New Marvel Universe promo picture and the shrinking of the MU in comics

[CIA]

Marvel released another promo picture of the Marvel Universe for licensing purposes recently and I noticed something.

At first we had:

It's a beautiful image showing all the relevant heroes and villains of Earth 616 at the time and in the comics we had lots and lots of IP diversity with the most unimaginable characters and teams getting shots at ongoings and minis.

Then we got this one:

It's clearly MCU inspired given the lack of X-Men and Fantastic Four characters, but is still a healthy ecosystem, containing characters that are related to several IPs and those characters getting shots in the comics, especially during the ANAD era.

How about the new MU pic? Here is it:

Just a bunch of MCU heroes and a handful of legacies.

It's a very lacking roster, and I'm not talking just about the Fox related IPs, but all the other minor Marvel owned IPs that were ignored. It also reflects the state of the comics at the moment considering the Marvel Legacy solicits that were revealed, since just movie and legacy characters have ongoings and all the other characters are only getting one-shots or straight out ignored. Most of the modern writers at Marvel use the same characters over and over with just a tiny group of writers like Ewing and Bunn not treating obscure characters like a joke.

Thoughts on the matter?

[gurkle]

My favorite character, the Scarlet Witch, gets hit with this from several different directions. For much of the '00s she was in character limbo and many people only knew her as the daughter of Magneto, so she was usually left out of these shots (or grouped with villains). Then just as she started to gain more prominence from being in the MCU, she was hit with Marvel's promotion ban on any character whose movie rights are all or partly controlled by Fox - making her and Quicksilver among the only MCU characters who get left out of these promotions. It gets tiresome.

[WebLurker]

Well, with the movies making the backbone of the Marvel franchise these days, it makes sense that the comics' publicity would mold itself to reflect the franchise's involved.

[dragonmp93]

Well, it helps to save up money.

[Wiccan]

What pisses me off the most is how Scarlet Witch is banned like the X-Characters when she's an Avenger and is on the MCU. If the ban itself wasn't incredibly dumb, her inclusion on it it's just...

[WheelchairX]

What pisses me off the most is how Scarlet Witch is banned like the X-Characters when she's an Avenger and is on the MCU. If the ban itself wasn't incredibly dumb, her inclusion on it it's just...

They even retconned her parentage.... And she is still under the ban. She's not even in the X-Men Movies either. Marvel is too paranoid.

[Frontier]

Reminds me of how insular or restrained Avengers Assemble (probably the Marvel cartoon most effected by movie synergy) felt compared to it's predecessor Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

[mugiwara]

Yes, that's been a problem since even before ANAD (remember when a dozen of characters were in 2 or 3 teams at the same time?)
I thought it could change with ANAD. I admit it's a bit refreshing that now Moon Girl or Spider Miles get to show up everywhere, while before it was always Daredevil or Iron Man or Clint Barton. But the Marvel Universe is still not exploited as it should. We've just gone from a tiny set of toys to a slightly different tiny set of toys.

When you check who guest stars in which comics, it's obvious that a lot of writers only want to use the characters who appear on the ANAD poster. The exception being support cast (Prodigy, D-Man) because in that case, it's better to have a character you are free to use however you want.

Or maybe it's mandated, to not confuse new readers, people who get in comics through Gwenpool or Moon Girl. Maybe they consider there is not point in advertising characters who don't have their own solo book.
But then what's the point of that huge shared universe? Marvel and DC have something that (AFAIK) doesn't exist anywhere else in fiction. They spent decades building an incredibly vast world with a rich history.
If readers are not interested with it, then the independant cape comics are a better option. Separated super hero comics that are not disturbed by events, where writers are free to do whatever they want, and with a lower cancellation bar.

[The BaRoN]

Least we have the Terrifics, new Challengers and the Immortal men from DC.

Thanks Ike, Alonso and marvel for saving me money.

[Prof. Warren]

Marvel released another promo picture of the Marvel Universe for licensing purposes recently and I noticed something.

At first we had:

It's a beautiful image showing all the relevant heroes and villains of Earth 616 at the time and in the comics we had lots and lots of IP diversity with the most unimaginable characters and teams getting shots at ongoings and minis.

Then we got this one:

It's clearly MCU inspired given the lack of X-Men and Fantastic Four characters, but is still a healthy ecosystem, containing characters that are related to several IPs and those characters getting shots in the comics, especially during the ANAD era.

