Are people that solely blame "wokeness" for comics not selling arguing in good faith?
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Are people that solely blame "wokeness" for comics not selling arguing in good faith?
Comics were selling like shit even before woke era (before 2014)
Aren't comics (though not amazing) rising in sales little by little each year though?
I think they're going down tbh, american comics usually. The stats i see refer to comics rising usually in conjuction to including manga
The stats I saw removed graphic novels (which is what manga falls under) saw numbers go down after covid but are slowly going back up but to covid numbers. Most sales are digital. Comics aren't in an AMAZING place but numbers are little by little going up.
Interesting do you have the source for that one.
NTA but this is the latest data as of 2021. We actually saw comic sales go down during covid. Graphic Novels (ie manga) still vastly overshadows comics though
>Are people that solely blame "wokeness" for comics not selling arguing in good faith?
No. They're being lazy. Not much different than the people who blame chuds for all the problems.
No. Manga is.
I would extend that to all colors of people anon.
Who told you that lie? Manga=/=Comics
Active phase of the woke bullshit started in 2012
And comics were having sales problems starting in 2009, then had a jump in 2011/2012 (due to New 52 and AvX) but then declined over time
I remember them being in the 100k number back then and Spider-Man being a 600k book, now Spider-Man is a 10k book
really where's that stat
No (though wokeness certainly isn't helpful) it's just repeated storylines. It's why Dragonball is doing so shit.
If brown people trigger you that much, the problem isn't comic books.
Then write better brown people instead of bad brown people and maybe people will read your shitty comics, troony
Or at least get brown people who don't suck. Juan Luis in East L.A. would probably love to have a comic of his sexy pinup girl, and she would probably sell better than another Puerto-Rican "latinx" New Yorker tumblr reject.
Speaking of which, I miss body bags.
Ok. So don't listen to those dudes. But anime seems to be doing fine, and is not those dudes too.
Well, the new people they're picking aren't producing winners either. Perhaps someone else should get a shot?
>Ok. So don't listen to those dudes.
I agree that it's impossible to discuss comics here.
>Well, the new people they're picking aren't producing winners either. Perhaps someone else should get a shot?
Here's the problem. The medium itself, especially big IP capeshit? Is not conducive to good writing anymore. Any GOOD writer is at best using comics as a means to get their name out there so that they go go sell that idea to a streaming service and make the real money. Nobody worth their salt wants to play in a sandbox of continuity where anything they create is going to get steamrolled in a big crossover event in six weeks time. Big Two capeshit is the way it is because its engineered to be that way.
>I agree that it's impossible to discuss comics here.
LOL. Don't be such a passive aggressive b***h anon. And I mean that with all love. I could ask why you're even here in the first place, but I'm going to suggest doing some storytimes of GOOD shit that you think is overlooked.
>Here's the problem. The medium itself, especially big IP capeshit? Is not conducive to good writing anymore. Any GOOD writer is at best using comics as a means to get their name out there so that they go go sell that idea to a streaming service and make the real money. Nobody worth their salt wants to play in a sandbox of continuity where anything they create is going to get steamrolled in a big crossover event in six weeks time. Big Two capeshit is the way it is because its engineered to be that way.
I agree with conclusion of your point, but I don't see that as inherent to the medium itself at all.
That's corporate structure and editorial policy.
Shocking hell anon. Did you miss the anon who storytimed the entire fricking spiderman 2099 run a week or three ago? Mayday, you're closer on, but she is a semi regular in spider coomer threads.
What killed comic books and the arcade in the 90's cause I was there. Was a new source of media that grew in popularity called the home video game console. Video games killed comics and books in general. Believe me people that like comic books never wanted their heros to have complete character identity changes that not only don't make sense but suck, so bad. And these most of the new woke artists can't draw worth a moldy banana. With the writers skills of a sub blue's clues level. Wokeness needs a safe space. And when your writing stories about fight super villains and super heroes I guess it's just to much for them .cause it's not actual big problems not stupid crap like BLM or LGBT what ever who cares about that. If you want that kind of thing watch CNN or FOX. We want badass fights cool stories and bodacious characters. Not even close to what we are getting.
While sales are probably going to stagnant relatively soon (Bad economy). I wonder what the stats are for retail comic book stores. I'd imagine post covid a lot of them shuttered
Comic Stores saw a surge in 2021 post covid though I'm sure those numbers are down due to the economic recession
Very much agree a lot more spending capital was available covid era, now it will be so tight
>Comic book movies now becoming so oversaturated can't be helping.
