Marvel’s VP On Sales Slump: People Didn’t Want "Diversity” or “Female Characters”

Well Sup Forums, is he right? Are comic book readers just intimidated by strong female characters like pic-related?

bleedingcool.com/2017/03/31/marvels-david-gabriel-sales-slump-people-didnt-want-diversity-didnt-want-female-characters/
>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.

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>SomeOfUsHaveJobs.png
It's the weekend, just because the degenerate NEETs have been talking about this all week doesn't mean the adults can't discuss it now that we have a day off

I work ten hour days you lazy sack of shit. It's been spammed literally every day for over a week now. Check the catalog or fuck off.

Discuss what? I doubt you or any of the other "adults" have anything new to bring to discussion, you might as well just go to the archives because everything that could be said has been said a thousand times already.

Guess what, if you're blogging about this on a chinese toon website then you are not an adult.

This is literally from over a week ago though. Why couldn't you discuss it last weekend along with everyone else when it was still news?

tl;dr Diversity isn't the problem considering DC's diverse books are doing fine. The problem is shitty writing.

Fuck off, I work too and everytime I check it's there.

It's not about people inherently disliking female heroes or minorities, it's when it's forced and inorganic to the story, or a ham-fisted political appeal.

Uncanny Avengers is the best team book Marvel has out right now and it's got probably the most "diverse" lineup as far as race AND background is concerned.

Rogue is female and the leader of the team, Synapse is female, Hispanic, AND an inhuman and she's easily the most likable of the nu-humans, Dr. Voodoo is black and has explicitly ethnic magic.

And you know what? It makes sense. The Unity squad is an explicitly political group that intentionally includes members from various cape factions, and it's members are aware of that fact and some even dislike it at first. The "diversity" isn't glossed over like it's how everything SHOULD be, the Mutants and Inhumans chafe at one another amidst the ongoing conflict.

Dr. Voodoo isnt some random fucker who came along and replaced an existing white guy, he's his own man that''s existed since the 70's. His powers are cool and he's a valuable asset to the team as resident spellcaster, the fact he's an experienced magic user is his defining role, not "token black guy".

Synapse is hispanic, but you aren't beaten over the head with cliche latina empowerment nonsense like in America''s book. The fact her uncle got Inhuman powers and went evil and she had to side against him is the important part of her family, not that they've got a Mexican last name.

Other book spend so much time tripping over their dicks trying to come across as "diverse" that they forget to be about capes doing their fucking job.

Captain America gives the Unity Squad the job of taking out red skull and neutralizing xavier''s brain, they clean up a bunch of unresolved plot bullshit along the way like Banner and Pym, they get the skull, save the day, incinerate the brain l.

Along the way these individual characters work together and bond.

>being this triggered
Sorry anons, but you got to face the facts. Lady Wolverine is dumb and FemThor is cringy

Both of those are some of the only two diversity books that DO sell though, thus proving that diversity is not the problem.

,':-^)

And Old Man version of the REAL Wolverine crashed the clone every month in the sales, even without his name in the title.

>we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked.
This is a fucking lie their new characters are boring and shitty.

That's the problem, shitty writers with shitty plots, shitty characters, and shitty idea, I don't give a fuck about diversity just give me a good story.

>ham-fisted political appeal
thing is there's nothing wrong with political messages, its about how its implemented

Either it comes across naturally or as some dork not knowing subtlety

I did check the catalog. It's not there. So maybe you fuck off?

You abandoned me so I abandoned you! I loved you!

No one ever denied that he has more fans. Just that "diversity" didn't kill her sales either.

Idk about individual comic sales, but I think that overall this whole forced diversity schtick has harmed Marvel as a brand. Female Iron Man, female Thor, female Wolverine, Asian Hulk etc. It's just such ham-fisted pandering to SJWs, at a time when we're seeing a lot of backlash against SJW culture, that I think a lot of people just gave up on Marvel altogether, not just those specific comics.

Combine that with the fact that Marvel stories have just not been good for the past few years. I personally don't like New 52, but I see why other people still like it so it wouldn't surprise me if DC is still going strong. But Marvel? They just suck lately, and seemed to think that forcing a bunch of SJW nonsense would make up for declining story quality

He's full of shit. Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz are literally who's except to full time comic book nerds, and doing just fine.

>people aren't reading our comics
>must be because they're diverse
>not because they're badly written and have terrible art

You have waifu threads everyday too, go fuck yourself

If the title didn't have the name "Wolverine" and had instead X-23, wouldn't have last more than 18 issues, like the last ongoing did, before the relaunch.

What they should've done is used some of their ACTUALLY diverse cast that they've had for the past 30 some odd years instead of taking recognisable characters, killing/retireing them, and putting in some complete unknown character.
They want a black woman main character?
Storm. There, issue solved.

