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This is particularly bad timing for Arno to take over because Iron man has been sitting quietly in the 30k range this year. Sure it can be a bit higher when accounting for digital sales figures but it's hard to imagine they're actually pushing 40k.
[B][U]2019 sales *sourced from Comichron[/U][/B]
January: 34,102
February: 33,940
March: 33,375
April: 29,158
May: 28,163
June: 39,059
July: 30,370
August: 30,359
Given that it's wrapping up (probably with no help from the delays) I just don't see the point. Iron man 2020 is relevant because he's from 2020 which is a title that is basically going to be irrelevant within a year on name value alone. What's more is that the Arno people know the character from is not the same Arno as he is here. Meaning that in order to get people interested you have to bank on people being interested in Iron man (which so far says people aren't nearly as much) and that they stick with it which while they do, it's not bringing on new readers. Replacing Tony Stark is also coming off the Riri Williams era and now that he's had a book for awhile among a bunch of delays, he loses the book again. But this is also to a character whom while is known among Iron man readers is not a big name among the reader-base.
In short, a relaunch as Iron man 2020 is an ill-fated venture for a title that this year has had issues escaping the mid 30k in sales. I want to see Iron man 2020 be a thing as much as the next guy but this is poor timing and the wrong creative team to get it out there.
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[QUOTE=SuperiorIronman;4572196]This is particularly bad timing for Arno to take over because Iron man has been sitting quietly in the 30k range this year. Sure it can be a bit higher when accounting for digital sales figures but it's hard to imagine they're actually pushing 40k.
[B][U]2019 sales *sourced from Comichron[/U][/B]
January: 34,102
February: 33,940
March: 33,375
April: 29,158
May: 28,163
June: 39,059
July: 30,370
August: 30,359
Given that it's wrapping up (probably with no help from the delays) I just don't see the point. Iron man 2020 is relevant because he's from 2020 which is a title that is basically going to be irrelevant within a year on name value alone. What's more is that the Arno people know the character from is not the same Arno as he is here. Meaning that in order to get people interested you have to bank on people being interested in Iron man (which so far says people aren't nearly as much) and that they stick with it which while they do, it's not bringing on new readers. Replacing Tony Stark is also coming off the Riri Williams era and now that he's had a book for awhile among a bunch of delays, he loses the book again. But this is also to a character whom while is known among Iron man readers is not a big name among the reader-base.
In short, a relaunch as Iron man 2020 is an ill-fated venture for a title that this year has had issues escaping the mid 30k in sales. I want to see Iron man 2020 be a thing as much as the next guy but this is poor timing and the wrong creative team to get it out there.[/QUOTE]
[COLOR="#000080"]They'd probably need to do another Armor Wars, this time between Tony and Arno to give a boost to the solo.
Slott's been doing a pretty good story. Just not enough to give some serious buzz. There needs to be a big story that spills over into Avengers and drags in some of the other solo Avengers titles, i.e. Black Panther, Captain America, Thor, Captain Marvel.[/COLOR]
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[URL="https://www.cbr.com/tony-stark-iron-man-ultron-agenda-interview-dan-slott/"]https://www.cbr.com/tony-stark-iron-man-ultron-agenda-interview-dan-slott/[/URL]
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[QUOTE=juan678;4572216][URL="https://www.cbr.com/tony-stark-iron-man-ultron-agenda-interview-dan-slott/"]https://www.cbr.com/tony-stark-iron-man-ultron-agenda-interview-dan-slott/[/URL][/QUOTE]
this is gonna be so dope
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[QUOTE=Marvell2100;4572210][COLOR="#000080"]They'd probably need to do another Armor Wars, this time between Tony and Arno to give a boost to the solo.
