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Underground > Comic Books >

Comics have overdosed on adverts

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14:02 / 10.10.05

I bought FF/Iron Man: Big In Japan #1 this weekend and was frankly shocked at the amount of adverts inside it. Marvel are pretty bad for adverts as it is, but this is the first case I've seen where there was literally an advert on every other page - bar one double-page spread, there was an advert opposite every page of gorgeous Seth Fisher artwork, page, noticeably interrupting the flow of the story.

On the same day, I bought Paul Grist's Jack Staff #8, which moved from the small label Elephant Press to Image some months back, and this, by contrast, is completely ad-free. How are Image making any money, if they aren't selling ad space to Lexus or The Big American Milk Company [or whoever does those stupid 'milk moustache' ads]?

I've recently been investigating getting my vast collection of individual issues bound into hardback editions, and the amount of adverts in an individual issue will affect whether I think this is viable or not. For series such as 'Jack Staff' and 'Black Hole', this will work very nicely, thank you very much. I could even have had the individual adverts removed from my Flex Mentallo collection, had I the forethought, as the ads are neatly placed back to back on the same pages. Older series had the adverts on the same large stapled sheet, so all that was required was to rip the pages out, but apparently certain larger companies have got wise to this and taken steps to remedy the situation. Even as I write this down, I'm tempted to knock several regular titles from my list on the head and subscribe to the trades instead - The Punisher, Planetary and The Ultimates come immediately to mind as being advert-heavy titles.

This surely displays an increasingly unhealthy disrespect for the individual issue format, and thus for their readership, by Marvel and DC. I'd even go so far as to claim [for the purposes of getting even a couple of responses to this thread] that this is contributing to a decline in monthly sales and an increase in those willing to wait for the trade collections.

Am I being too anal about an essentially disposable art form?

14:54 / 10.10.05

Am I being too anal about an essentially disposable art form?

I don't think so. I gave up reading single Marvel issues for the same reason. I found it really irritating to try to read *Daredevil*, a deadly serious and well-illustrated story, when just about every page of dark moody artwork was followed by a glaringly bright ad for acne cream, candy, or toys.

I'm not sure if I might have been more forgiving if the ads were age-appropriate. It still would have been a jarring reading experience.

14:57 / 10.10.05

Nope, I feel the same way about certain UK TV channels adopting an American-style commercial format (E4, I'm looking at you) of 6-8 adverts per hour.

At the end of the day you're paying for a section of narrative. If that's being affected by the amount of adverts then you're not being given value for money and should look elsewhere.

It's a cursed cycle really: less readership > more adverts > less readership

(BTB, I don't recall Planetary or The Ultimates having any adverts in them, unless I'm just heavily filtering my comic reading experience?).

15:22 / 10.10.05

I agree with Catjerome. It's not adverts per se I object to it's vastly inappropriate adverts that piss me off. When you're reading a comic that isn't "all ages" dealing with adult themes, why on earth do you get adverts for spiderman pyjamas or other assorted toys? It's just weird. Plus it says that comics are just for kids, which I find insulting and I think it's damaging to the industry in all sorts of ways.

18:07 / 10.10.05

It's the adverts full stop that get to me. Any advert. I like to immerse myself as much as possible, and no matter what advert I see it interrupts the flow of the story quite a bit for me. Probably because they wind me up so much. I literally get angry and will look out of the corner of my eye sometimes to see if there's an ad on the next page, just so that I don't have to focus fully on their stupid fucking spammage of whatever story it is.

I remember when I had all of The Invisibles books except series 3, and when I got to the end, having to see those stupid fucking ads..........grrr. Especially the fact that the crap they use in their trademarks and logos interrupted the flow of the comics hypersigil. I found that really annoying. In fact, that was the worst case as far as I can remember.

18:49 / 10.10.05

I tend not to notice the ads too much... but you're right. Marvel goes apeshit with them. Actually, even DC. Grr. Put 'em all in the back, for shit's sake.

21:17 / 10.10.05

WFTT, my friends -- wait for the trade. Especially from Marvel, which often gets the trade out within a month or two of the last issue collected therein...

23:07 / 10.10.05

How are Image making any money, if they aren't selling ad space to Lexus or The Big American Milk Company [or whoever does those stupid 'milk moustache' ads]?

I think the unfortunate truth is 'they aren't'.

23:15 / 10.10.05

Interestingly enough, I've never seen a figures relating to DC or Marvel's advertising revenue (such things are usually jelously guarded secrets, mainly because Ad sales people give frequently charge different prices to their customers). I'd be really interested to see how many people in ad sales in comics (a small niche indeed) are actually aware of the content they are selling into...

00:05 / 11.10.05

Honestly I never notice the ads. Maybe it's just me but I have a tendency to completely ignore anything that isn't part of the story! I notice i do the same thing with TV> i never pay attention to the commercials

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

03:31 / 11.10.05

All the ABC books seemed to run all the adverts right at the end, after the story ... which in itself sucked, because then you walked away feeling like the comic didn't end up being very long or deep.

