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It's difficult to imagine what sort of response Marvel expected when it announced a partnership with Northrop Grumman, the fifth largest defense contractor in the world. But the publisher's decision to axe the deal following a swift wave of backlash suggests that it didn't anticipate people being turned off.
The story was intended to be the sort of promotional, explicitly-branded tie-in that you see in comics all the time. Mars, for instance, has worked with Marvel in the past to advertise M&Ms by having their characters team up with Iron Man. Obviously, though, there's a very big difference between advertising candy and advertising missiles, one of Northrop Grumman's more widely-known products.
In a public statement, Marvel explained that the planned comic book that would have seen the Avengers team up with a group of Northrop Grumman employees, was "meant to focus on aerospace technology and exploration in a positive way." Critics of the partnership insisted that in partnering with a defense contracting company, Marvel was effectively marketing the military to a young audience—a message decidedly at odds with characters like Tony Stark's views on the military-industrial complex. Said Marvel:
The activation with Northrop Grumman at New York Comic Con was meant to focus on aerospace technology and exploration in a positive way. However, as the spirit of that intent has not come across, we will not be proceeding with this partnership including this weekend's event programming. Marvel and Northrop Grumman continue to be committed to elevating, and introducing, STEM to a broad audience.
The optics of the partnership were obviously bad enough that Marvel felt it'd be better off without, but what's remained unclear was just how bad (or harmless) the comic actually was. Thanks to an anonymous tipster, we got our hands on the first issue and it's... a comic promoting a defense contractor. If you've ever read a tie-in comic before, it's par for the course: it includes a team of tie-in characters getting to upstage the famous superheroes who guest-star, a barely-there plot, and awkward and clumsy writing. It's just got an extra layer of awkwardness, since the thing being promoted in it is a defense contractor.
More at the link.
