Death of the Inhumans ANNOUNCED

[Mike_Murdock]

What about people who want to read a Donny Cates work?

[rpmaluki]

A desperate last throw of the dice to make these characters happen?...People actually have to care for the comic book characters before you do a ''death of'' storyline, Marvel....

Hard as it may be to believe but there are people who actually care about these characters.

[Holt]

I must admit I think it improbable that any alleged “badmouthing” by store owners would have had much, if any, of an effect. Vision did terribly in sales too, worse even than most Inhuman titles. And yet that was universally critically acclaimed and received excellent word of mouth on forums and the like. Was there some furious campaign by store owners preventing customers from buying those books as well? The disappointing sales for many Inhuman titles wasn’t, in truth, an outlier, considering the obscurity of most of the characters.

When I last visited a comic store, I personally wasn’t faced by a blockade of incensed protestors, and a store owner who was deliberately forcing customers not to part with their hard earned money for 20-odd pages of Inhuman/Nu-human action (inclusive of adverts), or sneering from the corner of his mouth whenever a customer ventured to buy an Uncanny Inhumans book. Given that in any event the only sale indices we have measure pre-orders, and the future of a book is often sealed practically before it hits the shelves, I additionally find that a reason to ponder whether this anecdotal evidence would have much of an effect.

In short, the wicked storeowners’ theory seems a pretty frail hook on which to lay the hat of the Inhumans’ demise.

At a certain point it seems like looking for every excuse under the sun to explain the failure of the Inhumans push other than "Maybe there just wasn't all that much interest in the Inhumans." It doesn't help that the project the entire push was ultimately leading to is probably gonna go down as one of Marvel's notorious embarrassments.

[Child of the Atom]

Hard as it may be to believe but there are people who actually care about these characters.

And that's fine...but they are not much....Death of story-lines are just publicity stunts that only work for beloved A or B list characters..

[Brian B]

You'd have a point if the Inhumans books were actually bad quality. Inhuman and Uncanny Inhumans both had good art and good writing, so it's hard to justify owners swearing people off the books for legit reasons. Which only leaves the ulterior motives as the reason.

That's your opinion on the stories and art. I don't know any comic store owners who don't try their very best to move product. I just appreciate an honest salesperson is all, and a store owner can be that when they wave customers off bad product. I've never heard of a comic store owner trying to sabotage a product. It's against their own interests to do that.

[Brian B]

At a certain point it seems like looking for every excuse under the sun to explain the failure of the Inhumans push other than "Maybe there just wasn't all that much interest in the Inhumans." It doesn't help that the project the entire push was ultimately leading to is probably gonna go down as one of Marvel's notorious embarrassments.

It's really worse than that. They wrecked an interesting group of characters, the Inhumans, in trying to make them into something they are not, which are X-Men. Disney-Marvel needs to get rid of Perlmutter. I blame him for this whole fiasco.

[Mike_Murdock]

That's your opinion on the stories and art. I don't know any comic store owners who don't try their very best to move product. I just appreciate an honest salesperson is all, and a store owner can be that when they wave customers off bad product. I've never heard of a comic store owner trying to sabotage a product. It's against their own interests to do that.

Unfortunately, while you haven't heard that, other people have.

[Brian B]

Unfortunately, while you haven't heard that, other people have.

It sounds like a rumor to me. I can't imagine comic store owners, most of whom struggle, steering people away from good comics for sale.

[Mike_Murdock]

I can because many shop owners are fanboys with their own prejudices. I certainly don't think it's the majority of cases, but I'm not shocked by it happening. I seem to recall people who experienced it actually posting here about it. Sorry that you find it hard to believe.

[Harsh Lesson]

I guess I'm the only one who likes Black Bolt and family.... War of kings was awesome.

[Aighthomie]

At a certain point it seems like looking for every excuse under the sun to explain the failure of the Inhumans push other than "Maybe there just wasn't all that much interest in the Inhumans." It doesn't help that the project the entire push was ultimately leading to is probably gonna go down as one of Marvel's notorious embarrassments.

Basically. I don't know why it's so hard to swallow. Instead of blaming "disgruntled" X-Fans and the, apparently, rampant problem of CB store owners who are on a national trashing spree, for the failure of the Inhumans, why not blame the fans of other franchises (like the Avengers, FF, GotG, etc.) who, also, weren't here for the Inhumans? I would think that with the amount of visibility Marvel tried to give the Inhumans in the past few years, the resounding indifference from non-X-Fans is the bigger problem. It's all very...

[dan12456]

It sounds like a rumor to me. I can't imagine comic store owners, most of whom struggle, steering people away from good comics for sale.

There are literally posters on these boards who have posted long posts in these threads about how the hate the Inhumans and want their comics to fail while also admitting they are store owners. I can think of literally 3 posters who admit this.

I personally stopped shopping at my local comic store for being made fun of for buying Inhumans books by the store owner (who shockingly was a big x-men fan). Several other posters on this forum had the same thing happen, it's not a rumour there are numerous people on this forum who literally experienced it.

