Thursday, June 28, 2001

MARVEL PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT

Marvel staged its latest press conference on Wednesday to plug its online trailer for the "Weapon X" story arc in Ultimate X-Men and note recent sales reports.

Marvel is offering the trailer for various sites to post and will follow it up with a trailer for the MAX title U.S. War Machine.

The company also announced that it is dropping the price of its retailer First Look program from $10 to $6.

Following is an edited transcript of the question-and-answer portion of the call with Marvel's Bill Jemas and Bob Greenberger:

Question: Do you envision this (trailer) as possible advertising on the Internet?

Jemas: To have the trailer sponsored?

Question: Or to use it as a way to purchase advertising on other sites?

Jemas: I'm not really track, sorry. I'll tell you what we will do with and then maybe we'll work off of that. We'll do what people in the publishing business refer to off-handedly as syndication. So we will make these trailers available on a free basis to people who have an interest in attracting traffic to their sites because of the nature of the content. It's possible in the long haul that we'll be able to come up with a more strategic relationship with a packaged-goods company or a fast-food company or an electronics company that is willing to pay for this kind of a content. But, frankly, just in terms from the Marvel point of view, the increased interest in the characters and the comics more than justifies the costs of putting these things together.

Question: Would Marvel use this to purchase advertising on The Internet?

Jemas: No.

Question: You have flatly said DC Comics wouldn't buy Diamond. Can you elaborate?

Jemas: Why won't DC buy Diamond? That conglomerate, AOL Time Warner, owns spectacular pre-existing distribution capacity. It's inconceivable to me that they would make an acquisition of yet one more distribution company. Wonders never cease, but I cannot come up with a reason why that company would want to buy Diamond.

Question: Weapon X in Ultimate will be running at the same time Origin is running in the main Marvel Universe and at the same time you're revitalizing the trade paperback program which Barry Windsor-Smith's Weapon X is an acclaimed proponent of. You're going to have three versions of Wolverine's origin pretty much out there. Do you feel you could confuse or irritate fans?

Jemas: On the irritate side, what's irritating is bad work. And what's invigorating is good work or great work. All three of the works that you're talking about is some of the best stuff that Marvel has ever produced. So you're looking much more to excitement and invigoration than to confusion. There's nothing confusing inherently about any of these stories. They're perfectly clear. There's a consistency with respect to the character and an interesting exploration of the origin. I don't really foresee any of those issues happening.

It's almost the same intellectual discussion we had with respect to the introduction of the Ultimate Universe. What will the effect be from a fan point of view on the traditional X Universe? And the answer's pretty loud and clear. The X books are all top-five books in the comic-book industry. To the extent that there was a worry, I think the fans are voting pretty clearly that as long as the content is strong, the issue about what is the truth in this fictional universe, that's not really an issue.

Question: Can you give a hint about how the Weapon X story is going to go?

Jemas: The best look is the trailer.

Question: How work is going on the replacement ratings for the Comics Code?

Greenberger: The editors have been working with Joe Quesada figuring out which book goes into which of our categories. The labels are still scheduled to go as required with the September in-store books. We've got graphics designed. I believe we're going to start using them with the October solicitations so that the retailers know what they're ordering. We haven't seen any problems yet.

Question: What kind of response have you gotten from the fans on leaving the Comics Code and establishing the new ratings?

Jemas: We don't know. Certainly, there's predominantly positive message board activity. There's that horrible assumption that I receive a letter from a fan and that fan represents thousands or millions of fans. That fan represents himself.

So our sense, from the feedback that we've received from one-tenth of one percent of our fan base, is dropping the Code is positive. We never try to extrapolate on the good side or on the bad side from that response. We honestly won't know until the books ship, and we'll see if there is any significant issue either way. The issue that you worry about is that our view of how to apply ratings levels to particular content, if that diverges significantly from what a significant number of parents feels, then we'll have some issues. But right now, it's too early to tell.

Question: How are you coordinating racking and shelving on the ratings?

Jemas: Not to dwell to much on one word, but the minute I walked in the door at Marvel, I killed off whatever remnants there were of the racking program. I think wire racks are a great evil, and have been a great evil, for the business. CC, Comics Code Authority, or lack thereof not withstanding, we don't like racks. We want to go where the humans are, not where humans used to be.

