I wish I worked for Marvel's marketing department

I'm a cheap bastard.

I'm a college student, so I don't have much disposable income.
After beer and food, I don't really have much left in my budget for comics.

Thankfully the owner of my local comic shop is cool and lets me leech off his shelves like the little kid at the news stand in Watchmen. That is, as long as I buy a couple of books every week.

My point being is that this week, as i sat in Quinlan Keep's comfy chair, Marvel made me pick up a whole stack of comics just to keep up with what's going on with the Civil War aftermath. My problem isn't that there was too much coming out, that's never a problem.

The problem was that there wasn't enough!

In every issue, as Tony Stark was trying to pick out the new Avengers lineup, he had a pretty nifty screen showing all of the registered heroes and villains he had to pick from.

As I saw this over and over again, I wondered why I didn't have access to this.

I sat contemplating how easy it would be for Marvel to set up a mini-site with a replica of Stark's database showing exactly what he's looking at. Personally, that would clear up a lot for me. I'm not very well versed in the more denizens of the Marvel universe, and I'm sure that same thing alienated a lot of casual readers from Civil War.

I mean, I had never even heard of Typeface before Frontline, and now I'm supposed to care that he died?

Then the advertising student part of my barin kicked in, and I thought of how much farther they could have gone with this.

Marvel could put a few weeks between Civil War #7 and Mighty Avengers #1 and given readers a chance to guess the new lineup using Tony's database.

They could have made it a contest and given a prize to whoever guessed it right.
I mean, I think it's pretty safe to say that Marvel wouldn't have had to give out shit, because not one single person in their right mind would have picked fuckin' Ares (but I am interested to see where they go with that).

Anyway, the whole contest could have been interesting. The fans would be involved, visiting the site, reading each others' lineups, message board arguing (and from a marketing point of view, reading ads and adding their emails to marvel.com's newsletter).

Quesada and the gang could even choose like 5 of the coolest team combinations and give the winners autographed drawings of their Dream Mighty Avengers. Nerds love shit like that.

I graduate in May.

Gimme a job, Quesada.