Is the lack of discussion about Secret Wars tie-ins a sign of lack of interest?

[Omega Alpha]

Unfortunately, because Marvel overhypes a lot of stuff months in advance of releases, we kind of get a lot of this stuff out of our systems early on. We were talking about Secret Wars way back in January. Now we're starting to turn towards ANAD Marvel, because that's the big push.

Yeah, this.

[klefmung]

I personally love the tie ins and haven't dropped one. In fact, I intend to go back and catch up on siege.

[ijacksparrow]

To put it shortly and bluntly, YES. The fact that all it's happening in alternative worlds from the actual 616 universe gives me the impression that neither the tie-ins or the main books matter, so to speak. I've bought Secret Wars #1 and #2, but lost interest. It's just not what I expected it would be, regardless how much I love Hickman's work in the Avengers, it feels heavily editorial mandated and it's a hot boring mass, imho. The fact that All-New, All-Different Marvel books look worse than any other relaunch Marvel did since the 90s makes it more depressing. The result of Secret Wars to me is that I'll be sticking to Dan Slott's Amazing Spider-Man and the ONE book I'm excited from ANAD books is set in the past, which is Spidey. That's it, and I used to buy 10 to 15 titles prior to that. If that's not a hell of a backfire, I don't know what it is.

To understand my disappointment, allow me to explain what I wished and THOUGHT Secret Wars would be: a Hickman book, but riffing on Secret Wars from the 80s, meaning that it'd be a lot more new reader's friendly and at same time entrenched in Marvel's continuity. Not an easy task, I'm aware of that, but I thought that if there was one guy able to achieve that, that guy would be Hickman. Comparing his Avengers and New Avengers books and especially Infinity, which is the best Marvel saga since Civil War, Secret War is a hell of a MAJOR letdown for me. I'm not sure who to blame, but I think it's fair to assume that Hickman wasn't able to live up to the build up he did and the editorial was heavy on making things that don't really matter in order to bring Miles Morales to the main universe. Here's the deal, if they wanted to bring Morales from the Ultimate universe for the main universe so bad, Secret Wars shouldn't be the catalyst of that. It feels forced, and Battleworld is the worst Marvel concept since Heroes Reborn, and I'd easily pick the Onslaught saga over 2015's Secret Wars any day of the week. I imagined last year that I'd be all over these books and buying Secret Wars toys like I did back in the first Secret Wars came out, but all I've got was disappointment and one title set in the past with Spidey, that I'm hoping to God that it won't suck. Regardless, Marvel made my job much more easier, now I'll only spend 8 bucks in comics each month, my fiancée and my pocket are happy.

[Byakko]

A lot of people have different interests in different tie-ins, so I think making so many new threads feels a bit excessive. I kinda want a mega-thread where people like me who read multiple tie-ins can discuss the common threads going through each one. Like the Ultrons and Zombies near the wall, which is relevant to Age of Ultron vs. Marvel Zombies, Siege, and the one with Elsa Bloodstone which I can't remember the name of right now.

Or how the cosmic powered heroes are going apeshit in Korvac Saga, and Korvac himself is 'waking up'.

[QBall]

Lack of interest for me. I haven't picked up a single SW issue (main series or tie-in) as nothing I read about the event going into it or the previews of issues I've seen since has inspired me to buy.

[RAINMESS]

I am quite suprised because there isn't even a A-Force #4 thread.

[PhantomStranger]

Marvel hasn't been able to write an event properly since the late 90s-early 00s. I'm an old enough reader to remember the annual "getaway" conferences where the creatives of each family of titles (X-books, Spider-verse, Avengers, etc) would go away for a few days to a week plan next year's books. Each family had it's over arching Year Arc (which would lead to the annual "event"). Each book knew exactly what part it played, and every book played a part in the Year Arc by design.

This kept the secondary books involved and "mattering" to the larger family of books. It also added depth to every book because characters would occasionally pop up from other books for a scene that furthered the Arc (with a continuity note/ad to "check out Book so-and-so Issue whatever for details).

Then came the great re-alignment, and the abandonment of tight continuity (indeed virtually all inter-title continuity), "pacing for the trade", decompression, and the rest of the creative rot associated with all that.

Ironically, it's the fans who are most to blame. When we did have tight continuity and "all books matter", people griped and moaned about "I have to buy a bunch of books I don't usually buy to make sense of this..." So Marvel gave them what they wanted: books that "didn't matter" to the story of the Event.

And now fans are complaining about that.

Mind you, the real thing to remember is that Marvel (and DC) are no longer comic book companies with media divisions. They're media companies with comic book divisions. Comics themselves "don't matter" to either of the two anymore except as IP farms.

[AcesX1X]

you can easily run a search on the forums to track posting patterns. i believe you'll notice a sharp drop-off of conversation about the sw tie-ins once people clued into the fact that they were a bunch of glorified "what if" titles, which also seems to happen right around the time we started getting announcements for anad marvel's initial slate.

[Prof. Warren]

I personally love the tie ins and haven't dropped one. In fact, I intend to go back and catch up on siege.

Yeah, I'm loving all the tie-ins and ended up getting more than I initially planned to but don't really feel the need to comment much on them. Mostly due to the fact that they're minis rather than on-goings.

[JLS Comics]

It may be partly a loss of interest or fatigue given the length that this event runs. I think another important part of it is the fact that we are at a point where news and solicits are talking about the Post-SW/ANAD world and that's where current discussion has gone.

[The Sword is Drawn]

I don't think it's a total lack of interest, per se. But I do think that this Event is a bit different to many of the others from previous years. There is very little illusion in the minds of most readers that anything tie-ing into Secret Wars is likely to be inconsequential on the overall Marvel Universe.

I think that a lot of people (for right or wrong) just thought to themselves 'If this is a line-wide reboot I'll just take a step back from this one. Wait and see what comes afterwards'.

That's certainly been the case at DC this summer. I know of some stores here in the UK who have now swapped out DC for Images as their Number 2 selling brand, in terms of shelf space. Purely because interest (and sales) has dwindled.

[steeplejack2112]

I learned from both Original Sin and Axis to not get too heavily involved with buying tie-in books anymore. I am reading the main Secret Wars book, and I have four or five tie-in books that I am reading. Secret Wars is okay, but the tie-in books aren't really worth discussing in my opinion. This whole thing is really quite similar in fashion to what DC did with Convergence. I bought a lot of those books, and ended up skipping over reading most of them, because the two tie-ins I did read were horrible. I didn't want a repeat of that with Secret Wars, so I bought only titles I thought might be interesting.

[The Barrel-rider]

I personally lost interest in the tie-ins when I realized that there were so many variations of different characters. I was excited when I bought Planet Hulk because I thought that was going to be Secret Wars' book featuring Captain America... and that take was awesome. Then he showed up in several other places and it diluded part of what I enjoyed about that title. The characters are so spread vast that suddenly none of them mattered. As someone previously stated, it's all just one big What If? event.

[vrvr1]

We get very few discussion threads anymore, period.

I noticed that too. Why do you think that is?

[Raye]

I noticed that too. Why do you think that is?

We don't get a lot of discussion threads for individual issues or whatever, but in my experience it's usually just because they are being discussed in the 'appreciation' threads for the characters so a new thread would be redundant. Some appreciation threads have also taken on a larger scope than their title may suggest, as well.