I heard about this and I groaned. I groaned for several reasons:
1). It proves that Marvel does not realize, even after a bankruptcy, that it is not 1994 anymore. A book will not sell simply because it is a spin-off of a "hot"
title anymore. If that were true, then JUBILEE, ROGUE, and GAMBIT would not have been cancelled. SPIDER-GIRL would not be alive solely because of fans making it a sacred cow and needing something to mine for digests. And Marvel would not have so little faith in ongoing titles that almost nothing these days that wasn't already an ongoing title is being slated as something other than a "mini series". If they hope people will buy this book solely because of Ultimate Fantastic Four, then Marvel really needs to learn a new trick.
2). Marvel already has a bloated line with books that accomplish little point and no one buys. Yes, DC does the same thing. But does competition mean repeating your rival's mistakes? What is the point of a series based on an alternate universe from a 3 issue run of ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR, which is only the weakest selling Ultimate title right now.
3). It will have every poster who reads WALKING DEAD, one of those titles no one reads that is hailed as being good, saying that if you like Zombies and Kirkman in MARVEL ZOMBIES, you should REALLY be reading WALKING DEAD. Prove me wrong. It's impossible to talk about GRAVITY without having people shill for INVINCIBLE, and this will be no different. Look, it's great that online fans like trying to do a better job of promoting weak selling quality books than the companies do, but getting a handful of people on Hype to read a title will not help sales at all. It's one of those "principle" things I guess. Maybe the satisfaction of getting one more person reading, say, RUNAWAYS, offsets that fact that said accomplishment doesn't help the book's sales in any way. You need to increase readers and demand in the thousands to even have a shot at helping a book.
4). If this series is meant to amp up Kirkman, why? He's a good writer but I like books to have a purpose for existing, or to at least pretend to. If they're trying to amp Kirkman up in hopes that MTU will sell better, I can tell you right now it won't work. If they're trying to help sales on WALKING DEAD, why in god's name does Marvel want to amp a competitor (for that matter, why is INVINCIBLE showing up in MTU? Why? INVINCIBLE outsells a few Marvel books and they're HELPING it? It's like Marvel has no business sense).
5). It's one of those "watch the fanboys buy anything" titles that usually seems limited to X-spinoffs.
So, I'm really not interested, despite Kirkman and a pretty cover.
