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Marvel Promises The Secret Empire Will Avenge You In "New" Teaser

Published Thu, 12 Jan 2017 11:30:21 -0600

Last updated Thu, 12 Jan 2017 11:48:59 -0600

Marvel has released another teaser for Secret Empire, the upcoming Captain-America-centric Summer super-mega-crossover event that you first heard about on Bleeding Cool. The teaser is barely different than yesterday's teaser, this time featuring the phrase "The Secret Empire Will Avenge You" instead of "Trust The Secret Empire," with all other aspects including the background texture, color, and logo unchanged. It offers literally no value to readers and no journalistic value to news websites, and yet every single comic book site will run this teaser as a news story, including this one. In a particularly bold move, Marvel has offered the teaser as an "EXXXCLUSIVE" to media partner Comic Book Resources, devaluing the already near meaningless concept of the "EXXXCLUSIVE" even further.

Bleeding Cool Rumormonger-in-Chief Rich Johnston would have you believe that these teasers, along with Nick Spencer's simplistic political allegory in his Captain America comics, are part of some secret conspiracy to undermine Ike Perlmutter at Marvel. We don't personally buy into it, but if it makes you feel better as a progressive customer of Marvel about the fact that Marvel's success gives Perlmutter more money and influence with which to support Donald Trump, to whom he has donated the maximum allowed campaign contribution and will serve as a key advisor, then sure. This totally balances the scales. Fight the power, maaaan!

But even that is giving too much credit to these Marvel teaser campaigns, which haven't changed in at least ten years, and appear to require the absolute minimal effort to produce. For more on how teasers in comics work, we spoke to a super-secret high level Bleeding Cool source deeply embedded in the upper echelons of the comic book industry.

"They tell me, Vlad, make minimal effort to produce slightly altered version of teaser from yesterday which itself is slightly altered version of teaser from last week and email to comic book websites, who will run it like shameless capitalist dogs they are," said unpaid Marvel intern Vlad Kozinkerov, who designed the teaser using a Russian language copy of Photoshop CS3 of questionable origins. "So that is what I do."

"Comic book websites will publish anything if they think other comic book websites are also publishing it, because they cannot bear to see their rivals gaining in clickshare," Kozinkerov explained. "For Marvel, it keeps the name of super-mega-crossover event in the news cycle. It is like viral marketing campaign, but instead of taking effort to produce interesting content that people want to share organically, you just make five minute photoshop job and email to CBR."

Bleeding Cool, of course, is no better. We may be the worst of all! So here's your latest teaser for Secret Empire! We'd be totally ashamed of ourselves, if shame were an emotion we were capable of feeling.