Current Events > "Forced diversity is why Marvel Comics isn't selling"

(+) Yeah! (+)

- Person that hasn't bought a comic book in 20 years
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Nah. It's not helping them get the sales like they thought it would, but comics were suffering from lower than desired sales long before they started this stuff I'm pretty sure.

The truth is, a real reason comics can't catch on is because they are overpriced and the stories go on way too long. It used to be that a story could conclude in 1-3 issues tops. The only time you had issues going on 6-12 was major events and such.

Now everything goes on for 6-12 issues. Major events involve you having to buy across multiple different characters/teams just to get the whole story.

Unless you're a die hard comic fan (and even they are being turned away) you really don't have time or money for that shit anymore.

I'd also argue that the "forced diversity" thing does hurt them, but not because of diversity itself. It's because normal people that jump on from the MCU want to see the characters they like in the MCU, not Flacon as Captain America, or Jane as Thor, or Riri as Ironheart. And they definitely don't want to see Captain America as a Nazi.

It's not so much that it is diverse, it's that it is different.
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westernised countries seem to stigmatize anything that is animated or drawn. only live action tv/movies, or novels, or music are worth consuming apparently.

having said that, i don't read comics because its mostly naruto shit
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I honestly stopped when it became Event after Event after Event.
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Well, it can be. If you feel like a character being changed to sell to a demographic adds nothing as a storytelling element (or, worse, makes the storytelling more convoluted or poor just because they had to bend over backwards to justify it after they did) then it can drive people away.

Though people leaving BECAUSE of the forced diversity is more likely. It can feel patronizing and/or admonishing to see the injection of a character purely because it's trying to fill some kind of quota.

ib4howdoyouKNOWitsforceddiversity
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How are Marvel's sales compared to DC? And has DC done the big Diversity shtick too?

I figure if they aren't and they're doing better, then that's suggest the big push for Diversity at least isn't helping Marvel.
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Esrac posted...

How are Marvel's sales compared to DC? And has DC done the big Diversity shtick too?

I figure if they aren't and they're doing better, then that's suggest the big push for Diversity at least isn't helping Marvel.

Did you never watch the old Super Friends cartoons with Apache Chief, Black Vulcan, El Dorado, Rima, Cyborg and Samurai?
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Forced diversity isn't helping, that's for sure.

And it's actually turning away a ton of comic nerds, which were the only people really buying comics at this point.

Pretty much what everyone has said so far is true. I stopped buying comics probably about 10 years ago because

1. They got really expensive for what they were. (and this stopped me as an adult, I can only imagine what a kid would think)
2. Everything was constant events that required you to buy dozens of books a month to keep up.
3. I didn't like where the storylines were going.

And all three of these pretty much kept happening up until today.

The thing with changing characters up is that you really need a good character with a good story to get people on board with that change. That's how you get people behind Bucky as Captain America. That's how you get people behind Octavius as Spider-Man. That how you get people behind Kamala Kahn as Ms. Marvel.

But they seem to see that those three did good, and then just tried to do it with EVERYBODY and it got ridiculous.
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Marvel also has this really stupid thing where they keep just cloning their characters now IIRC

Last I heard, they keep popping out spider-people left and right (there's like 5 now, with superior spider-man coming back next year?)

and then thanks to all the goofy shenanigans involving wolverine, unless it changed recently we now have Logan, X-23, Old Man Logan and then a young blonde Logan from some other universe running around? I think they at least killed of Daken though so...
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it would help if they weren't bad wrtiers
kamala is good
riri is not

its dumb

It's one of the issues but not the only one.

Single issue comic books are antiquated and overpriced

Continuity is really bloated and confusing for new readers no matter how many reboots and relaunches they do

Physical media in general is dying out

Something I really despise about forced diversity is how easy it is to deny and make the person making the complaint look like the problem.

If you say something is forced diversity, they could come back and say "NUH-UH, WE JUST WANTED TO MAKE A [demographic with weak representation in media] CHARACTER, THERE WAS NO AGENDA BEHIND IT. IF YOU THINK THAT WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT YOU?"
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I go every Wednesday to get new stuff and I only have two marvel pick ups. Venom 2018 series and spidergeddon along with superior octopus

They just doing too much. DC I'm just keeping up with short runs like Batman Damned and Batman Kings of Fear
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plus barrier to entry tbh.

To me it seems like there is literally like what 70-80 years of content to catch up on? plus all of the other titles that the one you are interested in seems to branch out into.

toyota posted...

plus barrier to entry tbh.

To me it seems like there is literally like what 70-80 years of content to catch up on? plus all of the other titles that the one you are interested in seems to branch out into.

