Good point, Mr. X! I'm sure there are a fair number of straight SJW editors who are wringing their hands at how best to depict gay/trans characters, because for example they are doing a terrible job with the now fully gayed-up Iceman, who acts like he's a character on Will & Grace. I'm sure the Marvel editors are full of "straight guilt" - Diversity & Comics pointed out one tweet from a Marvel editor (I forget who it was, sorry) who literally apologized for not being bisexual. That's what happens when you deal in identity politics! Guess what, I'm writing fully fleshed-out lesbian and bisexual characters for my video series. Some Tumblr activist, some extremist third-waver somewhere is going to have a problem that my characters were created *at all* by a straight white cis male. I could give a fuck
OK I had already made a post but now I'm going to revise it based on your latest response, Heroine Addict, so here goes.
The point about Carol Danvers is not sales. If it was sales, then the current SJW Marvel editor board would be worried about the fact that they can only sell about 17,000 copies per issue (and that is total shipped to stores..we don't know how much of that is actual sell-through). And sure, that doesn't include digital sales, but guess what? Marvel does not release digital sales numbers. And the sjw audience that Marvel is vainly trying to appeal does not buy comics anyway..they read them online, or illegally torrent them, or just read *about* them to make sure the politics are correct, etc. I can guarantee you that the sales for the first two runs of Ms Marvel - even separated as they were by nearly two decades - were both WAY GREATER than 17,000 copies per issue. So was it really just consumer choice? Not really. Because right now, even though she's supposedly the flagship character of that universe, pretty much nobody is buying her book. Isn't that significant?
If it was sales, then sure you can look at the fact that two previous Ms Marvel runs were cancelled. But the second run was FIFTY ISSUES. That's four years and seems pretty significant. Furthermore when you talk about the longevity of her sexy costumes: she was in the first one (which was quite sexy) for about a year, Then she was in the second one for TWENTY FOUR YEARS (from 1978 to 2012). Not counting whenever she was Binary, which was also a great sexy costume. And yes Karla Sofen was hot, too, and thankfully still is (as far as I know).
Even when Carol changed her name to Captain Marvel, which she did officially in the first Kelly Sue issue in 2012, she still looked like a woman in the new [current] costume. Her hairstyle was different but still long in the back and not militarized. Her body was still shapely, her face was still classically beautiful. Near the end of that run, she had gorgeous long hair again, and was still beautiful, even if the art near the end of that run was terrible (which it was).
So now let's look at the second Kelly Sue run which started in 2014 and ended a year later with #15. Carol Danvers still had long hair, still had a fairly shapely body, etc. in 2015. During that period, Captain Marvel also had a fan club called "Carol Corps" which admired that particular Kelly Sue iteration of the character: strong, take-charge and sexy. Feminist too - obviously the Carol Corps had a strong feminist bent which is fine.
You don't hear much about the Carol Corps anymore (there was apparently a branch of it in my city which faded to almost nothing) but maybe you will again once the movie comes out.
So the overall history is way more than you're talking about with two cancelled series. Overall, we're looking at a period of 37 years in which Carol Danvers, in whatever costume she was in, was depicted as overtly feminine and sexy despite her awesome might!! And now, she isn't. Period.
Also it isn't about *being* a lesbian or even lesbianism *implied*. Carol Danvers has never been depicted as lesbian or bisexual, and still isn't, to this day. With Captain Marvel it isn't about "losing" a character to lesbianism (as you say) and it isn't about giving one up to the "lesbian team" (which hasn't happened anyway). In fact, I'd be perfectly fine if Carol Danvers discovered her bisexuality as long as she stayed feminine and sexy while doing it.
The issue is about losing *almost the entirety of Marvel books* (at least, the ones heavily promoted) to the Social Justice faction. And that includes the current Captain Marvel depiction. To the SJWs, what's important is the new Sexual Puritanism (a trait they ironically have in common with both
Islamic fundamentalists and right-wing Christians). Women must be utterly purified from the male gaze and de-objectified. Therefore, all aspects of the body associated with classical ("patriarchical") beauty traits must be discarded, in all cases. This is core third-wave feminist stuff.