>Prediction in 5+ Years hardcore shuttering of the more prevalent indie comic studios & Big 2 probably DC looks towards downsizing
>Comic book movies now becoming so oversaturated can't be helping.
I don't believe movies ever really helped, though Marvel/DC desperately wanted them to and bent over backwards to make moronic changes to match up with them. The main problem is that comics have almost nothing at all to do with the movies so it's a very hard sell to a movie fan.
If only it were possible to know how many issues were actually being purchased by readers.
You mean the numbers are *up* due to economic recession. Every god damn industry is posting record profits right now, since money is worth less.
can't forget inflation exists
Cute Mayday!
It's hardly the sole reason. But it's really not helping.
I am reminded of this recent tweet by the current scarlet witch.
>It is a bit interesting if an issue in the top 10 is struggling; wth is happening with the rest of the industry
Top 3 or nothing. Usually it's ASM and Batman trading the top spot with a relaunch series at #3
Isn't Spider-Girl the exact ideal of these little b***hes whining about "wokeness"? Instead of replacing an existing character they created not only a new one but an entirely new universe for them to play in.
you don't read comics
LOL. Cinemaphile is love anon. Less b***hing about b***hes. Listen to people if you actually give a frick.
The people that complain will always complain and there is no actual solution that appeases them.
I guess the solution would be to listen to fans but sales are in the triple digits nowadays
Listening to fans is how you end up with Geoff Johns, who almost single-handedly got me to stop buying comics.
The fact of the matters is fans are moronic and hate change but they are a diminishing resource that can't think of how to improve because that'd mean giving up their bottles.
So according to you superhero comics are a death genre that can't be fixed and writers have to give up or keep eating cat food?
I think they can be fixed but the solutions required to fix them are so dramatic that most people that still consume and/or fund them would rather they die a slow death of starvation.
Spider-girl also has the longest female-lead comic run for Marvel by a country mile and continues to get fans today whenever people read her stuff.
Miguel gets new fans too.
Execution is important. 'Woke' shit is executed terribly because the writer's politics take precedence over crafting a good story.
>Spider-girl also has the longest female-lead comic run for Marvel by a country mile and continues to get fans today whenever people read her stuff.
>Miguel gets new fans too.
If these are true then how come the only time anyone ever talks about Mayday or Miguel is in the context of hating Miles? Shouldn't they be able to sustain discussions that aren't driven by spite?
>If these are true then how come the only time anyone ever talks about Mayday or Miguel is in the context of hating Miles? Shouldn't they be able to sustain discussions that aren't driven by spite?
Ideally yes, but it's been a while since Mayday has had a solo comic, and from what I hear the recent 2099 stuff has been flooded with OC's instead of the previous lineup, so I doubt there are many 2099 fans eager to read and discuss it (I know I'm not).
You kind of need fresh content to generate discussion, and most of Marvel's new content generates spite. It's the reason why Kaine fans are happy he's been forgotten.
Cinemaphile doesn't really talk about old shit all that much. There's some exceptions (Raven's still queen of Cinemaphile) and old TV shows get some talks going some times, but overally Cinemaphile is a Cinemaphilensumer board and mainly talks about the newest stuff.
Old shit's been discussed through and through so now it's just like "this thing everyone said was good was good!" with "yup" as a response.
Miles keeps getting new shit so he remains relevant.
Most of the time when you see Spiderman 2099, it's actually in a Batman Beyond thread. Same vibe and overlapping fanbase I guess.
Beyond had a show.
2099 was just a comic.
Cinemaphile is mostly /cartoons/
we talk about mayday in the general spider-man threads. Creating threads solely for her discussion is impossible cause coomers will swarm the thread soon after
You will never be a real women OR a real comic fan.
Obviously not. No culture warrior is. The issue with comics are many and complex and all 'wokeness' is is them chasing a new audience that is unironically too smart to fall for it
>The issue with comics are many and complex and all 'wokeness' is is them chasing a new audience that is unironically too smart to fall for it
Hold up anon. I agree that's the central issue, but that's not the only thing going on. It certainly wasn't the case when trans activists demanded mandatory training for people at fricking Image over a Howard Chaykin book of all things, which is hilarious if you know any of Chaykin's CLBDF cases.
