Ultimate Spoiler Man

[pgwfolc]

When Marvel announced that they were introducing a new Ultimate Spider-Man, they put out an ad which, it turns out, is a major spoiler for an issue that has yet to be released. Why?

Comments

[aaron_bourque]

Because the people in charge of marketing are not the people who tell the stories, and the people who tell the stories are not the people who market the company's product.

[jlbarnett]

maybe the ad could be non-canon?

[abigailb]

You know, it's not an unusual thing for a piece of fiction to start with a flashforward, and then work towards that point. Do you call those spoilers too? Isn't that just that, except expressed through the paratext?

[pgwfolc]

That's an interesting point. I hadn't thought of it in that light. But I don't think it quite matches up.

When an author does that, it's a deliberate narrative choice. And the plot is designed to be interesting, leading up to that point. Knowing what's coming can actually enhance the tension as you try to figure out what went wrong to make that happen. Generally, you're given very little information/context. You'll see a moment in the climactic battle, but it will be a moment early in that battle. You don't know what, exactly, led to that battle, and you don't know how, exactly, the hero is going to turn the tables.

This is different. This is the authors deciding to have a long plot arc leading up to a climactic moment. Only hinting at the big decision to come. And here the marketing department has decided to let us know exactly what that decision will be.

[abigailb]

To play devil's advocate, how do we know Bendis wasn't involved in the decision to release that?

I don't know how long in advance he scripts stuff, but I doubt it's as much as 12 months. So he's been writing up to this, knowing that those ads already happened. Unless we're imagining that marketing are not just spoiling things but actually dictating story beats, then he must have told them information about where the series would be a year later in order for them to do that, no?

[pgwfolc]

My guess would be that it went something like this:

Bendis had a meeting with Quesada and the rest of the editorial staff.

"We'll have a new Spider-Man. He'll be a minority."
"Black? Latino? What?"
"How about both? Half and half?"
"Perfect."
"What about his secret identity? Secret identities are stupid. They don't make sense in this day and age."*
"Okay. He'll announce it at a press conference."

*Pretty sure I've heard that's Quesada's stance. Marvel has fewer and fewer major heroes with secret identities. They even took 616 Spidey public for a while.

So then Bendis goes off to plan out a long plot arc introducing the character and building up to the press conference. And the editorial guys pass along the plan to the marketing department.

Except that Bendis should have seen the ad and known that the conclusion had been spoiled and maybe rewritten things. But maybe he doesn't like to do that. He does like to take the slow road to wherever he goes...