The website Fuse.tv asked Marvel Editor-In-Chief Axel Alonso about Civil War II spoilers.

How does it feel when stories like major deaths and developments show up online before people can even buy the issue? It's happened at least a few times with Civil War II already.

He answered,

This is an industry in which there will always be predatory sites who are able to use the system to their advantage. They're able to find people, in certain cases retailers, who are willing to turn over information that's not yet public and post it. By going to a larger media outlet, and a strategic media outlet, we can get the right bang for our buck, get the right message out and control the message. There's instances where that's taken out of our hands, and a lot of people applaud those outlets like they've done them a favor, when it's actually hurting the market and it's mean-spirited because it hurts the creators. No one resents that more than the creators. And I hope I'm clear and I hope this gets into the article, 'cause it's a bad thing.

Is he talking about me? Possibly. But let's take a look at those Civil War II spoilers he's talking about.

The first big one was when someone who read the script to Civil War II #1 posted on the Neogaf forums. It revealed the death of Jim Rhodes and the possible death of She-Hulk. They were able to do this because one of the creators Axel Alonso is talking about wasn't as careful with who they let read the script as maybe they should have been. Predatory outlet? Retailer? No, one of Marvel's own employees.

The second big one was the death of Bruce Banner at the hands of Hawkeye which Marvel chose to spoil in the New York Daily News website.

Bleeding Cool had indeed run that story previously, but only because we'd guessed it from the promotional materials that Marvel had put out. Marvel asked "Who Will Fall?", Bleeding Cool looked at the evidence and said Hulk, at the hands of Hawkeye with the lead pipe arrow. So in this case, the culprit is Marvel PR – their challenge for the readers to work it out, and their tools for us to do so.

And as for the verdict of the Hawkeye/Banner trial, while again Bleeding Cool guessed that from the promotional material, the week before publication Marvel revealed it in a preview they released for Totally Awesome Hulk.

It's generally not retailers who reveal such information to Bleeding Cool, certainly we don't "find" retailers as Axel Alonso states. It's usually the creators themselves who, deliberately or accidentally, spill the beans. The rest of the time, it's Marvel's own promotional activity, again sometimes on purpose, sometimes quite by accident.

I'm reminded of the time John Byrne screamed in a retailer meeting that Marvel had revealed the upcoming death of Guardian in Alpha Flight in preview pages that had been shown off, only for the retailers to react with even greater surprise as they presumed the pages were a dream sequence… until John Byrne started shouting about it, that was.

Still, it's always fun to hear from the people in charge…