Marvel’s vice president of sales has blamed declining comic-book sales on the studio’s efforts to increase diversity and female characters, saying that readers “were turning their noses up” at diversity and “didn’t want female characters out there”.
Over recent years, Marvel has made efforts to include more diverse and more female characters, introducing new iterations of fan favourites including a female Thor; Riri Williams, a black teenager who took over the Iron Man storyline as Ironheart; Miles Morales, a biracial Spider-Man and Kamala Khan, a Muslim teenage girl who is the current Ms Marvel.
But speaking at the Marvel retailer summit about the studio’s falling comic sales since October, David Gabriel told ICv2 that retailers had told him that fans were sticking to old favourites. “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity,” he said. “They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not.”
He added: “I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales … 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.”
Gabriel later issued a clarifying statement, saying that some retailers felt that some core Marvel heroes were being abandoned, but that there was a readership for characters like Ms Marvel and Miles Morales who “ARE excited about these new heroes”. He added: “And let me be clear, our new heroes are not going anywhere! We are proud and excited to keep introducing unique characters that reflect new voices and new experiences into the Marvel universe and pair them with our iconic heroes.
“We have also been hearing from stores that welcome and champion our new characters and titles and want more! … So we’re getting both sides of the story and the only upcoming change we’re making is to ensure we don’t lose focus [on] our core heroes.”
Online, readers scorned Gabriel’s remarks, pointing to Marvel’s tendency over the last few years to focus on restarting and rebooting storylines, creating a complicated web of interwoven universes, as well as an overwhelming output that fans struggled to keep up with.
Alisha Rai (@AlishaRai)I love how Marvel thinks people are tired of "diversity".
April 1, 2017
NO I AM TIRED OF WATCHING UNCLE BEN DIE 373929463 TIMES.
Anthony John Agnello (@ajohnagnello)An idiotic conclusion, @Marvel. I stopped buying your books because of the high price & event fatigue not diversity. https://t.co/uysUOwOBkh
March 31, 2017
ㅤmanu (@hoesling)Marvel thinks diversity is ruining their sales? Idk, MAYBE turning Captain America, a worldwide symbol, into a nazi has something to do
April 2, 2017
Writer of the Kamala Khan Ms Marvel series, G Willow Wilson responded to Gabriel’s comments, writing that “diversity as a form of performative guilt doesn’t work” and criticising Marvel’s tendency to introduce the new iterations of fan favourites by “killing off or humiliating the original character … Who wants a legacy if the legacy is shitty?”
“A huge reason Ms Marvel has struck the chord it has is because it deals with the role of traditionalist faith in the context of social justice, and there was – apparently – an untapped audience of people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds who were eager for a story like this,” she wrote. “Nobody could have predicted or planned for that. That’s being in the right place at the right time with the right story burning a hole in your pocket.”
One retailer told ICv2 that increased diversity had brought a new clientele to his store. “One thing about the new books that go through my store, they don’t sell the numbers that I would like,” he said. “They do bring in a different demographic, and I’m happy to see that money in my store.”
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I don't mind black or female characters. But if you're going to do it, come up with something new. Replacing an old character with a new one and going out of your way to say "hey, so Iron Man is black and a girl now" doesn't work, it alienates the existing fans. And not because the new character is black and a girl, but simply because the character they love is Tony Stark. Iron Man is more than a suit of high tech armour. Also, some of them are j…
Maybe they should just stop saturating the market with shitty films, shitty tie ins and general cash grabs?
Marvel films aren't shitty.
They are a bit samey though.
No, just banal.
Further proof that "people" are the worst
When you put it like that, it kind of brings the 'straight' part into question...
Well, when I go out clubbing I go to gay clubs. When I pick a bar it is usually a gay bar. When I joined a rugby team...yes that too. Is it so wrong to want to see yourself reflected back at you in a non-threatening way? Because that is what this is about; comic books and people wanting them to continue as they have done all along.
Isn't that the point of the diversity argument? That people like to read about characters whose appearance and experiences mirror their own?
I don't entirely buy it (I mean, come on, every honky's favourite A-Team character was BA! Being awesome trumps representation), but if that's the argument that pro-diversity people want to put forward, then surely it applies in all directions.
Yep.
Amazing they would even bother to do this. Surely their market of white single men isn't demanding it?
Maybe that is why they are doing it. Because their market is single white men. New markets may require different characters.
But, but, but ... what about expansion into all those new untapped markets? What about growth!?
