Marvel Comic Yanked, Artists Shun Red States
You’d think business would be booming at Team Marvel.
The comic book giant is the recognized leader in the superhero film world. Both critics and fans cheer on every new Marvel Studios outing. They even made the micro wonders of 2015’s “Ant Man” and a new, cracker jack franchise.
What better promotion for your titles than having two-hour commercials hitting theaters several times a year? That’s not to mention the hearty realm of home video. MCU movies like “Doctor Strange” and “Captain America: Civil War” is available for streaming on Netflix.
That’s synergy with a capital “S.” (sorry, Superman). And yet comic book sales are down at Marvel HQ
That isn’t the whole story.
Diversity on Steroids?
The Marvel universe has embraced diversity with a passion. And it doesn’t mean a glut of new characters who better represent the culture’s ethnic and gender diversity. The comic book company radically transformed its biggest stars.
Iron Man is now a black teenage girl. Thor is a woman. Captain America is black. Ms. Marvel is a Muslim teenage girl.
And then there’s the company’s partisan storytelling, Marvel tweaked the classic villain Modok to look and sound like Donald Trump. One “Captain America” story cast anti-immigration foes as the villains.
Could all of the above be impacting sales? It’s what Marvel’s VP of Sales David Gabriel confessed during an interview with ICv2.com.
What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales.
We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against. That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked.
Gabriel later backpedaled. A nod, perhaps, to current diversity groupthink?
Either way, the company’s perceived biases may be intensifying. One veteran Marvel contributor vowed not to make new comic event appearances in states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. That echoed a similar promise by Mexican Marvel artist Humberto Ramos.
It Gets Worse
This week’s Marvel news is even more bizarre, Marvel just yanked a new comic book from the shelves thanks to the hidden messages left by its illustrator. Muslim Marvel artist Ardian Syaf slipped Koranic messages into the panels of a recent “X-Men Gold No. 1” title.
They were perceived as intolerant by some fans, who complained to Marvel about what they called “anti-Christian and anti-Jewish messages”.
The Marvel suits likely had no idea most of the messages were there in the first place. Syaf inserted a few in a cunning fashion. Readers probably missed them, too.
Not anymore.
Other statements were more obvious.
In the book, Jewish X-Men character Kitty Pryde is seen talking to a crowd, with the “Jew” portion of the word “Jewellery” over her head, and the numbers 212 and 51 in the background.
The number 212 is often used as a reference to the Muslim protest against the Christian governor of Jakarta on 2 December 2016, which the artist admitted on his Facebook page to draw inspiration from.
UPDATE: Marvel fired Syaf shortly after learning about the “surprise” panels.
Other comic-related events are getting political, too. Consider the placard for the upcoming East Coast Comicon. The two-day event, to be held in Secaucus, N.J., features an advertisement that reads like a Bernie Sanders rally poster.
“It’s a constant battle to defend liberty…” one rat-like figure on the poster cries. A snake wrapped around the Statue of Liberty features the following phrases: “homophobia … intolerance … racism … homophobia … voter suppression … treasonous acts.”
It might as well use the hashtag #resistance.
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And this is meant as a mainstream comic book extravaganza featuring Perez, Marvel scribe Marv Wolfman and other elite comic book talents.
Tapping the Brakes
Perhaps Marvel is already reconsidering its political bent.
BleedingCool.com shared a February chat with “X-Men” scribe Mark Guggenheim who said the company was looking to avoid the heavy partisanship that infected recent titles. Why? Audiences had had enough.
There has also been reaction from some fan communities and retailers to these kind of stories as having no place in superhero comics, despite all the many examples that have preceded it. Maybe it’s a little more obvious now? Maybe everyone is interpreting everything politically? Maybe fans wish for a time when they didn’t realise their superhero comics had political elements?
Either way, Marvel Comics has been a focal point for this kind of discussion. And last week’s Marvel creative summit I am told by well connected sources who have proved themselves in that past there was more of a focus on what DC Comics internally called “meat and potatoes” comics that preceded their doubling down on the popular characters and bringing back old favourite takes with DC Rebirth.
