Oh, boy, is it time to talk about THAT topic now? Whee, Ryan Lit is going to become Person #514392 to write a blog post about Marvel’s diversity issues! It’s content like this that makes you guys want to keep coming back to my blog, isn’t it? Seriously though, with Marvel’s soft reboot set to launch after “Secret Empire”, which is likely going to see the cancellation of several series and the retooling of the entire way the company’s comic division functions, there’s really no better time to talk about this so that I can throw my own two cents into this overflowing wishing well. For the two of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, for the last few years Marvel Comics have decided to get… Uncomfortably political. It started off in small ways, ways that I honestly wouldn’t even classify as “political” if they’re being looked at out of context – dark-skinned Spider-Man, Muslim Pakistani-American Ms. Marvel, jabs at Donald Trump, not really anything to get mad at, quite the opposite. But when Marvel saw that these things sold, suddenly every comic needed to have SOME sort of agenda to it, even when it made no sense. Thor (replaced by a woman now, who is also called Thor) has joined Captain Marvel in beating up people who disagree with feminism, Bor (Thor’s grandfather) has unsolicited opinions on Israel and is apparently part of the Men’s Rights Activists, Mockingbird is complaining about a patriarchal conspiracy to keep women out of SHIELD, and every single character you know and love is dead or evil, replaced by a younger, colored counterpart.

It, uh… Obviously didn’t work out. In the entirety of 2016, Marvel only had 33 comic books in the top 100 best-selling comics of the year, which sounds pretty good until you realize that their direct competitor, DC, had almost double that number, at 63. This disparity is completely inexcusable, especially considering the fact that while DC has been seriously struggling in other media (the last DC movie we got that was truly good was 2008’s “The Dark Knight”), Marvel has been knocking it out of the park again and again, with the biggest movie franchise of all time bearing their name. The Avengers, Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy are each a juggernaut of a franchise, with millions of devoted fans lining up to buy movie tickets on opening night. Each fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a potential comic book reader just waiting to be snatched up, so why has Marvel completely failed to do that? Well, according to David Gabriel, the vice president of sales, it’s because the comics are just too damn diverse. And the thing is that there’s certainly a correlation here – Marvel’s sales did, in fact, start to go down the moment they began pushing for diversity and the alt-left agenda. So on the surface level that statement makes sense, but it’s very important to keep in mind that correlation doesn’t always equal causation. And the fact of the matter is that it’s not diversity that killed Marvel’s sales, it’s how that diversity was implemented.

The thing about us, as human beings, is that we don’t really like having things forced down on us, especially in our escapism/entertainment. When I sit down to read a comic book, the last thing I want to see is a character essentially turning to the ‘camera’ and going on a political tirade which is little more than a soapbox for the writer’s own opinions. Don’t get me wrong, some stories not only benefit from political allegories – they downright require them. If you remove the politics from “Watchmen” or “Maus”, or even early “X-Men”, what’s left? But notice how those stories are merely allegories, or otherwise keep their politics in the background. At no point does Wolverine turn around and say “Hey, bub, you see how people discriminate against mutants? That’s happenin’ to gay folks and black folks and all the others that are different all around. And if ya vote for the Republican party, it’s just gon’ keep on going”. He doesn’t really need to shove his agenda down my throat because I’m smart enough to understand the allegory and draw my own conclusions. Modern comic books don’t have the same level of subtlety. “Allegory” and “metaphor” seem to be just fancy, yet meaningless words to the folks at Marvel. Gone are the days in which Wonder Woman and her island of Amazons represented feminism and female empowerment, now characters like Mockingbird are straight up wearing “Ask me about my feminist agenda” T-shirts. And if you, for one reason or another, dislike feminism and prefer to identify as an egalitarian instead, well, too bad. These books are overtly about feminism and you just have to deal with that.

And then there’s the matter of characters being consistently replaced, which once again calls back to the idea of people disliking things being shoved down their throats. When we got our black Spider-Man and Middle-Eastern Ms. Marvel, nobody particularly cared because the originals were still around. If you kept an open mind, you could give these new characters a shot, but if you didn’t like them you could always just go back to their “traditional” counterparts. But when Wolverine died, he got two replacements, and neither of them is the classic character that people want to read about. Same deal when Tony Stark was placed in a coma – two replacements, but neither of them comes close to scratching that Iron Man itch you might have after watching the movies. Hulk, Thor, Captain America, they’ve all been gone, and none have received a “proper” series since. All we have are their politically correct replacements. Okay, but what if I don’t want to read about Asian Hulk? I’ve got no choice but to wait until Bruce Banner comes back to life… Which is what many people appear to be doing, considering the fact that “Totally Awesome Hulk” has been selling rather poorly.

The fact of the matter is that it’s not diversity killing Marvel, nor is it politics. It’s how these things are implemented. Saying “You’re going to read about feminism and you’re gonna like it, because if you don’t you’re a terrible human being” isn’t exactly going to convince a whole lot of readers to pick up your book, you know. Similarly, as G. Willow Wilson (creator of Ms. Marvel) put it, “launching a legacy character by killing off or humiliating the original character sets the legacy character up for failure.” The lesson that Marvel needs to do isn’t “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t include politics or diverse characters in our books”. It’s “Hey, if we’re going to include politics we should do it in a smart way, and if we’re going to include diverse characters we shouldn’t do it at the expense of our classic, beloved heroes, who are now enjoying a resurgence of popularity because of the movies”. Hopefully the upcoming reboot will address these issues without the company’s stance shifting to the opposite direction. Because let me tell you, if Marvel STOP being political and introducing diverse characters into their stories, you’re going to see an even angrier blog post from me.