They aren't arguing in good faith, bit are partially right
Industry is taken over by cult members, and you position in a cult and your loyalty to it means more than your ability
Plus the ideas of the cult that creators are influenced by are also shit to top it off
>Industry is taken over by cult members,
LOL you're right, but not in the way you mean. The mainstream US cape comic industry has become run by successive generations of fans who make increasingly insular stories that appeal only to an aging, shrinking fanbase. It's part of the reason mainstream US cape comics are locked in a death spiral. Ironically the "woke" stuff starting about 10 years ago was an attempt to break out of that cage and appeal to new, younger audiences, though
is right that such audiences aren't going to buy it.
>Ironically the "woke" stuff starting about 10 years ago was an attempt to break out of that cage and appeal to new, younger audiences
I don't know why old white people think young people (who are largely non-white) are going to be interested in "woke" autism.
Reminds me of how one of the co-creators of Power Girl was online b***hing about how manga is misogynist because it has attractive, scantily-clad women in it.
To be fair, there ARE misogynist manga out there. But what people like that fail to grasp is that, unlike western comics, manga is not one thing. Its a fricking ocean. For every shonen manga where the girls are just helpless pretty trophies with no agency, there is a manga with a badass female protagonist or a manga about a gay romance or a manga about the marriage traditions of 15th century Turkmenistan or a manga about fantasy monster anthropology.
When you have so many options to pick from, yeah some of them are going to be overly horny or misogynistic. But I'd rather have 200 options, some of them I find distasteful, than one or two options only which appeal to no one.
You missed my point.
The point was that no one except white people cares if a manga is misogynist or doesn't give its female character(s) enough to do or is super horny, because that's western brainworm shit (and you can tell because said people rarely b***h about any gay media being super horny).
When I'm reading something from someone like Jiro Matsumoto or Kakeru or that one crazy chick who writes tons of stories about rape, I know what I'm getting into, the only people who complain about that stuff are people who are looking to flex their censorious muscles or clutch their pearls for online fame.
I dunno. I see you point on most of that, but
>or doesn't give its female character(s) enough to do
can be a legitimate criticism. You can't look at MHA and not recognize that its female cast is extremely underutilized to the point that it becomes a weakness of the story. Characters that are given powers that *should* make them important and relevant just sit on the sidelines and do frick-all, even when their powers would be directly relevant to the problem at hand and could have saved the lives of named characters. Ochako, for example, has a quirk that leveraged with any amount of creativity would make for neat and creative fight scenes taking advantage of unusual physics exploits and hitting people with things that are too heavy for anyone to lift. Instead, she learns martial arts early on and then functionally disappears from the story except to pop up and occasionally remind people that Deku isn't gay. Thats lame, not because of any SJW shit but because there was an opportunity to do something cool and it was passed by.
The thing is, there are characters in MHA who do frickall who are both male and female, that's just a consequence of filling your capeshit story with dozens of named characters, you only get to focus so much on a certain number of characters since otherwise your story would just become neverending crap like what American capeshit is.
Ensemble casts are rarely good for fleshing out all of your characters in a comic unless you really know what you're doing, especially one that's heavily focused on action.
Sure, but the characters that *do* get to do shit in MHA are all male. The only female character that actually *does* something besides sit around looking pretty is Miruko, a pro hero that is introduced, is cool for like 3 chapters, and then her injuries take her off of the field for the rest of the story.
Yes, it turns out that a story aimed at young boys is largely going to focus on the young male main cast.
This is also something that comics don't understand when it comes to demographics.
>You can't look at MHA and not recognize that its female cast is extremely underutilized to the point that it becomes a weakness of the story.
I don't understand your logic here. Do you think Fist of the North star or classic era Sgt Rock is weaker for lack of strong female characters?
I do support your fine choice of waifu, and your want to see more of her, don't get me wrong.
Because araki is talented and I have no idea who wrote spiderwoman but I'm betting she's a hack?
Also, it's why Japan gets Rumiko Takahashi as a japanese and we get Mariko Tamaki.
Battle shounen more often than not have useless female characters, but I'll argue that's because most people would have problem seeing girls beaten to death, remember when spectators booed Katsuki for beating Uraraka in a fight and a pro said something about gender equality.
Because he's not using those elements to virtue signal or preach a message, but because he finds them interesting. He also created his own audience instead of taking it from someone else
That's not sufficient. The political gatekeeping in the industry is fricking completely nuts. All these stories about millitary and crimefighters. Who's the highest profile milltary vet or ex police in the big 2 right now? They won't let anyone like that into their clubhouse.
Absolutely not there is so many factors that comes into play that blaming it only on politics is straight up wrong.
The comic book industry failed to adapt to the modern audiences...
