Wolverine Publicity/Comic Books

• In the Silver Age of the Marvel Universe, virtually any character who was supposed to get their own title would either appear in Spider-Man first, or have Spider-Man appear in their title's first issue - in fact, there's a phrase to refer to most of Marvel's Silver Age that basically amounted to "Spider-Man is in the third issue". Trades soliciting comics to shop owners would often carry a picture of the title's third issue's cover. Thus, Spider-Man wound up on a huge number of these, encouraging owners to feel that at least up to that issue the title would be a sure seller. In the nineties, replace Spidey with Wolvie, and it still works.
  • This even happened with the Marvel Transformers series which had the alien suit Spidey appear before being retconned away later.
  • This trend continued even into the 1990s, with Spider-Man appearing in the second and third issues of Darkhawk and the fifth and sixth issues of Sleepwalker. Wolverine didn't appear (and thank God for that), but Darkhawk and Sleepwalker would later team up with Spidey again when they tangled with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
  • Linkara reviewed NFL Super-Pro #1, guest-starring Spider-Man. He didn't wait a second after seeing the cover to point out he was there simply to boost sales. Things got worse as the story progresses, as Spider-Man and Super-Pro had little to no interaction, and had a solo scene where he broke into a mob boss's house and gave up searching for evidence after scanning only one room. Simply put, Spider-Man didn't add anything to the plot whatsoever, which is worse than not appearing at all.

Linkara: So this scene was: COMPLETELY POINTLESS.

• • Then again, NFL Super-Pro was infamous for its pointlessness.
  • Spider-Man was featured in the second issue of Marvel's The Awesome Slapstick limited series (albeit not on the cover). Noteworthy only because Spidey was all but useless in the issue, with many jokes made at his expense.
  • This extends to the current age, where C-lister Gravity finds Spider-Man watching him fight his nemesis, and he doesn't lift a single finger to help .
  • As of 2011, Spider-Man is catching up with Wolverine for the number of books he's in per month. Besides his own book, he's now on two Avengers teams (same as Wolvie), and with the Human Torch's death Spidey's taken their spot in the Fantastic Four Future Foundation.
• The Punisher seemed to be everywhere in the Marvel Universe in the early '90s.
  • It wasn't just Marvel, either. "Archie Meets the Punisher", anyone?
• In 1991 Marvel parodied their own tendency to do this with a three part Fantastic Four story headlined "The World's Most Commercial Comics Magazine which starred Wolverine and Spider-Man, as well as the then-hot Ghost Rider and Gray Hulk, as a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits brought together as Unwitting Pawns "The New Fantastic Four". And also had another unnecessary cameo by the Punisher at the end of the story. Lampshaded on the cover blurb-- "World's Most Exploitative Cameo". Frank Castle doesn't actually show up until the last panel of the last page, flying past aboard a commercial jet.
• The villain Venom from the Spider-Man comic was so popular that he was turned into a Nineties Anti-Hero, then given endless cameos and mini-series. When he began to feel over-exposed, the writers created the new character Carnage (a Darker and Edgier version of Venom—think about it, darker and edgier than a brain-eating fanged Body Horror, they had to make Carnage totally Axe Crazy and covered in blood) and repeated the process all over again.
• This is not exclusive to Marvel. Superman has sometimes been used this way, especially when he always turns up in a flagging new series starring an untested character (of course, given Superman's speed he could actually pull this off if he wanted to).
• As has Batman. Just about any new ongoing series in recent years will have an appearance by one or both of them before the first year is up.
  • A particularly bad offender of this is the back cover of the Catwoman collected volume Relentless. The back cover shows Catwoman and Batman kissing. While this TECHNICALLY takes place Batman doesn't show up until the last 5 pages, barely has 2 pages of screentime and serves mostly to talk Catwoman out of her Heroic BSOD. The kiss is Catwoman drunkenly coming on to him.
  • A common theme will be Superman for the most part being supportive of the new hero, while Batman will be a bit more suspicious.
    • DC's former policy regarding the two was actually an inversion, as they were kept away from other titles (and even off the covers of Justice League of America, which they actually appeared in regularly) to prevent them from becoming overexposed.
  • In a rather surprising aversion of this, Simon Dark, a series set in Gotham City, went more than a year without an appearance by the Bat. Or Robin. Or Catwoman.
  • And of course let's not forget Tim Drake, who appeared in his own title, Batman, and Teen Titans. This was lampshaded once when he was helping Batman on a case. Bats reminded him had to be on a plane to San Fransisco that night, and that he should honor his commitments. Robin still appeared for the rest of the arc, and this would also imply that the Titans' adventures (at least those that include him) all occur over the course of a weekend.
