Marvel VP of Sales blames diversity for falling comic book sales

[zenkai]

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

Perhaps they should focus more on a good story instead of what race/sex their characters are.

[sarahtasher]

[QUOTE=Laurcus;45225042]Captain America has not punched Hitler for a very long time.



That would be just as silly today as Fem Thor and her ethics in hammer wielding. At best, something like that would be fucking hilarious. At worst it would be ham fisted garbage. It would definitely not be badass on any level.

I don't know the point you're trying to make by linking a scene from a movie that I greatly dislike that was made in the black and white era of television. Casablanca is hot garbage to me. Overrated junk. Good art is not political. Get the emphasis now?

This is not political.



This is not political.



This is not political.



Okay, so now the GG crowd is imagining that political undertone is not common in art. It's a whole new low, I would say. There is not at all a subtle message in, say, Richard III or Henry the Fifth. At all...

[Deleted]

So they discovered that being a cuck doesn't pay when the vast majority of your audience are boys and men and they don't really care about female characters that they can't identify with. Aww...

[Berengil]

I feel like the article quoted in the Op could be subtitled " From the files of N.S. Sherlock."

I've been a comics reader since I can recall; first looking at piles of older comics from the 60s and 70s that some of my cousins had, then graduating to buying my own at grocery store spinner racks, then finally discovering entire stores dedicated to comic books when i was 9. I've seen a lot of stuff change.

This trend right now is blatantly a virtue-signalling project. There is one solution: drop books that do crap like has been done to Iron Man, Thor, etc.

That's what I do. I haven't read Thor since his girlfriend took the hammer, and I dropped Iron Man when the change there was announced. We all know why Marvel swaps established characters rather than trying to develop new heroes of diverse genders/race/ect: because those books would largely not sell.

So they desperately do it to established books, hoping that long-time readers stick around. Well, as my dad used to tell me " Hope in one hand, sh-t in the other, and see which one fills up first."

I've dropped so many marvel books from my pull list over the last 2 years, it's the smallest it's been in a long time. At one time I was reading like 15 marvel books a month, down to 9 now. I've shifted some of that money over to DC/Image/Dark Horse.

Seven to Eternity (Image) is one of the best comics I've read in a long time. It gives me the impression of scifi and fantasy comics from the 70s and early 80s. Best book at DC right now is a tossup between Nightwing and JLA (which really should have just been called Batman & the Outsiders). Main JL book is pretty good too. best Marvel book right now is Punisher, imo. Becky Cloonan is almost as good as Garth Ennis was on it years ago.

[OrcsRLame]

There is not at all a subtle message in, say, Richard III or Henry the Fifth. At all.

I am only aware of those as people, not as works of art. If you're referring to some work of fiction titled "Richard III or Henry the Fifth" I am wholly unfamiliar with such works. I very much doubt I would enjoy them if they are politically charged.

Like, my maximum for political messages in art is Game of Thrones. And I can only tolerate that because it's based on actual events in history, (the wars of the roses) and the only injection of modern day politics is that the dragons are analogous to nuclear weapons. And I have to try really hard to not think about the whole dragons = nukes shit that Martin said in an interview.

[NineSpine]

Captain America has not punched Hitler for a very long time.



That would be just as silly today as Fem Thor and her ethics in hammer wielding. At best, something like that would be fucking hilarious. At worst it would be ham fisted garbage. It would definitely not be badass on any level.

I don't know the point you're trying to make by linking a scene from a movie that I greatly dislike that was made in the black and white era of television. Casablanca is hot garbage to me. Overrated junk. Good art is not political. Get the emphasis now?

This is not political.



This is not political.



This is not political.



That's the kind of art that I like, and the kind of art that Marvel has produced before.

Bloodborne is about a society in decline because of organized religion and drug use. If you don't think that it has political overtones, you are deliberately missing them.

[dope_danny]

Female heroes nothing, they turned heros -the characters you are meant to root for- into soap boxes for the artists personal politics blogging and folks just arent interested in paying for what effectively can be gained by following someone who rants a lot on twitter.

I dont know a single person still buying comics from marvel and wasn't because of characters like Kamala Khan is was how they didnt know how to use their pre 2000's characters for anything but puppeting random first year college politics and why pay money for that?

[GennGreymane]

My friends who dislike politics in games love games with politics in them. I just felt like adding that.

