CATDOLL: DC's advertising policy sparks controversy, and the Deadpool comics mock it

Among the Marvel heroes, Deadpool, who is cute and mean, is so popular that he has surpassed Iron Man and Captain America. He is a "wall-breaker" and interacts with readers outside the fourth wall. Recently, on the cover of Deadpool #1, Deadpool broke the wall again and said a few witty words to readers. However, this time he was not targeting Marvel's own stories, but mocking the controversial advertising policy of its old rival DC.

Variant cover for Deadpool #1

We can clearly see that the upper part of the cover is a battle between Deadpool and Rhino, while the lower part is a picture of a real-life advertisement. This form of image is a reflection of the new advertising policy recently implemented by DC. In June, DC launched a rather crazy move, which is to allow real-life advertising images to be inserted into comics. This is devastating to the reading experience of readers and has therefore attracted a lot of criticism. Throughout June, DC's comic series were full of such images, mainly Twix chocolate advertisements. DC has also proactively asked screenwriters and painters to consider the existence of advertising space when making comics, and leave blank space in the composition for inserting advertisements.

That's what it looks like in the comics.

This policy of DC not only angered readers, but also bored some of DC's writers and artists. Cameron Stewart, the writer of "Batgirl", mocked the company's policy on Twitter, and Greg Capullo and Scott Snyder, the authors of the "Batman" series, directly satirized DC's product placement in the comics. We can find Greg and Scott's actions in "Batman #41".

Batgirl screenwriter's Twitter statement

Although the June chocolate advertisement seems to be a farce or a short-term experiment, DC's leadership seems to be optimistic about the effect of the advertisement. DC head Dan Didio was optimistic in an interview and said that inserting advertisements directly into comics instead of adding advertisements between comic pages as in the past has increased the advertising value of DC comics, which is beneficial to the company's revenue generation and will help DC develop digital comics.

In short, DC's policy change has caused quite a stir, but it can be seen that it is mainly for economic profit. Marvel, which makes a lot of money from movies now, may not adopt such a strategy, so back to the cover of the Deadpool comic, Marvel is mocking DC's policy in a light-hearted tone, which probably means that it has nothing to do with them.