Marvel VP of Sales Blames Women and Diversity for Sales Slump In a recent interview during the Marvel Retailer Summit, Marvel VP of Sales David Gabriel decided to ignore all the problems and criticism in order to place the blame on diversity. "What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. 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." Naturally the writer of the story says that's BS. 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. It's at least an arguable point. It's one thing to create new diverse characters, but it's quite another to take older, established characters to replace the new ones.
I've never actually ever seen someone reading a comic. Replacing old characters is definitely a bad idea, but I think they have much bigger problems to address.
Comic books can't compete with electronic entertainment, and especially now when you can just wait for the comic book movie instead of paying 3-5 bucks a piece for a thin little magazine. Modern CGI abilities mean that the movies can show things just as fantastical as comics do, which wasn't the case for most of the history of comic books. Plus, most comic franchises have been around for decades, and new ones are barely recycled versions of already existing ones. The stories have all been told already, there's really nothing new to see.
All true. If there is any sort of issue here with this it is that we see it time and time again in music, entertainment such as TV and movies, video games, even in the art world. Everyone has to filter everything through the politically correct lense of social justice and ignore the quality or value of the subject. Amy Schumer's leather special BOMBED in spectacular fashion while Dave Chappelle's return to stand up is getting decent ratings. But of course Dave was attacked for making jokes about gays and women and transgender people etc. Schumer on the other hand whined that it was the alt right and trump supporters who made her special fail. Ignoring the fact that most viewers simply found her to boring to watch. We saw a movie called moonlight, which most people had not heard of or even seen, win big at the oscars. It might have been a good film I have no idea but it certainly had the trifecta of PC since it was about a gay african american character which was played by a muslim actor. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the character and casting choice earned the oscar as opposed to the quality of the film. We also saw the new Ghostbusters fail big time and they had to blame everyone except the crew which made a bad film Now of course it is fine for people to do this if they wish to make such films or comics or whatever they may do as they wish. It is also fine to honor them with awards. But when the public pays little attention or simply do not buy the comics or the movie tickets or whatever they should at least stop criticizing the public and blame themselves for producing low quality stuff. I agree with what others pointed out if they want to introduce new characters which are diverse such as gay or a minority of whatever then no one really cares. But simply don't blame the public if it fails to sell. It is also a bad idea to alter older characters which have a fan base such as making thor a woman or outing some character as gay. I found it interesting when George Takai was critical of the character Sulu being outed as gay in the new star trek. HE was corect in stating that it was a dumb thing to do as the original character was not protrayed as gay and it served no purpose to make him gay. Takai's point was that he is a gay man but can play a straight character, just as a straight actor can play a gay character. Basically if the entertainment world in general want's to stop failing they need to stop focusing on making statements and make product which sells even if it is not PC
Ha, did they think nobody would notice when Iron Man became a black woman? If they wanted to have a black female superhero they should have just started a new comic. Sounds like Marvel needs to start using the snowflake test before they hire people.
Another take. Diversity sells because...Get Out made money at the box office. Let’s Talk About Marvel Comics, the “Diversity Doesn’t Sell” Myth, and What Diversity Really Means "Take that you cis gendered alt right troll!"
A fascinating take on why "diverse" comic titles don't sell...it's the marketing! MARVEL’S MARCH SCHEDULE, CANCELLATIONS INCREASE DIVERSITY WOES ...The problems began more than a month ago when the publisher announced a series of titles that would be ending in early 2018. Among those cancellations: America, Iceman, The Unbelievable Gwenpool, Generation X, Hawkeye and She-Hulk. Every one of those series had either a woman, POC, or LGBTQ+ character in the lead (in America’s case, all three). This followed the cancellation of other female-led series earlier in the year, including Black Panther: World of Wakanda(nearly a full year before the very high profile film was to be released), Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat, and Mockingbird. Marvel’s chief creative officer, Joe Quesada, was quick to allay concerns that the cancellation of those books was an indication that the company might be making a pointed attempt to cull their more diverse titles, tweeting, “If a comic finds an audience it will stick around regardless of the lead character or creator’s gender, ethnicity, sexual preference or identification. You can claim we were tone deaf but we PUBLISHED those books but you guys ultimately decide what survives.” (Emphasis his.)... Of course, there is a flaw in his argument, and it’s one we’ve discussed previously here on Fangrrls: you cannot market to diverse audiences the same way you market to your usual white, male audience. The comic book industry relies inordinately on direct sales (sales of individual issues through a comics retailer), which requires fans to do a great deal of the work themselves. These are audiences that have long been ostracized by the comics industry, as publishers have had a hard time depicting diverse characters, historically. New readers are less likely to read books individually (especially when they carry a hefty price tag)...
