Guitar Hero Mobile gets weird product placement in Marvel comic.
In this month’s issue of “Fantastic Four,” readers are greeted by an amazingly bad example of product placement: a dude in a Guitar Hero III Mobile t-shirt.
This sort of thing isn’t entirely new in the world of funnybooks, but as a fan of both comics and gaming, I can tell you that this particular example is lousy. As a gamer, I’m pretty well convinced that Guitar Hero Mobile is a terrible idea. However, Guitar Hero itself is not (or at least, it wasn’t)… so seeing a specifically Mobile logo as opposed to a regular GH logo is off-putting and reeks of paid endorsement.
My speculation: It is probably entirely likely that the current Fantastic Four creative team wanted to include a Guitar Hero shout-out because they’re fans and the game is a hip property. But when they contacted Activision’s Marketing Brigade – licensors of such amazing high-quality products as the Guitar Hero Air Guitar Belt Buckle and Guitar Hero LCD edition – they were told they have to use the Mobile logo because that’s what the Brigade wants to push right now. And using the GH: Aerosmith logo would require some advanced copyright finagling with Steven Tyler’s signature on a hundred documents. But that’s just me making stuff up. Maybe Activision contacted Marvel Comics and this was what they came up with.
If only they didn’t use the Mobile logo. They could have saved their street cred.
The full, unmolested panel (note that the logo is also seen in the panel above!):
This is from issue #556, June 2008. In case you’re interested, the Human Torch has signed on to do a reality TV show, and that’s what Mr. Guitar Hero Mobile Fan is referring to. Torch spent the night sleeping with some random female villain, which is why he’s grumpy.
And yes, no comics fan is ever impressed when a crisp corporate logo is clumsily Photoshopped into line art.
Tags: Fantastic Four, guitar hero, Marvel Comics, product placement
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While I agree that this is awful product placement, I need to point out that GHIII Mobile actually has some pretty strong reviews.
I think people need something to whine about. The logo isn’t that clumsily photoshopped. If you’re more interested in the logo than the story going on around it, maybe you should be criticizing the story or the art. Comics aren’t sold to make fanboys wet themselves with joy. They’re products like any other. That have to make money and that have pay salaries. If it truly bothers you that much, stop downloading the issues for free. Stop reading them in the store and putting them back on the rack.
Disagree. It’s a lousy Photoshop that breaks the form of the rest of the art. It is a highly obvious cut-and-paste job. A better solution for a paid advertisement would be to allow the artist to draw the logo naturally as part of the shirt. Or even better, find an excuse for the characters to play the game as part of the story. Of course, being a crappy cell phone cash-in game seems like a tall order.
And please save your rant. I buy all my books. I have never downloaded ANY of them for free. I never read them in the store and put them back on the rack. Those scans are from MY personal issue of Fantastic Four, which I have enjoyed for many, many years and have a basement full of longboxes to prove it.
I will feed your RSS after this useful article. Thanks a lot.
I will feed your RSS after this useful article. Thanks a lot.