Like Mike_Murdock said this isn't a shock, because as much as these store owners are struggling, they are often also incredibly passionate comic readers with very strong biases.

I've also read many posts on these very forums where people said they considered reading Inhumans books, but decided not to after seeing the negative reactions online.

It's more bizarre that you are surprised the toxic reaction of fans effected sales. Negative feedback/word of mouth effects sales in every industry, why would it be different in comics? Every single article CBR, Comicbook, etc post about the Inhumans bashes them. Every forum is filled with posts hating them. Of course this will dissuade neutral parties from buying. No one questions that negative word of mouth and press has hurt the profits of DCEU movies. Yet when it comes to Inhumans you all jump through hoops to deny it. This is literally basic business 101.

[Brian B]

There are literally posters on these boards who have posted long posts in these threads about how the hate the Inhumans and want their comics to fail while also admitting they are store owners. I can think of literally 3 posters who admit this.

I personally stopped shopping at my local comic store for being made fun of for buying Inhumans books by the store owner (who shockingly was a big x-men fan). Several other posters on this forum had the same thing happen, it's not a rumour there are numerous people on this forum who literally experienced it.

Like Mike_Murdock said this isn't a shock, because as much as these store owners are struggling, they are often also incredibly passionate comic readers with very strong biases.

I've also read many posts on these very forums where people said they considered reading Inhumans books, but decided not to after seeing the negative reactions online.

It's more bizarre that you are surprised the toxic reaction of fans effected sales. Negative feedback/word of mouth effects sales in every industry, why would it be different in comics? Every single article CBR, Comicbook, etc post about the Inhumans bashes them. Every forum is filled with posts hating them. Of course this will dissuade neutral parties from buying. No one questions that negative word of mouth and press has hurt the profits of DCEU movies. Yet when it comes to Inhumans you all jump through hoops to deny it. This is literally basic business 101.

I think the real issue is Marvel attempted to replace the X-Men and mutants with Inhumans, which we the fans rejected, because it made no sense.

The older Inhuman series, going back to vol. 1 in the '70s, had their fans, including me. Many of their Fantastic Four guest appearances were great. The Jenkins and Lee series was great and I loved the Pacheco-Marín-Ladrönn series. I still go back to stare at that art! Their appearances in Abnett-Lanings cosmic Marvel were sometimes great and effective and sometimes not, but overall were enjoyable. The last interesting thing to happen with them was what Hickman did in FF with them, although I didn't enjoy it at all, but it was interesting -- alien Inhumans!

And then, Perlmutter and Marvel blew it! Word was given from on high that they would be an MCU property, whether Feige wanted it or not, and the publishing arm was forced into making them monetized mutant replacements. The problem is, that's not who the Inhumans are. And forcing Inhumans into everywhere and really keeping them Earthbound ruined the best things about them, and only exacerbated their bad points, like their really ethically questionable systems of governance, monarchy and enslavement. That's a lot of the problem in a nutshell. Mutants work to a degree because they're presented as persecuted minorities. The Inhumans are by and large an alien nation, in every sense of those words, which at times acts in quite ethically challenged ways. It was fine when they were kept to themselves and the royals teamed up with Earth heroes to deal with their mad brother or some Kree threat. It doesn't really work when they unleash poison gas clouds on humanity. Then, the worst of all — their TV series with an IMAX premiere: Good gravy was that awful! Perlmutter, Marvel publishing and Marvel TV foisted this garbage on us. They wrecked characters we liked in the interests of trying to artificially replace mutants, instead of doing the wiser thing of finding a property that worked on its own merits, instead of having a passing resemblance to another property. Thank God Disney-Marvel is likely to get the X-Men back. I'm hopeful the Inhumans can be restored to an interesting little corner of Marvel again, instead of a failed star property.

[AcesX1X]

Basically. I don't know why it's so hard to swallow. Instead of blaming "disgruntled" X-Fans and the, apparently, rampant problem of CB store owners who are on a national trashing spree, for the failure of the Inhumans, why not blame the fans of other franchises (like the Avengers, FF, GotG, etc.) who, also, weren't here for the Inhumans? I would think that with the amount of visibility Marvel tried to give the Inhumans in the past few years, the resounding indifference from non-X-Fans is the bigger problem. It's all very...

this .....

the attempt to "pin" what happened to the inhuman franchise on cb shop owners or a (small) portion of the overall marvel audience is .. disturbing .. to say the least.

not only does it defy logic or reason, but from a pure mathematics perspective ..

let's wait and see if "death of" fares any better before throwing out wild accusations

[Harsh Lesson]

I'm going to go ahead and say it. The Inhumans are a more compelling group than whatever the X-Men have become. 40 years later, and not much has changed with that lot. Phoenix, Logan, Mutant-phobia, etc, etc.

I still don't understand how the MU rationalizes discriminating the X-Men in a world of super-powered beings. Doesn't make a lot of sense all things considered.