Slott's been doing a pretty good story. Just not enough to give some serious buzz. There needs to be a big story that spills over into Avengers and drags in some of the other solo Avengers titles, i.e. Black Panther, Captain America, Thor, Captain Marvel.[/COLOR][/QUOTE]
I agree but the timing for it this year was off. We started with a [I][B][U]6 part[/U][/B][/I] story arc which while good to fill out a trade can be draining on a readership (especially those needing a jumping on point) and then two issues of a WOTR tie-in. A book who you can't guarantee readers of WOTR will be interested in, or readers of Iron man being interested in WOTR. Comes with the territory of running events. And then we've got the delays which bled over which is another issue. Readers are fickle and if something isn't out on time they run the risk of not or never buying it which deters shops from carrying it. I just don't know where that would've gone.
And frankly at this point we do a temporary re-branding which will work in the short term, but I can't see this breaking the trend considering that even before all of this we had a sharp drop from issue 1 to 2 by around 100,000. So we either end up where we started or ride out the sales. And considering this a character who doesn't have that big a presence I'm more than a little skeptical it will be that big a boost. We relatively just came off Doctor Doom and Riri Williams and Tony going evil for awhile. So the shock of this isn't there especially since those involved know something is bound to come up with Arno.
Now that's not to say it's doing poorly, but Iron man isn't doing as well as it should either. For 2020 I'm more than expecting a miniseries, I'm not expecting a lasting shift.
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[QUOTE=juan678;4572216][URL="https://www.cbr.com/tony-stark-iron-man-ultron-agenda-interview-dan-slott/"]https://www.cbr.com/tony-stark-iron-man-ultron-agenda-interview-dan-slott/[/URL][/QUOTE]
Thanks for sharing this juan678.
[QUOTE=Snoop Dogg;4572229]this is gonna be so dope[/QUOTE]
I know. I've been wanting Tony and Janet to try and help seperate Pym from Ultron or at least let them meet up. So I'm getting something I was asking for and it sounds like the action hasn't even kicked off yet. Very hyped for this storyline.
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But Pym's soul was eaten by a monster, wasn't it? So there is no real Pym to separate.
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[QUOTE=MichaelC;4572683]But Pym's soul was eaten by a monster, wasn't it? So there is no real Pym to separate.[/QUOTE]
It would just mean more inconsistency with what exactly is going on with Pymtron.
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I just want to put it out there that I still consider the 'evil Tony' from Superior Iron Man to be the most authentic version of the character in recent years. You know, the asshole billionaire who fell backwards into the superhero business but still remained arrogant enough to believe he can change the world by himself, even if that means dragging the rest of society kicking and screaming towards the future. Let's see more of that guy and less of the timid team player we got with Dan Slot's book.
Because I started from #1 with this book but dropped my subscription fairly early into the run. I just found this current version of Tony Stark to be very milquetoast, existential angst just doesn't suit the character well. Tony Stark isn't somebody who worries about whether he's a real person or not, he stopped using conventional measures of self-worth long ago. I just hope whoever gets the next Iron Man book proves to be more ambitious.
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[QUOTE=Kintor;4572964]I just want to put it out there that I still consider the 'evil Tony' from Superior Iron Man to be the most authentic version of the character in recent years. You know, the asshole billionaire who fell backwards into the superhero business but still remained arrogant enough to believe he can change the world by himself, even if that means dragging the rest of society kicking and screaming towards the future. Let's see more of that guy and less of the timid team player we got with Dan Slot's book.
Because I started from #1 with this book but dropped my subscription fairly early into the run. I just found this current version of Tony Stark to be very milquetoast, existential angst just doesn't suit the character well. Tony Stark isn't somebody who worries about whether he's a real person or not, he stopped using conventional measures of self-worth long ago. I just hope whoever gets the next Iron Man book proves to be more ambitious.[/QUOTE]
That's a villain. The only story that would be told with such a character is him being beaten up by more traditional capes. I have no interest in the story of Stark making pompous speeches and then being beaten up by characters the writer likes more.