09:02 / 11.10.05

Especially the fact that the crap they use in their trademarks and logos interrupted the flow of the comics hypersigil.

yeah, maybe - not being funny though, the 'hypersigil' was quite potent enough for your little brain as it was though, remember?

macgyvers was spitting shit as he showed us the iron man-ff in japan thing - crazy bad use of the adverts. most scarily, they were for cars and shit, not the straight-to-video scifi films that they used to run in books like this. they're growing up with us, horribly horribly.

09:24 / 11.10.05

I have never really been bothered by adverts at all apart from the very last comic I read, which was the latest issue of The Ultimates and, for some reason, I found them incredibly, incredibly jarring and disruptive of the reading experience.

I'm not entirely sure why that issue was so bad; without having another look, I suspect that the adverts were poorly placed and disrupted the plot beats and also that the full-panelled, realistic, computer-coloured art blurred the lines enough between the advertising and the story to prevent me skimming over them as easily as I can do with art that features white panel borders, flat colours and stylised figures.

Or Marvel could be placing more adverts of course. I dunno. But yes, much prefer the Wildstorm way of doing things, and if it's not a particular fault of that issue of The Ultimates but instead a manifestation of the descent in crankiness that sees me shouting at the TV all the time, then it just means reinforces my preference for trade paperbacks.

10:57 / 11.10.05

Especially the fact that the crap they use in their trademarks and logos interrupted the flow of the comics hypersigil.

I can see it now. "DC/Vertigo would like to apologise to it's sponsers for not putting their adverts into copies of the comic "The Invisibles", it's just the writer's trying to build a hypersigil and you guys are messing it up!"

I would have thought GM would have taken the advertising in the comics into account when working his funky magic. He's a media monkey of terrifying proportions.

11:04 / 11.10.05

I have never really been bothered by adverts at all apart from the very last comic I read, which was the latest issue of The Ultimates and, for some reason, I found them incredibly, incredibly jarring and disruptive of the reading experience.

That really struck me when I read that same issue, too. I've got a sneaking suspicion that Marvel have slowly but surely been increasing the amount of advertising in their titles of late, and it's just gone beyond the point where some people can reasonably ignore it any more. I'd have to go over a selection of recent issues to confirm this.

The seeds of my disquiet were only sown when I urged my girlfriend to read the individual issues of We3, and this preponderance of initially confusing 'Is this the story? Oh no, it's an ad' pages was the first thing she commented on.

I feel a lot better that it's not just me, but it's still a bloody poor show!

11:05 / 11.10.05

indude! in fact, i remember thinking that a lot of the adverts that ran in the invisibles seemed to complement the story quite nicely, often highlighting the general zeitgeistiness. this was before the filth of course, with the classic line 'watch out for the continuity breakers!' which isn't going to make any sense in the trade.

11:16 / 11.10.05

this was before the filth of course, with the classic line 'watch out for the continuity breakers!' which isn't going to make any sense in the trade.

Was that when the Filth agents were flying out of the Paperverse while retrieving that scorpion gun, shooting Silver Age heroes in the head as they went? That's actually a very nice touch, which I missed first time round because I wasn't aware of the adverts in the first place.

They're clearly messing with my mind.

11:50 / 11.10.05

Yeah, it seems the entire comics internet (via the ever-entertaining FbR) has just noticed this.

We had a massive fuss round here, circa NXM #142. But maybe that was just cause Logan had a big bottle of 'Jake Denials' whiskey. I don't like it much, but I don't like missing out on stories that are OUT! NOW! much either. And I'm down to about three Marvel monthlies anyway.

12:19 / 11.10.05

I usually don't mind the ads in my comics, sometimes you get to see some cool shit you mightn't have otherwise known about, but most of the time, I barely even see them.

My girlfriend actually reads the fuckers though. I often catch her peeking over my shoulder, reading the ads, or reading them when she is given a book to read. I have to take to to one side, and make her realise that if she reads the ads she will become a soulless ad-fiend, just like they want!

BTW, has anyone noticed that really shit new ad for "Bodd" grooming products? It features a cartoon-style "teen" who likes like a fucking steroid case and all these girls' faces around him saying "I want your Bodd!"... This is wrong on so many levels it makes me want to vomit blood - including the prime fact that nobdy that reads comics is every gonna look like that, plus the over homo-erotisism in featuring a traditionally "hot" male in a state of undress in a medium where most of the readers are male.

It's just so fucked.

15:16 / 11.10.05

Yeah, don't entice the gays into reading our comics, Marvel!

22:53 / 11.10.05

Just read the scans and buy the trades when they come out hahahaha...

Fuck you comicbook companies!

23:02 / 11.10.05

Yeah! That's socking it to the man, man! Paying for the collected editions! Fight the system!

homo-erotisism in featuring a traditionally "hot" male in a state of undress in a medium where most of the readers are male.

And in a medium where most of the male characters are traditionally "hot" and wearing skin-tight latex. It's like a whole other world away!

