MARVEL'S DAVID GABRIEL ON THE 2016 MARKET SHIFT

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Mr. X
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https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/371 ... rket-shift
Now the million-dollar question. Why did those tastes change?
I don't know if that's a question for me. I think that's a better question for retailers who are seeing all publishers. 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.

(Note: Marvel’s David Gabriel reached out to correct the statement above: "Discussed candidly by some of the retailers at the summit, we heard that some were not happy with the false abandonment of the core Marvel heroes and, contrary to what some said about characters “not working,” the sticking factor and popularity for a majority of these new titles and characters like Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, The Mighty Thor, Spider-Gwen, Miles Morales, and Moon Girl, continue to prove that our fans and retailers ARE excited about these new heroes. 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! They've invigorated their own customer base and helped them grow their stores because of it. 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 of our core heroes.")
Kind of a big duh here. Some get annoyed at character swaps for diversity or quota reasons especially when its obvious or unnecessary or not done universally. When will Ms. marvel be replace by a guy? Also no one will buy something when they are guilted into it as in "if you don't like this you are fill-in-the-blank-phobic". Best way in the world to get a middle finger.

Hopefully Marvel and DC realize this doesn't work or its not bringing some huge new customer base. Romance novels don't gender swap 50% of their product lines cause they want to attract men who aren't really interested in reading romance novels. Do good stories. Gender swaps are not good stories.
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Don't be Lazy, if you want to make a new hero fine. Why must you replace an iconic character with a new version? Oh because the old one made money so this one will too. I know these guys chase the dollar, how about earning it first. Just my take on that.
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lionbadger
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But aren't Thor, Black Panther and Iron Man (variously gender swapped/ diverse) their biggest sellers right now?

Suspect their sales dents are more down to constant stupid "everything's changing!" events where you have to buy 20 comics instead of 6 to follow the plot.
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Mr. X
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ehh well Old Thor (Odison) wasn't doing too well to begin with so any bump looks better. Same with iron man etc. They just weren't doing well. so yeah any of these changes causes people in the short term to get curious and buy issues.
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Yes! Marvel has been dragged kicking and screaming back to reality, just like the cancellation of the Female Ghostbusters sequel. I'm as liberal as the next guy when it comes to abortion rights, LGBT rights, equal pay, and so on, but you don't compromise artistic creativity for political correctness. Most readers (of both sexes) want heroes (of both sexes) that are both powerful and look great in spandex - they just don't like to admit it for fear of being criticized as "problematic". There's only a small amount of readers who want their comics to be politically radical and all their heroes to look like ugly Tank Girls of Color ..so great, for that small cadre of stuck-up progressive fun-killers, Marvel (or whoever) can publish tiny runs that only get sold in leftist/anarchist bookstores that also sell Bakunin and vegan muffins to the Dirtbag Left, or in college-campus bookstores where many of the 'outrage culture' tweeters currently gather, or at DIY zine fairs and small-press conferences.

Marvel's PC-ness isn't going to go away, though. There are too many editors in that office still trying to push progressive agendas and so you'll still see the results popping up from time to time. Here's a good example: a recent issue of Champions saw Ms Marvel and her teammates jump into a Middle Eastern country to help women who wanted to go to school defend themselves against ISIS-like religious squads. That would be a great story, except that the Champions were very careful to not look like interventionists or imperialists - they hid underneath the ground, remained invisible, and used their powers to make the women look formidable. I wondered to myself if this isn't problematic: do the progressives at Marvel think it's better for the West to engage in puppetlike shadow proxying rather than straight-on military assaults? And the group of brown-skinned hijab-wearing women who were fighting for their education? There were sometimes a dozen of them in one panel, and the artist definitely had trouble drawing each individual woman distinctively - they all wound up looking pretty much the same. I would think that would also be problematic :)

I regularly watch a comicbook critic on Youtube by the name of Captain Cummings, and he is still noting instances of weird SJW injections into stories in brand new books like new X-Men titles. So don't expect their crusade to fade entirely away.
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Hmmm... the 'Note' in there is where my money is at. I mean, I've felt the majority of the displeasure with Marvel these days comes from ditching old heroes and replacing them. No one REALLY get's angry when a brand new character shows up.... well okay a FEW do. I still occasionally read the odd 'Bah, Miss America (or whatever her name is) is black, PC SJW characters sucks!' which considering she was a new character... so what? The actually aggravating stuff always seemed to be like what they did with Thor which was completely arbitrary.
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If you discount the X Men and maybe Black Widow (who I think is more of a side kick) Marvel has never had a great original superheroine.