-little to no synergy with the highly popular live action movies in an era where they've dominated the box office for years
-inconsistent art and writing within a series
-convoluted continuites which confuses new readers, they don't even know where to start
-no variety beyond superheroes
-too pricy for little content.
I and several will tell you that the these attempts at being woke are just a cheap attempt to gain new readers and even then its not the sole reason. But thats just me being a pretentious centrist.
>Cinemaphile is so far gone in terms of culture warriors that pointing out basic ass facts like this has to be cautioned with a disclaimer
have we really stopped so low as to make that last sentence necessary?
Yes.
No. But the thread was borderline pol bait from the go, so by that standard the entire thread is not necessary.
Comics have been getting cucked by manga since the 90's and the latter has only become more socially accepted with time.
Wokeness is definitely a large part of the issue that only alienates readers, but it's not the only one.
Your picture is actually a pretty good example because every time sales decline 1% they create a new version of Spiderman aka shit that they already knows makes a return on investment.
Meanwhile in Japan you have magazines that barely scrape by with pachinko ads and a single popular series but they still try to find new stuff that could be popular.
You look up "Spiderman" and get like 50 different series with the same character. No wonder people just watch the newest movie or TV series instead. Normalgays don't want to deal with that shit and I don't blame them.
Wokeness only makes this issue worse because the industry only hires certain people who already agree with everyone else who already works for a major publication. Good luck trying to get original ideas from them.
true
Wokeness in and of itself isn't the only problem. Woke people bring with them a mentality that destroys everything it touches. Laziness and narcissism combined with incredibly poor judgement. An addiction to preaching and talking down to people. Untreated mental illness eroding whatever sanity they still had.
This is how we get Paul and aged up Jon. Writers so stupid they constantly undermine their own message. A steady stream of new characters no one gives a frick about. Art so bad it's down there with the worst of the 90s. Squabbling children wrecking any continuity as they fight over their own head canons. Half of them spend their lives on Twitter so even less gets done.
It is weird that this industry is dead stuck on not experimenting with a new delivery format. Graphic novels are killing it for a reason.
>criticism
"This comic has a black person in it"
EXACTLY! This is what you do. Your art/script/quality etc is utter shit and you discredit the criticism by pretending all the complaints are from irrational people about an unrelated thing.
>Your art/script/quality etc is utter shit
Maybe some day you should try actually criticizing those, then. The only "criticism" I ever see is screeching that they added a black character, or a gay character, or whatever. A bad story is a bad story with or without those, yet somehow those are only ever the focus of this "criticism". It's almost like you're not actually interested in criticizing the content.
>Maybe some day you should try actually criticizing those, then
We do, we have, go die in a fire you disingenuous c**t.
>Next Up: Post #948357475138074055
84 titled "What did they mean by this" with a picture of a black character
Uh huh, sure.
I imagine you'll be the one posting it.
>added a black character, or a gay character
Usually it's complaining they turned a character black or gay.
>The only "criticism" I ever see
That's the key take away though. You don't see anything because spend all your time on Discord.
Differs from person to person. Wokeness and lack of quality aren't inherently the same thing, but religious devotion to spreading your message turns everything to shit 99.99% of the time. Just look at Christian media from before the time of wokeness.
You mean like the Sistine Chapel? Oh yeah, passion is like the worst thing for art. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists or any other religious people ever created beautiful works of art. Corny sanitized children's TV is the definitive proof of that.
In fact, nothing good was ever created until the rise of secular liberalism.
That's a cope. What happens is that when people worship ugliness they create ugly things. They purposely subvert what's normally considered beautiful by design.
It's like punk or dadaism, but funded by major multinational corporations instead of being anti-establishment so it can never be truly transgressive which would at least make it interesting.
Oh shit, is that gay Batman? Who cares, there's already gay people in dog food commercials. That's exploiting a market demographic, not a brave statement.
Proper religions make incredible art. They make terrible media.
Where do you set the difference between them? All media involves some sort of creative skill.
Even souless mass produced media requires the labor of creative, talented people who would probably rather be doing something else.
Media is media. Movies, TV, modern music so on. A building isn't media.
Or to be more pretentious. Media is consumed, art is savoured.
The distinction seems a bit arbitrary, but I think I get what you mean. Like if only modern music is media then I assume an old movie with strong religious subtext such as Ben-Hur (1959) wouldn't be media, but art instead.
If that's the way you see it then I think I agree with the point even if I personally don't like the distinction.
