Marvel VP of Sales blames diversity for falling comic book sales

[Scottyjscizzle]

I've been saying it from the start, if you are making something "diverse" off a checklist its not diversity. Make the hero whatever it needs to be, then look at it and go hmm you know this would really work as (insert gender/race/etc) and do it, stop with the "Hey you know ironman, lets make him an asian transgender otherkin!!!" then be shocked when people feel irritated that their long time favorite comic is now something else.

[Mormolyce]

Rewriting lore to fit a black Human Torch was terrible....making Human Torch black was terrible.

Not even in the top 30 most terrible things in that movie.

Seriously, when I actually watched it my quibbles about Johnny Storm's skin colour seemed so petty.

[OrcsRLame]

The KKK, Nixon and Reagan were vilain long before

Hint: Futurama Nixon was not exactly an endorsment of him.

Futurama is comedy. It's an obvious parody of real life, and it does what it does brilliantly. I don't get the same kind of enjoyment from Futurama as I do from Sword Art Online or Unforgiven though.

I'm unsure if you're just throwing out factoids here for fun or if we're still arguing.

[Deleted]

You know what will really revitalize comic books? The introduction of the first Muslim gay transexual autistic black woman. Checking all boxes at once.

[Aggrophobic]

People will always compare price with content. If the content is shit, price should go down accordingly.

And in this case the price has gone up but the quality might very well be the same and that might be the reason for poor sales numbers.
Or young people don't buy as many books and comics these days becuase games, TV and such?

I knew a lot of people reading comics when I was young but I don't see my kids or friends kids reading them at all.
There are better ways to tell a story these days. Guess Marvel just has to deal with it.

[sarahtasher]

You know what will really revitalize comic books? The introduction of the first Muslim gay transexual autistic black woman. Checking all boxes at once.

No, let's reboot everything for the third time.

[Mormolyce]

This guy gets it.

Also, holy shit, I didn't know they actually made Donald Trump into a villain.

Pictured: Captain America fighting Richard Nixon, the evil head of the "Secret Empire", a subsidiary of Hydra. 1973.

During Watergate. Timely.

- - - Updated - - -

You know what will really revitalize comic books? The introduction of the first Muslim gay transexual autistic black woman. Checking all boxes at once.

How about if they killed Peter Parker and replaced him with a half-black, half-Mexican kid?

Oh wait, that happened, and as the OP indicated, Miles Morales remains a successful addition to the Marvel universe.

[Louisa Bannon]

That was back in 1941, at a time when people lived in fear of war and needed reassurance and something to raise their spirits. Hitler was the enemy back then and very much alive, and the threat of him invading played on everyones fears.

My understanding is that America was very much divided on this question and that Simon and Kirby actually received death threats and hate mail over their comic book. I mean, xenophobia is a pretty big deal right now. It's sad to think this problem may always be with us.

Art often plays the role of trying to guide people to the right side of a dilemma. Sometimes it rings true, other times it seems like a hollow gesture. Gender flipping major characters is a grotesque token effort that obviously rings hollow.

Some here seem to think that rising costs on books is factor, others that there is "big event" or "crossover" fatigue - and sure those things may be factors into dropping sales.

But nothing is going to stink like Peter Parker not being THE Spider-man. Or the Banner Hulk being dead. Or Warmachine dying over some minor skirkmish. Or Iron Man suddenly being some young black gal we never met before. Thor being female? The hammer gives someone the power of Thor, it doesn't make them Thor. Thor is the son of Odin and the Norse god of thunder - Thor is his name, it's not a title. Crazy me, if a Marvel writer/artists wanted to develop a book about a fantastically powerful female character that can control weather systems there is an entirely unknown character that could have been used: Storm.

In what world is Storm not a huge fucking fan favorite? They should be paying UFO lunatic Barry Smith a packet to come back and retune his Adastra material back into its original skin. Maybe they can just pay McNiven more, I dunno.

Gender flipping main characters again and again is a very bad idea that should never have made it into a published book. It will absolutely piss off long time subscribers and its doubtful that it even accomplishes its intended purpose in terms of attracting new and younger readers.

[OrcsRLame]

Pictured: Captain America fighting Richard Nixon, the evil head of the "Secret Empire", a subsidiary of Hydra. 1973.

