Anyway, i also saw that Sandman was a huge hit with women as well, and i rather liked. It took the best elements that i’ve seen in any soap opera, and that is storytelling and emotion.

I read the story, and I had no idea what I was looking at. Only GL fans could possibly “Get” it.

Re: Fables—Point taken on Fables being male-centric. I was thinking that perhaps the fables part would be more interesting to women than to most men, as many men might consider themselves too macho to read it.

I haven’t watched Soaps in a good couple of years. And like I said, I only check in now and then. I’d hoped it was just that I was lost to see certain characters SOAS’ed and having babies etc.

It’s sad to hear that the emotional follow through that I learned about has become a thing of the past. And if that’s the case, how will two wrongs make a right?

While a major part of the soap audience is adult women, what the networks have been pushing for ages are younger viewers, hence all the stunts and de-emphasizing of veterans… which eventually gets enough fan fury that they reverse course… somewhat and temporarily. The thing is, though soap viewing used to be generational and young viewers would often watch the soaps their mothers and grandmothers did and those shows would balance the storylines so that everyone had stories they could relate to. One other similarity I see between the two storytelling forms is that both are what I feel is a creative downwards spiral driven by a desire to move the needle the greatest, when what would really help would be a long-term process that wouldn’t make a noticable bump in the quarter-to-quarter comparisons. There’s also been a shift in vision, it used to be that writers were the big behind-the-scene stars but the only big name writer still working on soaps that I know of is Claire Labine and James Reilley. Nowadays, the creative visionary is the Executive Producer, much like how overall editorial mandates tend to take over superhero comics.

Whoops, went on a tangent there… anyway, the initial point was that there is a market within the soap audience that comics could aim to reach.

As for the titles that should be a part of the crossover, I say it should involve any of the digest titles, since those tend to be the easiest to start reading without prior knowledge and often have a better mix of characterization and superheroics (though, I just finished reading Sentinel v3, so that particular experience might be skewing my feeling towards those comics). The Ultimate Flip Magazines don’t sound like a bad choice, either… I think the two main Ultimate titles have given me the feeling I got from comics in the early 80s, which was the same feeling that got me to discover Guiding Light in the mid-80s.

Apparently, it was great (albeit briefly) for the ratings, though my understanding is that this story drove quite a few longtime viewers away. Sounds like modern-day comics, doesn’t it?

[...] Johanna Draper Carlson looks into Marvel Comics’ upcoming crossover with the soap opera Guiding Light, and expresses skepticism as to whether it’ll do Marvel any good. I’m wondering if anyone’s going to buy the whole soda-and-light-socket origin story, myself. (Sequence from Marvel’s upcoming Guiding Light crossover insert ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. and Proctor & Gamble Productions, Inc.) [...]

Augie, no problem!

Runaways is a bit better than, say, Marvel Adventures Spider-man, but still – its more “prime-time teen drama” than daytime soap. I could see a tie-in with the OC, but with Guiding Light?

Now that CBR is up again and I can look at the whole list – I’m shaking my head even more than I was before. Franklin Richards? Power Pack? Wha? These might have a good crossover potential with some kids cartoons, but with soap opera fans?

Now, if Marvel were still publishing something like 80′s Claremont X-men, THAT I could see getting a crossover audience from soap fans. The characters were a bit overwrought, but not any worse than soaps that I remember.

re: Fables – would stereotyped characters really be an obstacle to a daytime soap fan? I don’t mean to be snarky, but I haven’t watched an episode daytime soap in maybe 15 years – has the characterization actually gotten better on them?

Re Fables: I would hesitate to recommend ANY Willingham work to a woman, just because his viewpoint is so very male-centric, and as a result, his women are often limited to being types or stereotypes. They never seem as three-dimensional to me as the characters of some other authors do.

Personally, I recommend Tramps Like Us to any woman who likes good women’s novels, but there’s an additional hurdle to jump there — it’s not just a comic but a translated Japanese comic.

Seems a total loss for Marvel on this deal, but one never knows.

Your point about stores having copies of the books is a good one — these are all low-selling titles for Marvel, which might be an issue.

Jer, someone else mentioned Runaways as a better choice for potential crossover, to elaborate on your thoughts about the choices.

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=85059/

“I was in the ABC Daytime Writer Development Program for years, where I was lucky to write an episode of One Life to Live that made it to air.”

Of these, only Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane makes any sense at all for the demographic, regardless of which way this is supposed to flow (i.e. if this is supposed to get comic book readers to watch Guiding Light OR if its supposed to get GL viewers to pick up and try a Marvel title). Despite being shown during the daytime, daytime soaps are not really traditional “all-ages” fare, and I see no real crossover between audiences for Guiding Light and, say, Spider-man Adventures. Even the crossover with SMLMJ is a bit weak – how much crossover is there really between daytime soaps and teen romance?

As for adult women being a vast untapped market – maybe. Right now they read a lot more prose fiction than the other demographics do, so there may not be as large a reservoir of untapped potential there as you might think at the outset. If their casual reading needs are being fulfilled by the prose fiction market, it may be really hard for comics to push into that niche and compete.

There are so many variables in this that just don’t click for me. Guiding Light’s audience tends to be older than a lot of other soaps. And I question the wisdom of anything that’s supposed to push non-comics readers to comic shops, when there are so many areas of the country that aren’t served by one. And how many of those shops are actually going to have extra copies of the featured titles on hand? The whole pre-ordering thing doesn’t make sense to someone who doesn’t read comics. I’m not sure either side thought it through very well at all.

I’ve seen one tiny mention of the deal in the soap press, by the way. I’ll DVR the episode because GL was a fave of mine at one time and they’ve chosen a strong, popular character played by a strong, popular actress to carry the story. That’s one point in their favor, at least. The experimental Wednesday episodes aren’t big faves with GL fans, except when they focus on core characters the fans like.

I won’t be getting the comics, because those art samples are so god-awful.

By the way, contrary to the blogger you linked to, soaps have done a pretty good job of forgetting how to tell their stories in a way that hook and hold fans and viewers. There’s too much focus on young hot bodies these days at the expense of core veteran characters that the viewers really care about. Obvious story beats and relationship elements get glossed over or dropped all together.

Days of Oulr Lives finally canned their head writer not long ago, after three years of stories that were big on bang-up events and weak on emotional follow through. (Sound familiar?) It had become truly painful to watch.

Still, she’s right about the thought process that seems to have gone into the whole thing. Sigh!

Sorry for the ramble. You’re getting bits and peices of the post on this topic I’ve not had time to finish.

As a fan of both mediums (media?), I’d love this to succeed, but there’s way too much both sides have over-looked.