Occasionally, controversy strikes the comic book world, and I thought it would be fun to gather my thoughts on such instances and put them out there for you, dear reader, to ponder on. So this is the first ‘Jury’s Out’ piece that I will be writing, and if people like it I will write more.
It can’t have escaped your attention, if you’re reading Marvel’s stuff in any great quantity, that there is a conscious effort to diversify the race and gender mix of the core characters of their comic universe. This has met with some pretty serious criticism – search Youtube for ‘SJW Marvel’ and clear your evening, because it’s a black hole of rage. People are pissed.
So is this drive a good thing? Well, the first thing to understand is that commercially, Marvel Comics are not doing that great. As a company they are profitable, yes, but they are ultimately owned by Disney, who like any other large corporation are very concerned with return on investment. So while Marvel Comics might be making money, they’re not making Disney’s idea of money. That situation has arisen from various problems, and it’s natural to blame any problems in a failing organisation on major changes that have been made recently. The subject of the debate seems to be, are Marvel’s creative team running the company into the ground in pursuit of an agenda, or is the Big M the victim of a hate campaign from prejudiced and hateful keyboard warriors, a campaign that is shaming people into avoiding their books?
Like I said, there is a LOT of stuff about this on the internet already, so let’s look at the main points people have made, for and against.
CASE FOR THE DEFENCE
1. Marvel have always been about diversity
One of the cornerstones of the Marvel Comic Universe is the X-Men. And some of the core points that make them so interesting and popular are themes relating to racism and prejudice. X-Men comics have had a lot to say about what it is like to be treated differently because of how you were born, and more interestingly how you respond to that when you fall victim to it. Are you a Professor X, who seeks to create dialogue with people who may not like you to find a way to co-exist, or are you a Magneto, who strikes first with the same violence such people will inevitably visit upon you, if you don’t act? Just think on that, and think how relevant that debate is now in our world of perpetual dissatisfaction with political figures and increased interest in civil resistance.
You can’t talk about the X-Men without talking about Wolverine. Just look at the cover of his first appearance:
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| No really, just look at that cover! Glorious |
Note the emphasis on the fact that he is Canadian, to appeal to audiences in that part of the world. Today he is one of Marvel’s most popular characters, and he was written at least in part to appeal to a new demographic. In other words, to diversify their characters.
As well as the X-Men, witness Wakanda, an African nation written to be the most technologically advanced country in the world, at a time when racial segregation had only just ended in the U.S. Marvel Comics have been progressive since the Silver Age; it’s not new, it’s part of their heritage, and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby helped forge it.
2. Marvel’s universe survives by constantly introducing new characters
A lot of the argument against the state of the current Marvel Comic Universe is that it is too concerned with introducing new characters and needs to give us more of the old favourites. But again if we look at Marvel historically, they have always introduced new characters on a truly industrial level. At the time of writing their universe is made up of about 7,000 distinct characters. Over 78 years, that’s about 90 characters a year, or one every 4 or 5 days. Yes, some have been terrible, but turning out new characters is a staple of Marvel comics, and the comics we know and love would look a bit weird if they stopped.
3. Trying to appeal to new audiences is good business sense
In business, there are only 3 ways to make more money: cut costs, raise prices, or sell more. When you are a Marvel-sized fish in the comics pond, selling more becomes difficult. It makes perfect sense to see who is not buying your product, and seeing if there is a way to convince them to do so. And characters that they can identify with is far from the worst way to woo them into the comic book store. If Marvel continued appealing to the same demographic that they have already cornered, they will never increase sales.
4. Writers write best when they write about what they know
How do you get the best out of a writer? You get them to write about what they care about. I couldn’t write this blog if I didn’t care about comics, and I like to think that shows through in my writing. The same applies to writers who have issues they care about – in the case of Marvel who, as we have established above, has always been a progressive publisher, getting talented writers to write about those issues they care most deeply about, stands the best chance of producing the highest quality content those writers can give for the money Marvel have paid. The prevalent social issues of today are very different to 10, 20 or 30 years ago, and Marvel has always sought to make their comic universe reflect the world around us. It needs writers who care about that world to deliver that.
