Marvel Comics Has a Huge Lying Problem

Everybody is keenly aware that things are not going well for Marvel Comics these days. DC is basically eating their lunch. It feels like Image Comics is just destroying them on quality basically at every single step. And there is definitely a massive disconnect between Marvel Comics and their audience. And I personally believe it's that everybody knows that you just can't trust Marvel Comics. And when we got the solicitations for July of 2026, I think they've actually crossed the Rubicon on this one. They have gone so insane with their pricing. You are not going to believe this stuff. But it does bring up all these broken promises, things that they said they were going to stick to that they never do. They say stuff because they know you want to hear it and then they never ever actually stick to what they tell you they're actually going to do as a company. Now, there is a company out there that absolutely sticks to the word. It is the 616 Comics, the sponsor of this channel. I love partnering with these guys because they love comic books and they always want to tell you the truth about what they're doing, what you're getting, and they will never ever steer you wrong. Now, let's go back to Comics Pro 2024 where Marvel President Dan Buckley was the keynote speaker, and he said this specifically. We know that pricing is an area we need to adjust to fit your needs. We want to make it consistent for you and for your customers. The bulk of the line will be $3. 99 with new number ones and 8 to 10 core titles with top talent and top characters being priced at $4. 99. There will be exceptions for event books, one shots, and anniversary books, but you will also see a more consistent pricing approach to those offerings, too. Basically saying the majority of the line will be $3. 99, and there will be select titles in number one issues that will be a little bit higher. You go to July of 2024. You look at the solicitations. Guess how many of their comic books are actually priced at $3. 99 now? One out of what? 70. And it's a generation X23. And if I were Jodie Hower, the writer of that book, I would not feel too good about that cuz that means that every other writer at Marvel Comics is top quality and worth $4. 99 except for Jodie Hower and the rest of her team. Absolutely ridiculous. DC Comics, which is hot as hell and absolutely destroying Marvel at this time and certainly has way more books that people are interested in, still has probably half their line at $3. 99. You go over to Image Comics, which used to be more expensive than Marvel and DC. It was like the luxury comics brand or whatever. It was always just a little bit more expensive. An overwhelming majority of all of their books are $3. 99. Just a select few like James Tin and a couple other creators are actually $4. 99 and above. They don't even price Transformers and G. I. Joe at $4. 99 which feel hotter than anything at Marvel Comics these days. And they certainly don't print to the numbers that Marvel Comics do. So they don't have to do this. DC's not doing it. Image Comics isn't doing it. The people that are doing this standard pricing at $499 are IDW. It's Darkhorse. It's Boom Studios. much smaller publishers with much smaller print lines with far less demand. So, it kind of makes sense that they wouldn't be able to get those margins out there with the bulk printing and all that kind of stuff. But Marvel is supposed to be the market leader. They shouldn't be following the lead of Darkhorse and Boom Studios. They should be setting the example and saying, "Hey, we've been pricing people out. " Dan Buckley, the president of Marvel Entertainment, actually pointed this out two years ago. So, they're breaking this promise 24 months later. Not exactly a large amount of time, but this is exactly what we as comic book customers and certainly comic book retailers have been basically trained by Marvel Comics to do because at the exact same Comics Pro keynote speech, he was actually asked a question about them restarting and canceling everything early. And this is what he said there. I think the days of having a 500 issue run is probably a reach, but we are looking at having less limited series and more ongoing with all our characters. I'm not going to say there won't be limited series, but I am at the moment approving some series for 10 issues at a time, not four or five. Hopefully, I can get to 15 or 20. That is the intent. How long did it take him to break that promise when he actually told retailers, "We're going to stop doing all these truncated runs. We're going to stop cancing things so much earlier. Actually, they just started cancing things earlier after that. " How many months was it before Weapon X-Men was changed from an ongoing series to a five issue miniseries? And that's one of the things that Marvel loves to do to claim that they didn't cancel, you know, Imperial She-Hold or whatever that stupid Stephanie Phillips book that nobody wanted was. It wasn't a five issue cancellation. It was always just a miniseries, but we just didn't tell you

