Diversity in Marvel Comics

Cafe Society
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I recently read this article: Diversity at Marvel Comics: "Avengers" #6 (Review) - World Comic Book Review about the increasing diversity of characters at Marvel Comics.

That article in turn references this article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/news/marvel-boss-creates-uproar-saying-diversitys-killing-comic-sales/amp/ about how that introduction of diversity is killing sales of Marvel Comics.

This seems to be not through some sort of discrimination, but instead, as the first article suggests, because core fans simply don’t like changes to the characters they grew up with and love.

That got to me to thinking about how Wertham’s book *Seduction of the Innocent * Seduction of the Innocent - Wikipedia to a great extent killed the American comic book market and especially the superhero market. This in turn made me consider that Gardner Fox’s re-creation of the classic DC characters and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s creation of the Marvel characters to come was a sort of “evolve or die”-type revamp of the genre. I wonder if that is what we are seeing here?

I did not see another thread on this in Café Society which surprised me given the publicity this topic has attracted in the past two weeks. Thoughts?

(I also find it interesting that the shift to diversity has not made its way into the movies. There is no sign of a Jane Foster Thor anytime soon in a motion picture.)

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We’ve seen a black Heimdall and a black Kingpin, however.

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And a black Nick Fury.

(I’m not sure if the story about Michael Clarke Duncan being selected on the basis of being the “palest” of all the huge, nimble, talented actors available is true but if so it amuses me.)

4

Dan Dockery over at Cracked took a shot at this earlier this week.

The real issue isn’t diversity…it’s lack of good writing. It’s the fact that quality comics of all kinds are being made by people who are from all backgrounds but aren’t being published by the big two. The fact that they can’t realize that the latest crossover/event/multiple year nonsense isn’t selling because they’re not telling any story is just indicative of the lack of creativity and passion in the superhero genre now.

In short, why the hell should anyone buy something that clearly seems determined to suck money while not delivering value?

5

Seduction of the Innocence, which I’ve actually read and is mostly nonsense, created an environment where superhero comics could thrive while others were abandoned. In the 1950s you could find comic books that were crime thrillers, supernatural tales, romantic soap operas, westerns, and of course super heroes.

I stopped reading comics around 2002 because I got tired of the way they were marketed. I resented having to buy 2-3 titles I didn’t normally buy just to follow a story line. I hated it when a story line I was getting into was interrupted by some meta plot designed to get me to purchase other titles.

So, for people like me, Thor isn’t Jane Foster, Damien Wayne isn’t Robin. and if you try to throw Miles Morales as the Spectacular Spider-Man at me instead of Peter Parker I’m giving the movie a pass. But, like I said above, I stopped purchasing comics for other reasons than diversity. I’m one of those people who doesn’t really like it when they mess with my favorite characters too much.

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Sales of comic books don’t mean anything. Nowadays, the comics themselves exist mostly as a source of material for more profitable media like movies. And as you might have noticed, comic book movies are huge.

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:confused: What about the Black Panther movie coming out next year? Does that not count as “diversity” because the character was written as black from his first appearance in the comics?

You seem to be defining “diversity” to apply only to changes in the ethnicity/gender of existing cishet-white-male characters. But I think it would be generally agreed that “diversity” can also mean raising the profile of other characters who weren’t originally cishet white males.

Did you consider that any of the other post-Dick-Grayson Robins were Robin? AFAIK Dick Grayson hasn’t been Robin in the comics for the past 30 years or so. Do you reject all the other Robin identities too, or is there something specific about Damian Wayne that makes him particularly un-Robin-like to you?

Where do you draw the line for “too much”, though? As with the multiple Robins mentioned above, AFAICT comics have been “messing with” characters’ identities and backstories for quite a while: a reboot here, an alternative version there, etc. Why is a change to gender or ethnicity seen as “too much” instead of as just another of these tweaks to the interpretation of the character?

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That’s all fine, but if (for example – not sure if this applies to you) a black Batman or Superman bothered you, then I think you’ve internalized some of the basic societal background level of race distinction – that there really is something important and fundamentally different between black and white people, when there really doesn’t need to be (any more than a distinction between, say, a German-American actor and an Irish-American actor playing the same role in different movies) – and perhaps you’d prefer not to.

