Marvel found themselves in the middle of controversy after an executive remarked that diversity was lowering their comic sales.
A Marvel Retailers Summit, which is a meeting between Marvel executives and retailers, allowed website “ICv2” to report on the summit, which brought some of their comments to light.
“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,” said Director of Sales David Gabriel.
Gabriel was saying that their sales were going down because people were not ready to turn away from the traditional Marvel characters that have been successful.
“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 said.
In 2011, Marvel debuted Miles Morales, a black Spider-Man and they have since amped up the amount of diverse characters in their comics. Ms. Marvel, who is now Kamala Khan, a Muslim girl from Jersey City, a female Thor, Korean-American Amadeus Cho as the new Hulk and black teen Riri Williams as the new Iron Man.
Twitter users criticized Gabriel’s comments, saying that he should look at other problems with the Marvel comics rather than diversity as the reason for flagging sales.
“Uhh, Marvel, I don’t think diversity is why your comics aren’t selling. This? Making Cap a Nazi? Just maaaaaaybe?” one Twitter user said.
Others asked that Marvel stop changing its old comic and add new characters instead.
“@Marvel’s idea to diversity is to change established characters. A total idiot move. Create new characters don’t change established ones.”
Gabriel has since issued a statement that is meant to clarify his comments.
“…Contrary to what some said about characters ‘not working,’ the sticking factor and popularity for a majority of these new titles and characters like Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, The Mighty Thor, Spider-Gwen, Miles Morales, and Moon Girl, continue to prove that our fans and retailers ARE excited about these new heroes,” he said.
“And let me be clear, our new heroes are not going anywhere! We are proud and excited to keep introducing unique characters that reflect new voices and new experiences into the Marvel Universe and pair them with our iconic heroes. We have also been hearing from stores that welcome and champion our new characters and titles and want more! They’ve invigorated their own customer base and helped them grow their stores because of it. So we’re getting both sides of the story and the only upcoming change we’re making is to ensure we don’t lose focus of our core heroes.”
Laina Yost
Managing Editor