5. Some of the characters are great and make sense
Even if you leave aside all of the above, some of the characters that have come in for fierce criticism are actually great when you look at them objectively. Kamala Khan’s Ms Marvel had a great angle of giving superpowers to a massive superhero fangirl, and while she uses a recycled name, it’s a name that was left vacant. And Laura Kinney’s Wolverine makes absolute sense in the context of the story – Logan loved her like a daughter, and after he died, she decided to carry on what he started by pulling on the Wolverine costume. Logan can’t be Wolverine if he’s dead, and can you really say he wouldn’t have approved?
CASE FOR THE PROSECUTION:
1. A conscious effort to add more diversity can lead to ‘box-ticking’
Not all diversity is good. Diversity itself is great, but when you are including a character from an underrepresented ethnicity/gender identity/sexual preference etc just to give a big patronising thumbs-up to that group, you make things worse, not better. It’s like saying “Look! Comics are good now because there’s someone like you in them!” First of all, that doesn’t mean the comic is good, and second of all, expecting people to care about your character because they have one thing in common with the reader is just another way of calling those people shallow. Yes, Pakistani people read Kamala Khan. But what about the white kid who recognises her overbearing parents and annoying older brother? Or the Chinese kid who just thinks a superhero who can embiggen on command is just plain cool? Trying to appeal to minorities by simply giving them a minority character only works if those people think nothing else of themselves other than “I am black/I am bisexual/I am genderqueer etc.” People see themselves as a bit more than that, and they can find your minority character boring as much as some white dude might love the character enough to buy the book every month. People are multi-faceted and are much more than one immediately obvious trait. If you give them characters who aren’t, you are giving them bad characters.
2. People aren’t buying Marvel comics, in particular the new audiences they went after
Numbers don’t lie. Marvel’s sales are, for the most part, nowhere near where they need to be. In the 90s, if an A-list Marvel character’s book sold only 70,000 copies, the people responsible for creating that comic could expect a long talk in a small room with no cake or coffee. In June 2017, just 6 of Marvel’s titles sold above this level, 2 of which were Marvel’s Star Wars Universe books. The remaining 4 were Spectacular Spider-Man #1, Edge of Venomverse #1, Secret Empire #4 and Secret Empire #5. You’ll notice a conspicuous absence of Marvel’s new characters from that line-up. The highest-selling title book for the new characters is Mighty Thor #20, with 42,000 copies; but it’s worth noting that Jane Foster’s Thor is barely in this issue, unlike the previous issue which sold 7,000 copies less than this one. Whatever your feelings on the subject, this strategy is not translating into sales, and a publisher that sells few books does not remain a publisher very long. People are voting with their feet, and not recognising that is to allow Marvel to descend into self-indulgence. When Disney realise they are cutting cheques for people to produce comics that hardly anyone but them want to read, we will all lose the books we love, whatever your politics.
3. Negative feedback that could be valid can be discarded by citing prejudice
As a creative myself, nothing makes me angrier, more spiteful, and generally a worse human being than receiving criticism. If someone suggests that your work is less than great, your first natural instinct is to look for reasons to ignore them; you poured your heart and soul into that book/picture/song/article/sculpture, how dare they! They obviously don’t ‘get it’ and we have to find why they don’t ‘get it’ so we can ignore what they have to say. The current debate around Marvel comics, made up of people who hate this current direction, and people who desperately want to protect it as they feel it is socially important, makes it impossible for objective criticism of books featuring minority characters to be heard properly. There are some monumentally bad comics hiding behind an easily-made shield that is there for no reason other than to let the writers and artists keep thinking that everything they are doing is great. Publically state that you don’t like America, and there is a ready queue of people waiting to tell you that you hate women, hate gay people and hate Hispanic people. Yes, there are such people lurking out there in the bottom half of the internet, waiting for any vehicle to hook their hatred onto. The real way these people hurt books like America, and the intention behind them, is to let the creative force behind them bury their heads in the sand and keep producing poor material. To achieve equality, you have to be prepared to fail equally as well as succeed equally, even if there is a cheap way to avoid doing so.
4. The use of existing names on new characters is confusing
This is one of the biggest bones of contention for critics for Marvel’s current approach; it’s not enough to add new, diverse characters into the their universe, they have taken established names and handed them to characters that we don’t know and don’t have any reason (yet) to care about. What’s the problem with this? Let me give you an example of the kind of conversation that is happening again and again in comic book stores. Parents are taking their kids into comic book stores on a regular basis now, looking to give them something to read and keep them amused that is connected to the characters they have seen on the big screen in the Avengers. Proud Parent goes to the counter to ask Comic Book Guy for help:
PP: Hello, I’d like some comics for my kid. She really liked the Iron Man movies, do you have any Iron Man comics?