One reason the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) crushes the competition is its lack of overt partisanship. That doesn’t mean the films are dull or without thoughtful subplots. Even “Captain America: Civil War” avoided partisan sniping while dealing with fictionalized tangents on real debates. The first “Iron Man” film from 2008 involved with the proliferation of military weapons across the globe.
Once again, it focused on the issues, not ideological talking points.
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It isn’t easy to thread those cultural needles. It can be done, though, and the results speak for themselves. The Marvel movies cost plenty, and they demand a sizable return on investment.
They almost always get it.
Marvel Comics aren’t nearly as expensive to produce, of course. The brand itself has a significant value, though, and each partisan body blow leaves a mark.
Photo credit: JD Hancock via Foter.com / CC BY
Yes, there was always some politics in Marvel, but it was mainstream liberal politics, the politics of individualism and tolerance. The politics in today’s Marvel are the cult talking points of an extremist fringe of liberalism, touting divisiveness and race hatred masquerading as “social justice.” If Marvel comics keep going in this direction, they’ll fade away into irrelevance.
Thankfully, with the Chinese market to attend to, Marvel movies have to retain elements of the more traditional Marvel, which appeal to a wider audience.
I’d prefer that Marvel create new heroes to fill their diversity quotas, but I don’t think they’re smart enough. When was the last time that Marvel created a new hero character with any staying power? Alpha Flight o9f the 80s?I have trouble counting Speedball. Any ideas?
I got nothing.
Even the guy from marvel called it “the false abandonment of the core Marvel heroes”. False. He’s admitting that they got caught treating it’s readers like they were stupid, and why? Because they were doing it for a ‘Noble Cause’ of being Politically Correct.
That is not a ‘respectful’ approach to making a minority character. People like that should be kept the f%^k away from making minority characters in toto.
Should’ve bought Mosaic then.
What happened? Dubai buy up majority shares in your comic empire once you went public?
Or does the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants have Stan Lee tied up in a dungeon?
Whatever it is Marvel is fucked now.
The 7th Century (but with cell phones) asks for your submission. I understand they once had a library.
Marvel has done for Comics what ESPN did for sports…politicized everything…and watched sales plummet. ESPN likewise lost subscribers in droves. SJW crap doesn’t sell well to the 50% of America that watches sports…or reads comics. Cut it out!
No need to ‘tap the brakes” when the wheels have come off the wagon.
tapping the breaks? I pull the e-brake and slam it into reverse just fighting the urge to firebomb your printing presses.
F[edit] YOU UP THE A[edit] WITH WHAT USE TO BE THOR”S HAMMER.
Incredibly, Thor’s brassier, while possibly pleasing to Will Smith, doesn’t inspire the great most of us the same.
And a Muslim female superhero? If that B[edit] ain’t set in the ME and based on 24/7 beating crap out of Saudi sex slavers, somebody’s lying.
Well, never watched any of the movies; haven’t read the comics since the ’60s. They’re just irrelevant to my world.
It’s just too much, and not just Marvel. Name me a major female character at DC that is not a lesbian or bisexual, aside from Wonder Woman. I don’t keep up so there could be many…can you name one? (A major character, not a sidekick please…)
Man! I was just going to comment about how DC is toying with a lesbo affair between Harley and Ivy.
It just sucks!
Because in the post Sad Puppies environment, the left is just going insane with the virtue signalling. That’s why Supergirl has turned into a show about her lesbian sister. That’s why Doctor Who just intro’d a black lesbian companion who I’m guessing will be the next Doctor, so they can hit all the bases.
So are they all gay besides Wonder Woman? I don’t follow DC. Why not the Gay Black Lesbian Biker Nun as Iron Man. They did that shit? Fuuuuuuck….
…too much to unpack; I’ll just point out: “Gay” “Lesbian”? Redundant, much?
????? Dr Who did what?
Doctor Who’s new companion is “gay”.
This really isn’t anything new, since they made Madam Vastra a lesbian who’s married to her maid.
I think the new Doctor should have been a woman. Imagine the scenes with River Song. Or Missy.
I’ve given up on Doctor Who.
I’ve given up on Star Wars.
