Do creators entice readers with lies or mislead them?
There are different benchmarks for everybody, of course, but I don’t think most creators actively lie about their work or upcoming stories. However, I think that misleading the readership is all part of the game. To give you a for instance, were you to ask me who the mystery villain in the next issue of Avengers was, I could tell you and ruin the surprise, I could simply refuse to say anything, but that doesn’t really do anybody any favors, or I can do a little verbal dance with you and hopefully keep you intrigued in what’s coming up. And it’s even easier when the fans themselves are coming up with their own ideas and theories, often ones that are so far afield from what’s actually coming up that they may as well be describing a different comic book entirely. In those cases, you can easily just let them go. The tease is a part of the whole promotional dance, and everybody does it a little bit differently.
