There’s no doubt about it – Marvel are at the top of the world right now. They’ve got the single biggest franchise of all time (no, seriously, they’ve grossed over $13.5 billion dollars at the box office over 17 movies – for comparison, the 24 James Bond films have only scored $7 billion), they’ve got their characters on anything from lunch boxes to mobile games (with the most successful one, “Marvel: Contest of Champions”, estimated to make a staggering $250,000 PER DAY), and the trailer for the latest instalment, “Avengers: Infinity War”, becoming the single most watched trailer on YouTube within hours of its release. With Iron Man and Captain America being international legends comparable to Luke Skywalker or Mickey Mouse, it’s kind of hard to believe that a mere ten years ago Marvel wasn’t in the best place, financially speaking.
In the 1990s, Marvel was in a REALLY tough spot. The story behind it is kind of fascinating – around that time, several news stories suddenly started popping up about people discovering their old Superman and Spider-Man comics, with the issues of their first appearances selling out for amazingly huge prices. Suddenly, people realized that comics were actually valuable, and many got it in their heads that maybe they, too, could invest in first issues of comic books and sell them for hundreds of thousands of dollars in 50 years’ time. That led to multiple first issues selling a staggering amount, most of which were bought by collectors and people who had no intention of ever reading the comic’s contents. But hey, if more people were buying comics than ever, what was the problem? Well, the thing is, while the first issue sold a ton, most of those sales remained unopened and unread. And since nobody read them, nobody cared enough to buy the second, third or fourth issues, leading to a market crash before the end of the decade that ultimately led to Marvel declaring bankruptcy.
To get out of that tight spot, Marvel needed to do make a lot of hard choices that were inevitable, yet would continue to haunt them to this very day. The worst part was that they sold a ton of their movie rights to various movie studios (for example, Spider-Man and Ghost Rider went to Sony, the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Daredevil went to Fox, the Incredible Hulk went to Universal, etc). And, of course, just a few years later they also made a deal with slot developer Playtech to release slots based on properties owned by Marvel Comics. And while Playtech kept their end of the deal, releasing comics based on the comic book incarnations of Spider-Man and Wolverine, most of their slots were loosely and unofficially not based on comics, but on their movie adaptations. Slots like The Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four and Elektra claimed a comic book inspiration, but were clearly meant to tie into big movies released around the same time.
But Playtech didn’t truly start to shine until 2008, when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was born. Their Iron Man slots were all fantastic, featuring various different features, and their Thor slot even had pictures from the movie as it symbols! The slot was based on a property that Marvel owned, so using the actors’ likenesses was A-OK for the first time since the deal happened. And let me tell you, all of the slots released during that time were AWESOME! Each featured a different gimmick/feature, very high production values and even wholly original music, which is just so rare in slots. But alas, it wasn’t meant to be. In 2009, Marvel was purchased by Disney – a company with a notoriously anti-gambling stance. Right then and there, they announced that they would be honoring the deal Marvel made with Playtech, but wouldn’t renew it – meaning that the developer wouldn’t be able to make any new slots after 2013. While 2012’s “The Avengers” wasn’t the last Marvel slot ever made, it most certainly felt like a grand, epic swan song to the entire saga.
While Playtech weren’t allowed to make any more slots after Iron Man 3, which marked the very last Marvel-themed online slot ever made, all of the games – alongside their shared Marvel jackpot – would remain online, where they would continue to be enjoyed for years to come… But even that had its end. As of April 2017, every single Marvel-themed Playtech slot was taken down in what, frankly, felt like a petty move that Disney made to express their displeasure over the fact that Playtech are now working with WB/DC on slots themed after their properties. Playtech are planning to rebrand the slots and return them to action, but it’s not going to feel the same. Here’s to you, Marvel slots! It was fun while it lasted.