Fans have been scorned, taunted, and belittled by comicbook creators on social media for — politely now, mind you — daring to ask questions about altering long-time characters and stories all for “diversity’s” sake.
You know the routine by now. Doug, myself and many others have written about it ad nauseam.
Still, the creators have continued in their snobbish, egomaniacal ways.
However, now there is this from Newsarama (emphases mine):
According to David Gabriel, Marvel’s Senior Vice President of Sales, Print & Marketing, a sales downturn at the publisher that accompanied a “big shift in the entire industry” beginning in October 2016 came as a result of many factors, including, according to the executive, the market “turning up their noses” at any title not featuring a “core Marvel character.”
Suggesting the answer to the question of why people’s tastes suddenly changed was better answered by Direct Market retailers, Gabriel told ICv2 that “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,” he explained. “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.”
And Jon Del Arroz’s (love that name) article from a couple of weeks ago is spot-on:
Marvel has a diversity problem.
In that they have none in terms of diversity of thought. They are a pure social justice propaganda arm. This is dangerous when it comes to creating art, as if you have everyone thinking in lockstep, unable to get outside the box, you’ll have creative stagnation. More than that, when you turn children’s adventure fiction into adult message browbeating, you lose any semblance of fun that a product formerly had. It’s no wonder that sales have dropped by about half, when they have an entire writing core of every single one of their monthly writers hell-bent on a crusade of alienating half of the country in some social engineering through comics. I don’t exaggerate my numbers either, and I did some leg work for you all so you might better make educated purchases, or lack thereof, of Marvel Comics. …
According to marvel.com, there are 18 writers on the current releases. I went through each and every one of their twitter accounts to give you a summary of where they spend their time on social media in terms of politics. I don’t mind people getting political occasionally, or even necessarily holding left wing views, but when it’s constant beating the drum of anger and hate, that’s what makes an SJW, and that’s where one needs to stay away (and is a primary reason for Marvel’s steep sales decline in recent years). Here’s a brief summary of the writers’ twitter feeds, as I’ve gone through all of them for you:
Mike Costa – Constant Anti-Trump posts.
Jason Aaron – Anti-Trump, has #resist greenpeace retweet from inauguration. However, he doesn’t post politically very often, not pushing some anger crusade all the time.
Brian Michael Bendis – Anti-Trump posts, but posts so much it’s not a large percentage of his tweets.
Cullen Bunn – Rabid anti-Trump.
Becky Cloonan – a couple of snarky anti-Trump posts pre-election, but no political posts since. From the feeds, appears to be the sanest of the Marvel staff.
Gerry Duggan – Constant Anti-Trump posts, retweets Bernie (he can still win!).
Al Ewing – British, and doesn’t seem to post a lot of American politics, but very heavily steeped in globalism in immigration “rights” in his posts. Anti-Western civilization.
Roxanne Gay – Constant rants about feminism, anti-Trump posts.
Zac Gorman – Complains about Republicans as “joke”, but only one recent post as such. Low percentage of political tweets.
Derek Landy – Anti-Trump, not overwhelming in political posts. Mostly sticks to posts about writing.
Kate Leth – Regular anti-Trump posts. Constant complaints about some boogeyman “privilege”, rambles at racist, sexist, etc., “white dudes”. Rants about queer issues.
Stuart Moore – Regular posts anti-republican, anti-Trump.
Greg Pak – Complains about “representation” of different races. Lots of anti-Trump posts.
Dan Slott – Anti-trump rants all the time.
Charles Soule – Constant anti-trump rants.
Nick Spencer – Rants about trump/republicans and calls anyone who disagrees with him flat out evil.
G.Willow Wilson – “Muslim” Ms. Marvel writer, rants anti-Trump posts all the time.
Chip Zdarksy – Constant anti-Trump posts.
That is … “100% […] extreme left-wing ideologues who hate half of the country [and] have nothing nice to say about the USA or its president ever,” Del Arroz continues.
Comic fans of goodwill, those with nary a racist/sexist/homophobic etc. bone in their bodies, have been blasted as just that by creeps such as Dan Slott, et. al. all because they’ve asked simple questions regarding characterization and stories.
Many, like Doug and myself, have pointed out that Marvel’s permissive attitude towards horrendous creator behavior on social media is hardly an appropriate business model.
I feel like going on a Randy Quaid-in-Independence Day-style rant: “I’ve been sayin’ it. I’ve been sayin’ it for ten damn years. Ain’t I been sayin’ it? Yeah, I’ve been sayin’ it.”
I — we — knew all this nonsense was unsustainable. We knew the chickens would be seeking out that proverbial roost.
Douglas Ernst Blog 