NS: Marvel Teams Up With... and then Abandons Northrop Grumman

[informationgeek]

Yes, this did happen.



This is from an article on io9...

Marvel announced late Friday that it was cancelling Saturday’s New York Comic Con comic announcement event with defense contractor Northrop Grumman, after facing criticism for seemingly promoting war profiteering.

Marvel previously teased a major announcement at its New York Comic Con booth on Saturday involving a team-up with Northrop Grumman, which was the world’s fifth-largest defense contractor last year. The company doesn’t sell guns, but it deals in cybersecurity systems, bombers, laser weapon systems, aerial drones, and other military hardware, selling mostly to the US government, generating over $20-billion in revenue each year.

There’s not a lot of information available on how extensive the partnership is, but it features a promotional all-ages comic (which is no longer on Marvel’s website) starring the Avengers and the “Northrop Grumman Elite Nexus,” or N.G.E.N. The comic is features the tagline “Start Your N.G.E.N.s,” and it includes career recruitment advertisements and a contest where readers can enter to be drawn into an upcoming issue.

I just... WHAT?! What the F**K was Marvel thinking?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?

This isn't like DC having fun with KFC and stuff. It's Marvel teaming up with a war machine!



...still, what do you think is worse? This... or this in hindsight...

Comments

[locuatico]

Okay, is there some sort of contest in Marvel to see who can screw up their PR the most?

[malitia]

Given this week even Action Lab played I think that contest is industry wide.

[informationgeek]

What happened with Action Lab?

[malitia]

In points what happened was this:

1) They (well, their Danger Zone imprint) announced a sort of questionable title (Ivan The Pervy Ghost), with more questionable covers (main character between two pairs of badly drawn cosplayer tits, with or without bra on), with a surreal price (100$ - half goes to charity!) for NYCC.
2) Some people reacted with *roll eyes* "Dudes, that's tasteless!" or "And we worked so hard on "cosplay is not consent"..." or "You do remember that your most famous title is Princeless, right?" etc.
3) So they went on a "we triggered the SJWs!" Twitter meltdown.
4) This failed to garner any sympathy for them.
5) And the whole thing ended with them deleting everything incriminating and now claim that they were hacked.

[thanekos]

A tech-using superteam all wearing the same mildly visually interesting armor and working for a controversial corporation?

Twenty years ago, they'd have been New Warriors villains.

[zachbeacon]

Heck, they'd be Champions villains NOW.

[deathcrist2000]

They literally ARE Champions villains NOW.

[onsokumaru]

They even have Iron Man on the promo art. Does that mean that when Tony Stark will be back, he'll build weapons for the SHIELD and/or the US army again?

[deh_tommy]

Some additional context for those unaware.

Basically, this was done by MARVEL's 'Special Projects' division responsible for promotional content and advertisements (like those M&M comics). They apparently don't get a lot of supervision from higher up in the company, so this came suppsedly as a surprise to the main comics division (who only found out about this through the actual announcement) which generally disapproved of the whole thing, which helps explain why this was shut down almost as quickly as this was announced.

[cloudtrader]

Ew. And I thought the Marvel+NHL team-up was terrible.