Marvel Comics May Have Slumping Sales, but Don’t Blame Its Diverse Heroes
This content was originally published by GEORGE GENE GUSTINES on 7 April 2017 | 4:37 pm.
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Marvel doesn’t have “more than one or two comics selling 60,000 or 70,000 copies,” Mr. Hibbs said, adding that this trend has virtually nothing to do with “this diversity canard.”
Marvel’s slump began in October. The company’s average market share from that month through February was 37 percent, a drop of 4.8 percentage points when compared with October 2015 through February 2016. By comparison, the average market share for DC Comics for October through this February was about 29 percent, almost 4 percentage points higher than that same period the previous years.
The falloff for Marvel was one reason the company held a two-day meeting with retailers last week, which led to the diversity firestorm. Asked about the tastes of Marvel’s readership, David Gabriel, the company’s vice president for sales, said, “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity.” The statement went viral, and though Mr. Gabriel tried to clarify his comments and signal Marvel’s commitment to diversity, coverage of his remarks ran in Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian, Breitbart and many other media outlets.
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Amadeus Cho, the Hulk, in The Totally Awesome Hulk, Issue No. 1.
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Marvel Entertainment
The Telegraph of London said that the comments “remain a troubling example of the struggles facing storytelling that places nonwhite faces” at the forefront.
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The outcry is not a surprise. Diversity “is a hot topic in culture, pop culture and geek culture; it is understandable that there is a reaction,” said Milton Griepp, the chief executive of ICv2, an online trade publication that covers the comic book industry.
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Mr. Griepp attended the meeting, which included representatives of 14 retail organizations that are among Marvel’s top 300 comic book sellers. But only two of the representatives remarked that comics with nonwhite lead characters did not sell well for them, he said. A majority noted that those titles were bringing in new readers.
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Executives at Marvel Comics did not respond to requests for an interview this week.
It is difficult to judge the popularity of the newly conceived characters based on the sales figures alone because so many heroes make the leap to television and film.
In February, Ms. Marvel, about Kamala Khan, a teenage Muslim girl living in Jersey City, sold an estimated 19,870 copies. It landed at 109 out of the top 300 comics for the month. But the series is known to be doing well digitally and with collected editions. There are also other signs of prestige. This week, a collected edition of the series, “Ms. Marvel: Super Famous,” written by G. Willow Wilson and illustrated by Takeshi Miyazawa, was nominated for a Hugo Award, which is given to the best science-fiction or fantasy stories.
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Kamala Khan, Ms. Marvel, in Ms. Marvel, Issue No. 1.Credit
Marvel Entertainment
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Ms. Wilson had a lot to say about the Marvel diversity firestorm on her blog, including one critical point that complicates the situation for legacy characters like the female Thor. She noted that they might be better embraced if the original hero had not been humiliated in the process.
Case in point: It is hard right now to root for Steve Rogers, the original Captain America, thanks to cosmic shenanigans that have reimagined him as a longtime agent of Hydra, a Nazi-like organization.
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On the same day last May that Steve Rogers was revealed to be a villain — however long that will last — DC Comics went the opposite way. The company published Rebirth, in which many heroes who had been pushed aside during a 2011 reboot returned. The reboot focused on new versions of the company’s characters at the beginning of their careers. Since Rebirth, the DC universe has been more hopeful.
There is also a sense of optimism that runs through Ms. Marvel, but there is no clear formula that resulted in its success. It depicts heroics, teen angst and struggles for assimilation. Ms. Willow posits that the comic’s mix of traditionalist faith and social justice struck a chord with readers. What she is clear about, however, is the use of the “diversity” label.
“Let’s scrap the word diversity entirely and replace it with authenticity and realism,” she posted. “This is not a new world. This is the world.”
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