Some X-Men comics now feature a QR code on the back of the book that hides a “bonus page.” These new hidden pages have sparked a huge debate online among comic readers and fans about what counts as bonus content and comic preservation.
If you look online nowyou’ll find people claiming that Marvel will lock the last page of all future comics behind a QR code. That’s a pretty wild claim! some of these tweets have gone semi-viral among comic book fans, which has led many people to assume that this is the case. However, this is not quite the whole story, even if the truth is still a controversial mess that has led to many online debates
Earlier this month, Marvel started doing something different with some of his new X-Men-related comics. At the very end of July 10 X-Men #1 by Jed MacKay and Ryan Stegman, readers came across a large QR code printed on one of the last pages. If you scanned this code, you would unlock a bonus comic page that teased future events or villains. (In the case of X-Men
Why Marvel makes QR hidden bonus pages in X-Men
According to Tom Brevoort, VP Executive Editor of Marvel Comics, the comic book company is not cutting content from the books here, but instead adding a bit of additional content without containing spoilers. as he explained on his personal Substack.
[The QR code page] was initially a bonus page, an additional page – we did not reduce the content X-Men
The publisher also confirmed that Marvel will create similar QR bonus pages in the future X-Men Comic starts as a kind of “modern equivalent of the ‘Things To Come’ page that appeared in the first issue of the Claremont/Lee X-Men #1.”
So it is not about Marvel cuts the last page out of a book and hide it behind a QR code—as comic book authors have confirmed— instead it is a bonus page, something extra.
However, some fans disagree. They consider these bonus pages to be important to the overall story and therefore these “extras” are actually the last pages of a comic. It doesn’t help that one of these QR pages was not available when the comic was first sold. I also understand that people don’t want to read comic book pages on their tiny phone screens when they’ve spent money on a real comic book to expand their collection. That’s weird and not ideal.
There is good news. According to Brevoort, the bonus pages will be included and not hidden behind a QR code when these issues are compiled for later release – like Marvel always does with comics.
This means that decades from now, people won’t have to hope that a URL still works to see another page in a physical comic book. The Marvel editor even suggested that if they release a second edition of a comic with a QR code page, they might include that bonus page in the comic instead, since spoilers no longer matter at that point.
This is all nice to hear and should mean that comic preservation artists don’t have to print out a digital page from a website to preserve history.
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