In today's Marvel press conference, Marvel President Bill Jemas told the press that the publisher was fine-tuning its books for mega-merchant Wal-Mart.  In preparing for a major outreach effort in conjunction with the release of the Spider-Man DVD, Jemas said, 'We thought that we would try to capture that movie audience, and give them exposure to Amazing Spider-Man and Ultimate Spider-Man, the first two volumes of the paperbacks.  We went in with consultation with Brian to make some changes to the Ultimate Spider-Man book.' 

 

Writer Mark Millar chimed in to say that the cuts were minor since, '...we do try and write these things (the Ultimate books) with a general audience in mind.'  Millar also jokingly suggested that fans should 'collect them all,' including the bowdlerized Wal-Mart versions, but that appears unlikely given that the original versions will be seen as the more authentic, earlier editions.

 

Jemas made certain to point out that Marvel was acting out of its own volition in making these cuts, and not doing so at the behest of Wal-Mart.  But the Ultimate Spider-Man editorial material has already been distributed extensively in Wal-Mart (see 'At Least Six Million Ultimate Spider-Man #1 in Print' and 'All Spider-Man All the Time'), so something changed Marvel's opinion about what was appropriate content for the consumers that shop there.  A few years back, Wal-Mart created a great amount of controversy by cajoling record companies into changing the lyrics of songs deemed 'offensive.'  Such is the buying power of Wal-Mart that some record companies did produce sanitized disks for the world's largest retailer. 

 

Taking Jemas at his word as to the lack of pressure from Wal-Mart in this case, it may have been complaints from consumers about copies bought in Wal-Mart during previous waves of distribution, a better understanding of the retail environment in which the books were being sold, or a change of heart as to what's right for an all-American character.  But regardless of the reasons, Marvel's pragmatic cooperation with Wal-Mart may well lead to market expansion.  The Spider-Man DVD itself contains lots of comic book-related content (see 'Spider-Man Limited Edition DVD' and 'Spider-Man DVD Set'), and the ability to place broadly accessible books that offend no-one near what may well be the best-selling DVD release of all time has to create some new comic consumers. 

 

To make sure that there's a strong association between the DVD and comics, Marvel has also printed some five million free Spider-Man movie comics, which will be given away to the first five million people who buy the Spider-Man DVD at Wal-Mart (think about that number for a moment).  This is also a great outreach program that will associate this hit movie with its source material, and direct consumers toward more comics to reproduce the fun they experience. 

 

Ultimately, the ability to cultivate new comic consumers in mass merchants and bookstores is essential to replace the lost outlets caused by the collapse of newsstand distribution.  And with one stroke, in this alliance with Wal-Mart Marvel is doing more to create new comic consumers than any other single deal that could have been done this year.