This. Build up Storm, Black Panther, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, etc. and make them play a bigger role in the Marvel universe instead of just being the side-characters they've usually been.

I still can't believe any of you cunts give money to these people. If you enjoy a few of the things they put out, pirate them. They treat you like shit

This. The problem isn't diversity, it's Mary Sues.

That's why Green Lanterns and New Super-Man are great while Champions and America are dogshit

They did give Storm a book. No one bought it.

People will buy comics with good characters, good art, good storylines and good dialogue. One thing I've noticed from these nu male pandering comics (let's be honest women aren't buying them) is that they have awful storylines and dialogue.

The characters themselves are fine. The art is good. The storytelling is shit. Giving female characters deus ex machina powers and having them emasculate male characters for no reason is a great way to get no one to buy your comics but cucks.

>People will buy comics with good characters, good art, good storylines and good dialogue.

LOL tell that to Vision's dead wife

>And having them emasculate male characters for no reason

They do this because they think it's an easy way to make the woman look powerful when it just makes them look like a cunt. If you want to see a relationship between a powerful woman and a (relatively) normal man done well you don't have to look much further than Wonder Woman and Steve

People will buy the MAIN heroes books if they're good. People do not buy fringe books generally regardless of quality. The point is that you need to improve the main ones enough that they subsidize the ones that are smaller, but Marvel doesn't seem to get that.

I've been a big Marvel fan for most of my life, and I don't like a lot of what marvel is doing right now.

You can't expect to replace the heroes I like with brand new ones.

There's a right way and a wrong way to do it. A good example of the right way would be of the new Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan. Even the writer says that it's an outlier. It was originally going to be a limited series, and no one was expecting it to be as successful as it was. It worked because Kamala wasn't trying to replace Carol Danvers, she was inspired by the hero, and decided to become her own hero because of it.

The wrong way to do it is to introduce a character completely out of the blue and expect us to be ok with that. Like Riri, the new Ironman who calls herself Iron Heart. She's a young genius black girl and is immediately this big new hero. Why should I care about her? What has she done to earn this? Moon girl is a similar case because she was a brand new character that is suddenly the smartest person in the marvel universe because Marvel said so. And characters like Mosaic is a bad example too. Despite the book not being that bad, I just don't care because he's a brand new character I've never seen before. You can't just start them with an ongoing book and expect it to be successful. You have to establish the character first. Have them show up in different books, then gauge the reaction of fans, if they're good, maybe you give them a limited series. And then if that goes well, then you can try an ongoing.

So no, I don't think it's diversity killing Marvel comics, it's bad writing, and forcing new characters on us.

>intimidated by strong female characters like pic-related?

Nah it's not that, Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor are certified badasses.

This just feels forced, it's there to fill a quota and appease a certain type of person (Who will never be appeased btw).

I think it's that their gender/race swaps are just a shitty cop out, that's why people don't like them.

>because everything that could be said has been said a thousand times already.
Push, peesh poosh. Cha wikky woo.

>Ellen Ripley
Yeah, her ass is pretty bad.

This is autism. It isn't even co sistently the "muh diversity books" selling badly, all of Marvel is in a slump right now.

nuMarvel sucks because of constant events, shitty writers, and an absolute lack of interest in maintianing a fanbase versus suckling off Marvel Studios' fat teats.

Y-you too?

Yeah, neither of them are particularly attractive, but that's another thing, the women don't need to be hot to do well.

So none of that "you're all perverts and just want big tits" bullshit either.

IMO, Marvel started going downhill a few years before this diversity push started. Marvel realized this, and thought that forced diversity was a quick and easy solution to their slump.
Like, "hey people think our new comics suck, what do we do?" "I know, lets make all the characters women/minorities, then we can get the SJW crowd to buy them!" Except it didn't work as planned and now they're stuck with shitty stories AND forced diversity

This.

There was a Captain America story where the villain was LITERALLY Richard Nixon, but it's beloved to this day because it sent him into the interesting Nomad period of his life.

>Moon girl is a similar case because she was a brand new character that is suddenly the smartest person in the marvel universe because Marvel said so.
I maintain that Moon Girl in her own series is fine, because her intelligence is balanced out by her arrogance and lack of life experience.

When you're looking at Dr, Strange and saying "Magic doesn't exist", he has every right to roll his eyes at you and say "get some more life experience, kid."

The problem isn't diversity, the problem is change.

Change by itself isn't bad, but Marvel changed too much shit all at once and by the time people have a chance to digest it, they flip the table again.

They're using every sales gimmick at the same time and it turns off everybody. The new readers get confused by events and relaunches and some give up entirely. Oldfags just hate change in general, so even if it's well written and a lot of them aren't, they're going to complain. People in the middle just want an entertaining story which is impossible with constant interruptions, especially bad ones.

