I think they've made the mistake of applying a form of affirmative action quota to comic books -- a certain number of core property characters must now be women or minorities. It's completely forced and disruptive to the franchise and likely to make fans opposed to further diversification. If the appeal of Iron Man was never specifically that he was a white dude and a critical representative voice for white dudeness, why the hell would we give that kind of treatment and expectation to a black female Iron Man? That's not diversity; it's tokenism. I don't want a female Thor, Wolverine, or Iron Man; I want diverse characters given space to grow in their own right, given the same opportunity to thrive or fail as their white male counterparts have been given over the decades. Put a top writer and artist on an original female or minority character who has substance to them beyond being a female or minority character, promote the heck out of it, and then get the hell out of the creators' way for a dozen issues. That's the kind of diversity I'm looking for in comics.

So David Gabriel was trying to generate some headlines with his original statement.

I don't know if I agree with the bolded part of your statement, in that I don't think there are people who "don't" want more diversity but that they don't want diversity to come at the expense of what they want.  

For me, I've been collecting Iron Man for a long time.  I have every floppie from #40 up, and with Masterworks, I have everything from ToS #84 up.  Tony Stark is my Iron Man (and Jim Rhodes as well, when Tony was on a bender), so when Marvel cancelled his most-recent series and replaced him with a minority female character, I stopped buying the Iron Man comic, as I'm not going to buy a book called "Iron Man" that doesn't feature a man named Tony Stark.  However, if people are as interested in Riri as @mrp says they are, good for Marvel for giving a segment of the population what they want, but they need to recognize that they are alienating a long-time fan (and there are more than just me) who has stuck by the Tony Stark character through a lot of high and low points in his varied series.  If they were publishing a Tony Stark-led Iron Man book, I would be spending my money every month on it pretty much guaranteed, while if Riri fizzles out and no longer appeals to that other segment of the population, those folks are going to spend their money elsewhere rather than continue to buy something that is no longer cool or hip or whatever the current terminology is.  

I'll shift gears for a little and address Sam Wilson as Captain America, because I see that differently, more akin to the Jim Rhodes as Iron Man periods.  Steve was no longer able to do the job, so he hand-picked Sam to carry the shield, as Sam had been his long-time friend and partner in crimefighting, and he felt that Sam could best carry on the legacy of being Captain America.  While we now had a black Captain America, it didn't feel gimmicky or a case of tokenism, but rather an organic change that flowed because of story reasons, not because Marvel needed to connect with a different audience or sell more books.  I was fine continuing buying the new Cap series with Sam starring in it, because to me, I was still being giving the story I was interested in with a character that I was invested in, even if it was not Steve Rogers.   

Lastly, in the case of a character like America Chavez, I read through the first two issues of the series at the LCS, and I don't like the art, I didn't connect with the title character, and it's too "millennial" in its tone and language and situations for me.  I won't be buying the book, but Marvel isn't depriving me of what I want, because this is a new(ish) character that stands on her own merits without replacing a legacy hero while retaining that character's name (and, yes, I know there have been Miss Americas in Marvel's past, but none of real note).  If it reaches new people and introduces them to the Marvel Universe, that's good for Marvel and good for the industry and good for the people who are being reached, but neither Marvel nor I am losing anything, because I'm not the target audience and Marvel probably wasn't counting on me buying it any way, and I'm not losing any character I care about because she's being published.

Hope this makes sense.

What I think is interesting is the whole digital thing... exactly how are those going? It seems to me if they were good, the publishers would be shouting it from the rooftops, and they aren't.

Incidently, the top sellers for Comixology are none of those diverse titles...I went through the first 6 pages, and it's full of Ghost in the Shell (duh) DC Rebirth, and X-Men. It also has some strange trades that further confirm that it's probably old comic fans that are buying them.

Here's the thing about those people you see cosplaying Riri.. they're not used to paying anything for their entertainment. They're used to watching anime on crunchyroll (or less legitimate sites) and are much more likely to either share an unlimited id with a bunch of friends or find free (illegal) downloads or mirrors than giving Marvel any money. My 16 year old gets horrified half the time if I just suggest she stick to legit sites, because she doesn't want to watch ads. This is the binge watch/I want it all now generation. they are simply not going to either wait 6 months for a story, or pay $25 for it.

I know in 2015 the sales number people (comichron working with ictv) estimated 10% of sales are digital.. that's a pretty pathetic number. I've also read alot of industry stuff before the book store closed that digital sales stopped growing.. most analysts opined that people were done rebuying stuff they have in print, and that sales would likely drop going forward.

