The Four Color Media Monitor

Yeah, man, those SJWs and Dan DiDio who caused that DC Implosion back in '78. Haven't they done enough?

Oh, wait.

The market expands and then constricts; that's what it does. Editors and publishers think readers want 27 titles starring Batman, or Wolverine, or Spider-Man or The Punisher, and then they realize they maybe misjudged things, and then they pull back. I know it's fun to blame everything in the industry on leftists or DiDio or female editors or Luke Cage's shaved head, but ... come on.

I don't know, Anon, but all those comic stores closing can't be good for the industry.

Of course it isn't "good," but it's important to keep in mind there are real people (store owners, employees, etc,) affected by closings, which may be brought about by any number of factors. To use their loss simply to keep grinding axes against "leftists" or specific industry figures is callous and kind of gross.

"To use their loss simply to keep grinding axes against "leftists" or specific industry figures is callous and kind of gross. "

Stop being such a pussy.

Just own up to the fact that calling the remaining readers racists and bigots isn't selling any comics in the Direct Market. That may work in polite society, but not in the Direct Market. Outspoken progressives are part of the problem. They are alienating more readers than they are drawing.

If you don't call out racists and bigots because you are afraid of losing their business, how much more pussyish could you be?

I don't think the remaining readers are racists and bigots. It is the other way round. A small group of people who no longer read comics want them to stay frozen in time and reflect what they read when they were ten years old are busy complaining, instead of allowing kids to have comics that mean something to them and their lives now. They are more interested in venting about cultural politics than they are in reading for pleasure, so they talk a lot on the internet about comics they don't buy or read themselves.

I think the sharply falling sales in the Direct Market with the advent of social justice politics tells me that neither middle school kids or the woke activists who want to use them as political tools

https://www.newsweek.com/oregon-lower-voting-age-16-1337043

are going into comic book stores to buy social justice comics.

Sales for graphic novels, outside the Direct Market, have started to flatline which tells me that the general market might be saturated with this dreck.

Making comics that appeal to contemporary readers does not mean characters constantly taking selfies or regurgitating intersectional bullshit. The movies have been largely successful because they have not been taking an sjw approach to making things relevant.
If the only way you can relate to women or minorities is to start off with "I'm not a white supremacist" or "I'm not a rapist..." you're DOING it wrong.


" you don't call out racists and bigots because you are afraid of losing their business" I double dare you to call any dark skinned man homophobic. I dare you. The whole gay acceptance thing is largely a white european thing but non-white people are held to a lower standard.,,and you're probably afraid of getting beat up. Before you say anything about ANTIFA, they usually go after unarmed people.

Get your white guilt, and self-hatred out of my entertainment.

Correlation is not causation.

Interesting the presumptions in the comment two up. First , that the poster he is responding to is one of this site's white male readers; it may have nothing to do with white guilt and might have been left by a black female reader. Also,a lot of dark skinned males are not homophobic because they are gay - you know, like James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman - not all black males come out of the pages of Mandingo. And some of them are blerds who would not beat up anybody. It is like the person who wrote this does not even live in America.

Sorry, dimwit, I don't base my idea of reality on what's on tv, on what activists in the media want to say is normal, or common.


"Also,a lot of dark skinned males are not homophobic because they are gay"
Most black people are not gay. Gay people are a small minority. So are blerds. I know progressive activists in the media want you to think that 20% of black people are gay or there is this large population of black nerds (who are being barred by whites from entering geeky professions or hobbies) but reality couldn't be further from these lies.

You really expect me to take the word of people who claim heterosexuality and gender were invented by white people?



"Correlation is not causation." It's a coincidence that sales are falling with the proliferation of sjw themed material in the direct market. It's not like an executive at Marvel said they have to purge their customer base.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw2_PyKf6K0


Take your lies somewhere else.

Well the guy who created this article doesn't live in America, so it all works out nice.

sales of titles are dropping because there is so much product (several hundred titles as pamphlets a month, plus graphic novels and webcomics); and because it is easier and faster to read free copies on the internet than to travel to the store to pay for them. Of course, if you base your idea of reality on what's on YouTube, you will probably get a different perspective.

Heterosexuality and gender were invented before there were white people, but homosexuality - as a type of person, as an identity, rather than as an activity or a sin - was at least aguably invented by Europeans.

That's a pet theory of sjws when confronted with the fact that their ideas are unprofitable, they pull out the "well, our audience is too busy reading webcomics and pirating our content" which they then cannot prove. You're drowning here. I'll give you a freebie. You were suppose to say "oh, but, comics for young adults are popular in school libraries. " Then, I'd shoot it down with it seems to be material that sjw teachers get kids to buy as a supplement to their sjw curriculums.

