Comic book sales are down because diversity sucks. Or....

For all intents and purpose they replaced them. In the worst way.

They made these new characters into tokens when they should have made whole new characters.

Translation: using a white guy like Bucky as Cap = a creative decision. But any use of non white characters in existing properties = tokenism and SJW virtue signaling.

Jane, the female Thor, is an excellent, deep, rounded character, as is Miles, the younger Spider-Man, and Riri, the additional suited character in Iron Man - the seventh altogether, btw, hardly a new concept. Thor especially is just an utterly outstanding book right now.

Dick as Batman was cool too, though the "replace Bats with another straight, white guy" folks forget that Dick's actually Roma.

And that his ass can actually turn men gay.

Thor has been replaced a few times before, most awesomely by Beta Ray Bill. Odinson is really boring, so they shake it up every now and then, like Throg who was an actual frog. The best thing to ever happen to Thor was Chris Hemsworth.

Other than that Miles Morales is probably one of the more interesting new heroes. He’s a kid who got spider powers and feels guilty over not helping Peter during his last and ultimately fatal fight with Green Goblin. A lot of his early arc was him trying to at least attempt to live up to Peter’s legacy. Peter’s identity was revealed when he died, the whole world discovering that some 16 year old kid fought crime and major threats while asking nothing in return elevated him to near sainthood. Miles was even attacked in his early days to defaming his memory when wearing a near identical costume. But he slowly learns the webs of being a hero and gets trained by Spider-Woman who is basically Ben Reilly, later teaming up with the 616 Spidey. Now he’s in the 616 universe and Peter has become a sort of mentor to him. I like him and his old supporting cast. That Ultimate series from Peter to Miles is one of the better runs of the character. Ultimate Peter got a death that really fit his story and him as a character. He dies saving Aunt May.

Wolverine just gets confusing because there are four or five wandering around. There’s old Logan, X-23, Wolverine’s kid from the Ultimate books, his other son and even old school Wolverine is coming back.

Honestly the people who complain about comics changing characters must never read them. They’ve been doing it forever. There was an international team of Batmen, Bruce set up franchises around the world.

Yep, then there was Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle, who was awesome despite my immense man-crush on Ted Kord.

How many fucking Green Lanterns does Earth have?!

Is Supes fucking Lois or Wonder Woman this month? Can he fly or is he just really strong and tough and riding a motorbike? Cape and underoos or T-shirt and jeans?

I can't believe no one has said "WELL WHAT IF THEY TRIED TO MAKE BLACK PANTHER WHITE?!" yet.

They have that character, he's called Dr. Doom.

The yammering mostly came from liberal parts of fandom, but I assume you have a better idea of what Nazi pandering looks like than anyone else here.

Saw a tweet asking why no one set a series in Europe and called it White Panther.

That's.....literally Thor

Seriously? That's interesting, all the liberal sources I read loved the story to bits. Do you have some links? I would love to take a look.

I stopped buying the Marvel books over five years ago now. I have runs of many Marvel titles going back to the late 1960s but in recent years the company has simply lost track of who their characters are supposed to be.

And speaking of Thor, there are few superhero stories I find more tedious than "lost my powers/can no longer be the hero." Only the "OMG hero is dead!" is worse.

I actually love the Jane Foster Thor series, and I'll miss it. Thor in general has had some amazing writing and art for the last few years. The God Bomb storyline as incredible. I gave up on Avengers and X-Men years ago, despite having read both avidly since I was a wee lad.

Not really. They alienated the fan base for ridiculous and easily avoidable reasons then to twist the dagger they attacked their own fan base and called them names. I bet a lot of them stay away and find new hobbies. Yeah, Marvel has finally said "We're sorry, we fired those SJW cunts because their stories sucked and their art sucked" but former fans could quite easily say no they have moved on and developed new hobbies so fuck you Marvel.

Aaaaand, reading the rest of this post would be a waste of valuable nanoseconds.

It's conservative code for "brown and/or queer folks"...

No, just the ones that dare object.

Collectors and fanboys like #1 issues, and there will always be a bump in sales for inaugural #1 issues. Marvel is chasing short-term sales spikes, while abandoning the concept of ongoing series. When's the last time one of these relaunched titles reached issue #50, much less #100? That's just not part of Marvel's business plan these days

Declining sales of print media are part of the problem, but not the biggest part.

Sidelining and/or killing off legacy characters to try and force rival movie studios to sell back the movie rights is part of the problem.

Allowing an adversarial relationship with customers to develop as a result of obnoxious creators attacking fans on social media is part of the problem.