  • Ditto for the current Robin, Damian Wayne, who appeared in Batgirl and a bunch of other titles shortly after Final Crisis. He was even briefly added to the floundering Teen Titans series as part of a heavily-promoted sales stunt, complete with multiple variant covers celebrating his arrival.
  • While Batman's appearances in the Blue Beetle series were never particularily gratuitous, they do provide an interesting contrast to his perceived constant distrust of new heroes. Even when he doesn't show it to him, Bruce always seems to keep an eye out for Jaime and is proud of his growth as a superhero. Whether this is because he has a soft spot for the kid or because he feels guilty for accidentally leaving him for dead on the Brother Eye satelite is certainly up for debate.
  • After the New 52 DC comics relaunch, it seems Batman Publicity is the name of the game. Not only is he a member of both the Justice League and the new Justice League International, he's got no less than FOUR books where he's the main character (Batman, Batman: The Dark Knight, Batman and Robin and Detective Comics). Plus tying into the Batman books are the new Batgirl, Batwoman, Nightwing, Birds of Prey and Catwoman comics, plus the all new comics Batwing and Red Hood and the Outlaws. That's a lot of Bat.
    • If you count Red Robin in the Teen Titans, Harley Quinn in the Suicide Squad, and even old-time Gotham City in All-Star Western you have 16 books with Bat-related characters; that's almost a third of the relaunch.
    • It gets worse, or it just got more awesome depending on how much you love the World's Greatest Detective. In May, 6 of the titles that are underselling were canceled and replaced with 6 new ongoings. Two of the six are Batman Incorporated and Worlds' Finest (with Huntress, another Bat-related character, as co-lead). An alternate version of Batman was also used to hype Earth-2, along with an alternate Superman and Wonder Woman, but the three were killed off in the first issue.
    • Perhaps realizing how ridiculous this all was, the writer of JLI has since had Batman quit the team so that he could be replaced by Batwing.
• In the 90's, after his creation and Zero Hour, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner was somewhat guilty of this, too. He had his own title, adventures with the Nightwing-less Titans incarnation, joined the JLA, had cross-overs with Superboy, The Flash, Connor!Green Arrow, still had his own monthly, made an appearance or two in Wonder Woman during the period Donna Troy had just lost her ex-husband and son, and basically showed up in a lot of titles. More of an inversion, though, since he was also establishing himself as a hero in his own right and had to run across these other heroes at some point; his guest appearances weren't about using him to hype other characters, they were using the other characters to hype him.
• Nineties Anti-Hero Lobo has also been used in this way. One Superman cover had the strapline "In this issue: Lobo appears on one page!"
  • As a parody of Wolverine, this is to be expected.
• Gambit of the X-Men followed in Wolverine's wandering footsteps for a while too.
• Parodied with the cover of the last issue of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, prominently featuring a member of the popular Teen Titans -- "All right, it's just Changeling, you can't have everything." Also, Superman's appearance in the first issue.
• The second trade paperback of DC's Justice miniseries has the Legion of Doom on the cover, with The Joker front and center. Except that the Joker was never in the Legion of Doom, wasn't broken out of prison when Legion member Scarecrow escaped from Arkham Asylum, and only makes cameo appearances in the rest of the series, in a Paper-Thin Disguise as an Amish man most of the time, and he blows up a building. None of those things have any bearing on the actual plot. The actual main villains of the series, Lex Luthor and Brainiac, are shoved off to the side behind Joker, as if to insinuate that they're supporting characters instead of the main antagonists. This may be a Mythology Gag in reference to the various Superfriends series, which Justice is heavily inspired by; Joker was originally slated to be a member of the Legion of Doom, but due to a Filmation cartoon being produced at the same time getting the rights to him first, the Ace of Knaves was largely left out of Super Friends.
• Donald Duck is on most of the covers of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. Somewhat fair, since he's also probably has at least one story in every one of them, but there are a few times where the cover art in question is actually from a story that isn't actually published in said issue.
  • This is fairly legitimate in that the "duck" comics (and Disney comics in general) traditionally had covers that were more or less one-off gags unrelated to the contents (and frequently boiled down to Stuff Every Reader Already Knew, like "Uncle Scrooge is really, really wealthy" or "The Beagle Boys are incompetent crooks").