During Watergate. Timely.

- - - Updated - - -



How about if they killed Peter Parker and replaced him with a half-black, half-Mexican kid?

Oh wait, that happened, and as the OP indicated, Miles Morales remains a successful addition to the Marvel universe.

I think that you think this is a rebuttal of my position. It's not. I don't defend that in any way. It's retarded. It was retarded then and it's retarded now. To me, that is basically the lowest form of art that exists.

[Deleted]

How about if they killed Peter Parker and replaced him with a half-black, half-Mexican kid?

Oh wait, that happened, and as the OP indicated, Miles Morales remains a successful addition to the Marvel universe.

But it would be even more successful if they made him gay at least.

[Deleted]

To be honest, i hate Miles Morales (black spider-man) and Riri Williams (black iron man). To me it's a lazy and stupid way to promote the acceptance on diversity and it's not a miracle that sales are dropping. It's just lame.
Is it that hard to come up with new super heroes that are black/white/yellow/green/blue/purple/rainbow? Originality is what made Marvel en DC great, not this.

[Mormolyce]

I think that you think this is a rebuttal of my position. It's not. I don't defend that in any way. It's retarded. It was retarded then and it's retarded now.

The Fantastic Four also fought a villain called the Hate-Monger in one of their first outings, he turned out to be a clone of Adolph Hitler wearing a KKK costume.

I also read an early Sgt Fury story about a racist getting transferred to the Howling Commandos and how they all reacted to him. Actually that one was pretty good. Not so much the Hate-Monger...

Marvel has always had progressive politics. If you don't like that, frankly you don't like Marvel.

[Skroe]

The Marvel VP is right. It comes down to this.

These are my X-Men


These are my Avengers (god I loved the Hickman Arc / Secret Wars)


This is my Thor


These are my Stories


These are my Artists




Give me what I want, and I will pay for it. I want to read about the Wolverine I grew up with. Not X-23. I want to read about the X-Men where Cyclops isn't a fascist and doesn't have a bunch of weird B-listers on it. I don't care about Ri-Ri Williams, and and Jane Foster isn't really Thor.

[OrcsRLame]

The Fantastic Four also fought a villain called the Hate-Monger in one of their first outings, he turned out to be a clone of Adolph Hitler wearing a KKK costume.

I also read an early Sgt Fury story about a racist getting transferred to the Howling Commandos and how they all reacted to him. Actually that one was pretty good. Not so much the Hate-Monger...

Marvel has always had progressive politics. If you don't like that, frankly you don't like Marvel.

I can like some stories in Marvel while telling other ones to fuck off.

Like anime, I would not say that I like Marvel. I don't hate Marvel either. I like things that entertain me and dislike things that don't. I will also pay for things that entertain me. Contemporary politics in fiction does not entertain me, and is in my opinion, the lowest form of art that exists.

I still think that you think you're making some kind of rebuttal to my position. And if that's the case, you're like, flailing around 30 meters that way while I'm back here waiting for the fight to start.

[Faroth]

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.

Price is a part of it, but for me?

Peter Park is now spider version of Batman + James Bond. Just doesn't fit well with me.
Peter Spider-Man, Miles Spider-Man, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Kaine, Scarlet Spider, Spider Woman - too many Spider-Peoples
Jean is dead, Xavier is dead, Cyclops was a complete Magneto minded asshole & now dead, Wolverine is dead.
X-23 as Wolverine just didn't land for me (and she was my top pick to fill the role in the book), but her new costume looks sweet & less like an imitator.
Old Man Logan in main timeline is not a replacement for Wolverine.
Time displaced X-Men makes no sense and are annoying to begin with.
Hulk is dead, Hulk is replaced.
JaneThor still makes no sense whatsoever and I still don't understand why they didn't do the Unworthy Thor storyline while Sif took over the typical Thor placement.

