What went wrong with Marvel's push of Carol?

[616MarvelYear is LeapYear]

Her legs are the most interesting part of the Cockrum costume, which goes to show how bland it is.

The color scheme is not even the most ORIGINAL of the McKelvie costume...

...which goes to show how KARA DANVERS it is to me.

[Saffron]

That comparison made me realise how outdated that colour scheme is. McKelvie is always behind when it comes to fashion. The man should have never been allowed to do any costume redesigns.

Anyway, back on topic... I think one of the problems with any character push is how the character gets handled on team or event books. They always come out so bland, probably because the writer has no interest in them. Instead of reading through a pile of the character's old appearances, it seems many writers will just stick to stock character tropes. In Carol's case, she always ends up as being the Strong Female Character.

[OBrianTallent]

The worst part of the black costume was editorial not keeping a reign on the artists and allowing them to draw it increasingly smaller in the lower half. It was the artists choosing instead to emphasis the buttocks of the character over the costume. This is where editors should have stepped in and either had the artwork altered (which the do all the time) or had it returned to the artists to be fixed.
As is, I have gotten to where I actually really like her CM outfit and think the name fits her well.

[dreyga2000]

Here's question; How exactly are we measuring the success rate of the Carol's push??

Her movie is heading toward the billion dollar club. She has a crap load of merchandise out there. Captain Marvel will be appearing in Disney parks and cruises to sign pictures and autographs. Little girls are dressing up as her. Her most recent number issue sold over 100,000 copies. Her trades are best sellers on Amazon.

I say we can call this push a success.

[Frontier]

Here's question; How exactly are we measuring the success rate of the Carol's push??

Her movie is heading toward the billion dollar club. She has a crap load of merchandise out there. Captain Marvel will be appearing in Disney parks and cruises to sign pictures and autographs. Little girls are dressing up as her. Her most recent number issue sold over 100,000 copies. Her trades are best sellers on Amazon.

I say we can call this push a success.

I think time will tell whether the comic can hold up the sales more then past comic runs, but the movie being so successful is bigger barometer for that by this point.

Is it successful enough for a cartoon? Well...probably not anytime soon with the way Marvel Animation is going.

(I swear it's going to be a race to see who capitalizes on their major female hero for a full cartoon between WB and Disney).

[XPac]

Here's question; How exactly are we measuring the success rate of the Carol's push??

Her movie is heading toward the billion dollar club. She has a crap load of merchandise out there. Captain Marvel will be appearing in Disney parks and cruises to sign pictures and autographs. Little girls are dressing up as her. Her most recent number issue sold over 100,000 copies. Her trades are best sellers on Amazon.

I say we can call this push a success.

Yeah, once you've at the point where you earned a billion dollars for marvel and Disney, you're made. She will always be used from that point on, regardless of her solo book sales. That becomes secondary.

[gurkle]

Here's question; How exactly are we measuring the success rate of the Carol's push??

Her movie is heading toward the billion dollar club. She has a crap load of merchandise out there. Captain Marvel will be appearing in Disney parks and cruises to sign pictures and autographs. Little girls are dressing up as her. Her most recent number issue sold over 100,000 copies. Her trades are best sellers on Amazon.

I say we can call this push a success.

I think the push was always partly intended to make her a viable movie character, not only by giving her the new costume and focusing on some things that might be of interest to the movies (like the Air Force background) but simply by increasing the amount of media coverage she got, so the movies wouldn't simply be introducing a character that nobody outside comics had ever heard of. In that sense, the push was a success.

The push was also intended to put her at the center of the Marvel comics universe and establish her as a character roughly equal in importance to other star characters like Iron Man, Captain America and Thor. In that sense, it hasn't completely worked, though to be fair it's very hard to do even if you like the approach to Carol that the comics have taken since 2012 (I don't, so I'm not the target audience). They don't have the benefit of being able to do what the movies are doing, which is to establish that she was important all along and an essential part of the reason the Avengers even exist.

And then there's the matter of sales, but they can't even make Iron Man a bestseller, so the fact that Carol isn't a bestseller is not really a sign of failure. A bigger problem is the inability to find a consistent writer since KSD left and an approach to the character that can last for more than a few issues at a time.

[Holt]

[CENTER]

The color scheme is not even the most ORIGINAL of the McKelvie costume...

If we're going to discuss which superheroes have similar color schemes to others, we're gonna be here all day. Nobody tell Spider-Man.

[Brian B]

If we're going to discuss which superheroes have similar color schemes to others, we're gonna be here all day. Nobody tell Spider-Man.

The good guys almost always wear blue, red and yellow. The bad guys almost always wear green and purple. We all know this, don't we?

Anyway, Carol Danvers is a super-star of a character now. That was a successful push from Marvel!

