From now on, Marvel comics will have a QR code to view the final page, and nobody understands why

Once upon a time (that is, a couple of months ago) reading comic books in physical format was very simple: you bought it, you read it, and that was it. As an alternative, you could wait for the comic books to be collected in a volume a few months later to enjoy the complete adventures at a slightly cheaper price. Or, if you preferred digital copies, you had different possibilities to enjoy your hobby. Until now.

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Marvel, like many publishers, has seen business is dropping and comic books are not selling as they used to, partly because a day before the new releases are available for sale, someone has already scanned them or posted the twists and best panels on Reddit and various websites. There is nothing that can be done against this, and it reflects the current state of things. As a result, the first release of the new era of ‘X-Men’ tried to change things in the weirdest way possible: by removing the last page and replacing it with a QR code.

With that code, readers can access the final page, which tends to be the one that holds the cliffhangers and nods to the future. But it turns out this won’t be the only time it happens, as Tom Breevort explained in his newsletter: they basically imagined it as an extra page that wouldn’t be released until the same day of the launch to avoid spoilers… and they will continue to do so throughout the different titles of the mutant franchise.

Some fans already believe – with some reason – that Breevort and Marvel are shooting themselves in the foot with physical comic book editions, urging the publishers to go entirely digital. After all, what does it matter if we already have to read part of our physical comic on a screen? Furthermore, they have already announced that those pages will be printed in the compilation volumes they release months later. In this plan, who would be willing to pay for something more expensive and incomplete?

The industry is changing at full speed, kids don’t read comics (not in physical form, at least) and the internet is destroying novelty and surprise. Creating a QR code definitely won’t solve anything beyond giving a false sense of modernity and innovation. This is the 21st century.

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