There is a strong female market too. It's not just men who are geeks.
Diversity, PC yuk
i feel the same about you
I am going to follow Guardian logic on this one and agree with whatever the cherry-picked sentiment of three Twitter users.
Careful now!
Sound advice to live your life by. I refuse to read articles that don't have links to angry Tweets.
Alishi Rai does make a valid point. The same origin stories told over and over again.
Comic book fans: don't like the idea of black people or women being empowered. Sounds suspiciously like they may vote Republican.
No, they don't like their existing universe of characters, themes and plots being taken over by, and re-directed at, groups that have shown almost zero interest in these comics prior to the advent of niche marketing.
Online commentator: unhappy at prejudice resorts to sweeping prejudice.
Internet rejoices at his misfortune.
Thats bull, I know plenty of black and hispanic comic fans, some of them are female. They didnt read the new titles, because to make room for the new characters they shit on the old characters that people already loved.
They should have made new titles for diverse characters instead of shoehorning them where they didnt belong.
Hang about most of the characters are only partly human - you can't get any more diverse than that!
Surely it's more their fucking up established characters with diversity quotas that's pissed people off. Marvel had female and minority ethnic characters for a long time and nothing at all was stopping them from creating new ones to to bring them to life on the graves of much loved personalities was kind of stupid.
Spot on.
This. There were always iconic female and non-white characters - Storm, anyone? Luke Cage? Jean Grey?
I think doing this so incessantly that it comes across as obsessive is a big part of the probem. You can do it once in a while and nobody really bats an eyelid (see Capt. Marvel) but when it's happening once a fortnight, your mania is on show.
Blade, Black Panter etc etc
Must every story now be prepared with unintelligible drivel from random nobodies on twitter?
As for diversity, if it's box ticking and doesn't serve the story then it's a pointless gesture.
"As for diversity, if it's box ticking and doesn't serve the story then it's a pointless gesture"
Fair enough as long as you apply the same rule to deciding that a character is white and male. I get really annoyed with the assumption that white male is some kind of default setting.
Done. Now, let's look at the next point of contention. When it's generally white males creating this content, should they create white males? Or should they create non white male characters, and run the gauntlet of shrieks of appropriating experiences they don't understand?
Your call.
Newspaper websites now write front-page online stories based on nothing more than a few outraged tweets. It's really quite remarkable when you think about it.
Someone on TV says something, about 10 people on Twitter post angry tweets, front page news story, "Remarks by [insert celebrity] cause social media outrage".
...then again, maybe some people are starting to look at Marvel as a licence to print money- as Disney's star wars is now.
Marvel is also owned by Disney.
! I actually didn't know that- just goes to show you why they tend to be lumped in together in 'new' reports!
This is exactly what it is. Marvel is a dream for filmmakers because of the number of tie ins you can do with toys, video games, t shirts, tv series etc etc. The idea that this doesn't diminish quality is daft. Marvel want your money.
Diversity never sells.
It has to be forced on people.
In the UK we have the BBC to do this.
No one has ever forced me to watch the Beeb .
Not just the BBC: It's built into every HR policy in the land.
Diversity is a fact of human existence, only those that would create in order to influence would say otherwise, where it has to be said there is political power in dividing people.
Most buyers are kids..
nope - https://graphicpolicy.com/tag/facebook-fandom/
ok: childish, whatever.
completely wrong
Perhaps they are diversifying out of the magazine business, inadvertantly..?
'introducing new iterations of fan favourites including a female Thor; Riri Williams, a black teenager who took over the Iron Man storyline as Ironheart; Miles Morales, a biracial Spider-Man and Kamala Khan, a Muslim teenage girl who is the current Ms Marvel.'
This may be the issue. Instead of promoting a new character that is both exciting and diverse, they instead opt for changing current characters to be diverse. This acts to both alienate current readers who don't like that their favourite character has been dropped/fundamentally altered, and is dismissed by potential new readers as dumb and pandering. Nobody is impressed by a statement saying 'Hey look, he's Ironman, but now black!', what they want is well rounded characters whose diversity is part of their overall character, not their selling point.
Miles Morales and Kamala Khan were well received, as they were their own characters, and didn't affect the "main" characters.
But yeah, shoehorning in characters as tokenism doesn't work. They still have to be well-written, given time to breathe without their stories getting broken up by tie-in events, and well-marketed (the DM system is broken).
