West Coast Avengers Announced by Kelly Thompson

[ed2962]

Yeah, the indie scene has really put out some more powerful stuff for sure. Marvel inches its way along, as does DC, but other companies usually take a big leap of faith since their business model sort of relies on it.

At least that's how I've always seen it.

Marvel figured out a formula that worked for them and was great at branding so they stuck to that for a long time. And mostly it worked. DC and other publishers were forced to take more chances. It didn't always pay off, but it did/does enuff that they continue to do so.

[skyvolt2000]

That said, I think anyone who mistakes their personal like/amusement regarding a character like Gwenpool for that character ever having any real, lasting, cultural importance is naive. You might not give a damn about Peter Parker, Tony Stark, or Steve Rogers, yet those will always be the iconic characters (same as Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne) no matter how many half-baked female knock-off's Marvel produces.

Who gives a damn about who is iconic or not? NO ONE. That person who is reading those knock-offs DON"T CARE.

It still boggles my mind that Storm and Black Widow don't have their own successful solo books, but there you go. Let me get really specific: black female characters. At least so I can understand.

Black Widow has 61 solo issues over 5 runs. Let not insult her. Storm would need a chair to kiss BW's foot. Widow did not have to take over someone else's book to get development. Nor try to beat the crap out Black Panther.

You'd rather have an Iron Man spin-off that's technically new, as opposed to Storm, one of the greatest underused characters in Marvel history?

That is not a question for a fan. That is a question for MANAGEMENT. Who green lights the books.

I personally believe that there is too much misplaced focus on supporting new legacy characters. That's not real progress: Black Panther and Storm were real progressive characters.

Yes it is REAL progress. See because SOMEONE took put their MONEY where their MOUTH is. I see all these post about why can the originals get this or that. Yet when these books get green lighted-here come the excuse train.

FANS are not doing THEIR part.

Where was the support for Falcon, Vision, Hercules, Jessica Jones, Scarlet Witch, Solo, Foolkiller, Slapstick, Starlord, Gamora, Dax, Moon Knight, Black Knight, Starbrand, Prowler, Cage, Ironfist, Rocket Raccoon, Carol Danvers, Black Bolt, Karnack, Lockjaw and so many others who did not take someone's place (aside from Carol). I should count Moon Girl, Squirrel Girl & Midnight Angels too. At 2 of those have support.

Then we get to MANAGEMENT.

I can't write about Eli Bradley-if he's OFF LIMITS.
I can't write about the Avenger Academy kids-If I am not allowed the change to PITCH a story.
I can't do a story with a black girl in the lead if I have NONE to use. Because someone ELSE is holding the few hostage.
I can't do a proper Cyborg (DC) story if MANAGEMENT is HELL BENT on Cyborg getting hacked or beat up by Black Panther or trashed in every book he is in.

Finally ACCESS.

I'll use my public library.
Here are the number of copies of trades in the entire Dallas Library.

Ms Marvel (Khan) 79
Squirrel Girl 66
Black Widow 31
Moon Girl 25
Jane Foster 22
X-23 20
Spider-Gwen 18
Gwenpool 14
Kate Bishop 11
Riri 9
Jean Grey (05 version) 6
Storm 5

It goes back to management. If you don't use or support your originals don't cry when the legacies and Gwen are all what anyone wants to read.

[Skedatz]

Or someone might say, "I don't like comic booky art, I prefer the realism of Greg Land."

Those people should be put against the wall for the purges.

[Tiamatty]

Well, as an industry leader Marvel must bear responsibility for the collapse in book sales. Especially since Manga sales have grown by leaps and bounds over the same period. The disparity between comic and Manga sales shows that the demand from readers does exist, Marvel just isn't providing the right kind of products to meet that demand. This is why reducing the line to 20 books is essential, a renewed focus on what actually works will restore confidence in Marvel as a brand and perhaps even begin to grow the industry again. So yes, I think that WCA sends completely the wrong message right now, it's a hollow repeat of the same gimmicks that landed Marvel in this mess to begin with.

WROOOOOOOOOONG!

Remarkably wrong. Manga and US comics are very different creatures. The success of manga is not at all related to the current state of US comics, which, again, is not even particularly dire. For one thing, there is a vastly wider range of manga easily available than what you'll find in direct market US comics, in large part because of decisions Marvel and DC made decades ago to focus almost exclusively on superhero comics. Other publishers haven't really filled the gap in terms of genre. If I want to read something like The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal, a gay romance comic, well, I'm not getting that in a comic shop. Very few comic shops would stock a comic like that. If I go to an average bookshop and spend a few minutes browsing their manga section, there's decent odds I'll find something along those lines. If I want a non-superhero comic written by a woman, holy **** am I ever going to have slim pickings at a comic shop, but it's so easy to find manga written by women. On top of that, the way manga are made means they can put out a ridiculously high volume of content compared to US comics. The assembly line production style used by manga makes a big difference in terms of output.

