“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.”
The quote
comes from David Gabriel, Senior VP of Sales, Print & Marketing
at Marvel, speaking to ICv2 about a downturn in sales Marvel suffered
through the end of 2016. He then goes on to contrast the strong sales
of Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, a nostalgia series about an
alternate timeline where Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson are still
married and have a daughter.
Now, Gabriel
admits there are a lot of factors in why between October and December
last year people might have been making personal economies, about how
Marvel may have just been putting too much product on the market, and
several other factors. Still, the message seems clear, especailly as
he goes on to tout the return of classic characters to prominence in
coming months as a response to this downturn.
So, we need
to discuss a few things.
For one,
there is a specific breed of fan to whom this is good news. This is
the sort of person who calls any title featuring a lead who is now
white, male, cis and straight as “SJW comics”, as “pandering”.
To this sort there is no additional, outside context to these falling
sales, its just the natural consequence of not exclusively catering
to them and their projected power fantasies at all times.
Unfortunately, in many cases, they are also probably right.
How did we
end up with this reality though? This reality that diversity doesn't
sell in a world where Moonlight and Hidden Figures have been so
successful? Diversity doesn't sell when YA novels can't throw out
empowered female leads fast enough? Diversity doesn't sell when LGBTQ
audiences will champion to high heaven any series that gives them
even moderately respectful representation? Diversity doesn't sell in
a world where one of Netflix's flagship series is set in a women's
prison and from day one featured a parade of female characters
representating all sorts of minorities? How does diversity not sell?
Because
there's no one to sell it to.
You see, the
sad reality of the comic industry right now is that if DC and Marvel
weren't owned by larger companies that make megabucks licensing their
IP they would probably have fallen apart years ago. The reason that
so many events, even major jumping on point relaunches like DC
Rebirth, are based around continuity wrangling is because the only
major audience left for these things is the same core audience who
have been reading comics their entire lives. Comics are sold in comic
shops, not in supermarkets or bookshops or the local newsagent and
that is just as true here in the UK as it is in the US. You want
comics on a monthly basis you either find a comic shop in some back
alley well away from the high rents of places with actual foot
traffic or you order online.
And how do
comic companies market a new series? Crossovers! Event tie-ins! A
marketing strategy that literally requires you already read comics
and have enough affection for Character A to want to spend extra
money on their two-issue guest role in the series of Character B.
Outside of
that? Nothing. Comics are advertised in comics, it is an insular
feedback loop.
So, of
course nostalgia sells better than diversity, of course Renew Your
Vows sells better when it has one of the company's most popular
characters in a spin-off of an era whose death fanboys bitch and moan
to this day. Hell, I'm with them on that! I love Renew Your Vows, I
got into comics during the Clone Saga, I miss the idea of a mature
Peter and MJ as a young family.
But I got
into those comics because they were in a rack at Nicholsons', an odd
shop that was sort of a halfway house between corner newsagents and
miniature supermarket. It was on one corner of what was, then, the
main square of Basingstoke town centre right next to the bus station.
I passed it every day of school through secondary school and on
Wednesday I would pass through and pick up a couple of comics from
the little section between the football magazines and the activity
books for kids: Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Generation X, Sensational
Spider-Man, Fantastic Four. It wasn't much of a selection, in fact it
was downright frustrating that of the four Spider-Man titles they
only stocked three so I always missed a quarter of any major
storyline.
It was
accessible, though, to me and dozens and dozens of other kids coming
to and from school.
It is a very
simple truism of marketing that you can be amazing at something and
you won't make a penny if no one sees you do it. If Marvel wants to
reach audiences who are crying out for representation they can't
trust that those audiences will just spontaneously decide to research
comics on their own in the hopes of finding the lesser spotted
Pakistani Muslim teenage girl superhero written by an actual
practicing Muslim, they have to actually put some bloody money into
telling the world that character exists.
And maybe,
while we're at it, concentrate more on the experience of buying a
single series than following the Marvel Universe? Events and
crossovers are money sinks and we don't live in that economy anymore.
You'll attract more casual fans if you aren't constantly teasing big
events. We just got out of Civil War II then Monsters Unleashed, now
you're building towards Secret Empire and Generations is going to run
in the middle of Secret Empire.
We
live in a world where the internet has basically destroyed any
knowledge-based barrier to entry. The most convoluted character
history is a Wikipedia article away and the only barriers left are
the ones the comic industry seems happy to perpetuate: physical
inaccessibility, lack of marketing and the financial burden of
following a huge universe instead of a number of different series
that share a setting.
Diversity
doesn't sell... PAH!
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