"This may be the issue. Instead of promoting a new character that is both exciting and diverse, they instead opt for changing current characters to be diverse. "
Would make sense if the previous Iron Man, Spiderman and Ms Marvel weren't still around (one as Captain Marvel) and the previous Thor is also still kicking around - these are all additional, not replacement characters.
Yeah new characters are often preferable. Or using existing characters more effectively - why invent a female Thor instead of using Sif? I liked Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury but simply changing the colour or gender of a character gets annoying if it's done too often within the same franchise.
The comic book Nick Fury I read as a kid was white and I was appalled when they made him black on screen, and I am not white myself.
Nick Fury was fairly low key, without a major following so the loss of custom can be outweighed by increased audience who like the new Fury. I think its been a fairly successful change. The big problem is changing the AAA big hitters. There is too much of a fan base, Iron Man, Spider Man, Thor are too big to find new audiences who dont identity strongly with the older versions.
"The comic book Nick Fury I read as a kid was white and I was appalled when they made him black on screen"
Nick (as seen on screen) is based on the Ultimates version of the comic book - and he specifically asked to be played by Samuel L Jackson. The original Nick is still kicking around somewhere in the Marvel Universe while his (black) son has joined the mainstream universe too.
Nick Fury was redesigned to look like Samuel L Jackson...in 2002. Samuel L Jackson was cast because he was literally whom the comic was based on for the last 15 years, almost a decade before his first screen appearance.
When I was a kid, I used to read the Transformers G1 Marvel comics - between 1988 and 1991 when it finished, if memory serves. Even back then, the UK and US Marvel stories varied massively, and you had all kinds of alternative realities and inexplicable differences in characters just to fit in with the lucrative toy line.
At one point, you had a clone Megatron impersonating the real Megatron (who was in another dimension); the clone fighting side by side with a future version of the real Megatron (Galvatron), taking on the combined forces of Autobots and Decepticons alike - all of whom were from various past, present and future timelines (aka 'Time Wars').
Reading this article and the sources, Marvel never seem to learn, it appears.
But they make even more money now...
The comics seem to have become ever more interlinked, with regular monthly titles often serving as little more than filler between overblown and poorly conceived crossover events.
Chopping and changing creators, dead-ending popular titles like X-Men and Fantastic Four, and generally being a little short on ideas, those are the reasons I don't read Marvel stuff any more. It seems impossible to pick up most titles and just read them without a detailed knowledge of the previous two years of stories across the entire line. If you have the time, money and patience to put up with the lower quality stuff, maybe it's great, but diverse or not, it all seems a lot less accessible than it was when I first started reading in the late 80s.
I don't think the ethnicity of the characters has any bearing on it, but America did just elect a racist as President so it could be different over there.
I've nothing much to add here except that I loved the (UK scripted) Target: 2006 storyline. First "epic" comic storyline I ever read and the ending of the battle between Galvatron and Ultra Magnus was great.
Ahhh to be a teenager again
(Without the spots, homework and crushing weight of ongoing virginity)
Time some people grew up
You tell them. In fact, you come comment on a Comics related thread to tell them.
Christ, did you literally pick up this story from the Batgirl thread?
Have to wonder, I saw the link in the comments there which seems to have inspired this article.
It is an interesting point though.
Perhaps, instead of changing the race and or gender of an established character, you create a whole new character?
When you take a recognised character and turn them into something else for the sake of 'diversity', then that alienates people, because people have gotten used to a character being the way they are.
Perhaps a more successful strategy would be to introduce completely new characters to cater to diversity and maybe it will have more success.
What race was the Silver Surfer again?
Argentinian.
He was from an alien planet. So not an earth based race.
He wasn't originally silver, that happened after he began serving (surfing?) Galactus. I have no idea how I knew that considering I don't read comics.
Who over 16 gives a flying expletive about Marvel comics? Oh, sorry I forgot, everybody...
Ach, you'd be surprised how many people give enough of a flying one to go to the effort of commenting on them.
Google 'average age of readers of American comics' , like me you may be surprised by the results.
One of marvel's problems is that people under 16 don't read comics. There demographic is decidedly adult.
Should have listened to Stan Lee , want a female charecter, create one. Want black superheroes, create them. But changing already established charecters just ruins the character as too many character traits disappear which made them popular.
There are plenty of female and ethnic minority characters they're very poorly written so dont get popular. Write them better and dont just force it and they will be better received.
Spot on! Bring on the women. They were always good just didn't get written well.
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