And that's just scratching the surface of what makes US direct market comics and manga different. They are too different for a comparison to actually work.

Oh, and the direct market does not define US comics. Comics, as an industry, continue to do well. And a lot of that is owed to diverse creators putting out their work through other channels, ignoring the direct market entirely. The only people who give a **** about the direct market are people who lack the imagination to read anything that doesn't come from Marvel, DC or Image. Speaking as a Wednesday Warrior who goes to a local comic shop every week for new single-issue floppies: Screw the direct market.

I don't think this will hurt the direct market at all, more comic sales is good for everybody even if those sales are focused on a few key books. Instead of taking a risk on niche books that might only sell 10-15K the independent comics retailers can invest in one of the only 20 high profile books that Marvel would put out. That 100,000 or bust goal isn't just for Marvel, it gives a sense of security to the direct market that they won't be caught any longer with low quality Marvel products that they just can't sell.

You're assuming that the majority of the people buying Moon Girl would, if Moon Girl was canceled, simply move over to Spider-Man. That is a stupid assumption. It is clueless to an astonishing degree. Getting rid of Moon Girl will not affect Spider-Man's sales in the slightest. Getting rid of Moon Girl just means losing the money they make off Moon Girl. ("Oh but it only sells whatever every month blah blah blah" shut up, the direct market isn't everything, get some imagination.)

Consolidating the line to 20 books is going to cost them all the readers who don't want the same **** that's been around forever. It shrinks the audience, and shrinks the potential audience. It is a straight-up stupid idea.

[Tiamatty]

And that's the great irony to me. You preach that you want new things (as you should) yet you list almost solely female character relegated to second-rate legacy status. It still boggles my mind that Storm and Black Widow (or hell, Northstar who I've loved since Byrne) don't have their own successful solo books, but there you go. Let me get really specific: black female characters. At least so I can understand. You'd rather have an Iron Man spin-off that's technically new, as opposed to Storm, one of the greatest underused characters in Marvel history?

I'm excited for the Coates/Bartel Storm solo. And I would do some pretty horrible things to get Nnedi Okorafor or Yona Harvey writing a Storm solo. I purchased and enjoyed David Walker's run on Power Man & Iron Fist, and then on Luke Cage. I enjoyed Mosaic, even if some aspects of it were disappointing to me. So I want and support titles featuring older characters from marginalized groups, as well. I mean, when the characters and creators interest me. I doubt I'd buy a Northstar solo by, say, Peter David. But I would in a heartbeat buy one by Saladin Ahmed.

[Digifiend]

Where was the support for Vision,

That book was a maxiseries from the start and would never have gone past 12 issues regardless of how well it sold, and even if King hadn't gone to DC to do Batman.

[Drops Of Venus]

You're assuming that the majority of the people buying Moon Girl would, if Moon Girl was canceled, simply move over to Spider-Man. That is a stupid assumption. It is clueless to an astonishing degree. Getting rid of Moon Girl will not affect Spider-Man's sales in the slightest. Getting rid of Moon Girl just means losing the money they make off Moon Girl. ("Oh but it only sells whatever every month blah blah blah" shut up, the direct market isn't everything, get some imagination.)

Consolidating the line to 20 books is going to cost them all the readers who don't want the same **** that's been around forever. It shrinks the audience, and shrinks the potential audience. It is a straight-up stupid idea.

They're not even suggesting a 20-book line-up anymore, but only publishing books that sell more than 100k every month, and I doubt Marvel even has something close to 20 that could pull those numbers consistently today. They'd lose a **** load of the market share they hold now precisely because they have a variety of expensive books to help inflate their numbers. It'd be a constant cycle of cancellation, new #1s and events that's even worse than it is now... can you imagine? I have a hard time taking seriously anyone who honestly believe this is what's going to save the publisher or the comic book industry as a whole. It's just delusional.

[Kintor]

Who gives a damn about who is iconic or not? NO ONE. That person who is reading those knock-offs DON"T CARE.

You'd have to be living under a rock to deny that the loss of Marvel's iconic characters has been the source of most conflict over the past few years. Having similarly themed sidekicks to the main heroes was one thing but this systematic move to replace key Marvel heroes with more demographically pleasing stand-ins had an inevitable and entirely foreseeable backlash. Perhaps Marvel gambled that the Tumblr crowd brought in by these changes would be able to overwhelm the criticisms of comic fans but Marvel failed understand the fact that Tumblr doesn’t financially support the causes they claim to champion.

