Marvel's Falling Sales 6 6

[romanheart]

Marvel's Falling Sales

Marvel VP blames diversity for falling sales

Personally, I think hollow stories and never-ending series renumbering is killing them.

[ComicConnoisseur]

6 minutes ago, romanheart said:

Marvel's Falling Sales

Marvel VP blames diversity for falling sales

Personally, I think hollow stories and never-ending series renumbering is killing them.

When they canceled Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men that showed me they didn't care about long term fans like me. All they seem to care about is selling that shiny new number one with multiple variants.

Edited April 2, 2017 by ComicConnoisseur

[Jeffro.]

7 minutes ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

When they canceled Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men that showed me they didn't care about long term fans like me. All they seem to care about is selling that shiny new number one with multiple variants.

They haven't cared about long term fans for many, many years now. 

[Artboy99]

I have been religiously buying 2 characters since 1974: Hulk and Wolverine. Buying everything published, persevering through reboot after reboot and re-numbering.

Currently BOTH of my characters are dead and have been replaced by a woman (She-Hulk and X-23 ) or a teenage boy ( Amadeus Cho ).

It is a strange method indeed of getting a longtime fan to purchase your comics Marvel.

 

[Broke as a Joke]

So all that talk about female readership and increased sales was askew?  Always an agenda.  Hopefully they can right the ship.

[thirdgreenham]

1 minute ago, CAHokie said:

It's not diversity that is killing them, it is forcing diversity.  Making old characters now be a new race or gender turns a lot of people off. New characters can be whatever you want them to be, but let them be new.

I love the Punisher but when they suddenly made him black for no reason, I didn't really get it. It felt like a cheap ploy and for the first time I stopped collecting it. If it were a new Black character taking up the mantle, I could  get that but to suddenly just change his race??? Doesn't make sense to me..

 

Just wait until you're called racist. 

[Chiefs1313]

I completely dropped Marvel from my pull list. My favorite characters were gone. I couldn't be happier that there is a negative consequence to them force feeding diversity into staple characters. Intro new characters, that are diverse, but leave the existing ones alone. 

[comicquant]

Hopefully they remedy the blunder and bring back the original characters with their original personalities.  They need to toss the variant junk, supplement the great writers and trim the fat.  They don't need a reason for any of them coming back from the dead...  they just need to be resurrected.  Recent leadership decisions are tantamount to New Coke.

[comicquant]

What we should do is publish two underground titles...  The Incredible Wulk and Holverine.  Start the characters from their origins and have them both kill off the existing Marvel universe.  We can do the work for Marvel.

Edited April 2, 2017 by comicquant

[Black_Adam]

I might be way off target (I haven't bought new comics in nearly a decade - I prefer trade reprints of Silver and Bronze age comics), but reading between the lines it almost seemed as if he was trying to shame Marvel's fanbase for not supporting their efforts at diversity. Maybe he's hoping fans hearing his remarks will rush out to buy the comics to reassure themselves they are not sexist/racist and do support diversity in (superhero) fiction.

I haven't read any of the comics so I can't say whether they're good or not, but my hunch is declining sales has far more to do with teenagers spending way more time on Facebook or League of Legends and/or getting their superhero fix through Netflix than anything on the printed page.

[Chiefs1313]

9 minutes ago, Black_Adam said:

I might be way off target (I haven't bought new comics in nearly a decade - I prefer trade reprints of Silver and Bronze age comics), but reading between the lines it almost seemed as if he was trying to shame Marvel's fanbase for not supporting their efforts at diversity. Maybe he's hoping fans hearing his remarks will rush out to buy the comics to reassure themselves they are not sexist/racist and do support diversity in (superhero) fiction.

I haven't read any of the comics so I can't say whether they're good or not, but my hunch is declining sales has far more to do with teenagers spending way more time on Facebook or League of Legends and/or getting their superhero fix through Netflix than anything on the printed page.

You're right, about the shaming aspect to his comments. It easier to blame the audience, rather than consider the product wasn't resonating. Marvel comics has an overwhelming abundance of outspoken social justice warriors in leadership. The lack of diversity in their viewpoints makes some of these "progressive" ideas sound reasonable. 

[FineCollector]

35 minutes ago, CAHokie said:

It's not diversity that is killing them, it is forcing diversity.  Making old characters now be a new race or gender turns a lot of people off. New characters can be whatever you want them to be, but let them be new.

I love the Punisher but when they suddenly made him black for no reason, I didn't really get it. It felt like a cheap ploy and for the first time I stopped collecting it. If it were a new Black character taking up the mantle, I could  get that but to suddenly just change his race??? Doesn't make sense to me..