That's why I get limited runs. A self contained story that most of the time doesn't affect the main storyline. Kinda like it's own world
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Esrac posted...

How are Marvel's sales compared to DC? And has DC done the big Diversity shtick too?

I figure if they aren't and they're doing better, then that's suggest the big push for Diversity at least isn't helping Marvel.

Last year at least, Marvel was still selling better than DC.

Their big problem is too many crossover events, and introducing a billion comic book runs that will just end up cancelled after only a few issues.

Many of their least popular comic book series are led by white guys, including at least three different runs for Star-Lord, so I'm sure forced diversity isn't the problem.
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Solid Sonic posted...

Something I really despise about forced diversity is how easy it is to deny and make the person making the complaint look like the problem.

If you say something is forced diversity, they could come back and say "NUH-UH, WE JUST WANTED TO MAKE A [demographic with weak representation in media] CHARACTER, THERE WAS NO AGENDA BEHIND IT. IF YOU THINK THAT WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT YOU?"

Alternatively, anybody can claim something is "forced diversity" the minute more than one prominent minority character is involved.
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Esrac posted...

How are Marvel's sales compared to DC? And has DC done the big Diversity shtick too?

I figure if they aren't and they're doing better, then that's suggest the big push for Diversity at least isn't helping Marvel.

DC has done the diversity stuff as well but they used a very different approach. They've pushed some of their major characters into alternative titles and rebranded some older failed characters to have new life. Green Lanterns is about Jessica Cruz (Latina) and Simon Baz (Lebanese Muslim). Hal Jordan and folk were shuttle off to "Green Lantern Corps"

Cyborg has been tacked onto Justice League. There's huge pushes for characters like Bumblebee, Vixen, and some others to get back into the spotlight.

Edit: also Batman's dick
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Slayerblade11 posted...

It's one of the issues but not the only one.

Single issue comic books are antiquated and overpriced

Continuity is really bloated and confusing for new readers no matter how many reboots and relaunches they do

Physical media in general is dying out

Yup. Best Buy doesn't even sell CDs anymore.
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Tyranthraxus posted...

Esrac posted...

How are Marvel's sales compared to DC? And has DC done the big Diversity shtick too?

I figure if they aren't and they're doing better, then that's suggest the big push for Diversity at least isn't helping Marvel.

DC has done the diversity stuff as well but they used a very different approach. They've pushed some of their major characters into alternative titles and rebranded some older failed characters to have new life. Green Lanterns is about Jessica Cruz (Latina) and Simon Baz (Lebanese Muslim). Hal Jordan and folk were shuttle off to "Green Lantern Corps"

Cyborg has been tacked onto Justice League. There's huge pushes for characters like Bumblebee, Vixen, and some others to get back into the spotlight.

Edit: also Batman's dick

I think that is a better approach than Marvel's. Pushing the minority characters you have without really sidelining the more established white male characters that are already popular.

I like that more than making a bunch of your popular white male characters suddenly dead, evil, unworthy, depowered, and/or comatose so you can replace them with an assortment of minority and female characters. You don't need to make Steve Rogers evil to give Sam Wilson more attention. Just put out some good Falcon books. Seems like they don't think these characters could succeed on their own, so they want to piggyback them onto the success that is already attached to an established mantle.
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Marvel Comics isn't selling because comic books as a whole aren't selling.

But I gotta admit, if I had any interest in reading Thor, which I guess I didn't, it left when they made him a woman.
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X-men has always been incredibly diverse, and its always been one of the most popular Marvel franchises. I dont think its the actual diversity that is the driving issue. Its that theyre SJWing staple characters.
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It's not the only reason but it's a real one. The SJW agenda is a more clear reason. Everyone hated the changes to classic characters and actual SJWs don't support anything is the lesson we learned.
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What's the difference between "natural" diversity and "forced" diversity in a comic book make-believe universe?

Nomadic View posted...

I dont think its the actual diversity that is the driving issue. Its that theyre SJWing staple characters.

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people still read marvel? so many way more interesting comics out there.

Comicsgate is stupid though, all those dumb nerds need to shut up about "muh forced diversity"
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AlecSkorpio posted...

Pretty much what everyone has said so far is true. I stopped buying comics probably about 10 years ago because

1. They got really expensive for what they were. (and this stopped me as an adult, I can only imagine what a kid would think)
2. Everything was constant events that required you to buy dozens of books a month to keep up.
3. I didn't like where the storylines were going.

And all three of these pretty much kept happening up until today.

All of these.
The "SJW pandering" is just a desperate attempt to replace the audience that had already wandered off.