CBG: Well we do, but it’s not Tony Stark Iron Man.
PP: What?
CBG: There are 2 Iron Mans right now. One is a teenage girl, Tony Stark is in that one, but he’s a hologram copy of himself, because he’s kinda dead. Or not, it isn’t clear. There’s another Iron Man but he’s basically Doctor Doom in new armour.
PP: Doctor Doom? The villain? OK, maybe not. How about some Captain America? His movies were great.
CBG: OK, there’s 2 Captain Americas too. The one from the movies is kind of a Nazi now. He came out as a fascist and is currently ruling America as a dictator.
PP: You’ve got to be shitting me. And the other one?
CBG: Well he’s the guy who used to be the Falcon, only he doesn’t wear the Cap uniform or use the shield any more, he lives in some tunnels and smuggles people out of the country.
PP: OK, forget that. Thor? Everyone loves Thor.
CBG: Well there’s 2 Thors…
PP: Christ.
CBG: You can have Lady Thor, who is Jane Foster from the movies.
PP: The annoying one who always looked bored?
CBG: That’s her. She has cancer now, she may die any issue. The original Thor is still around, only we aren’t allowed to call him Thor. He has lost an arm and is currently struggling with alcoholism.
PP: Um, OK, no. What about the Hulk? Are there 2 of them?
CBG: There were, but the one from the movies is dead. The Hulk we have left is a teenage kid who thinks turning into a giant green rage monster is the best thing that could happen to you.
PP: She’s definitely not reading that. What the hell happened to the first Hulk?
CBG. He was murdered by Hawkeye. Well, one of the Hawkeyes.
PP: One of the- wait, I don’t want to know. Hawkeye is a murderer now?
CBG: He was, not any more though. He’s basically turned into Scooby Doo. Drives around in a van solving mysteries and stuff.
PP: *Looking for the hidden camera at this point* OK. Well, that leaves Black Widow. Does she have her own comic?
CBG: Oh yes. Very good it is, too. Interesting storyline, a bit of mystery mixed with action, and very much the character you know from the movies.
PP: Great! Can I have a copy?
CBG: I’m sorry, that comic isn’t suitable for children.
That moment when we got our first comics and were sucked into the world of superheroes and supervillains battling for the future of the world, is one most people reading this will remember. Marvel is a big part of a lot of childhoods, but that is continuing via the movies now, and the conversation above is stopping that from translating into increased popularity for comics. Not to mention, some of the characters they have introduced are good in their own right and don’t need a tacked-on name – more books like Mosaic, properly marketed, will do more for diversity in Marvel’s lineup than the laughably cobbled-together Patriot from Brave New World #2.
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| Um, I don't care who you are sir, it's still one iPad per customer |
5. It’s not a new direction
This kind of relates to point #1 in the case for the defence. Marvel’s sales are low and they are desperately in need of new ideas. Increasing the diversity of the character lineup isn’t a new idea. Issues relating to equality and diversity in the comics industry have largely related to the hiring of staff rather than characters in the comics themselves, which have been pretty ahead of the curve for a long time before most of those claiming they were behind the times were even born. But people didn’t buy those Golden Age and Silver Age books because Monica Rambeau’s Captain Marvel was a black woman; they bought them because they were fun to read.
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| Captain Marvel was a black woman in 1982, and got her own book in 1989. |
So what side of this debate do I fall on? I think it’s not a good direction for Marvel to take, purely because it’s resulting in disappointing sales and that threatens the comics I love. I actually think it’s great that they want to make the Marvel Comic Universe more diverse and representative, after all most of the people in it with powers have been given them by random chance, so surely in a world where that happens so often, it makes sense that the people it happens to are a more varied bunch. My main problem is with its execution; making truly original characters that aren’t trying to trade on established names would give the whole thing much more credibility, as would a more self-critical approach to the material that is being put on the shelves at the moment. Be diverse. Be inclusive. Be accepting. Be tolerant. Be socially aware. But before all of these, make a damn good comic book.
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