Marvel VP of Sales blames diversity for falling comic book sales

[Deleted]

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...-a7662771.html

'People didn’t want any more diversity'.

Despite forming the basis for the multi-million dollar blockbusters that have recently overtaken Hollywood, Marvel comic book sales have been falling.

Well, Marvel VP of Sales, David Gabriel, spoke about what they believe could possibly lead to the decline, putting the blame on diversity.

“What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity,” Gabriel told ICv2 at the Marvel Retailer summit. “They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not.”

He continued: “I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales. We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against.

“That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked.”

Later on, after the comments were picked up by numerous outlets, Gabriel clarified how Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, The Mighty Thor, Spider-Gwen, Miles Morales, and Moon Girl continue to prove popular and won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

In recent years, Marvel has made steps to diversify their roster of heroes, often to large critical acclaim. Falling sales because of this seems rather minimal: instead, most fans have questioned the price of comic books in recent years.

As iO9 points out, the average price of a Marvel comic in the US stands around $3.99 to $5.99. Over here in the UK, to purchase the most recent Mighty Thor you’re looking to spend around £2.49 for the 22-page comic.

Meanwhile, over in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Brie Larson will play the first leading female superhero in 2019, taking on the role of Captain Marvel.

[darkwarrior42]

Haven't we heard this before?

-Daredevil movie does poorly: "People must not like Daredevil movies"
-Catwoman movie does poorly: "People must not like female superhero movies"

[Raptor With a Saber]

Most of them dont matter but what does matter was making some of the main characters in the marvel verse another race/gender and just killing them off. Hulk/Tony stark for example. They shoulda stayed doing what they were doing like what they did with spiderman and d.c has done with new heros. You keep the old just make the new ones their own hero. Dont replace them make someone to rival them

[dvaz]

Well no shit Einstein. No one wants a female Thor, nor a black teeny female Iron Man.

[sixbocta]

In recent years, Marvel has made steps to diversify their roster of heroes, often to large critical acclaim.

Their problem was that they spent too much time listening to professional virtue signalling "critics" and not enough time on their actual customers.

[Dextroden]

Well no shit Einstein. No one wants a female Thor, nor a black teeny female Iron Man.

Plus. It doesn't help that they have the stink of "made specifically to increase diversity" and not "Is actually interesting".

[Charge me Doctor]

Well, when you make changes that make no fucking sense just as a token of "diversity" you get sales drop

[May90]

I don't know, usually people don't mind seeing this kind of heroes in games/movies/books:



They must have screwed up somewhere else; I doubt the female characters could have this effect.

[shrunken]

Source: words

I strongly doubt it's that people "don't want more female characters". What they don't want is for Thor's nordic horsecock to get lopped off because in some alternative universe we're going to pretend that feminists are a target demographic of fucking comic books.

Their problem is that they don't employ a single artist with enough creativity to conceive a new and interesting character that fits the social molds they want to fill.

[leviathonlx]

If they wanted diversity so bad they should have made new characters and also not made those characters defined by their race or sexual orientation.

[dvaz]

Their problem was that they spent too much time listening to professional virtue signalling "critics" and not enough time on their actual customers.

This.

These "critics" all they do is bitch and moan over social media, but they dont spend a fuckin cent on their products.
They get their moral high for the day and forget about it.
This reminds me of the United and "banning" leggings shitstorm last week that some sjw mom started without knowning wtf was going on, most of these were bombarding Twitter with "omg you just lost my business" or "im not flying United ever again".
Bitch please, you are going to fly whatever comes up the cheapest in Expedia.

Companies need to learn to ignore these idiots.

[Brubear]

When you manage talent poorly, over-saturate the market, and price out customers, don't blame product diversity as the cause of declining sales.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/marvel-vp-bla...ump-1793921500

...

That being said, Gabriel’s point is bullshit, because it shelves blame onto the readers and blatantly ignores a lot of other reasons Marvel Comics are doing terribly. For example, the crazy over-abundance of events and crossovers. During the discussion, retailers pointed out during the summit that the number of Marvel events, and the fact that they overlap, make it hard for fans to focus. Right now, for instance, there’s Secret Empire, which will bleed over with Generations, which starts this summer. In the past two years alone, there have been at least 12 events and crossovers. Events, in particular, have become more of a chore than a reward. There’s little build-up or anticipation because you know another one’s right around the corner. They also can completely screw over beloved characters for the sake of drama, like turning Captain America into a fascist as Sam Wilson has taken his mantle.

Then you’ve got issue cost and audience retention. Nowadays, individual issues typically cost anywhere from $3.99 to $5.99 or more, making it harder for fans to want to buy— especially if you’re swapping out an established character for a version they aren’t familiar with. While chatting with retailers, Gabriel actually boasted that their sales almost tripled when they upped the Spider-Man book from $3.99 to $9.99, even though it didn’t bring in any new readers. It just made the current ones pay more money.

Finally, and this is a major one, there’s the problem of talent management. There’s been a steady decline in Marvel’s talent pool, because of better offers and independent retailers. One retailer mentioned at the summit that it’s especially hard to keep talented writers and artists when they can make creator-owned books at publishers like Image. Not only does it give them more flexibility to tell the stories they want, but they also keep way more of the revenue.

