Marvel Comics has reversed their previous decision about digital-only releases of lower-selling titles during the pandemic. Amid the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, Diamond Comic Distributors, the de-facto monopoly distributor of all mainstream comic-books for North America, halted receiving new products to impose social distancing measures in their warehouses. Marvel reacted by ceasing the printing of all comics and later chose to release a few issues already in the can to digital subscription services making it clear the issues would still be included in paperback or hardcover collections of their respective series down the road.
In May, Marvel announced that various ongoings and mini-series that had been appearing in print up until that point would arrive in readers' inboxes but not their comic-shops. Those titles were: Ant-Man, Avengers of the Wastelands, Ghost-Spider, Ravencroft, 2020 Ironheart, Marvel's Spider-Man: The Black Cat Strikes, Hawkeye: Freefall, and Star. A second announcement came in late May adding Revenge of the Cosmic Ghost Rider, 2020 Force Works, Scream: Curse of Carnage, and Valkyrie: Jane Foster to that list. Casual readers, as well as die-hard comic-book geeks, expressed frustration at the 'holes' this would leave in their comic-book long boxes. Comics creators on these titles were blindsided by the news but accepted the reality of the economic crunch the publisher was under.
As ComicsBEAT has reported, the major comics publisher has changed course and these comics will have new print dates. These will now see print both in the individual comic-book format as well as in collections at a later date. Matthew Rosenberg and Otto Schmidt’s Hawkeye: Freefall was among the books effectively canceled as individual issues as was Rosenberg and Juanan Ramirez' 2020 Force Works. Rosenberg's Twitter message to his fans can be seen below.
New release dates have been posted on Diamond's retailer system for each issue. Ant-Man #4 is now due on August 5th and #5 on August 19th. Avengers of the Wastelands #4 is set for August 5th and #5 for September 9th. Ghost-Spider #9 on August 12th and #10 on August 26th. Ravencroft #4 on September 2nd and #5 on September 9th. Marvel's Spider-Man: The Black Cat Strikes #4 on August 5th and #5 on September 9th. Hawkeye: Freefall #5 for August 12th and #6 for September 2nd. Star #4 for August 19th and #5 for September 9th. Revenge of the Cosmic Ghost Rider #5 on August 12th. 2020 Force Works #3 on August 26th. And Valkyrie: Jane Foster #10 on August 19th. Though both 2020 Ironheart #1 and #2 as well as Scream: Curse of Carnage #6 have yet to be rescheduled.
Although certainly the entire choice was forced by the situation of the 2020 covid-19 pandemic, the episode has stood as a surprising experiment in how the comic-book reader market would react if a title were to switch to digital-only. Marvel specifically didn't choose any of their best-selling major legacy heroes. Nobody who had collected every issue of Captain America going back to 1982 would have been thrilled to learn that issues would now only ever be available digitally. Marvel may have been shocked to find that even though new and relatively untested characters like Star, a Captain Marvel spin-off character, and the heroes of Avengers of the Wastelands, an expansion of the alternate future first introduced in the “Old Man Logan” storyline by Mark Millar back in 2008, did not have major catalogs of back-issues or deeply entrenched mythology readers wanted to add these last issues to their collections. Comic-book readers new and old appear to still be completists.
This move from Marvel Comics seems to reflect that the power in the comic-book industry still resides with the collectors, the comic-book shops, and soundly in the world of print. Digital comics has been struggling to gain more than a toe-hold in the world of mainstream superheroes despite webcomics thriving in one way or another since the mid-1990s. It would seem that as much as some would seek to view them as dinosaurs, printed, saddle-stapled superhero-starring, comic-books still rule the world of sequential art.
Source: ComicsBEAT
