The world of comic books is lousy with reboots these days. The New 52 initiative over at DC is probably the highest-profile example (of the titles I’ve read so far, the Aquaman relaunch is my favorite; even Koothrappali won’t be able to say “Aquaman sucks” anymore), but it’s far from the only one.

Over at Marvel, one of the newest reboot examples is Fantastic Four: Season One, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s classic by updating the team’s origin tale. It’s received mixed reviews: USA Today called it outstanding, while IGN rated it mediocre.

I’m not here to review the book, though. Instead, I’m here to review the one panel you see above.

Back in 1962, when the FF first encountered cosmic rays, news about their powers was spread by television, radio and newspapers. In Season One, news travels a lot faster: For example, Johnny Storm is the top-trending topic on Twitter and has his own website.

Except he doesn’t.

I mean, he does if you read the panel above. But just try and go to the site he names. No, seriously. Try. I’ll wait.

See?

Is it really that difficult, people?

How many writers and editors and marketers read that book and saw that panel? And you mean to tell me that no one at Marvel thought to register that domain before I did?

And they ought to be damn happy I did, by the way. Imagine if they similarly ignored a domain that was registered to a porn site — which is not at all out of the realm of possibility given the domain in question.

Worse yet, no Marvel marketer had the forethought not only to register the site, but to set up a Twitter account for Johnny Storm? For goodness sake, you’re saying he’s the top-trending topic on Twitter — and you’re not even going to get an intern to do some tweeting for him so you can add an actual social media dimension to the story you’re telling?

This seems to me to be a gigantic missed opportunity on Marvel’s part. In the Venn diagram of comic book fans and social media users, the overlap of those two circles is pretty significant. To be talking about social media components in one of your A-list releases of the year and not follow through by reflecting those components in the real world is a pretty big mistake.

But I get it: Marvel publishes dozens of titles each week. Even with their massive marketing resources, they probably don’t have the time to dot every I and cross every T, much less create a full-on social media initiative. Fine. At the very least, then, spend the six bucks it requires to register the domain and redirect it to the Fantastic Four page of the Marvel Universe Wiki.

Epic fail. ‘Nuff said.

Takeaway for marketers: If you’re going to use a fictional web address in some piece of published material, make sure you own that domain. Then actually do something with it. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Since I posted about Pinterest the other day, I’ve spent some time playing with my Pinterest account.

Not only did I find the time to go into my account and figure out how to create boards, add pins and upload pins, I now have seven boards and am starting to understand the Pinterest obsession.

I’m also starting to understand some of the marketing and communications implications beyond “hey, I’m gonna point to something I like.”

Visit Bucks County is the first entity on Pinterest I’ve come across that seems to be doing it right. They have separate boards (think bulletin boards where you can post images of cool stuff) for “Dine in Bucks County,” “Stay in Bucks County,” “Shop in Bucks County,” “Say ‘I Do’ in Bucks County” and more. The trick, of course, is not to just create the board and let it sit (though search will give you some traffic, I assume), but to keep adding content on an ongoing basis.

I’m sorta surprised Zappo’s doesn’t have a presence on Pinterest (they’re great at social media and they’re all about shopping, which is a huge part of what Pinterest is about), but I guess it’s pretty early in the game for companies to be all over the platform. I have no doubt they’ll be crawling all over it before too much longer.

I have a Pinterest account. I got it because someone I know offered me an invite and I like to check out new online networks and tools, especially if they seems to be gaining some traction.

Almost immediately, I started getting a lot of emails with the subject line: “[name] is following you on Pinterest.” Holy mackeral! I haven’t done a damn thing with Pinterest, I still haven’t spent the time to go into my account and figure out how to create boards, add pins and upload pins … but those emails keep coming.

Wow. That’s some hardcore traction. So I’m not surprised when Mashable reports that Pinterest has become a top traffic driver for retailers. (They also recently listed 21 Pinterest users you must follow.)

I see some interesting potential for the platform, too. For example, one of the drawbacks of online news reading (vs. reading a printed newspaper) is the loss of serendipity. When reading a paper, you turn the page and don’t know what story you’re going to see. You might go right past it, but you might find something you never expected and read it, only to learn something you never expected to find. Online, that serendipity is lost: People generally click to read exactly what they want to read and nothing else.

On Pinterest, you can click into the “Film, Music & Books” section and stumble upon (phrase used purposefully: Pinterest is like StumbleUpon on steroids) all sorts of interesting things. Imagine Pinterest categories for local, regional or national news. Imagine a local paper having a Pinterest page on their site that helps people discover new things near where they live.

I think I need to find the time to go into my account and figure out how to create boards, add pins and upload pins.

Takeaway for marketers: You need to, too.

Facebook’s coming IPO is all the rage in the news at the moment. Some links you might find worth clicking:

The L.A. Times takes a look at the IPO by the numbers.

Forbes calls it a “watershed moment.”

C|NET details the “top 10 surprises” about the IPO.

The Christian Science Monitor explains why this is a good thing for Groupon, Pandora, Zynga and others.

The Wall Street Journal looks at who’ll be getting rich on the deal.

The Week looks at the question we all have: Should we buy? (The answer: probably not.)

The Guardian notes that those pesky Winkelvii will cash in big-time. Maybe this will finally shut them up.

Ehhhhh, maybe not so much … at least if you believe some *ahem* “sponsored content” from the folks over at Destination CRM.

Actually, it’s from the folks at intelliresponse (Destination CRM only blasted the info to their mailing list), and while it’s the sort of information that’s hardly coming from someone without any skin in the game, it’s nevertheless tough to ignore. Here’s the salient point:

The number of questions asked via social media channels account for less than 1/100th of a percent of questions asked via customer-facing websites.

In other words: When customers have a customer service question, are they looking for answers in social media or on a company’s website? Overwhelmingly it’s the website.

Which begs the question: With spending on social forms of CRM on the rise big-time, is this really where dollars ought to be spent?

Takeaway for marketers: Sure, explore social customer service channels … but make sure your website is up to snuff first.