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Women and characters of color are the reason for a decline in comic books sales, says Marvel VP of Sales David Gabriel.
Because why not blame all of your problems on women just ahead of Equal Pay Day? Which, you know, is meant to symbolize how much more women have to work to earn the same as men.
Speaking on a drop in sales, Gabriel told ICv2, “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there.” Really? We’re just so inundated with diverse characters that we can’t take “any more?” That sounds a little off. He tries to backpedal a bit, noting, “I don’t know that that’s really true…” Okay, here we go.
“But that’s what we saw in sales,” he adds. Oh. You can just picture him throwing his hands up in the air as he says it. Just like every chump who’s told you women aren’t as strong or as smart as men. It’s not his personal opinion. It’s science!
And you just can’t argue with science… or sales numbers. I bet Marvel feels pretty vindicated now for never having made a Black Widow standalone movie. Even though they’ve made multiple films for all of the male “Avengers.” (And yes, that includes two widely mocked attempts at “The Incredible Hulk.”)
“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,” Gabriel said. How convenient. Literally anything other than a white, male superhero doesn’t sell, huh?
Except that it does. Introducing a more diverse line of dolls basically saved Barbie. People do want to see more diverse characters. “The sticking factor and popularity for a majority of these new titles and characters – like Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, etc. – continue to prove that our fans and retailers ARE excited about these new heroes,” Gabriel said, after criticism of his earlier comments.
So perhaps the Marvel diversity issue is more to do with Marvel than it is the actual diversity. But sure, nice “save” Gabriel. Maybe next time don’t disparage entire communities RIGHT before a day highlighting how far they still have to go for equality.