Where as:
Squirrel Girl was a new character in a new team that struck a chord with fans.
Ms. Marvel was a new character who made sense taking on a name only. She's not a replacement of Danvers at all.
JaneThor may be popular but I'd still have preferred Sif become a big name player more than this random choice.
Spider-Gwen started as a joke, really hit a chord, though.
Miles Morales was a new character in an alternate universe that responded to fan complaints of being too similar to 616. He grew over time to become a fan favorite.
Moon Girl is a gender swap, but of a character nobody's thought about for years.
I figured X-23 would be in there too, who was also developed alongside Logan & the X-Men for years before stepping up to take the mantle of Wolverine (giving her his costume was a poor choice, her upcoming new one looks better).

Don't take your most iconic characters and just race/gender swap them and call it a day and expect sales to pour in. You have to take time to develop new characters and let them grow on fans and grow into their own roles. There are a lot of ways to do this, but Marvel's been lazy in their approach in my opinion.

It also doesn't help that the writing has been so preachy it's cringe inducing. They've completely lost the concept of metaphor, nuance, and subtlety lately.

[Shadowferal]

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

Thor was the God of Thunder. They changed him in the movies so he's more or less Superman, but instead of laser eyes he fires energy from a hammer.
It's silly. The last writer that wrote him well imo was Michael Straczynski. (He showed how well Iron Man really measures up in a fight with him. And furthermore warned the government what a "God of Thunder" really means)

Comic sales have never recovered from the 1996 crash, and sales saw a brief resurgence in the mid-00s during the peak of the comic book movie craze, but yeah, overall paper sales have been steadily dropping. That's why Marvel and DC have been working to diversify their audience, and Gabriel himself even mentioned in an update to the article that The Mighty Thor, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Gwen, Miles Morales, Moon-Girl, and Squirrel Girl all remain very popular (Ms. Marvel in particular regularly outperforms sales expectations and it's likely Champions will do the same with her as the team's leader) and won't be going anywhere.

I agree that comic book sales have been in steady decline. But the reason why they seem to be trying new things is, well, they've nothing to lose at this point.
Tom Brevoort, VP of sales (former?) said flat out a few years ago (umm...2011, ok, that's not a few years ago) that controversy sells.

For the most part what Marvel does anymore is connect what is "new" with the old. (Originality means taking a risk, and that's not seen as a good investment anymore)

The "anchors" were created in the 60s. (Not counting Cap, Namor or the original Human Torch, or any character from the Golden Age)

Then Marvel got even more creative in the 70s...and they went to the wall with just about everything we know today.
The 80s went crazy from the sheer writing endeavors that reinforced characters that were created; e.g., Beta Ray Bill, Venom, Elecktra, She-Hulk, Dazzler, etc.,...(Though I extremely dislike Venom)
The 90s is when things started going downhill, and very much hit or miss. Cable, Deadpool, and even Gambit were ok. But they had the writers and the characters still reflecting from earlier material. The new "Darkhawk" was intriguing at first. But lacked the writing quality to keep any interest. The "Scarlet Spider" reflected back to Spider-Man, but still suffered from sucky writing. "Winter Guard" didn't make the cut because of the poor writing again. "Thunderbolts" did make the grade in a big way. Damn, that was good writing there! And that's what kept that title going strong. Things just took an embarrassing turn later.
The last good story run to me was the "Annihilation" series. (Yes, I bought the books)

They blame diversity when they should be blaming the writing and the decisions at the top that refuses to invest in originality.

[Faroth]

Give me what I want, and I will pay for it. I want to read about the Wolverine I grew up with. Not X-23. I want to read about the X-Men where Cyclops isn't a fascist and doesn't have a bunch of weird B-listers on it. I don't care about Ri-Ri Williams, and and Jane Foster isn't really Thor.

Hahahah, oh man, Wolvie used to have one heck of a head of hair.

I still can't believe Wolverine went YEARS with Jubilee as his sidekick in his book yet they never had him and X-23 as active partners doing the whole father/daughter bonding over globetrotting adventures thing. I like X-23, love her really, and some of the best things have been her and Logan's relationship. When he walked right up and punched Scott in the face just for putting her on X-Force with him was one of the best moments of their relationship and she wasn't even there.


For Riri Williams, I'm fine with her on her own as a concept, but again they're just swapping her out for Tony. Big mistake. Make her a genius, let her design her "Iron Man" armor, but I'd have made her an anime fan and give it a little manga/anime mech flair. Keep her in Chicago where not one single super hero seems to live and let her take a 6 issue mini-series. If she hits a chord with readers, she can guest in Iron Man with Tony bringing her in for a visit (patent issues? ) and even training for a while. Then she can do some small Avengers guest stuff. If all this builds and she keeps growing in popularity, she gets her own title, or joins/leads a new team based in Chicago.