Spiderwoman looks sexy? Put her in a drab costume wearing fucking sneakers. She-Hulk looks sexy and fun? Make her a miserable human being and a musclebound androgynous gray hulk. Squirrel Girl looks sexy? Make her ugly and looks like she has Down's syndrome, and turn her cheery personality into that of an annoying millennial braggart. Mockingbird looks sexy and has had sex with the likes of Hawkeye? Turn her into an annoying complainer who competes with men and demeans them. And of course there's no way in hell you could make a t**nage Muslim girl look sexy (see below). This is the agenda of Marvel. Using a phrase from Diversity & Comics, I call it the "B-Cup Agenda", because D&C has noticed that almost all Marvel female characters seem to have also undergone breast reductions in the past two years (to help eliminate the male gaze). They've even reduced Gamora's breast size - read her new series if you don't believe me.
It has happened. DC, on the other hand, has done NONE OF THESE THINGS to any of its characters (except on a couple of Batgirl-related books).
DC also has has very natural diversity, not forced diversity as Marvel does (see the paragraph below).
And in case you don't think all of the above instances were driven by a Social Justice perspective, then look at one of the other key agenda points the SJW team at Marvel has pushed, and how it interlocks with the third-wave/intersectional feminist perspective I described above. Another key push in the SJW Marvel is to eliminate the primacy of the cis-white-male characters. Kill them off (Hulk), depower them (Thor), make them look dopey (Spiderman), or give them unlikable character traits (like Hydra Cap). Don't forget to depict almost all of the villains as some kind of evil white man. Then, rather than creating innovative new characters, replace these white males with Persons of Colour: new Hulk is Chinese, new Spiderman is black, new Thor is female, new Iron Man is black female, etc. Look what happens when you violate the new Sexual Puritanism among that crowd: Riri Williams gets depicted as sexy by one artist, and all hell breaks loose from the Tumblrsphere.
Again, back to my point: what has been done to Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers in the past two years (the androgynization of her appearance and the militarized seriousness of her character) has been done to appeal to the [mostly imaginary] Social Justice contingent of readership and engineered by the Social Justice team of Marvel editors. These changes are unliked by a lot of longtime comic book readers. As you said, we can only hope against hope that the movie depiction of Captain Marvel will FORCE her comic book character back in a more mainstream, more commonly likeable direction. But don't hold your breath, because it really does seem like the SJWs have a stranglehold over there at Marvel.
In the meantime, re your auxiliary point about Ms Marvel: yes it is creepy that the book basically advocates Islam. If you think about it, how could
it not? The co-creators of Kamala Khan - G Willow Wilson and Sana Amanat - are Muslim. They could not say anything bad about Islam in that comic book (even though there's much bad to say - and a recent issue of Champions even went so far as to depict Muslim men oppressing girls). They could not really depict Kamala straying from her Muslim roots or violating any of the Muslim tenets. She could not be shown eating bacon or drinking beer, even though that would be perfectly *realistic* for a Pakistani-American teenager to try and do (I can almost guarantee you that Sana Amanat herself eats non-halal food and drinks alcohol, because she seems like a fairly liberal type). There are tons of American Muslims who violate traditional tenets of their ancestral faith because they see those rules as useless, outdated and stupid. But you will NEVER (and I mean NEVER) see a Marvel comic book
portraying a Muslim character violating Islam. Why do you think that is? Think maybe Marvel writers don't want to be Charlie Hebdo'd?
Note that Kamala is *tempted* in the book multiple times to do things against Islam but that she *never* does, and that Jersey City's fear of superheroes is written as an *metaphor* about Americans' fear of Islam. Even if the stories in the Kamala book occasionally rise to a decent level of fun and action (and I certainly have enjoyed watching her journey), there are always several levels of preachiness that readers have to wade through.
It's a soft and subtle form of indoctrination: "hey k*ds, Islam is just this cuddly lovable Hello Kitty of a religion that even t**nagers can love!"