hit a home run with the upcoming Disassembled arc (even thought people still have nightmares from Avengers Disassembled) only to find out no one was impressed. Why would we be? The current 12 issue arc is basically dragging Tony through the mud even more telling us how he is losing his mind, so why in God's name would we be impressed with another six issue arc that does it even more? Marvel is obviously excited about Stark getting shit on even more yet is ignorant of the fact that everyone, even non Iron Man fans, are sick of it. Like I mentioned in an earlier post months ago, I was talking to a Spider-Man fan and even he said what Marvel was doing to Stark was ridiculous, and he didn't even read the main title!

Next on to Marvel's pathetic response of it winning an Eisner. Here is the thing about books: people who read them don't give a rat's ass about awards. I had no clue what an Eisner was before Fraction got nominated. People read books for enjoyment and don't care what awards they won and right here is the big problem with Marvel: they think the opposite.

They think winning an Eisner means the book is good and the fans would care. Funny thing is when you talk to long time Iron Man fans none of them like this arc at all. Some consider it a rehash, some like myself are bored with it and others just think it's outright crap. The fans silence voiced their displeasure with this title right now.

The problem is Marvel wont take the hint. They'll go home, wonder why no one was cheering then say "well the fact it won an Eisner makes us right." They will, as they have done many times in recent years, ignore the fans. I have no doubt they are saying to themselves "the fans just don't get it." Unfortunately, it's Marvel that just doesn't get it. People are tired of Iron Man being dragged through the mud. While they made it fashionable to do so by blaming everything in Civil War on him three years later it is tired and boring and the readers are just rolling their eyes at this point.