Every comic book fan knows that comic book companies love hyping up their upcoming stories. But is hyping up a comic book a good thing or bad thing for the comic book reader?
Most events from Marvel and DC comics get hyped for months. Sometimes these stories have a big impact on their comics and sometimes it can just be big a let down. These comic book companies hype up their comics that way their sales go up. But sometimes they also hype their comics to show big flashing lights that something big is going to happen that may impact their comic universe forever.
When there is comic book hype it sometimes destroys the surprise for a story. The comic book companies tell you an exact issue that something big is going to happen. So, when you open up that issue you are not very surprised that something big happens. The companies do this that way more people buy that issue. Isn’t it more fun to randomly pick up an issue, and find out something big happened without knowing it would happen? Would it have been more fun to read a story like Flashpoint and not know the New 52 was coming?
Another bad thing about hype is sometimes the story that is hyped so much can be a let down. For months the comic
book company is hyping up a story, and you get really excited to read that story. But when the story actually comes you sometimes get let down. This is the definition of a story being over hyped, when the story doesn’t live up to all the hype surrounding it. A story arc that I read that in my opinion was over hyped was Fear Itself, when all the teasers were coming out for the story I got really excited, but when I finished reading the story I felt like the story was way too over hyped. I felt like I wasted all my money because I got too excited for the story from all the hype that it had. The story was suppose to show that superheroes could show fear also, but the story arc didn't really show that. It showed more about hammers falling out of the sky than they did fear. Fear Itself didn't effect the Marvel universe. Nothing happened in the story. These big events should change something in the comic universe that is the point of having a big event.
Of course hype is still good for the comic book companies. When they hype a certain event they get their readers excited, and make more people want to buy their comic books. This is a great thing for comic book sales, and we all want comic book sales to go up. So, hype is not all bad. It just depends how you look at it.
So, are you a person who likes hyped up stories, or a person that rather be surprised? Tell us what you think about comic book hype in the comments below.
