The Four Color Media Monitor

Tom Brevoort and Steve Wacker were interviewed on CBR, and the former is now trying to use the claim that they have subscriptions going for them on ASM as an excuse. He also implies they're going to shut out the voices of reason:

TB: Here's a key piece of advice for letter writers. If you are just sending a letter about a comic book we published six months ago, we're not going to print it. If you are saying something that has relevance to the story we are telling now, we are more likely to print it. We could be printing letters about the story we published six months ago until the end of time, but it doesn't help anything. If its obvious you've read the comic and not just the solicits and then got pissed about what you think it is going to be, we're more likely to pay more attention to what you're saying. But sending me the same letter every month more or less with three words changed and bullshit sales figures attached to it does not change my mind about anything.

Wow, that's pretty nasty alright. He goes on to say:

TB: Quite honestly, while it is nice that fans are using numbers to boost whatever arguments they have, they don't have a full understanding of what Marvel's financial goals and expectations for the book are. Even the numbers they get are only best-guess estimates cobbled together based on rankings. They are a guess. And they are always wrong.

They are also just direct market numbers. We did a promotion online when we started Brand New Day where we offered a year's subscription for a bargain price. The response to that was overwhelming. We got a huge circulation spike from subscribers, and these are numbers you will never see online.

Everyone is saying the book will be cancelled any day now. I could float the book on my subscribers alone at this point.

Yes, it is always nice to watch the clock ticker go up and down, but the business discussions are internal, and fans are not privy to that. They don't have all the facts.

Sorry, Brevoort, but without offering up clear sales figures, even for subscriptions, we fans will remain unconvinced, and will have to assume you're just taking out your frustrations on the fanbase, because you know that really, it's just not working out as you want it to. And if readers stopped buying it at stores and took it off their pull-lists, there's every chance plenty of them cancelled their subscriptions as well, so to say it's got more than enough mail subscribers without offering clear data isn't getting very far in defending his position. Also working against Brevoort's flaccid defense is the fact that Marvel's publishing sales have gone down, so I just don't see what he's getting at.

Brevoort is just hiding the facts he says we don't have, and not very politely at that.

Labels: bad editors, marvel comics