"It sells less and less every month"

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by IMJ

It really is as simple as "the free market

Oh, you mean that pesky thing they want to stamp out?

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Oh, you mean that pesky thing they want to stamp out?

Exactly. The free market doesn't just award a trophy, so they think it's evil.

[MikeandRaph87]

Was the only TMNT mention the cover rate lowering each moth because it sells less and less? I watched the one brief clip and a little beyond because of my investment in DC, but I don't have time to listen to over 2 hours.

[psychturtle]

Not surprised. The only book I still get is TMNT. And after Sophie took over, it’s been so bad. Yet, they keep printing the Real World: TMNT edition. If it doesn’t consistently get better, I’m cancelling my sub.

[Galactus]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

But imagine the opposite, casting a couple of white people in traditionally black roles without accusations. Why is one weird but not the other?

In the original novel the lead character of Pay It Forward was black and in the movie he was played by Kevin Spacey. How about Mariane Pearl the real life subject of the movie A Mighty Heart who was black but played by Angelina Jolie. Speaking of real world people depicted in movies how about 90% of representations of Cleopatra or indeed most depictions of ancient Egypt being white.

Not a black character but you more than anyone should remember the ******** that was Eric Sachs. At the time I remember a lot of fans being upset that it looked like they were swapping a character whose whole identity is based on Japanese Ninjutsu culture and making him a white business man who is the leader of a paramilitary group and rightfully so. However there was little condemnation of changing his race specifically. What we got was lots of excuses like he could have been adopted by Japanese parents or reincarnated, that William Fichtner was such a good actor and people complaining were anti-white racists. Even now apologists for that movie argue they should have stuck to their guns and kept Sachs as Shredder.

Originally Posted by IMJ

It really is as simple as "the free market is going to have to iron this $#!( out" and do it through action and interest.

In that case the free market becomes a whole lot less free.

This is an example of the political right's love of capitalism now being at odds with their with their cultural conservatism. The right has long been very much against regulating big business and feels that it's better for the economy for corporations to more or less do what they want. Now you want regulation to make intellectual properties be made in a way that makes you more comfortable. As a conservative who loves free market capitalism you should appreciate that these IPs belong to private businesses who can do with them what the want. Also the reason comics publish diverse characters is that many of them actually do earn profit directly or indirectly. As a nice supporter of capitalism you should surely be supporting that.

Even Black Panther which was successful would have been more successful if it just presented the movie and the culture without the messaging and the race-war. So this theory works across all of the spectrum of "financial success".

What??? Black Panther was a huge cultural event because it was a huge celebration of black culture and explored the lingering after effects of slavery. You can't divorce that from the marketing even if you wanted to.

If there was any weak point in the Black Panther marketing it was actually Marvel's publishing arm who at the time somewhat caved in to the comicsgate crowd and fearing further backlash decided not to flood the market with Black Panther related books only (as was their usual strategy when they have a movie out) only to have sales of Black Panther trades spike when a lot black people wanted to read about the character. They missed out on what could have been even bigger earner for their publishing arm. This wasn't the only time pandering to comicsgate cost them.

One of the better practices of Marvel in the late 2010s was that it gave low selling books time to catch on. I know I'm not the only comic book reader that often felt the disappointment if book I was enjoying got cancelled prematurely and felt that postive word of mouth might help the title find a bigger audience so it was a very welcome change. However Marvel listened to the comicsgate crowd that moaned about low selling diversity characters so very quickly cancelled their recently launched Iceman and Wasp books which didn't sell well. Months later the collected trades of both were so high that Marvel quickly scrambled to bring them back but of course by then the audience had moved on.

[AquaParade]

Dayum.
Well conveyed.

[red1981]

Originally Posted by IMJ

The only real reason that printed comic sales are so diminished is because people are rejecting the extremism content in droves. Almost nobody wants to read teen-boy-Superman making out with his teen-boy-boyfriend.

maybe if you let gay characters in your comics for the last 70 years and not hide it this wouldnt be need to be done, there would already be representation but since being gay is still considered bad by people with your attitude, heres a hint there are lgbtq people that read comics, and just maybe they want to see some characters that remind them of themselfs or is that wrong to want that so many people see themselfs in spiderman but thats fine since hes strait, but show a gay character oh no is woke crap get it away no one cares

[Leo656]

Spelling, grammar, and punctuation matter here, New Guy. Nobody but me is gonna read that. Just letting you know so you're not disappointed later.