at the time, I don't know, false advertising on that one. And they just continuously cancel books earlier and restart and reboot. Well, how many issues of Joe Garrison Punisher did we get four before they canceled it? And I understand that you were going to have to cancel that book because nobody wanted anybody at Frank Hassel to be the Punisher. But you committed to something and then you just completely reicked. That's what this company is. They have no staying power. They cannot commit to anything for any real amount of time. Since CB Sabolski, the current EIC, has been a Marvel comics, how many times had they rebooted Amazing Spider-Man, the flagship book of all the Marvel comics, should be the steadiest ongoing series that they can have. I think it's been three or four. What we've gotten the Nick Spencer, Zeb Wells, now Joe Kelly. There might have been something else in there, but it's about the same amount of reboots and restarts that Batman has had in over 80 years. It's absolutely ridiculous that a character like Spider-Man can't even make it to 166 issues. Why is that important to me? Because I believe Nightwing is on 166 issues. If Batman's sidekick, who became his own character, hasn't even had a movie or anything like that, can make it over 150 issues, it pretty much feels like Spider-Man can do that, too. But they choose to do that because they want to bend you over and charge you an extra dollar or two for that number one issue. So they keep going back to that well and it just keeps getting shorter and shorter and they have no intention to ever abiding by or fulfilling any of these promises that they make to retailers and fans. It's absolutely ridiculous. They even take something like Incredible Hulk by Philip Kennedy Johnson. Really cool story. Love the Nick Klein art. Really like what he's building upon. Let's cancel that book and relaunch it as Infernal Hulk because something happened within the book and then plan on canceling that at 10 issues. We'll do another miniseries in the meantime to lead into an event instead of it just being the Phil Kennedy Johnson Incredible Hulk run. It's all the same story, but now this way they get four number ones out of it and they get to call it an event and do some tie-ins and stuff like this. It is the worst manipulation of the market that's going on today. And Marvel is just an enormous offender. And it's not just Dan Buckley, the president of Marvel Entertainment. It's all the leadership there that are always saying things and never backing them up. This is what EICB Sabolski had to say during a Swedish convention in 2019. I don't want death to be used to boost sales or to use a shock value. So people go, "Oh my god, Johnny Storm is dead or Wolverine is dead. " Knowing that they're going to be coming back if we choose to do it now, we're going to add a little more weight and permanence to the situation. So that's in the early days of CB Sabolski being the IC saying we are committed not to using death as a shock value or sales tool. And if we do it, we're going to be a little bit more discerning and we're going to commit to the long run when it comes to death. I don't know. I read that and I just think of Zeb Wells Amazing Spider-Man run and Miss Marvel. Didn't even have an ongoing series at the time. What do they do to Miss Marvel? Killed her in the book. We had the, you know, funeral for a friend special and all that stuff. Obviously sales gimmicks. How long did it take him to bring Miss Marvel back so she could be an X-Men like she is apparently in the MCU? Was it even 2 months? I don't think it was. I believe it was less than 60 days later. There was Miss Marvel coming on back. What did they do with Doctor Strange when that second Doctor Strange movie was about to come out? What series did we get? Did we get the death of Doctor Strange? Of course, it couldn't be a storyline called the death of Doctor Strange within the Doctor Strange run, which continued on with the same writer. No, we've got to cancel Doctor Strange and do the death of Doctor Strange miniseries from Jed McCain to use death as a sales gimmick. So, we could have the Cle Strange book, which ends up of course being a miniseries because they can't commit to anything. And then Doctor Strange comes back. never really actually died. They do this stuff over and over again. CB Sabolski, the big swinging dick at Marvel Comics, the EIC, the man who sets the tone for the publishing line that makes the final call, said, "I'm not going to do this. " And has done it multiple times. And I've only used two examples, but there are at least 10 that have happened since he has been the EIC at Marvel Comics. Do you guys remember Fresh Start? You probably don't because there have been so many Marvel initiatives, you know, over the last decade or whatever, but Fresh Start was CB Sabolski's Mia, we're sorry without