"homosexuality - as a type of person, as an identity, rather than as an activity or a sin - "
More revision of history. Homosexuality was criminalized in many human societies. You're committed to the lies, I'll give you that but you just need to stop posting them. We've heard all of them before. All of them. None of them are true. Critical Theory is propaganda . It has no empirical legitimacy. Stop citing ideas from it. They are not facts.

How do you account for the Greeks then?

"as a type of person, as an identity, rather than as an activity or a sin - "
More revision of history. Homosexuality was criminalized in many human societies. You're committed to the lies, I'll give you that but you just need to stop posting them."

It sounds like the above two posts are in agreement. In many human societies, engaging in some kinds of homosexual acts was considered a crime or a sin, but it was not an identity or a community the way it has become in the West. Men have always had sex with other men, but, shocking as it may sound, men have not always marched in gay pride parades.

If you go to the various pirate sites, they post automated counts of how many people read specific comics. The numbers are high. The other factor is that the collector's market has collapsed. When sales were high, collectors would buy extra copies as an investment, and stores would order extra copies to be marked up in the back issue bins. Nobody does that now, except for really special books. Nobody buys this months X-Men number one, because you know there will be another one six months from now and you will get it in a trade anyhow. Without the investors, the sales figures go down.

How can you prove that sjw comics - a pretty vague and ill defined label, more an insult than a category - are behind drops in sales? Sound like you are drowning on that one.

' "Correlation is not causation." It's a coincidence that sales are falling with the proliferation of sjw themed material in the direct market. It's not like an executive at Marvel said they have to purge their customer base.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw2_PyKf6K0 '

I watched the youtube video at the link above; there is nothing in there about an executive at Marvel saying they have to purge their customer base. There is a brief reference to an executive at Marvel talking marketese and mentioning that Marvel should become a lifestyle brand; but even that quote is taken out of context so it is hard to know what she means by it. Most of the video is a scrawny bearded guy who has nothing to do with Marvel ranting about his interpretation of imagery in a couple of Marvel stories.

Because from about 2009 to now, the sales fell sharper than
from 2000-2009. There were sjw comics, back then too, but they never represented a market strategy. Sjw comics constitute a larger share of comics, at Marvel, which was an industry leader, until it replaced many of its most popular white male characters with minorities, often at a loss. Everyone knows what an sjw is. They are the people ranting and raving about privilege and oppression. Stop playing stupid.

Yes, we can totally trust counters on pirate sites as representing people that would pay to read comics. If we were were to go by them, monthly sales of Squirrel Girl would be at 109,449. The status of these sites being pirate sites is contentious since they could be eliminated if the copyright owners had a real problem with them.
Comics are essentially a non-profit at this point, which explains the presence of SJWS-- people who are willing to work for very low wages and are more interested in spreading their political views than making money. Many sjws have gone on the record to say that their views are much more important than making money--and now we're suppose to believe when they are hired by the dozens, comics sales are going to rise in the Direct Market? Sana's words wee NOT taken out of context. She KNOWS the vast majority of comics readers are white males but she is willing to hire feminists and other sjws who are hostile towards them in the hopes of making comics something they can no longer enjoy, even if that means losing sales. Falling sales have been blamed on bigotry by a former Marvel editor. Some sjws in the industry are glad that the Direct Market is failing because it's outdated...meaning the comics they want to see produced do not sell in the Direct Market. Keep believing that content has nothing to do with why comics sales in the Direct Market have been falling. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.



'Men have always had sex with other men, but, shocking as it may sound, men have not always marched in gay pride parades." What does this have to do wit white people, again? I'm lost. It was a good thing what certain gay people started using their sexual orientation as a cultural identity that deserved attention, celebration and representation quotas in all aspects of life in white countries?

It seems like everyone is ranting about privilege and oppression these days. One of the sad things about the conservative movement now is that so many of them are lamenting how white males are oppressed by privileged minorities. It is like a competition to see who can best claim victim status.

One of the commenters up top said that gayness was a white thing, so that most blacks were not gay, but that if you accuse a black guy of homophobia he will beat you up. Another disagreed, saying that was a dumb critical theory idea, and that homosexuality, or at least male homosexuality, has been a crime in many cultures going way back in history, so the idea that it was a creation of white Europeans was just stupid. A third pointed out that it was true that men, or some of them in every society, have been doing gay things since forever, but that it was also true that the idea that there was a special kind of person who identified as gay in the way someone might identify as Catholic or Republican was something that was new to the West, a creation of white European culture. So both the first guy and the second guy were basically saying the same thing, even though they were arguing with each other.

