Marvel's first Spider-Man cross-over in five years, Spider-Man: The Other, is getting a big push from the House, with marketing support, special trade dress, and a unique editorial configuration. In its press conference on Thursday, Marvel laid out the marketing support, which will include a p.o.p. poster; mini-posters, which will arrive in stores next week; and 100 free promotional checklist postcards per store, which will arrive about two weeks before the on-sale date of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1, the kick-off issue (additional cards will be made available at nominal cost). While not on the scale of the House of M campaign, which included the distribution of hundreds of thousands of a free sketchbook comic (see 'House of M Got Biggest Marvel Marketing Push in Years'), the marketing support is large by Marvel standards.
Spider-Man: The Other will feature three issues per month by the writers of three Spider-Man titles. Peter David, who's writing the new title, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, is writing issues of Marvel Knights Spider-Man and Amazing Spider-Man for release in October when Friendly launches. A Spider-Man: The Other Sketchbook will also ship in October. Reginald Hudlin, the Marvel Knights Spider-Man writer, is writing all three titles in November; and J. Michael Straczynski (Amazing Spider-Man) is writing all three titles in December. In January, each will write a final chapter in the their own books.
Each month's books will share a common trade dress to make it clear to consumers that they're a single storyline, despite being in different Spider-Man titles. The October covers will all be in red, the November books in blue, the December books in gray, and the January books in a yet-to-be determined hue. Numbering identifying the books as issues one to twelve of the crossover will also be employed.
Marvel has also determined that if reprints are made necessary by sell-outs, it will use sketch covers as opposed to a color variant to distinguish the second printings.
Peter David, who's writing the first books in the crossover, said that he was using story elements from the story he'd plotted for the first three issues of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. He also talked about the approach he's bringing to writing the new Spider-Man title. He said that just as his long run on Incredible Hulk used issue #6 as the starting point for his stories, he will use the Stan Lee and Steve Ditko Spider-Man stories as his starting point for his Spider-Man work. He also said that he's made an effort to have a discrete storyline, with a beginning, middle, and an end, in the three issues he's writing, in addition to incorporating the elements necessary to tie them to the over-all Spider-Man: The Other storyline.
