Marvel Reveals Issue #2 Promotional Program

By Nick Tylwalk | Sep 16, 2015

New #1 issues are easy sells. They’re obvious jumping-on points that clearly mark the beginning of a new story, often with a new creative team. Plus they simply have the shiny, sparkly feel that appeals to us readers on some primal level. If none of that were true, comic book publishers wouldn’t be serving up new #1 issues with the increasing pace that they do in the 21st century.

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It’s the #2 issues that usually mark the beginning of a decline that hopefully but not always ends with a series leveling off somewhere. As an attempt to fight this trend, Marvel revealed today that it’s putting an extra promotional push behind not just the debut issues of its upcoming All-New, All-Different Marvel titles, but the #2 issues as well.

Along with extra web advertising and web skins (an example of which you can see below), each #2 issue will be promoted in the previous one with a full-page ad. Quite simply, it will say, “You want to know what happens next? Don’t miss [insert title here] #2.”

It’s an interesting idea simply because one would hope that the story itself would provide the impetus to get readers to come back next month, but some reinforcement of the idea that, “yes, there is another chapter of this story coming” probably can’t hurt.

We’ll see this marketing campaign in action soon. The first wave of All-New, All-Different Marvel titles, including Invincible Iron Man #1 by Brian Michael Bendis and David Marquez, hits stores and digital on October 7.

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