I’ve given up on Star Trek.
I’ve given up on Ghostbusters.
Hey, Hollywood (and the bbc) – GO FUCK YOURSELF.
I hear they’re making Wonder Woman bisexual as well, her being from an island with only women and all.
Which is funny because that would make sense and I could deal with that.
Batgirl is none of those but some of her “friends” are.
Um, maybe not the ‘newest version’ of Batgirl, but in 2015-1016 I am pretty sure Batgirl was. I could be wrong and please forgive me if I am, but google says…..
Black Canary: married to Green Arrow.
Zatanna Zatara: has an “on again, off again” relationship with John Constantine (who is bisexual)
Carol Ferris (Star Sapphire): Hal Jordan’s ex and hooked up with Kyle Rayner after the events of “Lights Out”
Starfire: Dick Grayson’s ex-fiancee
Hawkgirl: married to Hawkman over the centuries as different women
Er….most of them? Of leads in books right now, it’s JUST Wonder Woman and Batwoman. It’s certainly not impossible for Batgirl, Huntress, Green Lantern Jessica Cruz, Black Canary, Killer Frost, Vixen or Mera to be queer, but I certainly haven’t seen anything, and I read all of the books that they’re in aside from Justice League.
I am stoked!
Stoked I tells ya!
Fu­ck Marvel, DC, and all of those other sh­ithole comic books that push their anti-American social agenda on us!
You’re hating on Marvel and DC for an “anti-American social agenda”. …too much to unpack here; all I’ll say is: it’s likely a good thing for your mental equilibrium that you seem not to have heard of Black Mask Studios.
Put the blame where it actually belongs. The Disney corporation has turned completely SJW. So we get ESPN injecting left wing politics into sports, we get feminist oriented animations like “Moana” and “Zootopia” and we get Marvel comics where conservative writers and artists are blacklisted and pushing diversity is the order of the day. Disney’s stock has gone through the roof the last 8 years and it isn’t any skin off of CEO Iger’s nose or his pocketbook if he makes it his personal contribution to the Democratic party.
This.
My respect for George Perez just plummeted.
And…Scarecrow Tinmen deserve the time of day, because…?
They failed to mention the worst thing that Marvel did in all of this that turned a lot of fans away which was to turn Captain America into a secret double agent. Like from his inception double agent. Most retarded thing that they could have done and done solely to bash America and how we were”never”great.
It’s also a huge insult to Cap’s creators, Simon and Kirby.
Yes perfect point.
Exactly.
They turned what could have been a good story and a great hook into mere social justice pablum.
It’s debatable which is worse: the beginning of the Cap-Nazi storyline thread, or how each new thread woven into it makes it exponentially worse.
Just…two points:
1.) “Retarded”? We’re still doing this?
2.) America had legalized slavery in its outset and continues to have many forms of oppression baked into its cultural DNA, if not its legal DNA, tho many forms exist there as well. By any reasonable standard, America on the whole does not average out to “great”, and it never will as long as it refuses to stand up for its ideals for every person that wishes to call themselves American. And yes, I say this as a cishet white male American.
This is such a social justice bs copout. Do we have people who are racist yes, but we would never have had a man of colour in the White House if we were a racist nation. How about we take into account all the liberal policies that encourage people to be irresponsible as have resulted in the degradation of minority families. Which is a strike against both sides the libs for the policies and the minorities for not taking personal responsibility for their criminal and sexual decisions. The idea that America hasn’t been great for anyone who isn’t a white sis-gender male is just criminally negligent of the facts.
I have been faithfully reading comics since the 60s and some recent comics in both Marvel & DC have crossed the line. I tolerated the new muslim MS Marvel as it wasn’t too preachy but I was shocked with the evil Trump inspired villains, it wasn’t the killing machine M.O.D.O.K that was redesigned to resemble Trump in Marvel, several evil version of villains/bigots/evil billionaire bad guys from both companies. It actually pissed me off even though I personally did not vote for Trump. I didn’t like it when any real politician was used in comics no matter which side of the fence they were on. On the TV series Supergirl they HAD to make the President a woman since they just knew Hillary would win. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ffb1eef8fdb3f38d9088f5ec88c0fe36ff2b8e637381c7f453fb7aeb70a5c302.gif
Marvel even had Tony Stark meet with Canadian President Justin Trudeau, which was pretty stupid by itself. Trudeau is a coward who praises brutal dictators like Fidel Castro.