What boggles my mind is why no one in the states has tried the Manga model.. do a big anthology with lots of ads that can sit on the magazine racks, then get cheap trades out asap.

If anyone is interested in another point of view-here is G. Willow Wilson's (writer of Ms. Marvel) response to the article in question.

Some highlights...









On another note, man, wildfire2099 that rant was reminiscent of every rant by the "straights" in every 60s and 70s movie about youth culture on how these kids are ruining the world with their crazy rock and roll and what not. The only grain of truth in it is that yes, nobody wants to pay $4 for a floppy in the current market, it is a dinosaur format and publishers need to move into the way 21st century publishing works and not linger with things that only sell to 50K people if they are lucky. But that rant smacks of the worst kind of gatekeeping and they're not real fans because they are not doing it right, a mentality that for me, represents everything that is wrong within the realm of comics fandom right now. There is no right way to be a fan and no wrong way. It's 2017, not 1987, products, marketing strategies, and formats that worked in 1987 no longer appeal to the customer of 2017, and businesses have a responsibility to their shareholders, employees, etc. to look to the future and not wallow in the past.

But then I have always read a lot of my stuff for free and didn't pay for it when I could, I mean reading my friends comics instead of my own, or swapping baseball cards for comic books with a neighbor to get more comics to read, and standing at the spinner rack in the Dairy Mart reading as many as I could before the clerk told me to buy something or get out, or reading comic for free from library or via hoopla now, or taking advantage of a free month of Marvel Unlimited when they offer and not continuing after that (as some of the folks I know did), so I guess what I like or say doesn't matter because I didn't pay for any of those comics I read that way and continue to do so when I expand my comic reading beyond my comic budget.

And The Captain I appreciate your wanting a book with Tony Stark, but a) books featuring Tony Stark have lost 75% of its sales over the last 25 years despite you saying that's what readers want to read, and b) I just don't get how Riri Williams in the armor for a while is a bridge too far after we have had Rhodey (introduced only 10 issues before the Demon in the Bottle storyline started so not really an entrenched figure in the mythos when he took over), Happy Hogan in the armor, Pepper Potts as Rescue in the armor, evil Tony that has been a servant of Kang all along, Teen Tony, Doom in the armor, whatever the hell Superior Iron Man was, Tony not really a Stark but adopted and whatever else Kiron Gillen did with that, telepresence Iron Man with the empty armor being Iron MAn while Tony is paralyzed in a bed somewhere, etc. etc. were all temporary changes we knew would play out and then return to Tony as Iron Man just as the Riri story eventually will. You can syy loyal to the book through all that, but not them exploring something like Riri for a bit. They've already made in known they are bringing back a lot of the classic iterations of characters in 2018 (even before this diversity article hit with some kind of Generations storyline (because big 2 comics can no longer allow the status quo to change or characters to grow it seems).

As for comic anthologies, many publishers in the US have tried them on some scale or other and they have all tanked sales wise (one of the worst failures was CRossgen's attempts to sell trades in the anthology format in The Edge and The Forge, formats which sat on retilers shelves unsold and which I have seen whole trades of sitting in dollar bins for years). It's not quite the same thing as the manga model, but nothing in the direct market has given publishers a sense that this format will sell to American audiences in that direct market, and since jobs at the big 2 are decided based on performance in the direct market (not digital or the book trade), your not going to see anyone support a format the won't perform there.

-M

You ask a fair question. In all honesty, I think Marvel's current publishing model bit them in the ass with me on this matter.

As I've written before, I have OCD when it comes to being a completionist, in that I have a pathological need to have all of something, in this case, the issues of a comic book series. For all of those instances of changes to Iron Man that you noted, they came within a series that I was already collecting and I pretty much wouldn't, or couldn't, more accurately, force myself not to buy the book, even if I wasn't interested. The only time I managed it partway through a run was with Superior Iron Man, as that was so unappealing to me, although I've struggled with thinking about picking up the books out of $1 bins so I can complete it now.

With the Riri book, Marvel gave me a chance to decide if I wanted to pick it up or not when they restarted the series with yet another #1 issue. Since I had no interest in the character, it was easy for me not to start buying the book. I will say that if they'd presented her story arc in the IM series after Tony Stark left it, with the same numbering intact, I probably would have continued to buy it, especially with the knowledge and understanding that Tony would be back at some point. Now, all I need to do is wait for that to happen and I can go back to buying a Iron Man book.

Again, if people are interested and want to read Riri stories, Marvel should publish them. I have no problem with that, but I'm not going to spend my money on them.