This is not an idea of creating a new character from two existing ones; it seems more to be the idea of amalgamating two of the most popular characters to gimmick up a new character who will also be popular (i.e., sales heavy.)

It seems that it is having a current turn at Marvel, e.g., Dr. Doom/Iron Man, Falcon/Captain America, Jane Foster/Thor, and probably others. Are they engendering consistently good sales? Are they avoiding the gimmick trap?

Hey, if the kids buy it, and it's suitable for comic books, great. But one flash in the pan is not enough to keep the fires burning. Gimmicks are exactly those flashes; and Marvel needs concepts and stories that will draw and keep readers.

This seems to be contrary to the idea that just because a thing can be done doesn't mean it should be done. Of course, if it sells.... then it was a great idea, and we can probably expect to see Captain Spider anytime now.

The inmates are truly in control of the asylum.

Marc

I'm more annoyed at the infinite number of WAR OF THE REALMS crossovers and related mini-series. Marvel just refuses to stop with this. Every damn year. And there's already some X-Men-related "almost every character except Cyclops and Wolverine has been thrown into an alternate universe and here's their three-issue mini-series" gimmick going on.

Who the hell can afford to buy all these comics? JB is right, and has been for years: taking comics off of newsstands was an awful idea. The direct market just encourages this sort of thing. 

At least as of late DC's "event" series are mostly self-contained, with very few "tie-in" issues from "regular" series (see: HEROES IN CRISIS, which is awful), and sometimes those "event" series are even fun to read (see: METAL).

The inmates are truly in control of the asylum.

Marc

++++++++

This is what I’ve been saying for quite some time, now, in regards to both Marvel and any number of franchises which I’ve loved for decades.

Puppeteered corpses are what we’re being presented with, not organic stories about the characters we love. Gimmicks and crossovers and stunts galore. Recons and reboots and reimaginings instead of stories being told about the characters as we’ve known them, in ways consistent with their established personalities and the established lore.

It’s over. All that’s left is for the numbers to dwindle, and the books to cease publication. The characters will live on in other media, at least for a while, but, as the comic versions become more and more unrecognizable, and are used more and more as marketing tools instead of characters, then the fire will slowly burn out.

I was killing time, the other day, and wandered into a comic shop for the first time in a long time. Leafed through a current Spider-Man story for a minute. The first few pages featured (a living) Kraven the Hunter in a direct homage/reference/rip-off to the opening pages of DeMatteis and Zeck’s “Fearful Symmetry”, and the rest of the issue featured “meh” art, simplistic dialogue, and characters I didn’t recognize as on-model.

The people in charge of the asylum seem to not understand professionalism, good writing, or marketing. It really is just fan-fiction, what-if stories, and constant rehashes/references/reimagining/trashings of older, better work by people who were actually creative. 

Back in the day, you might have seen “Hulkverine” as a one-off joke, or a single-issue lark. Now, it’s like kids mashing action figures to together to desperately try and maintain interest. 

Not to give Marvel anymore bad ideas, but as I was thinking about the whole nonsense of making a Wolverine-Hulk hybrid, I suddenly remembered that as a child, when I was 12-years-old, I had a somewhat similar concept, but instead of the Hulk, I combined Wolverine with Colossus. Heh.

Hey, even as a kid I realized at best this sort of thing should be a "What If" story, and not in actual continuity.

If Hulkverine really brought in a notable amount of young readers, I'd be okay with it. Most of the buyers these days are adults, and I doubt Hulkverine will change that, if that was even the intent behind his creation (which I doubt).

It really seems to me to be a case of fanfic becoming "real", as the thread suggests, rather than the editors or writers actively pursuing a younger audience. It's more about a gimmick than solid storytelling aimed to appeal to a wider audience. I could be wrong, but I suspect I'm not.

Even more than just flat-out stupid ideas used as gimmicks to temporarily promote sales, I despise the practice of taking older stories and doing the whole "everything you thought you knew was wrong" storylines. I may not be a fan of new stories that take the characters in what I see as a wrongheaded direction, but I loathe the current writers mucking with the past for what seems to be an all-too-frequent thing anymore. Let the past stories be.