10 Biggest Comics Controversies Of 2017
3. Marvel Suggest Diversity Was The Cause Of Poor Sales
Marvel's VP of Sales, David Gabriel, caused a stir when it was revealed from a meeting with the retailers that the publisher seemed to put the blame on declining sales on the introduction of a raft of diverse characters.
At a Retailers Summit reported on by ICv2, Gabriel stated:
“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.”
While he did go on to elaborate as to whether they should believe that, many took that as to mean Marvel saw the fall in sales as being down to the greater inclusion of female and diverse characters.
Naturally, such a conclusion would be drastically reductive given other factors such as fan event fatigue, exploitative variant cover incentives and maybe even looking at other elements of the content of their publications.
Many took issue with such a statement, and it painted Marvel in a poor light, given the controversies yet to come.