How about the new MU pic? Here is it:

Just a bunch of MCU heroes and a handful of legacies.

It's a very lacking roster, and I'm not talking just about the Fox related IPs, but all the other minor Marvel owned IPs that were ignored. It also reflects the state of the comics at the moment considering the Marvel Legacy solicits that were revealed, since just movie and legacy characters have ongoings and all the other characters are only getting one-shots or straight out ignored. Most of the modern writers at Marvel use the same characters over and over with just a tiny group of writers like Ewing and Bunn not treating obscure characters like a joke.

Thoughts on the matter?

It's a promo image for licensing purposes. If anything, narrowing the focus helps characters to stand out. In the first two images, there's many faces that may as well not even be there because they're lost in a sea of other faces and so small in order to squeeze them all in so that even the most hardcore Marvel-ite would need a magnifying glass and a Marvel Encyclopedia to identify them all. Not exactly the best way to market your characters. Seeing as one of the big complaints in recent times was that Marvel publishes too many books with too many characters that supposedly no one cares about, having a more focused promo image doesn't seem like such a bad move. Being more streamlined in this regard just makes sense and reflects modern marketing sensibilities.

If the comic line was limited to these characters exclusively, I'd balk at that but it doesn't.

[Harpsikord]

Yeah, this is a huge issue, because not even Cloak and Dagger, the New Warriors, or the Runaways are here; in fact, the only Defenders on this are Luke and Matt, with Elektra waaaaay in the back. Marvel, and Ike Perlmutter specifically, don't like the idea of embracing Marvel's "lesser known" properties and in actuality that includes characters that they SHOULD be pushing. Instead, they give us six Inhumans, only one of whom is working for Marvel.

[Techno_Knight]

Groot in front of the Punisher, with the F4 & Cyclops nowhere to be seen. This truly is, the worst timeline... But eh, I'm saving money so...

[Harpsikord]

Groot in front of the Punisher, with the F4 & Cyclops nowhere to be seen. This truly is, the worst timeline... But eh, I'm saving money so...

I mean honestly I'm fine with Logan and Scott not being the X-Men given a push but we COULD actually have one of the X-Men that's REALLY getting a push here, like Jean or Kitty.

[Techno_Knight]

I mean honestly I'm fine with Logan and Scott not being the X-Men given a push but we COULD actually have one of the X-Men that's REALLY getting a push here, like Jean or Kitty.

Eh, I just went with two figureheads. I could've said Emma or Gambit. Point is, that is a sorry excuse for a poster. It's as if they're a newly created company with knock-off characters. The style, the colours, it's all so...impersonal.

[JKtheMac]

Marvel released another promo picture of the Marvel Universe for licensing purposes recently and I noticed something.

At first we had:
<Image Snipped>
It's a beautiful image showing all the relevant heroes and villains of Earth 616 at the time and in the comics we had lots and lots of IP diversity with the most unimaginable characters and teams getting shots at ongoings and minis.

Then we got this one:
<Image Snipped>
It's clearly MCU inspired given the lack of X-Men and Fantastic Four characters, but is still a healthy ecosystem, containing characters that are related to several IPs and those characters getting shots in the comics, especially during the ANAD era.

How about the new MU pic? Here is it:

Just a bunch of MCU heroes and a handful of legacies.

It's a very lacking roster, and I'm not talking just about the Fox related IPs, but all the other minor Marvel owned IPs that were ignored. It also reflects the state of the comics at the moment considering the Marvel Legacy solicits that were revealed, since just movie and legacy characters have ongoings and all the other characters are only getting one-shots or straight out ignored. Most of the modern writers at Marvel use the same characters over and over with just a tiny group of writers like Ewing and Bunn not treating obscure characters like a joke.

Thoughts on the matter?

A crowded picture with hundreds of characters is a conscious choice to show a wide and varied line. To demonstrate just how many characters are in the universe and how broad Marvel's books are. That kind of image speaks to a very specific potential audience. Clearly that isn't the audience that this latest image is aimed at. Those huge cast pics would no doubt put off many potential fans.

You touch upon the audience that it is aimed at in your own post. Marvel have a higher profile than ever before. Hundreds of thousands of people that rarely open a comic book are seeing these characters and enjoying them on a regular basis. This image is aimed squarely at them. Why is that an issue?