[sarahtasher]

I am only aware of those as people, not as works of art. If you're referring to some work of fiction titled "Richard III or Henry the Fifth" I am wholly unfamiliar with such works. I very much doubt I would enjoy them if they are politically charged.

Like, my maximum for political messages in art is Game of Thrones. And I can only tolerate that because it's based on actual events in history, (the wars of the roses) and the only injection of modern day politics is that the dragons are analogous to nuclear weapons. And I have to try really hard to not think about the whole dragons = nukes shit that Martin said in an interview.

You genuinely don't know what are Richard III and Henry the Fifth ?

[Darkeon]

I wouldn't say that "Diversity" is to blame. More the way it's implemented and how forced it feels. Doesn't help that some contain gringy feminist\SJW writing.

But it isn't new that Suits at the top of the corporations quickly jump at the most obvious trait of something and declare that's the sole reason it flopped.

[sarahtasher]

So they discovered that being a cuck doesn't pay when the vast majority of your audience are boys and men and they don't really care about female characters that they can't identify with. Aww...

What do you call a ''cuck'' ? Having comics in which white-clad vigilantes mowing down thinly veiled minorities are not the vilains ? And, of course, angry boys can identify themselves with a dude with mutant powers...

[OrcsRLame]

You genuinely don't know what are Richard III and Henry the Fifth ?

Correct. I honestly have no idea. I know they were kings a long fucking time ago. I know a little about Richard the third as a person. That is the extent of my knowledge on the subject.

[callipygoustp]

Does diversity really matter when your content is getting played out?

[sarahtasher]

Correct. I honestly have no idea. I know they were kings a long fucking time ago. I know a little about Richard the third as a person. That is the extent of my knowledge on the subject.

There are plays that are kinda more seen as art then FF XIII (FFVI, I would not say, but XIII...)

You like anime, isn'it ? So I will give an example

In Attack on Titan, it was revealed recently that people called Edeans are persecuted by the Marleysians and forced to live in dilapidated urban areas while wearing armbands. Gee, is there some kind of subtle allusion there ?

[Machismo]

I do think it may be about companies trying to hard to be diverse. If they feel compelled to turn historic characters into other races and genders, then people are going to react. It's not sexism or racism driving it, but change that is likely throwing people off. If someone has known a character one way their entire life, changing it will not likely sit well.

Yes, most characters are white males, we get it. Yes, that should probably change going forward. No, that does not mean you retcon old characters, or decide to just change them out of the blue.

[Draco-Onis]

Perhaps they should focus more on a good story instead of what race/sex their characters are.

That's correct Marvel can learn from the way DC has implemented diversity, they build up the characters for years so they are flushed out and put them in the story. Marvel's approach has been to just drop characters out of nowhere and make them lead it is too forced and sales are suffering.

[Revi]

I'm not sure I'm convinced that diversity is a significant reason for declining comic book sales overall, but I think it's pretty obvious why the half-assed gender-swap of established characters isn't popular.

That has more to do with horrible writing and lack of creativity than it has to do with the diversity of the characters.

[sarahtasher]

I hate to state the obvious, but isn't Thor and for instance Superman not even Humans in the first place ?

[OrcsRLame]

Bloodborne is about a society in decline because of organized religion and drug use. If you don't think that it has political overtones, you are deliberately missing them.

That is certainly one interpretation, but I'm not convinced it's an accurate one. Yharnam was pretty fucked regardless because of what they did to Kos. That was inevitably going to invite destruction upon them with or without the Plague of the Beasts.

That's the interesting thing about Bloodborne. You can ask 100 different people to explain it, and you'll get 100 different interpretations.

Bloodborne's portrayal of religion is not extremely charitable, but it's not overly harsh either imo. There were good people in the Healing Church. People that advised caution, to not so hastily consume the blood of alien abominations.

Furthermore, I think you have missed the point of what I was saying. I'm not saying that politics must be absent from art entirely. From a certain point of view, anything is political if you abstract it enough. A man and a woman talking could be interpreted as a political statement that women are equal to men, or at least not treated as cattle.

What I am against, is modern politics being jammed into things. Topics like Feminism, or Gamergate, or Donald Trump, are not interesting to me, and certainly not what I want to experience in my entertainment. Sure Bloodborne has religion, and some people in that religion fucked up and then doubled down on their fuck ups. Other people tried to prevent and fix that though, other members of the church. That's not at all the same as if you were dealing with Muslim Jihadis and you had to kill them all to save Acirema or something.

[tankbug]

"People don't want change"