It goes beyond politicians.
I don’t watch Supergirl, but caught a few moments while surfing.
They made this nasty, sarcastic remark about Bill O’Reilly. I’m not a fan of his, but like you, I don’t like it when entertainment gets too political.
It’s O’Reilly. You’re seriously complaining about people slighting him?
And no, it’s not because he’s reich-wing. Slight Bill Maher all you want; dude’s just as much of an ass.
My guilty pleasure at watching Obama’s head explode in Kingsman is no longer so guilty.
I think this is what they don’t want:
Indeed. Create a new armored character who might be a teenaged black girl, or make another female character with a military background but no actual powers, site- but WHY CHANGE your CORE characters into something they’re not, solely to pander to “diversity”? It’s intellectually lazy. It’s, creatively speaking, disingenuous. And, it violates the TRUST of your audience.
That is what is alienating the fans. Not diversity of characters, but the wholesale changing of characters into diversity quotas to virtue signal to SJWs who for the most part probably don’t even read the comics.
This is the thing that gives DC the advantage over Marvel in the comics. At least they actually have a story that creates a bridge when making replacements for characters. “52” saw Renee Montoya become the Question after losing her job with the GCPD when she was getting trained by Vic Sage, who had terminal lung cancer.
Suddenly replacing your core characters because of politically correct social justice is pretty dumb writing in itself.
Well, as much as I love the Question, he’s not a core DC character like Cap, Iron Man, and Thor are at Marvel. A better example would be the new Batwoman, taking an old, mostly forgotten character, and updating her.
That may be true about Vic Sage (who was excellently highlighted in “52” with Montoya, by the way), but keep in mind Batman and Wonder Woman were both changed to demonstrate why anyone else can’t do the role justice. Diana was replaced by Orana after losing to her in single combat but Orana was killed by gunfire on her first day because of her lack of experience with the modern world. Several people have filled in for Batman’s role, but they each had their own flaws which required Bruce to resume taking the cowl (e.g. Jean-Paul Valley being far too violent in his methods as Batman). Geoff Johns is careful about the core characters, and actually does some excellent writing in explaining changes to certain characters. Well, minus allowing Wonder Woman to be a feminist.
Wonder Woman was ALWAYS intended as a character to embody feminism, at least as how her creators saw it back in the 40s. And…what exactly is the problem with being feminist to begin with?
Modern feminism has nothing to do with equality. The most radical of them want to replace the so-called “patriarchy” with a “matriarchy”. On top of that, they want women to be more like men, so if a man doesn’t want to have a child, then women shouldn’t have to either, hence the push for abortion being perfectly fine. As one meme brilliantly put it (using an image of feminist Anita Sarkeesian): “Men are pigs. Women are equal to men.”
And it’s insulting to the those they’re trying to attract.
Who wants used when they could have new?
, it violates the TRUST of your audience.
It’s like Stan Lee slithering down the chimney to burn all of your Xmen and Spiderman comics in the middle of the night, Xmas eve.
Don’t remind me! I’m still trying to get over that horrible Christmas morning. Why, Stan? Why?
“Because I can. Excelsior!”
A couple of reasons. One, SJW types lack creativity to come up with new characters with interesting backstories that aren’t hyper cliche and two, it’s a common practice with the left to ‘rewrite’ history to suit it’s preferences….. oh and three, they love giving the middle finger to those who enjoyed the old stuff.
True–it’s called O’Sullivan’s Law–any organization or enterprise not expressly right wing in time becomes left wing. Look at 24. Or the ACLU, the Ford Foundation.
Left-wingers take over existing organizations instead of creating their own.
Read Commies by Ronald Radosh for confirmation of this.
They do this to hide their motives and origins.