Also, most gay people seem to believe "All art should be Free" and thus even if there were more gay-centric comics they still likely would not pay for them.

Anecdote: The shop I used to frequent had a big "Adults Only" section with lots of full-blown porn comics. Straight, gay, furry, whatever. The gay stuff would just pile up because nobody bought it. Perhaps gay people simply don't buy comics.

If so, then "make comics more gay" is hardly a way to boost sales.

[ChosenOne]

Originally Posted by Galactus

Even now apologists for that movie argue they should have stuck to their guns and kept Sachs as Shredder.

Eric Sachs should've been the Trevor Slattery to Shredder's Mandarin. At least it would be a fresh take for the franchise without (if tastefully done) being disrespectful to anyone.

Originally Posted by red1981

maybe if you let gay characters in your comics for the last 70 years and not hide it this wouldnt be need to be done, there would already be representation but since being gay is still considered bad by people with your attitude, heres a hint there are lgbtq people that read comics, and just maybe they want to see some characters that remind them of themselfs or is that wrong to want that so many people see themselfs in spiderman but thats fine since hes strait, but show a gay character oh no is woke crap get it away no one cares

Here's another hint: no one cares. Minorities aren't special by virtue of being minorities, they're exactly the same as everyone else. But by all means, do keep shoehorning artificial "diversity" and feefees into everything under the sun, and then wonder why those causes are constantly being set back.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by red1981

maybe if you let gay characters in your comics for the last 70 years and not hide it this wouldnt be need to be done, there would already be representation but since being gay is still considered bad by people with your attitude, heres a hint there are lgbtq people that read comics, and just maybe they want to see some characters that remind them of themselfs or is that wrong to want that so many people see themselfs in spiderman but thats fine since hes strait, but show a gay character oh no is woke crap get it away no one cares

This is really badly written. I don't like to point out spelling errors but this wouldn't pass first grade.

1. Always begin a sentence with a capital letter.
2. Contractions should use apostrophes.
3. Initialisms should be all capital letters.
4. Plural of "self" is "selves".
5. "Strait" is a word meaning a narrow body of water, I think you meant "Straight" which is slang for heterosexual.
6. Always end sentences with punctuation.
7. Spider-Man is hyphenated.

There are also a bunch of syntax and grammar errors as well but they are too numerous to point out. Overall, I'm surprised you even got your membership approved. Everything about your post makes it seem like you are barely literate and a complete beginner when it comes to comprehension of the English language. It's the worst attempt at writing something in English I have seen in a long time.

As for the point I think you're trying to make, it's honestly really difficult to read the post, it is ironically pretty dismissive. It is unlikely that many people would comic books about mutant turtles or near-invincible aliens for the purpose of getting a political fix or "seeing themselves represented", as the subject matter is pretty far removed from any sort of realism. You have pundits, documentaries and down to earth dramas for that. And it's not like inclusion of LGBT characters needs to be turned into the primary subject matter of these comics, it's not like having a gay character run around needs to shift the focus to this character as much as possible, because that wasn't the appeal in the first place. Do I really need to explain that the appeal of Spider-Man isn't that he's heterosexual?

[Leo656]

I lost my sh*t at number 7. Like it's not even the "worst" offense in that post but I love how it was listed with the same gravitas as the rest, and furthermore that it was built up to for maximum effect. Also, HUGE pet peeve of mine when people don't hyphenate Spider-Man.

You probably don't get this enough but you are an artist, dude. Like, your posts are art. Even when I don't agree or don't feel as strongly I just love the f*cking cut of your gib.

.....No Homo.

[hypered1]

First off English may not be Red's first language or they may be dyslexic or have a similar condition so to attack them for spelling and grammatical errors is poor form at best considering most people here are barely any better.

But more to the point, Red's point is that minorities wouldn't be getting so much focus if they had never been demonized and discriminated against in the first place - those gay mags never shifted because the target audience were rightly terrified of being attacked or even murdered simply for being themselves in public because the neanderthals continue to take offence against things that don't affect them in the slightest.

[Leo656]

The fact that there have been minorities and homosexuals in the pages of mainstream comics for decades speaks against your argument. It's simply that "back in the day" readers weren't beaten over the head with those characters and told that if they didn't like them they were terrible people.

