The Four Color Media Monitor

Russia Today, of all news sources, took a look at the subject of forced diversity and other poor elements Marvel and DC were responsible for shoving into superhero comics and down the audience's collective throats, and later took to attacking fans who found it insulting:

Pushing diversity at the cost of great storytelling is wreaking havoc on the comic book industry sales and splitting the fan base. But beware, anyone who dares criticize risks being cast out of the industry.

Race swaps & hipster comics

In autumn 2014, readers of American Superhero comics came across something a bit different. The first issue of Marvel’s The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl saw an established character strangely changed from a cute and sassy young woman into an awkwardly shaped goofwho cracked unfunny gags about pop culture. She was, bluntly, ugly – deliberately badly proportioned and drawn in a casual ‘indie’ fashion. The book was aimed at hipsters, not Marvel fans.

Readers didn’t take to the character because it looked an ironic in-joke. It became a flagship ‘diversity’ book for Marvel.

Marvel Comics was ‘looking to be politically correct’. Other changes soon became apparent at Marvel. Established characters changed race or sex; female characters became unfeminine; male characters became less heroic; and the number of gay characters increased dramatically. More and more traditional characters were changed for political reasons.

And rabid leftist politics - including the time Marvel attacked the Tea Party rallies - were shoveled in like mountains of muck. How do they even expect to appeal to women if they draw ladies looking masculine? This is but a sample reason why Carol Danvers as Capt. Marvel has sold so poorly in every volume for the past several years.

Newcomers arriving directly from the movies were baffled to find that the Hulk was Korean-American and Iron Man was a teen black girl. Recent years have also seen an Afro-Latino Spider-Man, a female Muslim Ms. Marvel, and a black Captain America.

The drive to ‘diversify’ comics was strange as American comics were already diverse; comic book readers had always accepted new characters with good stories.

And that includes Black Panther's early adventures decades ago, when writing and art were far better than today's mainstream offerings. Something which, sadly, wasn't enough for these agenda-driven screwballs, so they set about ruining even that much.

It's important to remember DC actually put the keys in the ignition several years before Marvel pressed their foot on the gas pedal when the former took to race-swapping Firestorm, the Atom and Blue Beetle in the mid-2000s post-Identity Crisis, and Renee Montoya, a character who originally appeared in the 90s Batman cartoon before entering the DCU proper, was turned into a lesbian in the 2002-2006 Gotham Central series, by Greg Rucka, no less. This before she was subsequently turned into a female Question, replacing Vic Sage in the role. Anybody wondering where all this social justice engineering began should take a good look at some of DC's mid-2000s offerings under a magnifying glass.

‘This book wasn’t written for you’

What made matters worse was that new writers seemed to have little ability to write American superhero comics, a genre with specific traditions and rules. In order to appeal to a new readership, Marvel Comics hired female authors of young adult fiction whose main subjects were human interest and slice-of-life drama – not very compatible with the hero mythos, action and thriller stories.

I've already written about one hired by DC, whose visions are as unappealing as those hired by Marvel, and has no business associating with Black Canary any more than Wonder Woman. If they don't like how the original stories were written and drawn, it makes no sense they'd want anything to do with them now...except to get a big fat paycheck.

Some writers made no effort to conform to expectations. The current James Bond comic (published by Dynamite Entertainment) is written by Vita Ayala and Danny Lore, two black women who have focused their story on a black female character.

Fans resented the blatant alteration of history by newcomer writers and editors who believed they were more virtuous than the fans. Meanwhile, all criticism of the new authors was dismissed out of hand.

The new writers and their corporate backers accused critics of bigotry and hatred. Creators abused fans and told them “this book wasn’t written for you” and “I don’t want your money.” There was glee about upsetting devoted fans by despoiling beloved characters. Marvel Comics and DC gave work to freelance creators who were actively driving away potential customers.

New creators alienated regular fans while not significantly increasing consumption by women, younger readers, and non-white audiences. A war between comic book publishers and fans had begun.

A battle called Comicsgate, and thankfully, most of the reprehensible writers have, over the past year, quit talking about it and stopped attacking fans, realizing it was doing them no good. One of the reasons the SJW writers and artists wouldn't conform to expectations is because the editors allowed them to get away with only so much; many of these projects had the editors' full approval. And they still do.

As things stand now, unless the Big Two are bought out by more reliable businesses, there's no chance they'll recover, and so, the future of comicdom has to rely on indies. It's impressive RT decided to run an article with a focus more honest than stateside news outlets ever offered.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, dreadful artists, dreadful writers, indie publishers, islam and jihad, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat artists, moonbat writers, politics, sales