The bad news is that the Associated Press, in a story without the slightest hint of a spoiler alert revealed the identity of the major character in the Fantastic Four who died some nine hours before the first copies of FF #587, carefully polybagged to avoid revealing the doomed superhero, went on sale on the East Coast. The good news is that the AP broke the story of the identity of the major character in the Fantastic Four who died in issue #587, and newspapers from the Washington Post to the Minneapolis Star Tribune to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and at least 358 other papers and news sites picked up the story and ran with it.
While some retailers have suggested that Marvel should have waited until the day after FF #587 was released in comic stores to give the story to the AP, that simply wouldn’t work in the age of the Internet, since news of the identity of the deceased superhero would have spread quickly via the Web as soon as the books arrived at retail stores. Marvel itself let the cat out of the bag in the subject line of a mass email it sent out on Tuesday morning at 7:37 am Eastern time, a hour before the books went on sale on the East Coast.
While the release of the Oscar nominations, the State of the Union address, and other events of this day’s rather full news cycle will likely work against the FF story matching the tremendous news coverage that the Death of Captain America received in 2007, the news of a death in the first family of comics appears to have, thanks to the AP and Internet reports, made an impression outside the world of comics. The AP story may have spoiled the surprise, but it also likely stimulated sales, and it’s not easy to see exactly how the latter could have been accomplished without the occurrence of the former.
Though some comic fans and retailers may resent the spoiler aspects of the AP story, if they read it, they would probably admit that it’s a pretty good piece of journalism with salient quotes from FF #587 writer Jonathan Hickman, Marvel editor Tom Brevoort, and Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada. But it’s veteran comic scribe Roy Thomas who made the most telling comment, remarking perceptively: “Whether it’s Superman, the Thing, or Bucky, if someone wants to bring them back to life later, you can’t bury them deep enough or tear them into enough pieces to keep that from happening. Death is not a permanent condition in the comic book universe.” Amen.