As it relates to how the books physically get displayed in mainstream magazine racks, I can tell you that the response that we care about and the input we got most seriously was from Curtis, our newsstand distributor. They really embraced the idea of dropping the Comics Code and having a pro-active ratings system. And that's been confirmed by the retails accounts that we deal with with Curtis on a joint basis. By and large, retailers want the same kind of labeling system that they are very accustomed to for videos and games and records, to be applied to comic books.

Honestly, the only significant negative reaction have been from the people, who for various personal or emotional or whatever reasons, are attached to the old Comics Code. Beyond that, everybody with a triple-digit IQ has been very pleased with the move away from the Code.

Question: On the newsstand, are the ratings being coordination with placement of the books?

Jemas: That's a very long answer. No, it's a short answer. Yes, it is being coordinated. It varies on an account-by-account basis. For many, many accounts, it doesn't matter at all. For certain key mass-market accounts, what we're doing now is looking at the line and sort of trying to plan how these books fall into the line.

Question: Has there been any thought of any of the trailers like the Weapon X one inserted into Marvel's cartoons or movies?

Jemas: Actually physically putting into a TV show? I'll tell you, television is tough. But where we've seen significant interest and have some pretty solid plans is inserting comic book trailers and full dot-comics onto the videos and DVDs that will be released after the movies. That's pretty much certain to happen in the not-so-distance future. And we're pretty public about who we have movie deals with. We've not finalized those deals, but the trailers and the dot-comics you can expect to see on the movies and the DVDs.

Question: Is it illegal to do it on television?

Jemas: That's one issue is that it's an advertisement for a product that relates to the content of the television show, which makes it hard. You have to make the argument that this isn't really an advertisement, it's content. It's a long way to go and it's very, very hard to do and we really haven't been pursuing.

Even if you have somebody decide it's not illegal - and I'm not so sure if it's a legal requirement or just a network regulation requirement - there's also the issue of whether this counts as advertising in the rules that count towards the kids advertising mix.

So, it's really, really hard to do. But it's not very hard to do - and, in fact, it's very attractive to people who market videos and DVD - and that's where we've been pushing it.

Question: Are you planning a Spider-Man movie adapation?

Jemas: There will be a Spider-Man movie adaptation and we have kind of a fun announcement as to who's writing it. But I think Joe's going to do that the next week or the week after that.

Question: Are you worried about scrutiny over the ratings?

Jemas: There's always concern kids content and teen content that you'll have scrutiny. We think the best way to deal both with the scrutiny issue and proactively with helping parents understand what their kids are reading, is for us to take a very proactive, clear, out-front effort to explain to people what's inside of the books before they purchase it. We really do think that on both levels, regardless whether there was any issue of scrutiny, that having our own ratings system that we enforce diligently is the right thing to do.

Question: Is there any progress on the kids imprint or anything to announce?

Jemas: Progress, yes. Announcements, no. We're dealing with decent-sized entertainment companies who rightfully careful about having things announced before there's a formal deal.

I can also tell you that in terms of having the best kids' characters in the world, we think we already are sitting with the X-Men and Spider-Man - and I love Spongebob, I watch it all the time, and I love Johnny Bravo and Dexter - I would not, in terms of putting our best foot forward as a publisher, I'll take Spider-Man and the X-Men all day long to talk to kids.

Not that we don't have a sense of urgency and not that we have rocks in our head as it comes to understanding demos. We do believe that to get to the younger kids, we want properties that are TV properties with younger animation.

In terms of the absolute focus of priority, we're in a race now. We have two blockbusters coming up in 2002 with the X-Men sequel and Spider-Man no. 1. We're really, really hard after getting those properties to make sense in the mass market right now.

And it's not that there's a back burner on the kids imprint, but first things first. Everybody on this phone call to some extent has their fortunes attached as to whether Marvel gets our act together in the mass market in advance of those movies, and we think we're going to do that. And the kids imprint will absolutely come. We don't have to focus on that. We really have to focus on Spidey and X-Men.