Comments

1. flapjaxx says:

   November 9, 2009 at 5:09 pm

   Not thrilled with the premium price. Do not want anything more to remind me of the "Utopia" crossover. Uninterested in these characters. But it’s the creative team that did Captain Britain, so of course I’ll try it.

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2. cromulent says:

   November 9, 2009 at 6:13 pm

   Not really that interested in the Dark X-Men, but I guess I take whatever Cornell/Kirk fix I can get :

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3. JimBilly4 says:

   November 9, 2009 at 9:16 pm

   Odd that all mini-series get the $3.99 treatment. I know I for one am significantly less likely to pick up a mini-seires when I see that price tag. Do a lot of people say, "Well, that is a lot of money for 22 pages, but I will only have to buy 3-5 of them."  Now something like New Avengers seems a lot more devilish. You have been buying this for years and it is the premiere Marvel flagship (i.e., all major events will touch it), so suck it up or get that empty, I am missing out feeling. Without a doubt, if I am on the fence and I see that $3.99 I put it down, especially with a mini, which suck more than half the time. All that being said, I will be getting this because I am a X-Whore.

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4. vadamowens says:

   November 9, 2009 at 11:08 pm

   I haven’t read any of the CB books, but I’ve heard teriffic things about the talent of this team.  I was going to pick it up anyway, but I’m glad to hear a good team is on this book.

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5. theswordisdrawn says:

   November 10, 2009 at 7:54 pm

   @JimBilly4 All Marvel limited series have been $3.99 for over a year now. You’re only noticing now? ;D

   I’m very psyched about this. Cornell and Kirk do great work together.

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6. JimBilly4 says:

   November 11, 2009 at 5:13 pm

   @ theswordisdrawn Of course I noticed. I have been paying for too many of them. I was just now questioning the market strategy. My general comic shop strategy is to grab all the books that interest me and then put back several until I actually get my pile down to a reasonable amount. The $3.99 minis almost always go first as they tend to be least important to continuity and are diciest quality-wise. As a collector it doesn’t bother my completist OCD much to get something like that in trade later. Or even wait a few years and Ebay for them. Mini-series are almost always dirt cheap to pick up all in bunch 5 years later. Obvious exceptions are the mega-event books: It makes total sense to charge $3.99 for those as waiting on them just doesn’t make much sense.

   The only thing I can figure is that the #1 issue phenomenon, i.e. that we as comic readers are always looking for the next new thing, more often than not overwhelms the financially prudent portion of our brains. I see this with many new launches and new series, where just the first issue is $3.99, $2.99 after that. For a mini, if you already bought it and liked it (and sometimes even when you did not), well… you only need to buy 3-4 more issues… so you suck it up and do it. For now I can only assume the numbers at Marvel suggest that the number of people that don’t pick up because of an extra $1 is not enough to counteract a whole extra dollar of profit (33% increase). To me this is counter-intuitive to how most businesses work, at least those that feel there is substantial market that remains to be gained. You sacrifice maximizing your profits today to grow your customer base so that you get greater profits in the future. This should be doubly true for a company whose profits come increasingly from using the brands created by their comics to market everything from bed linens to movies, not the comics themselves. More people read Hulk, more people buy Hulk hands. Squeezing an extra few cents out of each issue seems shortsighted, but now I have ranted on in an obscure comments thread so I will leave it there.

    

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7. flapjaxx says:

   November 12, 2009 at 10:27 am

   You get several pages of back-up feature, with Steve Dillon art, so the $3.99 isn’t a total mark-up.

   I thought this was okay. Cornell and Kirk did just about the best they could, but so many of these characters are just so uninteresting to me (everyone except Mystique) that not even this creative team could make me really excited. I give it a 3 overall. I’m onboard for the next issue, because I used to like Nathan Grey when I was 14.

   Too bad Cornell and Kirk couldn’t’ve chosen their own book to work on. I get the strong impression that Marvel knew that something called "Dark X-Men" would sell no matter what at this point, even with this cast of characters, and they would have given it to another, lesser creative team had Cornell and Kirk not been available. Still, at least they’re working.

   I found the Beatles "fraptions" annoying and pointless. It’s very depressing to see this stupid, glib technique of Matt Fraction’s catch on with other writers.

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8. ProjectX2 says:

   November 12, 2009 at 6:47 pm

   I liked this but it made me miss Captain Britain and MI13. Those "fraptions" are very odd but I think I like them.

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9. theswordisdrawn says:

   November 12, 2009 at 11:18 pm

   I loved how Cornell basically took the Dark X-Men left after Fraction’s Utopia storyline and restyled them to the aesthetic of the Original 5 X-men. They’re even wearing uniforms like the O5 had in the original X-Factor series.

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10. clintaa says:

    November 13, 2009 at 4:37 am

    this was horrendous.

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11. zenman says:

    November 13, 2009 at 11:40 am

    Not a spectacular start but good enough for me to pick up the next issue (I have faith that Cornell will pull this together by the end).

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12. lantern4life says:

    November 13, 2009 at 3:15 pm

    Paul Cornell, let me count the ways.  This was really good and unlike Dark Avengers this was not just another Thunderbolts.  I love the wacky family of f’ups feeling this book has.

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13. theswordisdrawn says:

    November 13, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    @clintaa – Okay, I give. In what way?

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14. Anonymous says:

    November 15, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    I actually really liked this.  It introduced me to characters I didn’t care a lot about and gave good motivations.  There was only one statement by Mystique that seemed out of place.  I love that she is going as Jean Grey, and I’m kind of excited to see X-man back in the mix.

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15. rockingeek says:

    January 13, 2010 at 5:50 pm

    What an ugly ass cover.

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