Nobody cried foul when Cyborg or Vixen debuted. Nobody screamed when Cyborg got to be in the last season of Super-Friends and was presented on-par with Superman and Batman. Nobody threw a fit when Maggie Sawyer or Renee Montoya came out as gay. Nobody objected when Ron Troupe was hired as Clark Kent's replacement at the Daily Planet when Clark was presumed dead after the Doomsday incident. Nobody threw a tantrum when Perry White and his wife adopted a black son named Keith (but rather, there WAS some outcry among people asking "WTF?" when Keith was retconned out of existence as if he'd never existed, as his arc was years-long and quite popular with readers). And on and on and on.

There simply are Organic and Inorganic ways to present characters and tell stories. When it's "real", people tend to react favorably. When it's "fake" or "forced", people react negatively. It's not complicated, and it isn't new.

Yes, minorities don't always have the shelf space or page-count of other characters. Because they are, in fact, a minority. As in "not most people". It's not done out of malice, it's simply people writing (and reading) what they know.

Meanwhile, back in the 90s a bunch of minority creators got together and created Milestone Comics. They got off the ground with a MASSIVE crossover with DC, and their guys even got to smack Superman around for a bit. The entire line tanked hard and folded within two years, with DC buying them out in essence. An entire company of minorities, with nothing but minority characters, marketed explicitly to minority readers... And you're gonna sit here with a straight face and say "Nobody ever pushed to make comics more diverse until five minutes ago"? COME ON.

It's ALL been attempted, it never hooks. Why not, who can honestly say? Maybe black kids in 1994 didn't like comic books. I doubt that; all my black friends loved X-Men. None of them ever gave a sh*t about Milestone, though. Maybe they thought it was pandering crap? I don't know, I never asked them. I just know that even the black kids who read X-Men liked Wolverine way more than Bishop, even though Bishop was black. Funny how that works.

See, you kids who see "bigotry" in every passing cloud have a tendency to oversimplify the living crap out of things. You say things like "black and gay people prefer to read about black and gay characters" because YOU feel that way. Actual evidence does not support that theory and never has. Rather, evidence shows that they APPRECIATE it when they can "see themselves in the art" but that it's by no means an overt preference or barrier of entry.

Because again, if there's some giant untapped pool of "minorities" out there who simply never read comic books because "they didn't feel represented", then logic would dictate that the books created Just For Those People would sell in huge numbers, and they don't. Historically, they sell like sh*t, even Right Now in these "progressive" times.

Don't tell lies. Don't say "minorities have never been represented", "people never reacted positively to minority characters", "companies have never attempted to attract that audience", "people only respond to material they see themselves reflected in", or any of that other happy horsesh*t. It simply isn't true.

Also not true is the idea that you can say, "Here, gay/non-white person, your Very Own Character(s) just for you!" and that those people will come out in droves to support it with their wallets. It simply hasn't happened to an appreciable degree yet. But it definitely hasn't been from a lack of effort on the creative side.

[red1981]

Originally Posted by hypered1

First off English may not be Red's first language or they may be dyslexic or have a similar condition so to attack them for spelling and grammatical errors is poor form at best considering most people here are barely any better.

But more to the point, Red's point is that minorities wouldn't be getting so much focus if they had never been demonized and discriminated against in the first place - those gay mags never shifted because the target audience were rightly terrified of being attacked or even murdered simply for being themselves in public because the neanderthals continue to take offence against things that don't affect them in the slightest.

thank you with my medical condition its hard for me to type the words dont come out right

[red1981]

Originally Posted by neatoman

This is really badly written. I don't like to point out spelling errors but this wouldn't pass first grade.

1. Always begin a sentence with a capital letter.
2. Contractions should use apostrophes.
3. Initialisms should be all capital letters.
4. Plural of "self" is "selves".
5. "Strait" is a word meaning a narrow body of water, I think you meant "Straight" which is slang for heterosexual.
6. Always end sentences with punctuation.
7. Spider-Man is hyphenated.

There are also a bunch of syntax and grammar errors as well but they are too numerous to point out. Overall, I'm surprised you even got your membership approved. Everything about your post makes it seem like you are barely literate and a complete beginner when it comes to comprehension of the English language. It's the worst attempt at writing something in English I have seen in a long time.

