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Post by judgejosephdredd on Jul 31, 2019 19:06:15 GMT
I would say most of these YouTubers take issue not so much with Portman coming back as Jane Foster but rather that it seems Marvel Studios really wants to go in the direction of more recent storylines from the comic books which have neither been too successful with fans or financially and are mostly written and illustrated by people who often slam anyone, not just trolls, who express critical thought on their work even if its well argued and constructive - As a long time reader I personally avoid any book that is written and or drawn by Tim Doyle, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Ta-Neshi Coates, Richard Pace, and especially by Mark Waid because of how politically and religiously divisive and disrespectful to consumers they are if they do not feel or think the same way they feel on certain topics. And that is not even talking about how some have tried to sabotage independent comic makers from releasing books like their own, like your Jawbreakes: Lost Souls or Cyberfrog. But...That's taking this discussion to a different area almost, so I'll bring it back to Portman - I can see it happening, and to be fair Portman has something of a history of making pretty questionable statements herself in the past albeit fairly rarely. I'd love to see the sales figures that back up this frequent assertion. I worked in a comic book store during the era when Kamala Khan's Ms. Marvel was introduced. Those books sold well. If I recall correctly, they sold so well that Marvel was eager to repeat the experiment, which is why they introduced female Thor in the first place. The Khan character's books frequently exceeded Marvel's sales projections (which granted were usually very conservative). I'm certainly not calling you a liar but, I often hear that sales were terrible on those books without much in the way of sourcing. The way I remember it from the retail perspective is that not only were the books selling reasonably well, but they were also attracting a new audience. Marvel was desperate to get new readers into the comic books as older readers were aging out and sales were slipping dramatically. I can attest to this personally. Jason Aaron's run on Thor, Unworthy Thor, and Mighty Thor were by all account successful critically and financially. Where I worked, we had a crop of regulars who insisted they would not buy Marvel books anymore if the diversity trend continued. This put pressure on my boss, and he joined a coalition of retailers who took their concerns to the distributors (who in turn pushed back on Marvel). Ironically, a lot of the older regulars had sub-lists that had shrunk more than 2/3 before the diversity trend even started. Many long-time big-two readers, suffering from "event fatigue," started switching to highly praised indies as their goto books. I'm not saying every diversity-themed book Marvel put out during that era was a hit. A lot of them bombed hard (A-Force, I'm looking at you), but, the entire experiment was far from a complete failure critically or financially. Some of the titles did start off strong but interest dropped later which led to lowering sales numbers and for some cancellations(Marvel has a whole had to drop close to half of their 100+ titles in the last few years in tally)and eventual rebrandings, I'd say the 'Marvel Comics is failing' stuff really came into view sometime in 2017 when insiders posted then recent sales statistics. Can't speak for everyone but at the store I regularly go to the newest Marvel titles tend to collect dust while manga, Image, Valiant, and Dark Horse sell more, and older reprints or omnibuses of classic storylines are purchased in heartbeats, I'd say the same goes for DC - huge selection of Doomsday Clock on one shelf collecting all issues of the run from start to current but barely touched. Regarding critical reception personally I tend to trust the average consumer more(Which is why in these types of discussions I focus more on profit) as many of these professional reviewers sometimes come across as biased as certain storylines seem to appeal to them on a political level and in some cases they were not really long time readers of Marvel and appreciators of the medium till more recently - so whatever issues long time readers have matter little to nothing.
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