If you compare the D.C ones and I will eliminate Batgirl and Supergirl to focus on the non spinoff, they have done a better job.
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I'm disappointed that people still get taken in by "Things will never be the same again!" scams in comics. How long long did Jean Paul Valley last as Batman after Bruce Wayne was crippled? How long did Dick Grayson last as Batman after Bruce 'died'? How long did the clone Ben Reilly last as Spider-Man? How long did Doc Ock last as Spider-Man after he did a body swap in which Peter 'died'?

Yet the modern trend for sex-swapping heroes is somehow regarded differently. It seems the fear of SJWs under the bed makes people all too willing to scream "Dey tuk r huroes!"

These scams have been going on for decades. The core difference now is that a bunch of angry people are certain to generate a load of free publicity on social media. And if the publisher is really, really lucky, an angry alt-right conspiracy nut who says "cuck" a lot will make a video or ten. Thus allowing the publisher to point at the awful sort of people complaining about the change.
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Mr. X
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Heroine Addict wrote: Yet the modern trend for sex-swapping heroes is somehow regarded differently. It seems the fear of SJWs under the bed makes people all too willing to scream "Dey tuk r huroes!"
That's a flawed argument. Fallacy of false equivalence. Bruce Wayne being crippled is not the same as flat out gender swapping a female out of some quota BS. There is a difference between true change and experimentation vs recommending square tires on cars just to ruin cars.
"Things will never be the same again!"
This is a strawman. Where did you get in the article that this is the argument?
These scams have been going on for decades. The core difference now is that a bunch of angry people are certain to generate a load of free publicity on social media. And if the publisher is really, really lucky, an angry alt-right conspiracy nut who says "cuck" a lot will make a video or ten. Thus allowing the publisher to point at the awful sort of people complaining about the change.
If SJWS don't have any power or influence then why did comics change to meet their whims? Clearly its the SJWs with the power. And who's angry? The ones who get offended by any cheese cake in a comic? The ones who get offended cause there aren't 31 genders in a comic? The ones who complain about body types? Who were the angry people who started all this? Complaining about every character and making racist comments about "comics are too white"? Who are the angry, delicate, hyper sensitive people? And people who don't even care about comics.
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Part of it is the sqeeky wheel syndrome. The prtotesters at college are a tiny minority but they scream while the hard working student are conctrating on their studies.

Or it is a writer with an agenda as we have seen with Davies and Moffat on the DW thread





If SJWS don't have any power or influence then why did comics change to meet their whims? Clearly its the SJWs with the power. And who's angry? The ones who get offended by any cheese cake in a comic? The ones who get offended cause there aren't 31 genders in a comic? The ones who complain about body types? Who were the angry people who started all this? Complaining about every character and making racist comments about "comics are too white"? Who are the angry, delicate, hyper sensitive people? And people who don't even care about comics.[/quote]
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Mr. X wrote:
Heroine Addict wrote: Yet the modern trend for sex-swapping heroes is somehow regarded differently. It seems the fear of SJWs under the bed makes people all too willing to scream "Dey tuk r huroes!"
That's a flawed argument. Fallacy of false equivalence. Bruce Wayne being crippled is not the same as flat out gender swapping a female out of some quota BS. There is a difference between true change and experimentation vs recommending square tires on cars just to ruin cars.
The mantle of Batman was supposedly being passed on permanently to Jean Paul Valley. An example of "Things will never be the same again!" being used as false marketing to generate publicity.

Batman and Spider-Man were replaced by new characters, supposedly on a permanent basis. Thor and Iron Man have been replaced, supposedly on a permanent basis.

Not a false equivalence, but an actual equivalence.
Mr. X wrote:
"Things will never be the same again!"
This is a strawman. Where did you get in the article that this is the argument?
See above. I was referring to the marketing hype regarding swaps, old and new, not the article.

