Amidst the wave of teaser images, house ads and other clever marketing gimmicks, Marvel comics reached back into it’s 1980’s playbook and pulled out something it hadn’t used in a long time – traditional on-air TV advertising. This 30-second TV spot promoting Marvel’s Secret Invasion aired last night during the Minor League Baseball Championships on ESPN2. The ad leads viewers to embracechange.org, which is really just a link to the Secret Invasion page on marvel.com. With Secret Invasion already 6 issues in, this ad is presumably aimed to boost sales on trade paperback which will be released once the mini-series concludes in November. While it remains to be seen how effective the TV campaign will be, it’s nice to see Marvel pushing their core product – comic books – in a mainstream media venue. That’s something we haven’t seen since the 1980’s ads for G.I. Joe comics.
NEAR MINT COMIC SHOW .com 