Trying to shove liberal identity politics down the throats of your aging fan base and alienating them is a part of the problem.

And no, superheroes are not SJW as some retards claim. Batman's crusade isn't to make sure liberal campus snowflakes have safe spaces because they feel threatened over the College Republicans inviting Ben Shapiro to give a lecture.

The bigger problem with Marvel and DC is that creators no longer approach them with original ideas. If a writer wants to create a new character, they go to Image, where they can retain the rights to their intellectual property. They all want to be the next Mark Millar and have movie deals for their own versions of Kick Ass and Kingsmen. They all want to be the next Kirkman and develop their own Walking Dead.

When's the last time Marvel had a new, from scratch character? The only new characters are amalgamations of pre-existing properties, like SpiderGwen. That's why they keep flogging the legacy characters they haven't killed off, with 20 different Avengers books and then solo titles for each of the Avengers characters, 15 different X-Men titles, one for each color in the crayon box (team blue, team gold, team magenta, team turquoise).

It really isn't code for anything, it has a very explicit definition.

I signed on for its original definition of people that talked a good game on social justice, but didn't really help oppressed people.
But the Nazis sneaked a little bit more, and a little bit more under the label to get their pet agendas in, until going "hey, running people over with a car isn't cool", made you an SJW and a snowflake.
Fuck them.
SJW is ruined.
Time to chuck it.

From what I can tell SJW was an insult made by conservatives, mainly young ones, upset that minorities wanted to see any representation in media instead of just more white men. This triggered the conservatives since they’re extremely insecure and seeing fictional white men do things is how they know white people are great because whiteness is entirely fictional. That’s why they cry and bitch when Black Panther or a gay guy is a character on Star Trek. Being reminded that other groups existed and fully capable of doing anything they can do reminds them that there is absolutely nothing special about white men. But now he market has spoken, appealing to wider audiences brings in money to media companies. I’d feel bad for these pathetic white boys, my brothers are white boys (they don’t seem to give a shit about this though), but I don’t fucking care. It’s just shows, books and movies, they can appeal to anyone.

Of course now SJW is anyone to the left of actual Nazis. So whatever. I wrote this in the bathroom.

An SJW is someone who takes something you've loved your entire life, shits on it, and then calls you a racist/sexist/homophobe/xenophobe/whatever because you dare to complain.

Appropriating classic characters was inevitably going to be taken as an insult by long-term fans. All the good intentions in the world don't change that.

I'm glad Marvel seems to have figured that out.

How are they the ones making creative decisions AND insulting you? One seems like writers and the other seems randos online. I don’t think there is a lot of overlap there.

Put the bottle down for fuck's sake, Dinner. It's barely 5 o'clock.

Reboots and reimaginings are nothing new to comics. Why is it suddenly a problem when it involves brown and/or queer people?

Their slumping sales suggest otherwise, but keep telling yourself that.

So it's "shitting on" something you love to include women and minorities in it?

I'm saying the SJWs at Marvel insulted the fans by setting aside the classic characters.

Tony Stark? Pushed to the back, so a black teenage girl can become Iron Man.
Bruce Banner? Killed off, so a Korean guy can be the Hulk.
Wolverine? Killed off, replaced with by a young woman.
Thor? Made unworthy, replaced by a woman.
Steve Rogers? Nazi all along, sadly. Black man takes his place.

The objection isn't that Marvel put more woman and minorities into central roles in their comics. It's that they did it by marginalizing characters that people have known and loved for decades.

Ok

Whoa, whoa, come the fuck on.
Even if all the legacy characters were wiped out right now, and never, ever, ever, EVER came back, you've still got 60 years of comics, and the entire goddamned MCU, and the entire goddamned Fox-CU.
And that's a big "if", because as has pointed out repeatedly, the diversity characters lived right alongside the classics.
The classics either didn't go away, or they took temporary vacations that were always intended to be tempoary.
And the characters have been temporarily radically transformed before.
The aforementioned frog-Thor.
Beta Ray Bill.
How many YEARS was Hulk the grey Mister Fixit?
It was a big greedy bite out of the 90's, I know that much.
Where was the "they shit all over something I loved!! ", then?

Shit, characters have taken a break by being fucking dead in the ground before.

Why the anger now?
You've been watching too many videos with thumbnails of fat guys with tiny glasses with a look on their face like they stepped in elephant shit.
You're supposed to skip over those.
I thought there was a mental health alert ad out there for that.

It would be a problem if they replaced the characters with white folks. Anyone remember when Ben Reilly became Spider-Man?

Based on the promos for their latest reboot, that's what Marvel is telling themselves, too.