Whether " It was a good thing what certain gay people started using their sexual orientation as a cultural identity that deserved attention, celebration and representation quotas in all aspects of life in white countries? " is a whole different story that you can argue about until the cows come back to the barn. But, to the extent that you are tossing around phrases like sexual orientation, you have already bought into the gayness paradigm.

"Sjw comics constitute a larger share of comics, at Marvel, which was an industry leader, until it replaced many of its most popular white male characters with minorities, often at a loss."

The 'replacement' of the old characters was a gimmick introduced as a way of creating buzz around spin-off characters who would then be put into their own titles once the original guy came back. They have been doing this for decades, at both DC and Marvel. Only very new or gullible readers thought that any of this would last.

"Comics are essentially a non-profit at this point, which explains the presence of SJWS-- people who are willing to work for very low wages and are more interested in spreading their political views than making money. Many sjws have gone on the record to say that their views are much more important than making money"

This was probably true in the 1970s and for a while after that, when the publishers were hiring fans who were eager to write comics and expand the nature of the medium, and worked for low wages for the privilege. Now that the publishers have gone all media conglomerate, though, they are tending to hire experienced writers with track records in other media, who are used to working for real money. Ta Nehisi Coates is the best known, but Nalo Hopkinson, Willow Wilson, Roxane Gay, Rainbow Rowell, Chelsea Cain, many others, are accomplished novelists, some genre writers like Cain, others more literary. They know their worth, are used to negotiating contracts, have other outlets to spread their views, and don't come cheap.

Those writers are like Fine Artists. They make money here and there but are ultimately supported with their parents' money or academic grants.

Telling me they aren't cheap is like saying a "Fine Artist" isn't cheap because she sold a few pieces for 100k to a rich client and hasn't sold anything for that amount in years but is somehow mysteriously able to support herself.

Coates got a 625,000 dollar genius grant in 2015, has written bestseller books and wrote regular journalism for the Atlantic for ten years. He turned down a job as a regular columnist at the New York Times. He is doing okay financially.

Cain has written several bestselling thrillers and one of her books has been made into a tv series. No numbers out, but she seems to be earning her own living too. These people are professionals and working writers; but if you have access to their tax returns and know different, please let us in on the truth.

Some fine artists do make money. And their galleries make a profit. It is a difference kind of marketing, of course, but people can make money at it.

"Cain has written several bestselling thrillers and one of her books has been made into a tv series. No numbers out,"
Of course, there are no numbers because her audience is very small.
The best seller lists are more like what critics think everyone who is cultured should be reading.

"Some fine artists do make money. And their galleries make a profit. It is a difference kind of marketing, "
The entire comics industry is marketing themselves to
to rich people and academia. It used to be companies like Fantagraphics, but now it's the entire industry .


This IS and WILL cause the industry to continue shrinking because the
"fine arts" kind of marketing will attract a very small and affluent audience of actual paying customers. This audience will NEVER EVER reflect the general public's tastes.

Here is a complete waste of actual talent.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/in-his-laab-experiment-ronald-wimberly-plays-with-dynamite?utm_brand=tny&mbid=social_twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
This the product of artist who is told that his "woe is me" feelings are more important than making art that connects with a wide number of people. With the right attitude and guidance he could have been a decent comic artist but he's doing the equivalent of horrible art installations with "white ppl are racist" being a central theme of his installations. Stunning and brave? Not when it's a bunch of rich poeple and ne'er do wells clapping for you.


Here is another patronized black person
http://www.tcj.com/feedback-is-not-important-to-me-an-interview-with-taneka-stotts/



These kind of neurotic people to make good art never mind comics are not going to save the medium, bring in new readers or even save the craft.


Comics made in a vacuum with no feedback, comics about "being black" in white man's land...these THESE are not going to build a large audience the way some manga occasionally does.

Neurotic, self-referential, semi-autobiographical comics have been around for forty years. Most of the public do not know they even exist, never mind read them, and they are NOT profitable. They are the equivalent of Sundance Film Festivals.
http://www.realclearlife.com/movies/curse-blessing-sundance-films/

Rebranding Neurotic, self-referential, semi-autobiographical comics as "young adult graphic novels"*, with feminists and lgbt activists as the public face of them and socially influencing their comrades in education to order these ya books as teaching tools won't make them appeal to more people.



*an admission that comics for adults was a complete failure.

The "Neurotic, self-referential, semi-autobiographical comics" can sell a lot better than the superhero comics. Think: From Home, Are You My Mother, Persepolis, A Contract With God, Blankets.

"The best seller lists are more like what critics think everyone who is cultured should be reading."

They are called best sellers because they sell the most copies. Cultured people are too snobbish to read the best sellers lists.