I think the legacy classics should keep doing their thing in New York and possibly on the West Coast. But new characters, younger characters that teens might gravitate towards (I guess, I grew up with the same X-Men as you all in their 30s or so & my Spider-Man has always been married and I never had issues relating to him) should form teams and titles in untouched cities like Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, etc.

I'd also prefer to see the crossover events return to the old ways. Spider-Man might have a multi-Spider-title crossover every other year and the X-Men may have an X-title crossover every other year (or a big one then a small one the following year), but it wasn't a Marvel universe crossover where everyone in every title was affected. Onslaught ruined that and it's been these big massive "buy all the titles!" things ever since... and it seems like one just leads into another, yet the titles still feel unconnected more than ever.

To be honest, i hate Miles Morales (black spider-man) and Riri Williams (black iron man). To me it's a lazy and stupid way to promote the acceptance on diversity and it's not a miracle that sales are dropping. It's just lame.
Is it that hard to come up with new super heroes that are black/white/yellow/green/blue/purple/rainbow? Originality is what made Marvel en DC great, not this.

Keep in mind that Miles was actually a response to fan complaints. Ultimate Universe was becoming a carbon copy of 616, so they started making major shake ups to change things. Miles took a while to get popular, but as an alternate Earth Spider-Man, he built a fan base. Bringing him and Peter into the same universe makes them both a little less unique to me.

Riri I think could have been a cool character, but like I've said they're just taking the lazy approach and hoping legacy character name on a new person will carry the new character and it won't.

[Sunseeker]

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

THIS.

Diversity is only a problem to comic nutjobs who don't ever want to see comics change, and people who don't read comics.

Everyone in between will read a good comic based on the quality of its art and story.

That being said, there are simply too many comics on the shelves, at $3+ a pop with the ever increasing number of side-stories, crossover events and so on it's almost impossible to keep up with all but a handful of series these days. Further, the comic artist industry is not a kind one.

So yeah, don't blame diversity. If you can write a good "Black Superman" people will read a good "Black Superman". Clearly they wrote a good Captain Marvel and it's doing well. I don't read it but I've heard Squirrel Girl get nothing but good reviews. Spider-Gwen was good but I stopped keeping up with it (see above: price of comics) and Mighty Thor isn't bad (but I don't care much for Thor-themed comics anyway). People will read good comics if you make good comics.

[Ealyssa]

Diversity is 100% fine. What is retarded is CHANGING CHARACTERS PEOPLE LIKE.

I can't understand how anyone can think "hey lets make Ironman a black woman with an afro, it will be such a cool thing to do". Like WTF ???

Ironman is a white male named Tony Stark, period. I have nothing against a black woman super hero, but hey maybe try to use your brain for once Marvel and start creating something ? Like new heroes ?

I'm all for more diverse hero. But please, stop shoehorning them in allready existing one. And just create new ones ? A few change can be made when it actually makes "sense" (in a comic book way) Thor loosing his hammer to jane Foster ? Hey why not, not the first time he loose it. Like X-23 taking the mantle of Wolverine. But wanting to change everything just for change is stupid. We don't need an asian Dany Rand, we don't need a black woman Ironman, we don't need a 12 years old Power Man, we don't need a purple queer Hulk.

And price is a factor too. It's just crazy expensive for a few printed page on shity paper. Digital version are also really overpriced even if I now pretty much only read comics on comixology.

[unbound]

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"

Yep. It's much easier to blame boogeymen than to acknowledge real problems.

The real issue is that the comic industry has seen strong growth a few years ago when they opened into new markets (thanks to diversity). Now that they can't find new markets to infiltrate, and they haven't grown existing markets during those years, with markets plateauing, it looks like there are problems. During this same time, new players also entered the comic game which means there is a problem of over-saturation.

But rather than acknowledge that the market competition is a bit tougher and upper management at Marvel isn't handling the challenge very well, it is much easier to blame the diversity bogeyman because they know a good chunk of comic readers will buy into the BS.