"Forced diversity" is a meme for people who can't explain why they're actually mad so they blame it on the most obvious change or are legitimately sexist/racist.

There isn't just one problem. Some even go far deeper than anyone here has mentioned.

1) Diversity in and of itself isn't a problem. I think most non-retards can agree to this. And Marvel has a long standing history of diverse characters. They're just woefully underused/misused. More to the point with the diversity nonsense is that they just *poof* made x into y without a reasonable in story justification that felt natural or believable. Female Thor, Female Wolverine, Black Captain America, Asian Hulk, Muslim Power Girl etc. There was no reason to do this other than to sell a new #1 issue and let the tumblr SJW's have their moment in the hopes that they shut up. Special snowflakes are not the type to buy en masse or read cross over titles, so to bend over backwards to appease a non-buying 1% to get likes on social media and pissing off your 95% buying demographic is just stupid.

And before you say "just invent new characters", this brings me to point #2;

Marvel has a long long longgggg history of being abusive towards writers and artists who bring in new characters or who do new and original things. As soon as Marvel or Disney see a potential action figure or movie or tv series come from the mind of a writer they start clamping down with IP copyright paperwork and work on contract agreements. Artists and writers who create anything sign over all creative control to Marvel in exchange for a paycheck, only for those characters to be mutilated in the diversity machine in ways their creator wouldn't normally allow. Michael Turner started his own label to avoid this. Todd McFarlene went super hardcore Image and there were lawsuits a plenty. Angela is the last character they fought over. To this day Alan Moore is beyond furious with Marvel (and DC for that matter) for fucking him over creatively. So there's no incentive for creators to create because they don't get to keep or control their creations.

I want good writing and well thought out characters.

I remember being like, 8 years old and watching Alien for the first time. I didn't know what sex was back then, but goddamnit did I want to have sex with Sigourney Weaver.

Nothing wrong with diversity, everything wrong with awkwardly shoving it into your books with bad writing and expecting it to fly. I'm annoyed with champions like I'd be annoyed with a book where a superhero is a rabid trump supporter who laughs at liberals wearing a MAGA hat.

They just need to make changes that don't suck

Take a look at Rebirth Superman. All DC did was give him a new son and Jon has been great so far.

Agreed.

The problem is the way they implement the message, not the message.

Right now Marvel is more hamfisted than a guy arm deep knucklefucking two pigs.

I had one of those "I am now open to the possibility of girls not being yuck" moments watching that movie as a young un.
She killed the alien, saved the cat and I got to see her panties.
It was a good experience.

why do marvel's writers and artists suck so bad? did they just hire a ton of shitty "diverse" millennials or what?

>I'm annoyed with champions like I'd be annoyed with a book where a superhero is a rabid trump supporter who laughs at liberals wearing a MAGA hat.
Shit I'm a liberal and I'd read that, it sounds hilarious

I didn't know what sex was so I just wanted to tongue-punch her fart box

Most kids who would have gotten into comic book art go into anime+manga instead. The anime community actually has girls, you know?

I just really dislike quirky girls, why can't Marvel write real women? Even Black Widow's series wasn't badass at all,

I agree. It's like Vince McMahon is booking the Marvel Universe.

It's a shame they can't do a cheap B&W newsprint weekly/monthly collection of recently released comics. Have some old favorites, some niche picks, and a couple characters they want to get over. Give people a chance to read them without blowing 5 bucks an issue trying random things out.

A lot of writers and artists realized there was more money and creative freedom in doing creator owned shit and bailed.

>ham-fisted political appeal
appropriate for the hambeast audience

>why can't Marvel write real women
Because comic fans don't want real women.

You want real women? Go outside.

of course he's right that's why the news is getting blown up, because it's the harsh truth that the SJW diversity culture doesn't want to hear.

Isn't Jane Foster a top 3 Avengers book, sales-wise?

Didn't the first Jane Foster volume have consistently better numbers than the last Thor volume?

I feel like reading some Marvel
It's been a while since I read Vision by Tom King
Give me all the best current Marvel books that are free of Sup Forumsbait

Foolkiller

But everything that isn't two white men being manly with each other but not fucking is considered SJW /pol bait.

People also didn't want the regular heroes because that's what drove them to change up things in the first place.

Could be that their books are bad and overpriced and diversity is a neutral (or possibly even positive) influencer.

Just because you put m&m in a turd and no one wants to eat it doesn't mean people suddenly hate m&ms.

Forced diversity is what's killing comics

No, the problem is the fact that it sucks.

Not only are you changing characters people like into Women and Minorities and hoping their fans accept that, you're making 9/10 of them preachy trash.

Comic fans are generally pretty Liberal.

Hell, even on Sup Forums, comicsfans are likely to be incredibly left leaning, so they're probably not a bunch of rabid Trump Nazis mad about the Niggers and Niggers of Gender ruining their comics

It's just plain bad