You really need to learn what a strawman is. Particularly as you just used one.
Mr. X wrote:
These scams have been going on for decades. The core difference now is that a bunch of angry people are certain to generate a load of free publicity on social media. And if the publisher is really, really lucky, an angry alt-right conspiracy nut who says "cuck" a lot will make a video or ten. Thus allowing the publisher to point at the awful sort of people complaining about the change.
If SJWS don't have any power or influence then why did comics change to meet their whims? Clearly its the SJWs with the power.
Why did comics change? Largely due to the apathy of the "cheese cake" market and the growth of comics readership among other groups.

Marvel is a business. If it consisted of just Marvel Comics, it would probably close down. The comics have become a testing ground for more lucrative movies, TV shows and video games. Which is exactly how the current Carol Danvers iteration of Captain Marvel proved successful enough to get a movie greelit.
Mr. X wrote:And who's angry? The ones who get offended by any cheese cake in a comic? The ones who get offended cause there aren't 31 genders in a comic? The ones who complain about body types? Who were the angry people who started all this? Complaining about every character and making racist comments about "comics are too white"? Who are the angry, delicate, hyper sensitive people? And people who don't even care about comics.
Calls for censorship are pretty cunty. I personally think it's shameful to campaign for perfectly legal content to be removed. However, in the case of the Spider-Woman cover with the ludicrously deep buttcrack, Marvel made a business decision on what would be best for the company. It's unfortunate that the protesters were appeased and the content was removed. Even if it was crap.

Nothing discriminatory about calling for more diversity, however. If groups exist in society, why shouldn't there be a demand for them to be represented in fiction? And why shouldn't a business respond to that demand?

Admittedly, Marvel's current approach of using race and sex swaps is a poor way to increase diversity. Particularly as we all know that the original characters will return. Making it seem like the substitute got a patronizing "turn" at playing the hero for a short while.

Of course, it's much easier to do swaps when adapting the character for other media. Nick Fury is a black guy in the movies and Watson is an Asian woman on TV's Elementary. Both work fine, as they exist in their own continuity without usurping an existing character.
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Heroine Addict wrote:Nothing discriminatory about calling for more diversity, however. If groups exist in society, why shouldn't there be a demand for them to be represented in fiction? And why shouldn't a business respond to that demand?
There is no point in even getting into this discussion. The prevailing logic is that you have to have the same story, with the same character over and over again for ever, nothing new or different can ever come about unless it's a conspiracy by some mean nefarious "other people".

Its obviously nothing to do with stupid nonsensical stories or "EVENT!" fatigue or kids not reading comics, it's all down to colouring in an alien superman brown instead of sort of pinkish or giving some vauge nod to a techno viking bloke a pair of tits instead of pecs.

There was a time when the anglosphere wasn't so bluddy terrfied of literally everything.
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Mr. X wrote:
Heroine Addict wrote:
"Things will never be the same again!"
This is a strawman. Where did you get in the article that this is the argument?

....

If SJWS don't have any power or influence then why did comics change to meet their whims? Clearly its the SJWs with the power. And who's angry? The ones who get offended by any cheese cake in a comic? The ones who get offended cause there aren't 31 genders in a comic? The ones who complain about body types? Who were the angry people who started all this? Complaining about every character and making racist comments about "comics are too white"? Who are the angry, delicate, hyper sensitive people? And people who don't even care about comics.
Oh the SJWS, OMG the SJWS can we ever have a subject on this website that isn't somehow shadowed under the all oppressive power of the all mighty SJW's? Or a strawman deflection? You can't call 'strawman argument' and then turn around and say 'but the SJW's...' It's the same thing. That IS a strawman argument! It's a friggin label used to say 'this is who alllll these people are because I choose this acronym to describe them which is totally fact and can't be argued against.'

You can be aggrieved by getting strawmanned, that can be valid, it can be acceptable, but you can't then go on add 'SJW this or that' because you are now strawmanning! If you want to complain about the SJWs though, you're gonna have to accept that many of the return arguments will be strawman, because the conversation has already devolved into oversimplifications of largescale and intricately complicated pier groups by non specific and broadly excepted stereotypes.