[H-E-D]

That just looks like a dominatrix outfit, tbh.

From what I've heard, this is more or less the reason KSD wanted to get a full new design for her. The redesigns they were getting were trending towards a more "supervillain" impression. Dexter Soy posted some of the costume ideas he had. They're not bad per se, but I don't think they would have stuck like McKelvie's design did.

McKelvie is always behind when it comes to fashion. The man should have never been allowed to do any costume redesigns.

I couldn't disagree with you more. McKelvie is the best costume designer in comics right now. His designs in the Wicked + the Divine are routinely astounding.

If we're going to discuss which superheroes have similar color schemes to others, we're gonna be here all day. Nobody tell Spider-Man.

Yeah, within the realm of superhero costumes, the originality of color schemes are a weird hill to die on.

[Ascended]

Here's question; How exactly are we measuring the success rate of the Carol's push??

Her movie is heading toward the billion dollar club. She has a crap load of merchandise out there. Captain Marvel will be appearing in Disney parks and cruises to sign pictures and autographs. Little girls are dressing up as her. Her most recent number issue sold over 100,000 copies. Her trades are best sellers on Amazon.

I say we can call this push a success.

Agreed.

The film's success probably wont have a major impact on comics sales long term. It almost always never does (though the sales look good right now, apparently). But comic sales are a pretty minor fraction of the overall picture; I doubt anyone would seriously claim that characters like Wonder Woman, Superman, and Flash aren't successful major names, but their monthly titles don't always sell great.

Carol's got a long line of animated appearances now, a successful live-action movie (with more appearances to come), tons of merchandise, and little kids are dressing up in her costume and colors (my daughter and wife included). Older, established fans may not care for how artificial Marvel's push of Carol has been (and with good reason; markets should speak for themselves) but it seems pretty cut and dry at this point. Seven years of investment and attention has turned Carol into a well known commodity, with enough stuff on the racks to keep her in everyone's mind after they've left the theater.

[Killerbee911]

Here's question; How exactly are we measuring the success rate of the Carol's push??

Her movie is heading toward the billion dollar club. She has a crap load of merchandise out there. Captain Marvel will be appearing in Disney parks and cruises to sign pictures and autographs. Little girls are dressing up as her. Her most recent number issue sold over 100,000 copies. Her trades are best sellers on Amazon.

I say we can call this push a success.

It was already a success. But now we have the middle finger to give fans who didn't see the reason why she was getting pushed. More importantly, than self-fulling prophecy gets to start with her now which is if you put quality talent on her books and you use her good stories, Make her important in events. She will be popular and sell well. The biggest goal for a comic character is the move in terrioty where they consistent get good creators work on them. I don't care what anybody says if some of these so called iconic characters had constently had creative team you see on others books they wouldn't be selling that hot either.

[Frontier]

It was already a success. But now we have the middle finger to give fans who didn't see the reason why she was getting pushed. More importantly, than self-fulling prophecy gets to start with her now which is if you put quality talent on her books and you use her good stories, Make her important in events. She will be popular and sell well. The biggest goal for a comic character is the move in terrioty where they consistent get good creators work on them. I don't care what anybody says if some of these so called iconic characters had constently had creative team you see on others books they wouldn't be selling that hot either.

I think that has still yet to be realized with Carol yet.

I think Kelly Thompson will do good work but the inconsistent creative teams and Carol's use in past events isn't what I would cite in her favor in the comics at the moment.

[XPac]

I think that has still yet to be realized with Carol yet.

I think Kelly Thompson will do good work but the inconsistent creative teams and Carol's use in past events isn't what I would cite in her favor in the comics at the moment.

I think generating heat worked for Iron Man in the first Civil War, so they thought it might work for Carol in the second. Yeah, a lot of people didn't agree with Stark but it nonetheless made him arguably the most important character in the marvel universe at the time.

But the second Civil War wasn't quite as big and didn't have anywhere near the same impact as the first. It was basically in the shadow of Secret Empire the whole time, so it ended up being a fairly forgetable event.

I'm guessing we'll get some sort of skrull based event down the line and Carol will again get a shot at being the star of the event.

[Frontier]

I think generating heat worked for Iron Man in the first Civil War, so they thought it might work for Carol in the second. Yeah, a lot of people didn't agree with Stark but it nonetheless made him arguably the most important character in the marvel universe at the time.

But the second Civil War wasn't quite as big and didn't have anywhere near the same impact as the first. It was basically in the shadow of Secret Empire the whole time, so it ended up being a fairly forgetable event.

I'm guessing we'll get some sort of skrull based event down the line and Carol will again get a shot at being the star of the event.

I dunno. A lot of people really disliked Iron Man post-Civil War.

I think the movie did more for rehabilitating his image and popularity.