As for the point I think you're trying to make, it's honestly really difficult to read the post, it is ironically pretty dismissive. It is unlikely that many people would comic books about mutant turtles or near-invincible aliens for the purpose of getting a political fix or "seeing themselves represented", as the subject matter is pretty far removed from any sort of realism. You have pundits, documentaries and down to earth dramas for that. And it's not like inclusion of LGBT characters needs to be turned into the primary subject matter of these comics, it's not like having a gay character run around needs to shift the focus to this character as much as possible, because that wasn't the appeal in the first place. Do I really need to explain that the appeal of Spider-Man isn't that he's heterosexual?

ever thought about the fact i suffer from brain damage, and that maybe i have issues typing and this the best i can do, does that mean i cant be in your special club

[Mayhem]

I feel the point is valid, even if it's a bit harder to comprehend due to the typing issues. Let's face it, gay people still get persecuted and killed in various parts of the world, let alone just being discriminated, so if picking up one of the comics in the past (or possibly even today) would have been a red flag like having to wear a badge in Nazi Germany to indicate you were Jewish, then no wonder.

Originally Posted by Leo656

Also, HUGE pet peeve of mine when people don't hyphenate Spider-Man.

I'm into retrogaming, I get the same when it's not spelt "Pac-Man" or "Boulder Dash" heh, two of the most incorrectly spelled game titles.

[Leo656]

I feel like a lot of people in other countries feel like all of the U.S. is the Deep South. I cannot stress enough how greatly Florida and North and South Carolina do not represent the rest of us. Rather, they're more like the crazy uncle we invite to holiday functions because they're "part of the family" but otherwise never visit, talk to, mention, or care about.

We made disco a thing. We're the country that "really" made Freddie Mercury and Elton John and David Bowie super-famous megastars. We gave Ellen multiple TV shows despite the fact that she has the body of a ten-year old boy and the face of a Christmas elf. We invented the Bravo network. We made RuPaul famous. We Do Not Collectively Hate Gay People, Here. Rather, we actually have a bit of a fascination with them that at times seems a bit odd and possibly unhealthy.

But we do not collectively hate gay people, and in fact have not had any significant problem with them for a very long time. Most people here got over that hang-up decades ago. Sure, there are isolated incidents and individuals - like anywhere else. But I think you need to be over here to really appreciate how HUGE this f*cking place is, compared to almost anywhere else in the world. You are obviously not going to get every single person in a group of 330 million to all feel the same way about damn near anything, whether it's Gay People or pizza toppings. And yet, just because a VERY small number of people feel a certain way, we ALL get painted with the same brush by people who aren't actually over here. It's very frustrating.

Anyways, yeah, no, we're mostly-fine with gay people. Some of us were just iffy on the whole "marriage" thing for reasons that had more to do with paperwork and "tradition" than any actual malice. But most of them got over it super-quick. Past that... much of what you hear is a ton of embellishment and exaggeration by people who maybe THINK they're being "persecuted" but are more like being "minorly inconvenienced" for one reason or other, if anything. Which isn't the same thing at all. But try telling them that, I know.

[AquaParade]

I'm from the US and I agree with Leo on most of that.

The taboo of being gay has completely reversed. In the early to mid 2000's, it was, indeed, uncool to be gay. For the most part. My friends and I would gossip about another dude if we thought he was gay, in a teasing way. We were 13, it was dumb, it was common. One day there was a rumor that I was gay, because a buddy and I pretended to make out in the tool shed of our woodshop class, which had my friends literally running away from me on campus after school, like I was a leper.

Nowadays, it's cool to be gay around here. You have to at least be bisexual if you are a young person, which is easy enough to claim without actually going through with anything.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by red1981

ever thought about the fact i suffer from brain damage, and that maybe i have issues typing and this the best i can do, does that mean i cant be in your special club

You did not reveal anything about your brain damage before I responded to you, I simply assumed it was because of something that's easy to correct. If it's any consolation, up to date browsers have limited spell check built in and I'm sure there are extensions to improve this feature. If you are having problems with grammar and spelling, I suggest you use such tools.

The built in spell check on my browser did admittedly not detect all problems with your post but it did notice the most obvious ones. Here are some extensions that may be helpful to you:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/spelling
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/spellcheck?

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by AquaParade

I'm from the US and I agree with Leo on most of that.

The taboo of being gay has completely reversed. In the early to mid 2000's, it was, indeed, uncool to be gay. For the most part. My friends and I would gossip about another dude if we thought he was gay, in a teasing way. We were 13, it was dumb, it was common. One day there was a rumor that I was gay, because a buddy and I pretended to make out in the tool shed of our woodshop class, which had my friends literally running away from me on campus after school, like I was a leper.

Nowadays, it's cool to be gay around here. You have to at least be bisexual if you are a young person, which is easy enough to claim without actually going through with anything.