This situation wasn't helped by the gloating attitude held by Marvel as they destroyed their own heritage, declaring each stolen mantle a victory in a moral struggle to teach comic fans a lesson in humility. Of course this wasn't sustainable, when these new characters only had the borrowed credibility of better heroes they simply couldn't last in such artificially obtained positions of prominence. Now that Marvel's iconic heroes are finally being restored something like WCA is in particularly bad taste, one last effort to usurp an iconic Marvel name for the benefit of unpopular new characters.

[responsarbre]

It's getting so sick and tiring to hear people make these inane arguments about "diversity." This team is way more white and male than Ultimates, but it's getting a lot more crap because of the premise and the vibe. (Not to say that people didn't try to **** on Ultimates without reason.) Just admit that you don't like the idea of this comic and that it isn't for you, and then ignore it, because this isn't the kind of thing that's killing the industry or whatever else you think. This isn't actually pushing people away, since sales on core titles are unaffected by different characters existing in other titles. Heck, even the wave of "Big Three" replacement heroes sold about as well as (or even better than, in Thor's case) those titles usually sell.

There's also an obtuse belief in the idea that it's unnatural for comics and comics alone to make topical stories that react to trends in writing and politics. It was always tied up directly with superhero comics, from the explicitly political angle of Captain America Comics trying to push the US into WW2, to the nuclear paranoia and Cold War stories of the Silver Age. This flood of "diverse titles" being some sort of forced reaction to hot-button issues? We already got that in the 70s when Marvel's reaction to the Women's Lib movement when they put out the Black Widow solo, The Cat, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman, and She-Hulk, each of which explicitly acknowledged contemporary feminism and played right into it for sales! Marvel has characters they pulled from the blaxploitation trend like Luke Cage and they have published all sorts of awful and hamfisted reactions to 9/11 politics and the Bush wars. Superhero comics always react to the world around them, and shamelessly play into topical issues. It's not a big deal because you just started noticing it.

Black Widow has 61 solo issues over 5 runs. Let not insult her. Storm would need a chair to kiss BW's foot. Widow did not have to take over someone else's book to get development. Nor try to beat the crap out Black Panther.

Do we really need to pit characters against each other? Come now. You can easily make an argument for Storm as the most developed and interesting heroine out of Claremont's X-Men.

[Skedatz]

Teach comic fans humility? That is a weird one. I can only imagine it.

"Ah. It is I, Tom Brevoort. I have noticed how our readers have become too big for their britches. This arrogance cannot go unanswered! Their ego must be tamed and a lesson must be taught. We shall kill one white man per month and replace them with something else until the readers have learned their lesson and regain the humility befitting their station in life. SO I HAVE DECLARED!"

"But Mr. Brevoort. White men are our heritage. By killing them you destroy us."

"That is what a hero is, peon. We must sacrifice of ourselves so they can know a better world. I would gladly burn down the house of ideas and sacrifice a hundred thousand fictional white men and replace them with something so insulting as women and even go as far as people of color if it would but humble them a single inch."

[Midnight_v]

Teach comic fans humility? That is a weird one. I can only imagine it.

"Ah. It is I, Tom Brevoort. I have noticed how our readers have become too big for their britches. This arrogance cannot go unanswered! Their ego must be tamed and a lesson must be taught. We shall kill one white man per month and replace them with something else until the readers have learned their lesson and regain the humility befitting their station in life. SO I HAVE DECLARED!"

"But Mr. Brevoort. White men are our heritage. By killing them you destroy us."

"That is what a hero is, peon. We must sacrifice of ourselves so they can know a better world. I would gladly burn down the house of ideas and sacrifice a hundred thousand fictional white men and replace them with something so insulting as women and even go as far as people of color if it would but humble them a single inch."

Hahahaha, it sounds silly when you put it like this... its not far from how he's been explained as coming off on twitter rants.
Still why does almost every thread have to be like this?

I'm not a fan of the quirky funny stories, and I think I was expecting something else from the West Coast avengers name when I heart there's a relaunch.
I'm not a HUGE fan of the characters but I don't care about them either and its NOT offensive that they exist, but of course people are having fun
arguing the same angry points across many threads.
It wasn't until this thread though that I see America Chavez does have a lot of potential, but then again so did starbrand I guess. I hate to see her and Quentin Quire played for laughs when they need only a batman to be a trinity.
The reality tv thing turns me off too.

[JKtheMac]

Well, I think a reasonable person can access for themselves, "Hmm...here's a team comic, but I don't find enuff of the members appealing to my personal tastes. I think I'll pass on this one."