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Yes, a good article. Aside from Donald Duck collected pocketbooks, I never found the Appeal of US Comics compared to the Franco-Belgians *, which had good Quality Pictures and colours, and interesting Story lines. Maybe it was the Age disparity: I didn’t read Comics from the 50s and 60s (Pulp Quality, or Pilote weekly), but started in the 80s, at 10 and upwards, so primitive Story lines bored and insulted me.

I also don’t understand how in General People expect a constantly changing Team of 6 People or more: writer, drawer, inker, paint guy and speech bubbles writer, cranking out one issue per week, to produce good Quality ever? A good novel isn’t written that way, the days when serialized novels were published every week are Long over. Good TV Shows have several different writers, but if they want to stay good, a few People have a “bible” so the stories and characters stay consistent, and a plan where the arc is going (or only stand-alone stories without arc).

  • which ironically become better because of the same censorship that in the US resulted in the Comic code, which only dumbed things down, but in France caused a restriction on Import, leading to Young artists leaving the arts academy going into Comics, so you line clare from Herge and others, People who could draw, and Albums that took 1-2 years for 1 or 2 artists to finish, but with good drawing, and complex Story lines.
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While I don’t know much about the US Comic characters (and their endless reboots, clones etc.), I remember an African-American actor * commenting on a new James Bond being played by a black actor, saying essentially **
“James Bond was always a White guy. Why re-imagine him instead of inventing a new character that’s black from the start?”

(Although James Bond has always been a hereditary character anyway, being played by different White guys over decades without aging - but there are still several other double-Zero numbers available!)

Which I think is a much better solution, it upsets less People who are used to the traditional character, and a new character who is X (black, female, hispanic, gay…) from the start is in my opinion a better identification than a different character who’s “adapted/ re-imagined”.

Similar like the “Ghostbusters just like the old ones, only women” - I don’t want that, it’s boring. Make a new Team, a different Name, a different City, whatever.

  • Don’t remember which, and yes, one black Person doesn’t speak for all

** paraphrased

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What’s the latest word on a Black Widow film? I know there was some studio lip service to doing one but God knows when and God knows whether it’ll be any good.

On another topic, I rather liked the idea of a teenage Muslim girl as Ms Marvel, in that it gave them an opportunity to explore the challenges of her dealing with a traditionalist Muslim family while also (clumsily) coming to terms with being a superhero PLUS the usual American high school dramatics. I haven’t read all of it and I’m not particularly committed to previous incarnations but the potential to do something interesting is there even if the writing isn’t always as good as I might like.

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But rightly or wrongly, people perceive a difference, and that perception sometimes results in real differences. For instance, it’s inherent to Steve Rogers’ backstory that, not only was he an All-American Boy, but that Americans in the 1940s were able to perceive him as an All-American Boy. That wouldn’t have been possible if he were black. Now, it’s still possible to put a black man in the star-spangled tights and shield, but that character needs a different backstory, consistent with how blacks were treated in the 1940s.

On the other hand, for some characters, it doesn’t matter as much. Catwoman’s essential backstory, for instance, is just that she’s a really skilled cat burglar, and so it didn’t really make any difference when she was played by Eartha Kitt instead of Julie Newmar.

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Have you seen the movie? It’s very different from the original. It’s also freaking awesome, and also hilarious.

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Marvel’s idea of diversity is “let’s take a popular established hero and turn him into a minority” instead of “let’s promote and write good stories for the minority heroes we already have” or even better “let’s create new heroes because we haven’t had a single good idea since the 50’s”. Of course turning Thor into a woman or Captain America black or any of the other ridiculous ideas they’ve had are not popular. First of, like a comic book death, we KNOW none of this are permanent. Tony Stark is going to be Iron Man, Peter Parker is going to be Spiderman. Their diversity is a gimmick, not something minorities can actually embrace. Don’t make the Falcon Captain America, just freaking write good Falcon stories.

