Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Before Therre Was SJW Marvel…There Was SJW DC





Many Comic fans complain about SJW Marvel and how their changing their primary white characters with minorities has destroyed the Marvel Comics brand and led to the decline of the entire comic book industry. However, before Marvel went the SJW route in 2015, DC Comics went the SJW route in the mid 2000s And they had the same disastrous results a decade before Marvel decided to go down this road to Hell.


Back in the Mid 2000s DC decided to diversify its universe with minority characters. And as part of its diversity campaign replace some of its secondary characters with new heroes of color including:


A Black Firestorm,


A Hispanic Blue Beetle,


A lesbian Batwoman,


A Hispanic Lesbian Female Question,


And an Asian Atom.


And  along with these diversity replacements, Superman decided to renounce his American Citizenship. Before going to go find himself by walking across America a year or two later.

Good Gravy. When there’s no truth, justice and the American Way in a Superman Comic you know DC has lost its way as a publishing company.


Many of these ethnic heroes stepped into the heroes’ boots after the death of the original character. Jason Rusch stepped into Firestorm’s boots after Identity Crisis. Jamie Reyes stepped into Blue beetle’s goggles after he was killed by Max Lord in the countdown to Infinite  Crisis. Renee Montoya became The Question after the Question died of Cancer in Infinite Crisis or Blackest Night (I Think).


Ryan Choi was the only hero to not replace Ray Palmer due to a set of tragic circumstances.  But he’d meet a tragic fate later on.


Most of the “diversity” heroes were met with a lot of anger by DC Comic fans. They hated seeing their favorite characters killed off and replaced with affirmative action replacements. Out of all the “diversity” heroes only Ryan Choi’s Atom was met with a positive response. Most people loved Ryan Choi in the role of The Atom, but the editors at DC didn’t like the fact that he was so popular.


So they killed him. Damn. Just Damn.


Ryan Choi’s murder showed me how racist the so-called diversity campaign at DC truly was. Sure we could have characters of color. But they couldn’t get more popular than the White heroes they were replacing.


Moreover, the whole diversity campaign also appeared to be racist because like Marvel, DC had a catalog of GREAT Minority characters. Bumblebee, Connor Hawke’s Green Arrow, Black Lightning, Bronze Tiger, Cyborg, Vixen, Both John Henry Irons and Natasha Irons Steel and the entire catalog of Milestone characters like Hardware, Icon and Static were waiting to get a push at DC. Not to mention Michael Holt’s Mr. Terrific who EARNED the mantel from Terry Sloane in the pages of JSA.


But they made new minority versions of White characters Because…Diversity. Then they kill off the only one who got over with readers.


Comic publishers are their own worst enemy.


In the aftermath of DC’s diversity campaign they wound up splitting their audience and alienating fans. Just like what’s happening at Marvel right now.  The only difference is that DC wasn’t STUPID enough to replace the main versions of their most popular characters in their flagship titles with token characters.


Over the last few years Marvel’s editors has been copying DC’s failed business approaches. Only they haven’t seen what the end result of what happened at DC under Dan Didio’s failed leadership. Along with the diversity heroes, DC also decided to tinker with its continuity. First with Identity Crisis. Then Infinite Crisis. Then Final Crisis. The Blackest Night. Then Brightest Day. Then Flashpoint. Then New 52. Then Convergence and finally Rebirth. And with each meandering year-long storyline and continuity reboot they lost more and more fans and more and more sales and pissed off more long-time readers. Since 2011, DC has lost serious market share in not only the comic book market, but also in merchandising as fans and casuals have abandoned the DC Comics brand.


Marvel followed suit over the last few years with reboots to its own universe. First Marvel NOW. Then Secret Wars. Then All-New-All-Different Marvel. Then Marvel NOW! A direct rip-off of all the same failed approaches at DC Comics.


Marvel continuing to do what didn’t work for DC in 2011 has nearly collapsed the comic book industry in 2017.


Damn. Just Damn. If that ain’t the definition of insanity I don’t know what is. The inmates are clearly running the asylum at BOTH Marvel and DC. And no one at Warner Brothers or Disney has the balls to clean the crazy out of both publishing houses.


The sad part about the editors who created the diversity heroes of SJW Marvel is that they never studied what happened to DC’s business from 2002-2016. What hasn’t worked for DC since 2002 hasn’t worked for Marvel since 2015. So why would anyone with any common sense want to follow in their failed footsteps?


That’s the question I’d like Axel Alonso and Tom Bevroot. Because the definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing and expecting a different result. How is following a business model that failed for DC going to succeed at Marvel?


For years Marvel and DC have played a game of follow the leader copying each other’s characters, story models and business approaches. And sadly Marvel followed right down Dan Didio’s dysfunctional road and took Marvel Comics and the entire comic book industry down a road where they have one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel. Before there was an SJW Marvel DC was pushing dysfunctional diversity in between the pages of its comics.


3 comments:


  1. The thing is Shawn that Marvel legacy characters outsold their original counterparts. Check the comicchron. Thor,Cap,IM,Hulk were not selling any honest comic shop owner will tell you this. The legacy characters sold well even Hydra Cap outsold the previous run so Marvel had a logic to their strategy. Admittedly they ended up over doing it flooding the market with books but initially they were on the right track.

    Also movie sales don't drive comic sales never have. Check the sales for Avengers when that first movie dropped the sales for Avengers were crap and that;s when Bendis was writing. Before SJW Marvel. So it's not ppl are coming to shops looking for movie characters and being disappointed by poc chars.

    No what has hurt Marvel was the alienating of their core fanbase by character assassinating classic characters and this happened way before 2015. Cancelling books like X-Men hidden years by John Byrne even when sales were good.This and event fatigue ppl are not going to spend 5 dollars a pop on 20 titles just to keep up for an even that lasts a year.

    That and the demonizing of " The male gaze" and cheesecake art has further hurt Marvel. Nobody wants to buy an ugly She-Hulk comic and mannish Carol Danvers. It's not pocs killing Marvel it's fringe feminism and the emasculating gay agenda.

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  2. The long drawn out stories like The Clone Saga of Spider-Man really turned me off. 2 year long Spider-Man story, much of it spent assassinating Peter Parker as Spider-Man. Miles Morales isn’t that bad in comparison, although Marvel decided to bring Ben and Kaine back from that awful saga so go figure.

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  3. It's not even about the identity, it's always to me been about the fact that superheroes aren't inspirational to me anymore. Since when is your own love interest supposed to be your sole motivator to save countless lives? That's been shown in a couple of comics recently, and regardless of whether or not that's "canon" to the superheroes of a so-called publisher, it's not inspirational. How about publish a story where a superhero ultimately, in spite of some mourning, just goes back to being a hero. Many of us need to live at a higher standard than most superheroes, when it's supposed to be the other way around. It's fanwanking to an extreme portion of fandom. DC is over the top worshipping of the Batman, Marvel has issues with going off the beaten path of superheroes. DC also decided to imitate Superboy Prime and say it's Dr. Manhattan instead.

    As for Anon, of course they are acting with a lack of awareness toward their audience, but quality comic stories don't have to be long. Chances are it's too late for the publishers to change course with their dying off audience in the tens of thousands, but few people are going to be interested when you can cover more story than a comic book with a TV show or a video game in a month's time.

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