Other person might think, "Hmm...a light-hearted team comic where the team is also on Reality TV series? Bah! Not my cup of tea, I find gritty street heroes more engaging."

Or someone might say, "I don't like comic booky art, I prefer the realism of Greg Land."

In my mind these are legit reasons to pass on a title. No one is obligated to buy a comic they aren't interested.

Having said that, I will be checking it out. I liked Kelly's run on Hawkeye and I personally do like the art style.

You will note that by carefully rephrasing it to be about personal taste and cautious supposition rather than bold statements based on assumptions the meaning of each statement changes entirely. That was my entire point.

The three points were explanations of why this book was a hard pass and I was examining how much we really know based on those elements. I was not arguing against personal taste or even informed preorders, I was arguing against prejudging a book we have limited knowledge of.

All the suppositions are prejudging without a great deal of self reflection and one (art) is just odd.

If the argument was ‘hmm I don’t really like comedy books’ I wouldn’t have bothered examining the issues - of course we don’t actually know if it is a comedy book. Instead it was a retreat to ideas of taste from a far harder line, and I wanted to point out even taste issues are worth examining in the context of a book we have very little knowledge about.

Take the reality show idea. This has been ‘clarified’ in such a way that we are no longer entirely sure if it really is a reality show, or if it is just a tonal story choice. We really don’t know yet.

[WebLurker]

You'd have to be living under a rock to deny that the loss of Marvel's iconic characters has been the source of most conflict over the past few years. Having similarly themed sidekicks to the main heroes was one thing but this systematic move to replace key Marvel heroes with more demographically pleasing stand-ins had an inevitable and entirely foreseeable backlash. Perhaps Marvel gambled that the Tumblr crowd brought in by these changes would be able to overwhelm the criticisms of comic fans but Marvel failed understand the fact that Tumblr doesn’t financially support the causes they claim to champion.

Can we get off the Tumblr conspiracy theory? A.) There's not concrete proof for it and B.) it's based on a fallacious model of how comic book sales work (one that has been refuted by people who've tracked comic book sales for a living).

Also, as far as backlash goes, I've seen more grumbling over the legacy characters being stripped of their mantles to make room for the old guard's nth return from vacation. We can have two Spider-Men and two Hawkeyes, but we can't have two Wolverines and two Thors? Give me a break!

This situation wasn't helped by the gloating attitude held by Marvel as they destroyed their own heritage...

The legacy characters are part of that heritage. Nothing's being destroyed. (Besides, we always knew the classics were coming back. This is comics. What goes around comes around.)

...declaring each stolen mantle a victory in a moral struggle to teach comic fans a lesson in humility.

Seriously?

Of course this wasn't sustainable, when these new characters only had the borrowed credibility of better heroes they simply couldn't last in such artificially obtained positions of prominence.

Of course, there was no market for them, so Marvel is giving them new series to loose more money on. Seriously? It's easier to believe that than that Marvel (the only people who know for sure what sells and what doesn't) didn't work out that these properties are still viable.

Now that Marvel's iconic heroes are finally being restored something like WCA is in particularly bad taste, one last effort to usurp an iconic Marvel name for the benefit of unpopular new characters.

Pure entitled fandom. WCA has as much right to exist as old school Thor. If you can't accept that not everything in comics is made just for your tastes, maybe you're in the wrong hobby?

FIY, new characters like Miles Morales and Kamala Khan are popular. Also, some of the legacy characters are both well-established and popular, like Kate Bishop and X-23.

[JKtheMac]

The statement ‘now that Marvel’s iconic heroes are being restored’ encapsulates so much that I don’t like about comic fandom.

Firstly there is a supposition that somehow there was a deliberate attempt to remove them. Then there is an underlying assumption that fan pressure somehow made Marvel rethink. Then more worrying to me personally there is the insidious idea of a hero being iconic, which every definition I have ever read makes me more convinced iconic is just a shorthand for ‘illusion of change’ the most damaging idea to hit comics in the last century.

[Matternativ]

As always the negative voices are the loudest. It's a weird thing in comics where fans spend a ton of time on threads about books and characters they don't like and/or read. I hardly ever encounter it in my other interests. I don't see people post "I haven't liked rap music in ten years" on the rap music forums. I don't see people post "I haven't seen the new episode of Cosmos but based on last season I bet it's garbage" on the cosmology sites. I don't see "I hate the new dynamics for Madden 18 " followed by dozens of negative comments about those dynamics on video game sites. In all of those things, and more, people just move on when something isn't for them. I don't know why comics has fans that haven't read or liked anything in years yet still post hundreds and thousands of comments about comics.

I honestly notice this in different Fandoms be it Metal or silly stuff like Wrestling.
Elitism is a bitch no matter where and when.