I was constantly picked on for being "gay" as a kid, because I have soft, feminine facial features, was under-size and under-weight until I got to high school and started lifting weights heavily (I weighed 30lbs in Kindergarten, no sh*t, and I didn't crack over 100lbs until 8th Grade), watched She-Ra as well as He-Man, also watched Jem (to be fair that had more to do with it being on right after He-Man/She-Ra and me being too lazy to change the channel, it's admittedly a rather dumb show), never cared about sports at all, and so on. That's all it took back then. "You don't like football? WHAT A F@G!"

When I was a little younger I probably made my Dad a little nervous with my Rainbow Brite doll. 3-year old me found her attractive, I don't know, man. He never had a problem with me watching She-Ra though because there was SO much hot ass on that show; I'd always catch him peeking over his newspaper whenever it was on. For all the limitations Filmation's cartoons had, "Every woman having a perfect body" was a very welcome side effect.

Most of the teasing went away around 6th or 7th Grade, though (the "gay" teasing, at least) once I started growing facial hair, letting my hair grow out, wearing the leather jacket, etc. Oh, the fact I developed a mean right hook probably helped, can't lie. Once I stopped "looking like a girl" people stopped accusing me of being "gay" and just started picking on me for being small. But then that eventually stopped after I beat the living sh*t out of some of the bigger kids. People discourage violence as a solution, but the thing is, it works great. Like, it's a REALLY good way to get people to stop picking on you, especially if you do it in front of a crowd. I recommend it! Assuming of course that your parents will understand the situation and stick up for you with the principal, as mine did. I got a few suspensions but the whole thing eventually resolved itself, and by high school I was very well-liked and popular. Even most/all of the kids I ever got in fights with became very good friends and they actually respected me for standing up to them.

The best part of all the "you're gay" teasing I endured was when I ended up having sex (with a girl, duh) quite a few years before most of the other kids in my grade did. Sweet revenge!

I did feel bad, though, for this one kid in my class in 5th Grade who was rather "obviously" gay (we didn't know Then for sure, but all the signs were there; for example, whenever we'd hang out I'd want to talk about chicks and look at girlie magazines, and he wanted to watch musicals and would actually get angry at how obsessed with women I was). He got shunned pretty bad, for no real reason. I hung out with him a lot, I kinda made it a point to since nobody else would. We weren't "great" friends; he was honestly kind of a snot and one reason people avoided him wasn't that he was "gay" but moreso that he was very obnoxious, but I mean, in hindsight I get it, he was dealing with a lot, not only with being gay but his parents were divorced and so I'm sure he had a lot going on. Like I said, I felt bad. So even though we'd get in fights sometimes, we'd still hang out and spend the night over each others' houses and stuff (and No, he never "tried anything"; I don't think he was even admitting it to himself yet). Sure enough, though, every time we'd have a sleepover, kids would come up to me at school all like, "So... IS he gay?" I'm like "I honestly don't know, man, I didn't ask and he didn't say." I guess they were expecting him to try and blow me or something. But like, in hindsight... if that had happened, why would those kids think I'd advertise it? But no, it never happened, he never gave me any "explicit" signs that he was gay, just "gay-coded" stuff like his taste in movies, the way he talked/walked, etc.

I did finally have a strong inkling, though, one of the last times we hung out. He used to have this poster of a hot chick in a bathing suit on his wall - I guess as a deflection - and I had a bit of a preoccupation with it. One day he got so fed up with me staring at it, asking if I could have it, etc., that he actually tore it off his wall and ripped it up. I didn't say it out loud, but in my head I was like, "That's not something a straight guy would do." Kid Logic. Anyway, not long after that he moved and I never saw him again. I'd heard different things; some kids said he was sick of being teased, others said his Mom just got a new job. I'd rather believe the latter, frankly; especially in those days, parents generally didn't uproot their kids and move an hour away just because other kids call them names. Nowadays, yeah, but back then it was "Suck it up". So I think his Mom just got a new job. We talked on the phone a few times but then I think we had our phone cut off for a while, and when we got it back he'd gotten a new phone number. He did keep in touch with one of the girls we knew, though, who a couple years later confirmed that he came out to her privately as gay.

I often wonder how he's doing, I wouldn't mind reconnecting but I've never managed to locate him. He might've changed his name, or just isn't on social media, or maybe "he" is a "she" now for all I know. I just know they seem like they've disappeared, and that's kind of a bummer.

But yeah, kids are dumb with that sh*t.