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Oh man. It’s exasperating how many times over the last couple of weeks I’ve seen ICv2’s coverage of Marvel’s retailer summit regurgitated by outlets that don’t seem to know all that much about comics in general, the Direct Market, or how Marvel and DC have been operating lately. Meanwhile, most comic sites are pointing out how a lot of Marvel’s sales woes can be laid at their own feet.

But anyway, it’s spawned a lot of discussion:

Marvel’s VP of sales realized he’d just thrown chum in the water, and walked back on that comment about diversity almost immediately.

No, Diversity Didn’t Kill Marvel’s Comic Sales

Marvel’s Problem Isn’t Diversity - It’s Much Bigger

Marvel Comics May Have Slumping Sales, but Don’t Blame Its Diverse Heroes

How the Big Two Painted Themselves Into a Corner With Diversity

G Willow Wilson weighs in

Mostly folks seem to agree that this boils down to:

  • Marvel has a bad habit of flooding the market. They released/relaunched over 100 monthly series in roughly the last year and a half. These books bear a cover price of $4 to $5 dollars a pop, with the annuals and special event books at $6 to $10 each. There is simply no way for the average reader to afford to keep up with the majority of Marvel’s output, let alone find time to read it.

  • Marvel is going back to the mistakes of the 90’s and leaning hard on variant covers and other sales boost gimmicks, essentially opting to squeeze money out of the retailers as opposed to figuring out ways to retain and grow their readership.

  • Marvel did find an audience for its “diverse” titles: Black Panther, Ms Marvel, Squirrel Girl, Jane Foster as Thor… quite a few have performed quite well in the DM. (And that’s not taking into account digital sales or the outside market that Marvel’s been pursuing with Scholastic book fairs and such.) And the “diverse” books at the bottom of the sales charts aren’t performing that differently from a lot of the traditional heroes. Did She-Hulk and Nighthawk tank? Yup. But so did Solo and Hyperion, both books staring white, straight dudes in the lead roles. Heck, even the attempts at a Star Lord solo aren’t going so great. It has less to do with diversity than it does an oversaturated market, and which titles Marvel chooses to allocate big name writers and artists to. But again, they overdid it - they took this new target audience they’d found and inundated them with new books at $4 and $5 each, relaunches, etc. when most of them are more than likely going to buy the trades online, by which point the book is already cancelled.

  • Multi-book mega-events twice a year and relaunches every six to twelve months. They’re great for short-term cash grabs. They’re not so great for retaining reader interest. It essentially means that there are several points each year where Marvel gives readers on a book a great point to walk away, and each time, a few more do.

  • Neglect and dilution of traditionally strong IP lines in pursuit of new audience and other-media synergy. Marvel has slapped “Avengers” on so many different titles lately that it’s nigh impossible to determine what the thrust of the line is supposed to be. Until just recently, they’d been treating the X-Men as a third-rate property because one of the higher ups was being snotty about the movie rights situation. Suddenly, they’re pushing the Inhumans as X-Men lite. And yes, to an extent some of the new faces in traditional roles fall under this category – the way Bruce Banner was killed was going to piss a lot of fans off; making his replacement part of the “diversity” push meant said character was going to be the target of that ire. Growing a new audience shouldn’t mean telling fans of the old characters to like it or lump it.

There’s a lot of reasons why Marvel’s not doing as well as they traditionally have right now. A lot of it comes down to assuming they can take the retailer and long-time readers for granted, because these are not new complaints. But boiling it down to “diversity is killing sales” has been click-bait sensationalism at best and lazy scapegoating at worst.