Weird, I stopped purchasing comics when Brian Michael Bendis decided to turn my man Iceman gay for no reason. That doesn't feel like 20 years ago.
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Tbh, if you're going to go the replacement route, you have to at least handle the legacy characters with the respect befitting them. And marvel didnt.

Miles Morales may have gotten a lot of backlash when he first dropped, but he was readily accepted. And when he dropped, the writers gave a fitting, heartfelt, powerful sendoff to Peter parker first. Make no mistake, that helped the transition. Dont doubt the power of a well done swan song.

Unceremoniously dropping Tony into a coma, stripping thor of his power, title, even name, and turning steve Rodgers into a literal nazi, all in very rapid succession were PROBABLY not the best ways to convince people to fall in love with their replacements. Dont shit on the legacy
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Firewerx posted...

What's the difference between "natural" diversity and "forced" diversity in a comic book make-believe universe?

That's what I'm trying to figure out.

DarkBuster22904 posted...

Unceremoniously dropping Tony into a coma, stripping thor of his power, title, even name, and turning steve Rodgers into a literal nazi, all in very rapid succession were PROBABLY not the best ways to convince people to fall in love with their replacements. Dont shit on the legacy

The idea in all three of these scenarios isn't to make the legacy heroes look bad though. Most people read headlines for these stories without actually reading the comics to see where the writers were going with it and just went along with internet outrage and complained about SJW pandering.

Thor himself chose to live as a regular man and denounced his godhood because he believed the Gods were selfish and spiteful. My only beef with that is that it makes no sense for someone to adopt Thor's name.

Tony's coma was probably a callback to the original Civil War, where a hero gets near fatally injured in a situation taken too far. But he still lives on as an artificial intelligence mentoring the new Ironheart.

And Hydra Cap, if nothing else, is a cool what-if story about what would happen in Hydra found Steve Rogers first before the U.S. government did and corrupted his ideology. And ultimately, Normal Cap comes back to challenge Hydra Cap anyway.
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And really, the minority character comics have been among the best-selling for Marvel.

Ironically, it's the series featuring straight white guys who aren't A-list characters who are having trouble selling.
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Firewerx posted...

What's the difference between "natural" diversity and "forced" diversity in a comic book make-believe universe?

In this context here, "Forced" is building up an established fanbase with a character and then completely removing that character one way or another to make room for "ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL. IS LIKE MAIN CHARACTER IN EVERY WAY BUT BETTER AND ALSO (FEMALE/LGBTQ/ETHNIC)" who now replaces the main character.

It's a shitty bait and switch which spits in the fans of the original just to draw in new people who probably weren't interested in the first place because the premise of the original already turned them off.

If you take a look at DC's New (Chinese) Superman, he's a great non-white character, has had fantastic success, introduced a bunch of other Asian heroic characters to boot, and they didn't have to kill or depower Superman / Clark Kent to do it.
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Rika_Furude posted...

having said that, i don't read comics because its mostly naruto shit

how so?

Tyranthraxus posted...

"ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL. IS LIKE MAIN CHARACTER IN EVERY WAY BUT BETTER AND ALSO (FEMALE/LGBTQ/ETHNIC)" who now replaces the main character.

And when exactly did this happen?
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RchHomieQuanChi posted...

Tyranthraxus posted...

"ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL. IS LIKE MAIN CHARACTER IN EVERY WAY BUT BETTER AND ALSO (FEMALE/LGBTQ/ETHNIC)" who now replaces the main character.

And when exactly did this happen?

Thor and Hulk, although people actually liked Totally Awesome Hulk so it worked there. It didn't quite work out for Thor because it was plagued by the same lack of awareness regarding social issues that led to things like Iceman being outed by Jean Grey.
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RchHomieQuanChi posted...

The idea in all three of these scenarios isn't to make the legacy heroes look bad though.

It isnt the idea, but none of us are here to care about what the intent was. What we will care about is what happened. And the fact is, embellished headlines or not, the characters DID end up looking bad. Motivations aside, no one wanted to thor demoted to chump in order for jane foster to take his place. Callback or no, hologram or no, people dont want Tony arbitrarily out of commission. And even outside the headlines, the nazi stone was TERRIBLY received, though I'll give you that one was more a matter of unfortunate timing.

Granted, fans dont always know what they want. And stories need to take chances for huge dramatic beats. But, when bombarded with this shit, from one character after another, for months/years, with Marvel being VERY public and transparent about the fact that none of it is happening for story reasons... yeah, people will conclude the characters they love are being disrespected. It's not unreasonable.