Yes by utilizing this method we can agree that SJW's are a shadow society dedicated to the enslavement of all men everywhere, probably with remote controlled cock rings, and that even male minorities are totally okay with this for some reason. By this method we can also agree that all people who fight this society are white alpha male pigs with no class or character. Finally we agree to use these broadly accepted stereotypes against our opposition entirely at our leisure while deflecting any return broadly accepted stereotyped arguments against us as totally off base.

It goes like this.

I scream "You're all a bunch of white alpha male pigs with no class or character!"

The opposition goes "Poppycock You're just a member of a shadow society dedicated to the enslavement of all men everywhere!"

Then I say "Hogwash! You're all a bunch of white alpha male pigs with no class or character!"

The opposition returns with a wry and witty, "Liar Liar pants on fire, you're just a member of a shadow society dedicated to the enslavement of all men everywhere!"

And on and on it goes.
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Lets all just take a breath before things get out of hand (this is not aimed at anyone but to all posters )
I always get nervous when quotes of quotes of quotes appear!
I appreciate no one has overstepped the mark yet so lets keep it that way
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I gotta quick question... does anyone actually like having these discussions?

Seems to me they most consist of the same three or four people screaming in a circle, no-one convincing anyone else of, well... anything.
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I think for most people, casual readers and probably a lot of hardcore devotees as well, there isn't a distinction drawn between the character (Bruce Wayne) and the mantle of the character (Batman). So, I think it's a source for frustration and confusion when the mantles are shifted around for anything more than a very small length of time. It's tough, because I think I actually like mantle-swapping an established hero towards a different gender and seeing what happens. It's not the worst way to launch a new heroine, mitigating the risk of attempting it without as much support in the market, and then let them go off onto their own title when the original bearer of the mantle inevitably returns.

I don't like messing with established characters - especially IF it is done purely for cynical reasons - but at the same time I always enjoy seeing fresh, strong heroines being introduced. I'm not sure I can articulate it very well, but I feel there's an inherent weakness in the classic established heroines that their 'mantles' are indivisible from their gender, which is why it's so hard to imagine it being flipped. A strong mantle shouldn't need a gender. Ugh, I'm pretty sure I'm not making sense. I would welcome more strong heroines, is what I'm saying.

Either way I would judge the content based on what it is - not why it was done.
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Disciple wrote:I gotta quick question... does anyone actually like having these discussions?

Seems to me they most consist of the same three or four people screaming in a circle, no-one convincing anyone else of, well... anything.
Nobody likes circle arguments (That was sort of my point I guess) but whether you like having them or not, choosing not to respond to something you strongly disagree with doesn't actually help you, it just assures that the only viewpoint and opinion on display for others is that of the opposition which you strongly disagree with. This can only have a long term negative impact on whatever it is that you believe in and would be arguing. More often than not you can't convince your opponent of anything because most of us are already to old and our brains to well programed to accept much of anything else without an extreme event causing immense psychological impact. Logic and reason will only take an argument so far, it requires emotional reasoning to convince somebody to act, and emotional reasoning walks the fine line of inspiring action or convincing everyone in the room that you're just a raving lunatic who shouldn't be taken seriously for any reason whatsoever... so there's that as well. I'd say 'debates' in large scale forums have probably always been more for the onlookers more than for the people actually arguing anyway.

To return to the topic.

@Void

I'm not sure to be honest. I think what Marvel is ACTUALLY seeing has very little to do with diversity and more to do with them just continually replacing the old heroes with new ones. The suspicious part of me suspects the MCU movieverse as the madness behind this method. They may hope to make a NEW Thor popular so that when they can't afford Chris Hemsworth anymore (This is entirely an example, I don't imagine they'd want to pay big bucks to import Natalie Portman into a bunch of films anymore than they'd be worried about Hemsworth's check... but you get the idea at least), they can just replace him without having to RECAST him in a way that forces movie audiences to break their brains suspending their disbelief... but it's not ever going to work because Thor has been Thor for to long, it's better to just make new heroes altogether... that being said, if the hand off is actually foreshadowed and done over the course of say... a decade as opposed to the usual gimmick of introducing the next 'Batman' in issue 1 of the current run so that they can swap him in ten episodes down the line, that's always going to be seen as a quick and dirty cash grab.
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