...

[Zyster]

It's because the amount of people that actually believe there is inequality that matters is slim to none, yet they are really vocal and somehow marvel fell for it.

Also big difference between making a female super hero with amazing story and doing something like this for the sake of diversity.

[Jotaux]

When you manage talent poorly, over-saturate the market, and price out customers, don't blame product diversity as the cause of declining sales.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/marvel-vp-bla...ump-1793921500

I call BS on that quote, Hydra cap is probably the best title they have while Sam Wilson is unreadable (even though I try every month).

[dwightyo39]

I don't know, usually people don't mind seeing this kind of heroes in games/movies/books:



They must have screwed up somewhere else; I doubt the female characters could have this effect.

Last time I played Tera it was plagued with those Asian child porn characters (Elin).

[Louisa Bannon]

Marvel is in such shambles. They've got a whole bunch of original female characters that are actually very worthy of further development, but instead they just gender flip major characters.

It's just impossibly stupid to have a female Thor, when they could have developed either Valkyrie or Sif into something interesting. Personally, I was very disappointed in how they handled the whole Beta Ray Bill and Sif relationship. The Unworthy Thor is just ghastly. The supposed big secret about why Thor is unworthy feels like something only a lawyer could come up with to justify doing really stupid things with major characters.

The way the spider titles have multiplied is also insane. Silk, Spider-gwen? Sorry, never had to see those happen.

Iron man is supposed to be some young black chick? Why? Why can't she be the new War-Machine? No spoilers here, but that's just an obvious option that was ignored.

The She-Hulk was always sort of a stupid cheesecake thing. So no joy there because it was always half-assed to begin with.

Moon-Girl? Trying to correct too much of the work of Jack Kirby is probably a mistake. It's better by far to just keep riding on his coattails. Anyway, Devil Dinosaur is the star of that. So what were they thinking?

Not going to spend a lot of time shitting on SJW concerns, but the latest in a long list of stupid SJW demands that Iron Fist/Danny Rand be an Asian character for some reason is just fucking nuts. Now I haven't seen the Netflix Iron Fist, and I may never, but the idea that a character originally created during the martial arts craze of the 1970s must for some reason be Asian is just addle-headed. Did they forget Shang-Chi, the martial arts character that predates Iron Fist? Are they both supposed to be Asian for some reason? If I had to think about how or why Marvel made these choices back in the 1970s I think its fairly obviously a simple matter of Shang-Chi being Bruce Lee and Danny Rand being Chuck Norris except as comic book characters.

I think my real deal here is that SJW concerns don't actually exist. There's dozens of great female characters to work with, there are just as many other characters representing diverse backgrounds. There's no reason to trash, kill off or gender flip any existing characters. It's just bad writing. You don't write by committee and you don't produce good results by following some bizarre social agenda instead of focusing on good storytelling or character development.

Some of my favorite characters from Marvel include:
Morbius, the Living Vampire who is Greek
Phyla-Vell, Quasar a Lesbian character
Black Panther, Leader of the Super-Tech Wakandans
Son of Satan, literally the child of the bad guy, which must piss of Christians the world over
Scarlet Witch, perhaps the most powerful super-hero ever, who is some sort of Eastern European unless I missed another retcon
Etc Etc Etc, meaning this could be a very long and diverse list

There's not a gender or diversity problem. There's just short-sighted publishers and developers. There's certainly no need to gender flip any characters. What they need to do is simply tell better stories with what they have already.

[Brubear]

I call BS on that quote, Hydra cap is probably the best title they have while Sam Wilson is unreadable (even though I try every month).

So you call bullshit on that quote (and the multiple likely reasons for their decline in sales) because you like Hydra Cap (so one sentence out of that entire thing)? Got it.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Surely more than one reason can exist for poor sales. On the topic of diversity, I think its very possible that some of these changes turned away more buyers than it gained.

[Mormolyce]

Later on, after the comments were picked up by numerous outlets, Gabriel clarified how Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, The Mighty Thor, Spider-Gwen, Miles Morales, and Moon Girl continue to prove popular and won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

Note that these are all "new" characters or gender/race swaps of old characters. In one way or another.

So suffice it to say, some of them worked and some didn't? Sounds like business as usual for comics.

[Edge-]

Later on, after the comments were picked up by numerous outlets, Gabriel clarified how Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, The Mighty Thor, Spider-Gwen, Miles Morales, and Moon Girl continue to prove popular and won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

In recent years, Marvel has made steps to diversify their roster of heroes, often to large critical acclaim. Falling sales because of this seems rather minimal: instead, most fans have questioned the price of comic books in recent years.

I'll just leave this here while everyone else is focused on the ever so important SJW vs. anti-SJW nonsense.

Using bold to highlight only the bits that serve your argument isn't terrible interesting, go figure : /

Note: I think most of the recent "Diversity for diversities sake" stuff is silly, myself. But I'm a casual non-comic book reading observer so I don't give a shit one way or another.