Exactly. What fans don’t like is people talking down to them and foisting their political beliefs on them and using comics as a weapon. It’s a trojan horse. No one gives two sh##s about these writers’/artists’ politics; they only care about the characters and the creative teams are just using them as a vehicle for their leftist nonsense.
leftist nonsense, leftist hatred, leftist lies, leftist insanity.
I’ve had enough to last several lifetimes, thank you very much.
Yeah, how DARE Marvel insinuate political themes in their comics! They should make it more like the ’60s, which had that storyline with the Avengers being demonized by talking heads on talk shows, or that Daredevil storyline in the ’70s with the masses being inflamed to be destructive and hateful by a jackass manipulating TV and radio broadcasts to warp the news, or that Spectacular Spider-Man storyline that brought up minority college students getting screwed over by changes in class scheduling, or the original Ms. Marvel #1 having an afterword by its male writer that it aimed to be feminist right from the gitgo, or that storyline that had T’Challa fight the KKK, or that Iron Man story where pollution overran a factory island to the point that it needed to be evacuated pronto before it exploded, or…
Wait, what point were you making about left-wing leanings only coming up now?
They can be as narrow-minded and laughably one-sided politically as they want. Comic fans didn’t want it, rejected it and the sales figures are showing it. Comics are about escapism and not liberal brainwashing. I’ve read some of their recent comics and they’re so laughably ham-fisted in their attempts to push liberal politics that the stories all become tragic comedies.
The writers can blog their leftist drivel into the Tumblr echo-chamber but the people who actually buy the comics just don’t care.
One thing to remember, the division that makes the comic books has absolutely nothing to do with Marvel Studios, which is the division that makes the movies. And that goes all the way to the executives. Kevin Feige is the head of Marvel Studios, he reports directly to Disney. No one currently writing for Marvel can tell him anything about what to do with the stories or characters. Kevin is a fan of the comics of the 70s and 80s and its clear he uses that period as the source for his inspiration when it comes to creating stories, something he retains a fairly high level of control over even while allowing the directors to hire the scriptwriters.
That’s why the movies can be amazing while the comics themselves should all just be burned. They’d provide some good to the world that way.
They’re still both owned by Disney who isn’t above doing a little “diversity pushing” themselves. = Moana, Zootopia, politicizing ESPN.
or allowing the idiots who wrote Rogue One to claim/virtue signal that the film was some kind message against Trump, when that film was finished long before the election.
The writers of ‘Rogue One’ flat out said, ‘the empire is white men, the rebellion is women and minorities’.
After the SJW festival that was EP 7, that’s quite enough.
I’ve been a huge Star Wars fan for 40 years, I didn’t see either of the new movies and I will NEVER SEE ANOTHER STAR WARS MOVIE AGAIN AS LONG AS I LIVE, SO HELP ME GOD.
Those idiots completely forgot about Luke in Episode IV to begin with, then. They forgot he was the one who destroyed the Death Star I, not Leia or Mon Mothma and their politics.
…you think that just because a white man is the first to do something, that means that someone else shouldn’t be able to do it? That’s kinda what you’re implying here.
You’re completely missing the point. If “the Rebellion is women and minorities,” then those brainless writers would have to discount the fact that Luke destroyed the Death Star. However, if “white men are the Empire,” then Luke would have to be counted as Empire, as well. Do you see how stupid their comment was now?
Ruining ESPN, more like…
…even if I believed that gaining greater awareness of the full scope of the world’s peoples and cultures could be boiled down to some vague notion of “diversity-pushing”…what was the “problem” with Moana, exactly?
What’s going on in the comics now is preparation for what the folks running Disney would like to have happen in the movies later. They’re not going to jump all-in on changing Marvel’s signature characters in the films right off the bat, because the risk of blowing a quarter-billion dollars is too high. The goal is to get today’s comic readers comfortable with the new diversity of the Marvel Universe, so that a decade from now, when the inevitable film reboots happen, then they can transition that diversity over to the movies.
The negative reaction to it might give Marvel and its parent execs at Disney some pause on their plans. Or it might result in their doing what they’ve done with the mix of sports and progressive politics at ESPN, which is to double down on the SJW support, where those who don’t get with the program are demoted (Sage Steele) or fired (Curt Schilling).