I was thinking more about pander bears, aka SJWs this morning. They really represent a minority of a subculture; faux geek girl millennials who believe everyone deserves a sticker or trophy just because. They’re turning our beloved superheroes into unrecognizable and unreadable drek.
Many are outraged at them. The SJWs are outraged at the outraged. There’s lots of outrage going around these days, and I asked why? Here’s what I concluded: Marvel is a business. They can push a weird extremist agenda all they want, but they have to pay the bills, pay salaries, pay for publishing, and so on. Bottom line: if they don’t have a consumer base, they’ll go out of business.
Now, the Marvel movies and tv shows are juggernaut that’s raking in mountains of cash. We’ll probably see Avengers movies for the next twenty years before people tire of them. The comics on the other hand, are an eroding dying business. The internet and related technology has damn near put the print media out of business altogether. Technology has been destroyer and liberator in this regard. Many newspapers and magazine companies have migrated online or went out of business. Comics are no different.
There’s still a sizeable audience who want to read comics. There’s a very tiny minority that want what Marvel’s selling. (Look at Comicchron.com‘s numbers to see what I mean. The numbers are way down.) The majority of those who want to read comics are not buying Marvel. People are still buying DC, but those numbers are dwindling too. (Stop with the reboots, dudes.)
So, what do we do? I say, let Marvel die. It may be the only way to save it.
(I’ll explain more in a further post.)