No matter intent, you absolutely CANNOT give your audience reason to believe external pressure, rather than good storytelling, is driving the narrative. And marvel did a shit job at that. Because, believe it or not, everybody noticed when all their favorite characters were very hastily shelved.
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RchHomieQuanChi posted...

Solid Sonic posted...

Something I really despise about forced diversity is how easy it is to deny and make the person making the complaint look like the problem.

If you say something is forced diversity, they could come back and say "NUH-UH, WE JUST WANTED TO MAKE A [demographic with weak representation in media] CHARACTER, THERE WAS NO AGENDA BEHIND IT. IF YOU THINK THAT WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT YOU?"

Alternatively, anybody can claim something is "forced diversity" the minute more than one prominent minority character is involved.

Some do, but most people can tell the difference between that and forced. The hallmarks of it being forced are things like changing the attributes of existing characters; having few if any characters (and they're usually bad guys) who don't meet "diversity" criteria rather than realistically reflecting the distribution in the real world - this last one can also work in reverse of course, where those who meet "diversity" criteria are less frequent (or entirely absent) than they should be for the setting, mind you.
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It's not the only reason, but I'm quite sure it it's one of the biggest. The real problem is the response to it. When a group doesn't like pointless forced pandering, it turns into "that group is full of crybaby 'X-ists' so who cares if they don't buy the product." Then many fans, even some people who might not have even been on the complaining side of things, get reasonably pissed off and stop engaging. Telling their fanbase that they're all "inherently misogynistic" for not liking some badly written female superhero is not a good practice.

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It's silly when people make comments like that. It's actually something comics have tried to do since the seventies.

Marvel comics current problem is bad writers not forced diversity.
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lmfao western comics. you need a walkthrough just to know what books to buy.
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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.
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Firewerx posted...

What's the difference between "natural" diversity and "forced" diversity in a comic book make-believe universe?

There is no such thing as natural diversity, without government-enforced integration the vast majority of people naturally tend to segregate themselves into racially homogenous groups.
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DarkTransient posted...

RchHomieQuanChi posted...

Solid Sonic posted...

Something I really despise about forced diversity is how easy it is to deny and make the person making the complaint look like the problem.

If you say something is forced diversity, they could come back and say "NUH-UH, WE JUST WANTED TO MAKE A [demographic with weak representation in media] CHARACTER, THERE WAS NO AGENDA BEHIND IT. IF YOU THINK THAT WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT YOU?"

Alternatively, anybody can claim something is "forced diversity" the minute more than one prominent minority character is involved.

Some do, but most people can tell the difference between that and forced. The hallmarks of it being forced are things like changing the attributes of existing characters; having few if any characters (and they're usually bad guys) who don't meet "diversity" criteria rather than realistically reflecting the distribution in the real world - this last one can also work in reverse of course, where those who meet "diversity" criteria are less frequent (or entirely absent) than they should be for the setting, mind you.

I explicitly said it isn't including any minority character. More minority characters is generally better. The implementations of such are what's the problem. I have not a single issue with any if DC's new or recently revived minority characters. I don't really even have problems with Marvel's characters. I'm just trying to say that there's definitely a difference between forced and not forced. And sometimes forced is desirable. I liked the Khalid Dr. Fate, for example.
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MarshawnLynch posted...

Firewerx posted...

What's the difference between "natural" diversity and "forced" diversity in a comic book make-believe universe?

There is no such thing as natural diversity, without government-enforced integration the vast majority of people naturally tend to segregate themselves into racially homogenous groups.

It's not an entirely fictional universe, in that it's based off real places. So, the racial (and gender, sexuality, etc) spread should reflect that of real life in those areas - of course it's a bit unrealistic to expect them to get it accurate to 100 significant figures; but if your story is set in a location that's 50% white and 50% black, your characters should be roughly 50% white and 50% black; not 80% white or 80% black. If they're, say, 55% black and 45% white, that's still pretty close to accurate, no one expects you to get it perfect - just try to stay close.

If it's an entirely fictional setting altogether, you can pretty much do whatever you want - though changing existing characters is a clear pander move. But new ones, yeah, do whatever you want.
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DC is more fictional. but Marvel tries to be like real life

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.
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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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Comics are dying because Diamond Comics sucks, and they basically have a monopoly on physical copies from the major labels.

the last time my store ordered comics, we got charged 25 bucks shipping for a box with two dozen issues, and another 25 bucks shipping for a box with three Funko pops. And four of the comics still came in damaged.

There is no reason for a store to carry them anymore until you can guarantee 1000 issue sales a month.
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Wouldn't Marvel Unlimited have some sort of impact too? Nobody ever seems to bring that up.

Personally I don't see any reason to buy comics that are on that service.
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