LogFAQs > #910641950

RchHomieQuanChi posted...

lightwarrior78 posted...

Comics have other problems, but it is no doubt responsible for a bleed off of what little support for the medium remained, and it isn't even a new problem. Not diversity itself, but the nearsightedness to not realize we're reading for the characters, not the logos or the powers. Go back to the 90s and see how well Kyle Rayner was taken as Green Lantern: white guy for white guy (despite some retconned mexican heritage later). Or Ben Reily, seen as the fake Spider-Man. Thunderstrike: that'll just get you laughs. Young Tony Stark because the old one was a Kang double agent since the beginning: even Marvel wants us to forget that one. Some of them did well at the time, but that was before we accepted the spectator boom had died.

Without that today, new characters at all risk people like myself no longer being willing to put up with the high cost, event burnout, and other bullshit without some major demographic to jump in for a consistent run. Make their diversity their main if not only selling feature, and you leave us nothing to stay for. Berate and belittle us for not liking your new character, and I don't even feel guilty about reading more manga and books that do a horror twist to Archie.

But why exactly is that a fault of the publishers?

Stick with the status quo for too long and readers eventually get bored. Nobody wants to see the same characters go around doing the same things for 30 years.

So what do they do? Big crossover events. Start killing characters off and replacing them with new ones. Have characters pull face-heel turns.

It's the quickest and easiest way to at least bring attention your titles.

Yes, but it's a question of what kind of attention you bring. Most of these were inspired by the Death of Superman bit, and all similar impact: big attention for the event, but only the event, and it's been found sales can even drop off lower than they were previously (ie: big event for issue 100 has big sales, but issues 101 gets lower sales than 99 had). And this was found in the 90s. It became the habit to chase the big sales of the one massive event not realizing that the core readers weren't bored with what was being written, and that what they did was rushed, gimmicky, often destroyed what people liked about the character, and happened so often the readers became cynical about them, so long term, there was no growth to the audience, and a slow erosion.

In short, attention means nothing if it doesn't mean attention that grows your market. Marvel particularly right now gets a lot of attention, but it's attention that tells the rest of us still into their product to stay away because it doesn't interest us, and they name call if we express that.
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