I know a guy who's a huge Punisher fan... survived the skin graft storyline, stuck with it through the avenging angel storyline... what killed him was Frankencastle.  After reading years and years of the stuff, that was the storyline that he couldn't justify.

I don't think replacing the established character is necessarily the jumping off point.  I dropped Captain America when they brought Bucky back, but Brubaker make Cap a strong seller without his title character.  I was willing to give Sam Wilson Captain America a shot, but the hack writer had Sam proclaim that he didn't realize hard it would be to be Captain America.  For real?!

Marvel flushed the old readers when Joe Quesada started Ultimate Spider-Man.  Their focus was on the new line, and they thought people would keep picking up the classic title, even if they didn't put a lick of work into it.  What Marvel still fails to understand is that comics are not merchandise.  People aren't buying a brand, they're reading the stories critically, and basing their purchases on recent performance.

[Readcomix]

52 minutes ago, CAHokie said:

It's not diversity that is killing them, it is forcing diversity.  Making old characters now be a new race or gender turns a lot of people off. New characters can be whatever you want them to be, but let them be new.

I love the Punisher but when they suddenly made him black for no reason, I didn't really get it. It felt like a cheap ploy and for the first time I stopped collecting it. If it were a new Black character taking up the mantle, I could  get that but to suddenly just change his race??? Doesn't make sense to me..

The Punisher is black now? I completely missed that.

[Readcomix]

49 minutes ago, comicquant said:

Hopefully they remedy the blunder and bring back the original characters with their original personalities.  They need to toss the variant junk, supplement the great writers and trim the fat.  They don't need a reason for any of them coming back from the dead...  they just need to be resurrected.  Recent leadership decisions are tantamount to New Coke.

This! No reason not to just ignore non-continuity , forget it happened, and bring back continuity. What If's are fun, but they lose their impact when everything is what if all the time. Commit to a character having a history, recognize that major changes have long-term and sometimes permanent implications, and write accordingly. The rest of the time, tell good stories. I don't need or want every arc to "change the life of (fill in character/team) forever."

[ComicConnoisseur]

5 minutes ago, Readcomix said:

This! No reason not to just ignore non-continuity , forget it happened, and bring back continuity. What If's are fun, but they lose their impact when everything is what if all the time. Commit to a character having a history, recognize that major changes have long-term and sometimes permanent implications, and write accordingly. The rest of the time, tell good stories. I don't need or want every arc to "change the life of (fill in character/team) forever."

This is why I miss Jim Shooter. The guy ran a tight ship,and had Marvel running on all cylinders. They need someone like that now to come in and clean house.

Edited April 2, 2017 by ComicConnoisseur

[lizards2]

[CAHokie]

20 minutes ago, Readcomix said:

The Punisher is black now? I completely missed that.

[Fan Boy]

39 minutes ago, CAHokie said:

I also missed that phase. For me, as a reader since the '70s, I had read many titles in DC and Marvel. I had dropped them out years ago when they had changed for the worse. I still do read but only in TPB and volumes. I miss many of my old favourites and with today's revisions and different origins makes it bit harder for me to keep up. Variants? That, I do not need. 

I get it that the audience of today wants something different and Marvel did that. Unfortunately, the audience does not have the same thinking as the older generations had. 

For the record, I do thought Ms. Marvel series were good. But then again, I read this in TPB volumes at sale prices. Not the monthly issues. 

[Aweandlorder]

This whole thing is funded by George Soros so marvel is not losing a penny. 

 

Its a joke, relax ok??

[Artboy99]

Diversity is not the problem at all. I do not care whether the character is white black green or pink or male or female!

It is a whole bunch of problems:

1. Changing long standing characters into someone else. It is the most ignorant decision they have made. They make movies that are great, and that can potentially introduce new readers that then go to a comic store to find Thor is a woman, Hulk is dead, Logan is dead, Punisher is a black guy, Iron MAN is a woman, etc. Just so baffling!

2. Killing selling characters. Hard to sell comics of a character that is DEAD you insufficiently_thoughtful_persons.

3. Constantly rebooting. Number 1's every year are a great jumping OFF point.

4. Massive cross title story arcs. I don't want to have to collect Squirrel Girl because the recent story of my collected character ties in.

5. Variants. 1:15, 1:25, 1:50, 1:75, 1:100, 1:200, 1:250, 1:500, 1:1000, 75 different covers, etc. Makes it impossible for the completist to collect them all.

6. Why can't characters stay unique? Spider-Man becomes Spider-Woman becomes Spider-Girl becomes someone else becomes Spider-Man becomes Spider-Gwen becomes Gwenom becomes Gwenpool, etc.

So frustrating.