Comic Book Rant - Sorry Frank, Tie-ins Are Not Necessary

Before I start, this little rant isn't a rant against Frank Tieri or even a declaration that his work is no good. It's just Frank Tieri's comments sparked it when he recently had a chat with Newsarama concerning his Lord Havok & The Extremists mini-series for DC and, as you probably know, it's a tie-in that spun out of Countdown several months ago. Here's a brief snippet of the pertinent dialogue from their conversation:

It was something I saw in the Dan DiDio interview you did a little while ago– this question of whether or not a series like Lord Havok and the Extremists is “necessary” or “important”. You know, I’ve been involved in a number of these big company-wide events now, from Countdown to World War Hulk to Civil War, and I’ve seen this way of thinking before—people so worried whether a tie-in is necessary/ not necessary to the event in question—and honestly, I really think those people get too caught up in that nonsense. I think they’re missing the point. Simply put, a series like Lord Havok exists because we think the characters are interesting and we have an interesting story to tell. That’s it-- not much more complicated than that.

Regardless of whether or not you enjoy the book, I think we can all agree that it actually is completely unncessary in every sense of the word. It adds nothing to the Countdown story, it's taking place months after the actual events the book is building up to and, finally, the characters are all dead as of the most recent issue of Countdown, rendering the entire storyline moot, as it will have no lasting effect, will reveal no new pertinent plot points and, eventually, will be barely remembered by the few that are bought it.

None of that would matter if this story was being released as a Lord Havok & The Extremists story. However, DC is marketing this as a Countdown tie-in, one that we must assume has a bearing on or tangential relation to that event, and, thus, this book becomes a tie-in by default and, as the story is only marginally related to the events of Countdown, renders it completely unnecessary, for all intents and purposes.

Frank continues on his tirade over his book being labelled a pointless tie-in by saying the following:

And if I had to compare the Extremists to another project, it would be Marvel’s The Hood. Now, I really don’t remember, but I hope people didn’t get caught up in stupid stuff like this when the Hood came out because if they did, they would’ve missed a fun series, not to mention the fact that…

It’s pretty $%^&in’ “important” now, don’t ya think?!

He compares the Extremists to the Marvel MAX title, The Hood, which was conceived in a bubble by Brian Vaughan and is in no way, shape or form related to any Marvel event, character or other title. Seriously, WTF? The Hood was a standalone title that told a relatively complete story (it had some plotlines left dangling at the end) and was later picked up on by Brian Bendis for New Avengers. There was no reason to call The Hood a pointless or unnecessary title. It was an original graphic novel for the most part. Extremists requires Countdown to validate it and its story is neither required nor consequential to the events of Countdown.

While people may or may not have enjoyed any one of the dozen or so Countdown tie-ins, none of them are necessary. We could argue no story is ever necessary and they should all be read based on their own merit, but many of these tie-ins have no other merit than to cash in on the main event.

While this has been DC-centric, Marvel is not innocent of the pointless tie-ins either. Again, Tieri's comments sparked this little rant, so it's focused more on the content he was trying to defend.

In a perfect world, every comic, whether it be an event, series or tie-in, would be read by everyone and we'd all be able to enjoy as many comics as we like. However, life isn't like that and people need to make choices on what to buy and read. Everything we do in life gets categorized into what we want, what we can afford and what don't want and comics are no different.

When DC announces a million Countdown tie-ins, we, the fans, have a certain amount of money to spend on them. We want the entire story and we have to decide which parts are pretinent and which are rubbish, regardless of the quality of the book. DC, and Marvel when they do it, are hoping people will overspend in order to get the whole story and cash in on the readers.

So, in the end, while some creators would like to believe their book is worthwhile and necessary to an event, they are wrong. Almost all tie-ins are unnecessary and very few add any value to the event. The Tales of the Sinestro Corps War were about the only tie-ins in recent memory that have been a valuable and worthwhile addition to the crossover.

Sadly, having a few high quality tie-ins doesn't gouge the readers enough, so we're forced to separate the wheat from the chaff everytime a new event, and the onslaught of tie-ins, comes along. Thankfully, they are almost always unnecessary and we can safely skip just about every single one and those that wish are free to purchase any they feel they might enjoy, even though we know it's not going to be important.

Related Posts