saying we're sorry. We're going to commit to new series, new characters, new creators, new beginnings. It was something stupid like that. If you remember what it was, it didn't last very long, but it was implied. never specifically said, but implied that these are going to be more character-driven series. We're going to do less crossover event stories, and we're going to give them more runway, them being the creators, to tell longer form stories. None of that ever came to fruition. They immediately went back to the event well, and they've been running that one dry since he arrived. Another thing that he kind of said, you know, I see event fatigue out there. Done nothing about it. See the problem, doesn't want to actually address it. We've got what? Avengers Armageddon and Queen and Black launching literally in the same month in June. You can't make this stuff up. These guys commit to nothing. And as I said, it's not just Dan Buckley. It's not just EIC CB Sabolski. This is what Tom Revort, and this one's funny because it's actually a good thing that he lied because what he said they weren't going to do, they ended up doing. But this is what Tom Bravort, senior VP at Marvel Comics, had to say on his Substack in November of 2024. Remember that timing because it's important. Marvel isn't all that interested in doing a lot of crossovers. DC for the last several years has seemed much more open to doing them when Marvel does participate in one. There tends to be some reason for this internally, some objective that making a crossover helps us to achieve. And that was answering a question about, you know, how do you set up these Marvel DC crossovers that you do every once in a while? November of 2024. Marvel's not interested. I. e. we're not doing a crossover in the imminent future with DC comics. When did CB Sabolski and Marie Javins get up on stage at Comics Pro 2025 and announce the Deadpool Batman and further DC Marvel crossovers that were going to be happening? That's right, February of 2025, a mere 2 3 months later after Tom Brahort specifically said, "No, we're not interested in doing that. " Would have been really easy to say, "You know what? Those kind of negotiations are very difficult. We can't really commit to something like that. There's a lot of uh dialogue that has to go into it. So, it's very complicated. No, he said, "No, we're not interested. We're not going to BE DOING IT. " FUCKING LIED. Within months, less than 90 days, they were literally announcing the [clears throat] goddamn crossover because these guys never really want to be true to their word. They never want to be honest with us. They don't the retailers. anybody. They think they're above the law. What? because they were the market leader in a little niche fucking uh you know corner of entertainment media for 20 or 30 years. Well, you're not the market leaders anymore because nobody trusts you because every time you say stuff, you pretty much lie right out your teeth. I will admit there's one thing that they have not lied about. This is also from Tom Revort at Baltimore Comic-Con in 2024. If you're working for Marvel, the ground rules are all the characters are Marvel's and Marvel as an institution gets to decide what's right and wrong for these characters. So, there are certain things you don't want Spider-Man to do. He can get back with Mary Jane. He just can't actually tie the knot with Mary Jane. And it seems like they're pretty much committed to never ever giving people the Mary Jane Peter Parker marriage that people have been demanding for what over 15, 18 years, something like that. Now, when it comes to the Peter Parker, Mary Jane thing, absolutely upfront about it. Nope. Never going to happen. Eat it, fucking fanboys, you fucking nerds. You think we're going to give you what you want? Oh, you've been demanding this? You're never going to get it. So, at least they didn't lie about that one. Although that's one of those things that you would have hoped they would have lied to you about that because Marvel sucks right now. Nobody cares about any of their books. There's no hotness going on right now. Iron Man can barely go over 10 issues on an ongoing. Hopefully Josh Williamson does better than that, but it ain't going to be that much better. I can guarantee you that. And quite frankly, getting Peter Parker and Mary Jane back together and married would be a big deal. It's something that people would probably like, you know what, Marvel sucks, but it's something that I wanted. I'm going to go check it out. See, also what happened with Ultimate Spider-Man where they actually gave people kind of a version of something that they wanted. Of course, it doesn't matter cuz that universe is basically already dead and gone. Now, we have talked about the spiraling prices and how Marvel and DC have certainly

contributed to this issue. I think Marvel are taking it to another level here in 2026, but this has been a long time coming. This has been an enormous problem for quite some time. If you want to see how this pricing crisis really started and when it started, check out this video right here. I appreciate the time and remember to keep thinking critical.