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[QUOTE=MichaelC;4572997]That's a villain. The only story that would be told with such a character is him being beaten up by more traditional capes. I have no interest in the story of Stark making pompous speeches and then being beaten up by characters the writer likes more.[/QUOTE]
If you're worried about pompous speeches that's really Captain America's department. Which is what you'd expect, Steve Rogers is the ideal hero to many, the man who does the right thing simply because it's his nature to do so. Yet that's not the only way to write a hero. Tony Stark works as Iron Man precisely because he's the most unlikely man on Earth to become a hero, it's no secret that corporate CEOs are easy fodder for comic book villains. After all, Marvel is the world outside your window, the arrogant heroics of Tony Stark shows that you don't have to be perfect to be a hero.
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I don't agree. He's an inventor who lost his parents to a traffic accident, and who therefore wants to invent safer technology so that won't happen as often to others. He started out as someone who wanted to protect freedom from dictators, and almost died trying to make sure our soldiers had the best equipment possible to protect themselves with. He is defined by his empathy, not by an obsession with dragging the world into the future. Sometimes that empathy has been misguided, such as him being more concerned with protecting soldiers and stopping dictators than with the more big-picture strategies to solve the issues that result in dictators existing and soldiers being in danger to begin with. That's the real Stark: someone whose empathy makes him do things on the small scale that are sometimes unwise on the large scale.
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[QUOTE=MichaelC;4573020]I don't agree. He's an inventor who lost his parents to a traffic accident, and who therefore wants to invent safer technology so that won't happen as often to others. He started out as someone who wanted to protect freedom from dictators, and almost died trying to make sure our soldiers had the best equipment possible to protect themselves with. He is defined by his empathy, not by an obsession with dragging the world into the future. Sometimes that empathy has been misguided, such as him being more concerned with protecting soldiers and stopping dictators than with the more big-picture strategies to solve the issues that result in dictators existing and soldiers being in danger to begin with. That's the real Stark: someone whose empathy makes him do things on the small scale that are sometimes unwise on the large scale.[/QUOTE]
No offense but I really think you're overselling the empathy of his character. At the outset Tony Stark was the walking embodiment of the military-industrial complex. A man who made his fortune selling weapons to US troops certainly but would've also happily sold this same weaponry to any number of tinpot dictators or military juntas if they were on the Pentagon's approved sales list. And so it would have remained if his security detail didn't fall apart in the middle of a war zone. That's the origin of Tony Stark as a character, an outwardly amoral or perhaps simply uncaring man who starts on the path to becoming a hero, on his own terms.
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No. We see his words and thoughts in those early stories, and it is clear that he is never motivated by greed. His concern is all about protecting troops and stopping dictators. This idea that he was a greedy sociopath is modern nonsense not backed by the original text. It comes from the idea that someone just can't possibly have been a member of the defense industry and be motivated by empathic beliefs. So people head-retcon things into his character that are NOT backed by the original text, which again includes thought-bubbles, so it's not like he could hide his motives from us.
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[QUOTE=MichaelC;4573051]No. We see his words and thoughts in those early stories, and it is clear that he is never motivated by greed. His concern is all about protecting troops and stopping dictators. This idea that he was a greedy sociopath is modern nonsense not backed by the original text. It comes from the idea that someone just can't possibly have been a member of the defense industry and be motivated by empathic beliefs. So people head-retcon things into his character that are NOT backed by the original text, which again includes thought-bubbles, so it's not like he could hide his motives from us.[/QUOTE]
Look, think of it like this, at the height of the Vietnam War Marvel created a character who sold weapons to the US military for a living. I don't care how many thought bubbles you find from that era there's simply no way that Marvels readership would see Tony Stark as anything but a scumbag, as he was directly supporting and profiting from the most unpopular war in living memory. But that's the origin of Iron Man, an unlikely hero who overcomes the sterotypes of his profession and shortcomings of his personality to genuinely inspire readers.