• Wildstorm also tried to pull this off with Grifter, Zealot and, later, Midnighter, by having them make as many guest appearances as possible. Grifter and Midnighter actually starred in two miniseries just about them teaming up! Generally the best way to tell if a comic was in trouble was by how prominently Grifter appeared on the cover.
  • When Wildstorm was still an Image imprint, Grifter and Zealot shared the spotlight with Spawn and Badrock. Badrock is an oddity in that he's never had a solo series but was the star of the Marvel Team Up-like Badrock and Company and has had many crossover minis - including ones with Wolverine and Grifter!
• Emma Frost has been appearing in a great deal of comics, often just so that she can be there. The worst example is the time when she showed up in one page of one issue of the new White Tiger's miniseries to tell her that white wasn't her colour (after several thugs had mistaken her for Emma... because a dark-haired Hispanic woman and a blonde Caucasian woman are so alike).
• Deadpool has been appearing everywhere lately. Within one year (Fall '08 - Fall '09) he has been granted three of his own ongoing titles (more than Iron Man and Captain America (comics) combined) and a confirmed a place as a regular character in X-Force, given his first animated speaking role ("Hulk vs. Wolverine"), confirmed as making his first speaking television debut (Season 2 of "The Super Hero Squad Show"), made one of the most prominent characters of Ultimate Alliance 2, ... errr... "featured" in a live action film (Barakapool), and eventually got his own reboot movie (and when that proved to be hugely sucessful, a seque)l. Not bad for a character who was canceled less than a decade ago.
  • It's safe to say Wolverine has officially passed the baton to Deadpool. Add to that a limited series and guest appearances in various titles (Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Wolverine, etc.) all in the time frame shown above. And an additional limited series being released next year and well, to put it simply, he is the new Wolverine. Look at the cover art for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. He has more cover space than Wolverine himself.
  • Recently there was a Marvel Team-Up between Deadpool and It the Living Colossus. For all that Deadpool actually did to help, it was basically an It one-shot. It seems Deadpool's role in this team-up was just to get people to buy the book. Sorry, did we say Marvel Team-Up? Our mistake - the book's called Deadpool Team-Up. Deadpool is the star of Marvel's team-up book - meaning Marvel editorial considers Deadpool their flagship character. Oh, and Deadpool Team-Up started with issue 900 and counts down from there. Granted, this was a joke about the then-current release of Action Comics 900 - the series got canned after a little over a year.
  • Similar to the earlier mentioned Wolverine variant covers, Deadpool, was for one month featured on numerous variant covers, though the series', were mainly in the Marvel Universe. The covers ranged from slight alterations of the original covers, to parodies of classic covers (One Amazing Spider-Man cover parodied Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21, and featured Deadpool, smoozing up Mary-Jane, and pushing Spidey out of the way), to at least one completely original cover.
  • Let's not forget how he's prominently displayed on most of the artwork for Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and shown opposite Dante in the intro.
    • His recent burst of popularity is lampshaded by She Hulk in the game, who annoyedly points out to Deadpool that in the 80's and early 90's, she herself was very popular.
• Villains have started getting in the act too. The Hood and Norman Osborn especially. Doctor Doom did it before them though; He was even the first villain defeated by Squirrel Girl.
• The Scandinavian Disney trades, which didn't start printing home-produced material until the late 90s, could always be counted on to feature Duck Avenger on the cover if he made the slightest appearance in the book. Amusingly enough, he appears more often than ever nowadays, but has only had two cover appearances in 20 years. Guess his popularity dropped.
  • The first few issues of the Warren Ellis revamp of Marvel's Thunderbolts have Norman Osborn dressed in his Green Goblin suit displayed prominently in all the covers, despite the fact that he does not wear it until much later in the series.
• Believe it or not, Captain Marvel was often shoved on the cover back in the 40s, when he was the decade's most popular hero. Of course, since the number of genres was a lot more eclectic, you'd see him promoting the latest Funny Animal book or Western.
• IDW Comics clearly hoped that they could do this in their Transformers comics with new character Drift. They even said as much. What they ended up with was something a little different...
• Sonic appears on the cover of the first issue of Sonic Universe, despite not actually appearing in the issue other than a brief flashback.
• For a brief time in the '90s, the popularity of Death's Head II led to him appearing in nearly every Marvel UK comic, either as a cameo or a guest appearance.
• The Fantastic Four were pretty much this for most of The Sixties and The Seventies; Strange Adventures and Marvel Two-In-One were just two ways Marvel Comics tried to turn the Fantastic Four into a Cash Cow Franchise.
  • The Fantastic Four even show up in The Amazing Spider-Man #1, back before the Web-head could start making his rounds.