Super Serious 616 is now "What If... Marvel was REAL?"
What's happening here in the real world and why
In an effort to expand our reach we are re-branding Super Serious 616. This podcast originally launched in March 2021. We are coming up on two years! We started with three episodes per week, dropped down to two per week, and as of last summer moved to a single episode per week. While our content production has slowed down both of us are still very excited and engaged in the project and will continue producing episodes for the foreseeable future.
When we started the project the first nine episodes were all about the Fantastic Four (#10 introduced the Hulk, #13 Spider-man, and #16 Thor). Each new character introduced was an exciting opportunity to discuss new pent up ideas in the episodes. New variety is fun! Along the way we got better at structuring and editing episodes. We introduced things like “behind the comic” and full episode transcripts. We have had a ton of fun, but our audience has not grown the way we would have liked. We have more fun ideas, but they require larger audiences. So along the way we also invested in audience-growth strategies. None worked in any significant way.
We promoted episodes on Overcast. We promoted newsletters on The Sample. We hired two different public relations firms (one grew our social media, to no real effect; the second got us on television as “Marvel experts” for Disney movies, but also did not grown any listenership). We are trying again with a new strategy. This time I am going with an old friend who has grown a number of podcasts to top rankings on iTunes. Brfore he got started he suggested a couple of changes: The most significant was re-branding. His concern was that when someone glances at our logo, “Super Serious 616” they will likely come away with no idea of what our podcast is about. Even if they are desperately looking for our “product” (an in-universe analysis of early Marvel comics), they are unlikely to realize that is what we are offering with their first exposure to the “brand”.
So we are shifting to s far less subtle strategy. The new name and logo is very descriptive of what we are doing:
WHAT IF… MARVEL was real?
It would be hard to summarize what we do in fewer words.
We are also using the typography and logos of both “What If” and “Marvel”. When we started this podcast we were a little worried that what we were doing may infringe on Disney trademarks. Our belief was that what we were doing was “satire” and that we were protected, but we wanted to make sure we did not use any Disney logos. We may have been right if we were a podcast produced by Paramount or Sony. But it seems less and less likely anyone at Disney cares at all about what we are doing with our little show. And there are LOTS of much bigger podcasts out there that use the MARVEL logo indiscriminately. We are likely safe for now.
In the unlikely case that we get so big and threatening that Disney asks us to stop using their logo, we will switch back to being Super Serious 616. Those are what they call “good problems to have”.
So that is the story of the re-brand. If it goes well our audience here will grow dramatically. If that happens, we will begin rolling out some other ideas we have for this community.
Until then, the show goes on just as it has before. And we are coming up to some exciting times in the Marvel Universe. May 1965 sees the publication of Avengers #16, where the team is given a complete refresh (it was also the most valuable comic I owned as a kid - a birthday present from my parents when I was about 12 years old). 1965 will also see Namor getting his own title, the birth of SHIELD (run by Nick Fury), more continuing storylines (instead of villains of the week), Peter Parker graduating high school (clearly not discussed in the episodes), and the introduction of the Sentinels into X-men lore.
Stay tuned every week for the new and improved WHAT IF… Marvel was real?