More Disasters to Marvel At, a Fisk

Marvel doesn't learn. In fact, they've doubled down on their stupid.

Many moons ago, I wrote up an evaluation of everything wrong with Marvel comics, where I concluded that Disney should have Joe Quesada walk the plank off the top of Marvel's office building. 

They have since doubled down on the stupid by adding POLITICS to the mess.

And now, the VP of Marvel is declaring ..... that the problem is the readers.

Yup, you read that correctly: the problem isn't that the writing sucks, the characters, premises, politics, and situations are forced, or that gender and pallet swapping heroes in the name of "diversity" is an unoriginal and stupid idea. No, the problem is YOU. YOU, dear reader, have been proclaimed by Marvel to be the problem. YOU are the racist / sexist / homophobe who just can't understand all of their brilliant concepts and ideas.

..... So, obviously, we are so stupid, they're obviously too smart for us, and can't be tainted by our money.

Yeah, seriously, I was out of the Marvel market after One More Day, and they only got dumber from there. Since then, they've only made things more and more idiotic since then.

And, yes, for the record, I have serious problems with the new Ms. Marvel. Not because she's Muslim. Not because they've replaced one Ms. Marvel with another (Carol Danvers got promoted to Captain Marvel, which makes a certain level of sense), but ... Well, I'll give you a hint.

Fans of the film The Incredibles will see my problem immediately.

If you thought that capes were a problem, look at this design. It's supposed to be some sort of headscarf variant, but good God, if it gets caught on anything, it's going to take her head off. Forget flying through the air, or getting caught on wreckage, she'd be decapitated riding on a roller coaster. 

Oh, and speaking of Captain Marvel, apparently, Miss Marvel decided to become a fascist in Civil War II.

And one cover of Mockingbird was literally "Ask me about my feminist politics."

Yes, really. In a comic book where I want to see Spider Man beat up Venom, or vice versa, they want to stuff politics in there. 

You know, Marvel guys, it was really bad enough that the original Civil War was a piss-poor analogy on the War on Terror -- with conflicting plotlines, story ideas, concepts of what the original Superhero Registration act even had, and sticking heroes in a prison that made real life GITMO look like day care -- but going into full on, real world politics? Are you stupid over at 666 5th Avenue?

Yes. Yes you are.

Let's look at this interview with Marvel VP of Sales David Gabriel, shall we?

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. 

Okay, I already have to stop. Hey, dummy, you're the VP of SALES. Have you NOT NOTICED that Marvel doesn't have many (or any, depending on the month) titles in the bestseller's column? So that means that EVERYBODY is getting screwed -- Daredevil, Spider Man, Hulk, Captain America, etc.

Seriously, Gabriel, you're VP of sales. Do you even math, bro? Seriously, are the sales of Captain America UP since he said "Hail Hydra," and your people treated the readers like idiots until the next issue came out and they retracted nearly everything they said?

Oh, and "That's what we heard, whether we believe it or not?" Hey, dummy, your sales are tanking. Believe in the power of the purse. People have voted with their feet, and they are moving.

In fact, his next sentence is:

I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales. 

Shocking, huh? Math. It's a thing. Use it.

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.

So, Hydra-Cap? Was that working? Or maybe making a MODOK supervillain that was Trump? Really? Those were working?

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.

YOU DIDN'T HAVE FRESH, NEW OR EXCITING IDEAS! You brought in a black female, threw her in Iron Man armor, and declared her something new. You gave Jane Foster Thor's hammer. They brought in another Spider-man who was black, and made another Miss Marvel as Muslim, and then made Spider-Gwen and "Moon Girl." 

These idiots stuffed the Falcon into the Captain America suit, and somehow turned Sam Wilson into more Black Panther party propaganda than the actual character NAMED BLACK PANTHER. And guess what, people like Sam Wilson. He was one of the stars of the Captain America films. He was awesome. But no, Marvel's writing sucked, and suddenly people don't like him because he's "diverse"? Really? 

Marvel has not used one "fresh, new or exciting idea" in a decade! They're giving old branding to new people, and praying that the popularity will transfer over. It's basically a pallet and / or gender swap.

EVEN IO9 KNOWS THIS IS BS. And io9 screw up is Beth Elderkin, the creature from the black lagoon that suggested killing or castrating Puppies. Even she's not stupid enough to fall for this.

Gabriel’s point is bull****, because it shelves blame onto the readers and blatantly ignores a lot of other reasons Marvel Comics are doing terribly. For example, the crazy over-abundance of events and crossovers....They also can completely screw over beloved characters for the sake of drama, like turning Captain America into a fascist as Sam Wilson has taken his mantle.

And of course, they upped the price, and they don't have anyone in the talent pool anymore worth a damn.

I wonder if those could have anything to do with it? Hmmmmm.

When io9 comes close to the voice of sanity, we know it's time to start firing people at Marvel.

Here, have some books that are more superhero focused than Marvel yesterday.

And they're cheaper than come comic book.

The Love at First Bite series.