Quote Originally Posted by jwatson View Post
No the original picture was not the solicit but i see how it can read that way. I was saying if you look at the make up of their upcoming solicits the lack of diversity overall is glaring but the actual avengers covers for december are these.
One of those is the final page of AVENGERS FOREVER 11, by Pacheco and Merino, which I wrote in the 90s.

And out of the solicitis there are only 5 characters of color with a book. Black panther book, Echo Phoenix Song Mini, Blade Oneshot, Shang Chi, Miles Spiderman, and the most diverse group team book is The Marvels and New Mutants and that's out of over 60 books not including star wars. So 5 books with a diverse lead out of almost 60. And 2 with an diverse cast.

edit: lets say 2 because Strange Academy is pretty diverse team. I don't know what world out of who window that is. That also does not account for their unlimited comics. I think that comes to about 8% of their books or rounding up 9%.
Yep. Part of that ongoing struggle I described earlier. Much of the audience wants the classic characters and the classic characters are mostly white men. And enough of the audience wants more characters who aren't straight white men that there's support for launching them, but then the "crowded stage/gimme the classics" aspect kicks in.

Characters of color don't get the same support, so when they get books at all their books get canceled sooner. And around we go again.

It's an ongoing struggle, and it creates exactly the feedback loop you (or someone) mentioned earlier: If the books look like they're all for white men, fewer non-white/non-male readers are likely to pick them up. Not none of them, but fewer. So when the characters of color show up, fewer non-white readers notice, and the books often sell worse, and get canceled, and then the line-up looks like it's for white guys again and the loop continues.

And new white characters generally don't get much traction either, because of that same crowded stage, but that doesn't stand out as much because there's so many white faces on that stage already.

It's something no one at the big publishers wants to surrender to, but it's also not easy to break out of that loop. If they do, it likely comes through team books, where non-white characters can get the chance to become popular because they're in a book with characters who can attract readers who wouldn't buy that character of color in a solo book, and movies and TV, where there's plenty of audience for BLACK PANTHER and CAPTAIN MARVEL (because the movie world doesn't have that crowded-stage problem, though they do have others), and if that leads to TV shows for the Falcon or Spectrum, that may help build an audience that'd support them in solo books.

But I'm glad THE MARVELS stands out as a diverse book. We're able to pull characters from all over the Marvel Universe, so there's no one set of "classics" readers repeatedly demand to see.

kdb