Worlds Within Worlds...

Courtesy of the latest PULSE:

Of the most interest, naturally, was Gui Karyo's publishing presentation. According to Karyo, Marvel's new initiatives will focus on getting more mainstream penetration in Wal-Marts and Targets, exposure at school book fairs, more books aimed at the kiddlies, more prose books following on the success of the YA (that's "young adult" in pub speak) Mary Jane novel, and rolling out yet more of those 4,700 characters in the Marvel library.

Geeze, am I the only one getting somewhat mixed signals here? They say they want to get more mainstream penetration, yet they still can't seem to decide if they want to publish the Tsunami GNs, which were originally created for this purpose. They want more titles aiming at kids, but are canceling titles like Sentinel. Maybe they'll do the digest Tsunami volumes after all, but are working on some sort of exclusive deal at Wal-Mart or Target? Either way, I just hope they actually have a decent plan worked up for this new market penetration. If they just try to shovel a bunch of their current content into the market, I doubt it'll do all that well, and may actually cause problems for these stores taking chances on more GNs in the future...

The Mary Jane prose comment makes me a little hopeful as far as titles for girls, but I'm still not convinced they really know how to do or market these yet. With females just about driving the GN market in bookstores these days, it seems like a section of the population that can't be ignored anymore...