Geez - sit on a post for a few days, and Rich Johnston beats you to it. Still, I want to comment briefly on Marvel’s promotion for “Nextwave.”

I can understand Marvel’s desire to really push their current crop of Warren Ellis projects online. Of all the creators in the business today, there’s no denying that Ellis was the first and best at cultivating an online personality and corresponding “cult of.” While going after this demographic to promote “Next Wave” makes perfect sense, the way that they’re going about it just kind of blows my mind.

In an amazingly wrongheaded move, Marvel’s posted a Tenacious D rip-off of a theme song that’s theoretically going to make you want to read the comic. Yes, you can download a horrible mp3 in anticipation of a Warren Ellis series. In addition to it just being a horrible song, I’m surprised that Marvel’s legal department let them post it online considering the cursing in it. Legal monkeys are usually fairly skittish about that sort of thing, especially for something that’s being promoted as an all-ages project. Additionally, simply dropping the f-bomb in a song isn’t going to fool Ellis fans into thinking that this is cutting edge internet marketing no matter how you slice it.

Ultimately, if this is the best they could come up with, Marvel should have relied on Ellis’ own marketing and the artwork from the series to sell itself. Ellis may not have the WEF any longer, but between The Engine (does “Nextwave” count as superheroes?), Bad Signal and his blog, he still has a fair bit of online presence to cash in on. At least, that’s what I’m thinking. Or am I completely off here?

Spread the word!