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I totally agree. As a stand-alone it is great.
I don’t think the problem with Marvel is diversity per se-I think there isn’t enough consistency to let people become attached to characters. For instance, Tony Stark(Iron Man) has been stunted into a coma and they have split the Iron Man persona into two different characters: a 15 year old African-American girl named Riri Williams, and a supposedly reformed Victor Von Doom. Now, Doom is a long-standing character that has been on the scene since the early 60’s, but Riri sprang from nowhere and nowhere is where she will return to the instant licensed money-in-the-bank original Tony Stark wakes back up…which will be soon, no doubt about it. Marvel is oft times inundated with temporary fill-ins like this, people that are there to hold the spot until the One And Only Original inevitably returns, and it is to Marvel’s credit that they try to think outside the box and use this as a chance to give diversity a good try. Unfortunately, 99% of the time, temp fill ins, whether white or black or yellow or green or blue, whether male or female or straight or gay or trans or whatever, are doomed to low-ratings because the fan is waiting for the original to return.

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If by diversity you mean ‘endless reboots’ (particularly you DC) then …yes…diversity is the problem.

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Jane Foster has been Thor since 2014, and original-Thor (“Odinson”) has been MIA for most of that time.

Logan died in 2014 leaving Laura to take over as Wolverine, and that has been the status quo since then.

Tony Stark returning “soon, no doubt about it” seems to be a very dubious assertation.

edit: And both of their books have very good ratings (espc. All-New Wolverine), so I think the fans waiting for the original to return may be SOL.

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One commentator (sorry, I can’t remember where I read it) noted what I feel is an important issue: character ownership. If you’re a writer working for DC or Marvel, any character you create will generally be owned by the company. In smaller companies, writers retain ownership of their characters. It’s pretty obvious which system favors writer creativity; a writer with an interesting idea for a new character is going to keep it for himself not give it away. Efforts by Marvel and DC to introduce new characters get minimal effort from their writers.

Nowadays, interesting new characters like Wolverine, Starfire, Deadpool, Storm, Cable, and Lobo don’t appear in Marvel and DC titles; they appear in other companies’ books.

DC and Marvel are doing okay with the stable of classic characters. Many readers are still interested in reading about the characters they grew up with decades ago. But those readers don’t want their classic characters to change and company policy prevents interesting new characters from being introduced alongside the classics.

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I’m not really a comics guy (although I’m enjoying the MCU and its offshoots), but I’m interested in different people’s perspective on these sorts of issues. I really appreciate Anduinel’s input, and I suspect that sort of analysis would be of value in many areas lately where the critics who are generating the most clicks and awareness are… ignorant of inside baseball, shall we say.

I’m somewhat conflicted when it comes to re-tooling an established character for the sake of diversity. One the one hand, I agree with the sentiment that it would probably be better if we could start new properties with diversity baked-in at the outset rather than changing established icons. On the other hand, those who feel strongly about diversifying media could rightly argue that it’s unfairly difficult to get attention to a new character, relegating all of the diversity to smaller projects.

On the third hand, I yearn for vast amounts of diversity and creativity of all kinds, and wish that these conversations would more often go there. I would love to see someone do a take on, say, a Black Captain America, and really explore it for its own sake. Make the story so compelling and creative that all but the direst of haters come to appreciate it as being much more than just slapping some color on an established character. Because I get the impression that, sometimes, there’s little more thought put into these changes than that.

Like with the new Ghostbusters. I’m really surprised at the response it’s gotten here at the 'Dope, because I thought it was really lame, and far below the quality of humor and story that I’ve seen each of the actresses involved exhibit. I dunno, maybe for me it’s mostly about watching the movie at forty-something instead of as a teenager, or maybe it’s about having seen decades worth of good and bad comedies instead of maybe a dozen.

But one point that really struck me, and I feel serves to exemplify the long treatise I’d write if I had a mind to, is that in the original Ghostbusters, the nerd was celebrated. He was mocked, yes, but he was mocked by fellow nerds, and the portrayals of the characters had a bit of truth and more than a little love in the heart of them. The new movie felt like when the popular kids poke angry fun at something they don’t understand to try to shut it down and make it go away. Maybe my appreciation of the movie was tainted by the outrage and backlash and how Feig handled all of that, but I felt that this movie had very little heart overall.

I think if the creatives and the studios, etc, that managed them were to develop really good stories, first and foremost, rather than trying to tick boxes, a lot of the controversies would evaporate. Eventually. Somewhat.

Clickbait and hatemongering are hard to beat.