23:05 / 11.10.05

... the over homo-erotisism in featuring a traditionally "hot" male in a state of undress in a medium where most of the readers are male.

Erm. This ad was in a superhero comic, right?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

05:48 / 12.10.05

Ah! Ah! Ah! Female Gaze! Must be Teh Gay!

Well, actually, the Bodd guy looks pretty cloney to me. Least there's no butt floss.

06:22 / 12.10.05

The worst things for spoiling the flow are adverts that incorporate comic book panels or characters - I got completely confused recently before I realised that I was reading an advert for a hulk computer game into my issue.

However, I used to love the ad's as a kid, maybe it's the products that just got bad?

10:59 / 12.10.05

However, I used to love the ad's as a kid, maybe it's the products that just got bad?

Ha, yeah - I want to sell Grit and win a microscope!

This site's great, but I can't see anyone hosting whatever the equivalent of a website is in forty years' time celebrating homoerotic topless man and his floating, disembodied, surely misguided [and yet and at the same time quite tasty] girls' heads.

Or can I?

12:12 / 12.10.05

i too was always wondering why Cap had turned up in my copy of x-men to throw hostess cup cakes at some random villian and defeat him through the power of obesity

12:14 / 12.10.05

Just to clear up about my previous post - my gripe with that Bodd ad is that the dude has a stupidly unrealistic physique that no comic book kid is going to have.

Granted this is in a superhero book, but they're trying to sell this stuff to the kids that read the book. The ad would fit like a glove in a mainstream teen/mens mag, but I always find the "so uber-het I touch my rippling man-abs" kinda thing a bit disturbing and insulting to my fat ass.

My point is, they obviously aren't thinking properly about what kinds of readers are going to be seeing that ad, and how best to get through to them. While the characters in Super-books are usually buff, it's normally in a way that emphasises the pure, iconic values of the hero, rather than as a sexual object.

Anyway, just wanted to clear that up, I don't wanna be mis-construed as some kind of hairy-knuckled anti-homo, cus I'm not.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:10 / 12.10.05

To be honest, you should continue with the homophobia argument as at least that one makes marginal sense in some perverse way, meanwhile, I'll continue writing a letter of complaint to Skittles because I ate an entire packet and didn't get a rainbow exploding in my room like the ads promised.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

01:07 / 13.10.05

It works, but only if you eat the red ones last. And even then, we're talking millions in property damage from high-velocity bursts of rainbow energy. You may also come away from the experience wanting to beat on the Flash.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

01:17 / 13.10.05

Kaizer John: My point is, they obviously aren't thinking properly about what kinds of readers are going to be seeing that ad, and how best to get through to them.

Well, you can make that argument right up until you see that pretty much every example in the industry uses a sexually attractive model or image, even if they aren't designed to appeal arousement-wise to the audience; the idea is to the sell the notion that you could *be* as attractive as the model, if you use their product; the most commonly cited example is any issue of Cosmo. Bodd means to imply that "unhip loser" stereotypes that they assume are reading comics want to be more in line with the dull clone image they present, who is of course attractive to the opposite sex.

Obviously this doesn't always work, and it should be noted that more often than not it does work to some extent, even if consciously we can throw up the Irony Shields and remind ourselves that, you know, there's more to life than sex. Which is annoying, because occasionally I'd like my convictions to be free and clear of hidden biases and subliminal manipulation, but I'm only human.

01:42 / 13.10.05

To be honest, you should continue with the homophobia argument as at least that one makes marginal sense in some perverse way, meanwhile, I'll continue writing a letter of complaint to Skittles because I ate an entire packet and didn't get a rainbow exploding in my room like the ads promised.

My daughter was genuinely disappointed when her head didn't turn into a watermellon after eating a packet of Fruit Gushers.

14:12 / 13.10.05

Papers - I see your point, but I don't want to be anything like the image portrayed in that ad, but I still like the ladies and manage to fit being an uber-geek with a healthy sex-life.

Maybe, given time to mull it over, I'm more annoyed by the advertisers trying to shoehorn in "traditional" notions of attractiveness into an arena where these ideals aren't really the ideal. I mean, girls who like comics are more into geeky-style boys (this is in my limited experience with girls who like comics, of which I can think of about 5 at the mo) and not the body-type (and by connotation, the lifestyle type) depicted in the Bodd ad. Conversely, all the comics-guys I know don't really like "normal" girls either.

Put a chunky dude in a Batman T-Shirt there, surrounded by alt./comic-y girls and that is an ad that works for it's target audience.

Anyway, steering the topic, who else wishes they still did the ads for X-ray specs and shit? I love reading old comics and coming across those. I actually read-em too!

15:24 / 13.10.05

what about the genuine 7 foot luminous ghost? the flying saucer YOU control? learning the secrets of the kung fu masters? training as a locksmith in your spare time?

i was so desperately jealous of american kids who could send just 99 cents and get the magical wonders in their lives

i wanted a charles atlas body too. and still do.

17:17 / 13.10.05

I've got that Charles Atlas body.

it's in the fridge . . .

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