Amazing Spider-Man #21 (Legacy #915) came out this week with much anticipation from the reading audience. “What’s so special about ASM #21 compared to a typical milestone issue?” you may ask. Well, this is the issue that begins to answer all the questions writer Zeb Wells introduced in ASM #1.
For everyone keeping score, the time between the question (a big explosion in York, PA) and the start of the answers encompasses 20 issues of the main title plus an assortment of tangent issues for the critically-blasted Dark Web event and a year-long wait, since the comic ships twice monthly. I repeat, the gap between the questions and the beginning of the answers is 20+ issues and a year in real-time.
I’ve read ASM #21, and it’s pretty good. The questions aren’t fully answered, but you can see where the story is headed.
Unfortunately, Marvel is taking a critical hit on ASM #21. Not because the issue was terrible but because the issue doesn’t pay off the delay, which I’ll henceforth refer to as 20+/365. In my opinion, the criticism is deserved.
Marvel editorial, along with the creators, made a creative decision to artificially inject a delay that progressively leads readers from curiosity to frustration to, eventually, apathy. The hype for ASM faded away like a lit candle in a stiff breeze, and unfortunately, the curiosity-frustration-apathy cycle could have been avoided. Marvel should have understood that waiting can build anticipation and excitement, but only IF it’s done the right way.
What’s the right way? I’ll explain, but first, it’s important to understand what a delayed question means within the context of an ongoing story. It’s a mystery. For some readers, it may seem silly that it needs to be spelled out, but that’s right, a question with a delayed answer is a mystery. It’s a puzzle that needs to be solved.
And what do you need to solve a puzzle? You need pieces.
When readers are fed pieces of information that contribute to solving the puzzle, a mystery can stretch on for months or years (although I wouldn’t recommend years) and still be satisfying. The reader will pick up the piece and analyze it to try and solve the puzzle on their own. In effect, the mystery becomes a game in which the readers get to participate. The pieces can be dropped at regular or irregular intervals, but the objective is to continually give the readers something to chew on to keep the mystery fresh, tease possible solutions, and keep readers invested in the wait.
Why didn’t this ASM mystery work for Marvel’s critics? Because not a single puzzle piece was dropped between issue #1 and issue #21. Occasionally, the creators would introduce a scene into one of the 20+ issues to remind you about the mystery, but no information was given to keep readers invested in the mystery. In short, Marvel made a creative blunder, thinking the wow moments in issue #1 would be enough to keep readers hanging on for 20+/365.
Imagine a Sherlock Homes novel where the entire story involves Holmes finding a dead body, going off to do other things, and periodically coming back to look at the dead body, only to resolve the mystery in the last chapter. No detective work, no clues, no revelations. That would be a pretty boring Holmes novel. Right?
Back to the headline – How long is too long? That depends. The mystery has to be big enough to incite curiosity in the reader, and the frequency of clue drops needs to be equal to the wait time. Ideally, a little hint in every issue would work, but going longer than two or three issues without a hint is asking for trouble, as Marvel is now finding out. If the mystery is curious enough, and the clues are juicy enough, creators can keep readers hanging on for a very long time without invoking the curiosity-frustration-apathy cycle.
If Marvel can pay off the ASM mystery, kudos to them, but they may have lost too many readers who no longer care. Then, the real mystery will be how to get them back. That’s an Op-Ed for another day.
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