I'd say all films are media. They are by design something people pay to go see. I guess you could call that another possible distinction, economic intent. I don't think there's any product placement in The Last Supper.
Not all Christian media is bad anyway, but it's like
said, the vast majority is shit.
The difference there is that the church is commissioning people with money and not directly creating the art. If comics could regularly commission quality artists and writers to do shit then no duh it would look and be more engaging.
Also your 'they worship ugliness' thing just makes you come off a moron
>If comics could regularly commission quality artists and writers to do shit then no duh it would look and be more engaging.
Isn't that exactly what they do? Hire artists and give them a set of values to follow? All corporations have them, and Marvel shares Disney which is their parent company. Do I need to copy-paste their DEI policy here? It's essentially a secular belief system.
>Also your 'they worship ugliness' thing just makes you come off a moron
In what way am I wrong exactly? I even provided examples. I guess the word they like to use is "celebrate" instead of worship but the behavior is essentially the same. "Diversity is out strength" is their "Deliver us from evil".
>Isn't that exactly what they do?
They don't have the same amount of money to hire competent people is the issue, moron. Unless you think every single right leaning artist is somehow leagues better than a left leaning one
Marvel doesn't have enough money?
I think we are done here.
>Marvel doesn't have enough money?
Do you actually think that the comic division of Marvel has a ton of money? Because if so then yeah, you're fricking moronic.
>The difference there is that the church is commissioning people with money and not directly creating the art.
those artists were Christians and were educated in Christian schools
I can't even tell whether you're moronic or only pretending, but I will briefly indulge you.
>You mean like the Sistine Chapel?
Obviously not. I'm not even gonna waste time explaining the difference.
>What happens is that when people worship ugliness they create ugly things. They purposely subvert what's normally considered beautiful by design.
How does this explain the absolute deluge of garbage Christian media produced over the past hundred years?
>Oh shit, is that gay Batman? Who cares
I assume, people who take issue with the enemy planting they/them's flag in something you used to enjoy and care about, as a symbol of the conquest of their ideology. There is no exploitation of a market demographic, because woke people are not that numerous, not that wealthy, and it's been proven time and time again that pandering to them will only drive away your old fans, not make new ones. Making everything gay, from a corporate perspective, is all about courting investors at the expense of your brand and your customers. It's a short term move you use to inflate your own salary as a CEO before dropping out and moving on to the next company to parasitize.
But you know this already, which is exactly why you're trying to downplay it. Or you are so stupid that you should never have an opinion on anything.
>How does this explain the absolute deluge of garbage Christian media produced over the past hundred years?
Much of that media was made less for themselves and more to compete with or as an alternative to "less-Christian" media. Much of it is created by fundamentalists as missionary tools.
And targeting existing Christians rather than trying to convert children or those that were not Christians.
Whether they are arguing in good faith or not, they are wrong. They mistake the symptom for the disease.
Comics are chasing after younger audiences because older audiences cannot support them and they desperately need new blood to not go extinct. So they are trying to change up things by appealing outside of their traditionally straight white male fanbase, so you are getting a bunch of stuff that gets labeled as woke. This is exacerbated by 2 issues: the first is executive mandate to push big and dramatic changes to stir up controversy on social media, because like all children they don't distinguish between positive and negative attention. Having your comic be shittalked is as good as it being praised to them. The second issue being that the modern comic industry isn't where you end up unless you don't have the skills to hack it anywhere else, no self respecting artist or writer works for DC or Marvel because its shit work that you get no returns on. Why would you want your crowning achievement in life to be 12 issues of Spiderman where the next writer in line immediately undid everything you wrote with ignorance and retcons, and you made no royalties on it because you don't own Spiderman and never will... when you could have instead gone off and made your own character and written a story that stands the test of time and made more money doing it?
So you not just have corporate pushes to appeal to new audiences because sales are down, and those pushes are not just woke, but they are being done by hacks because that is all that is left in the calcified industry. Which, in turns, feeds into why sales are so bad in the first place. Which makes corporate push even harder for new audiences with even more desperate swings, etc. Its a vicious cycle that would have burned out DC and marvel a decade or more ago if they were not being propped up by media conglomerates as IP farms for movies.
>The second issue being that the modern comic industry isn't where you end up unless you don't have the skills to hack it anywhere else, no self respecting artist or writer works for DC or Marvel because its shit work that you get no returns on.
Not necessarily. If you grew up loving Spider-Man, there's only one place you can create a real, actual Spider-Man book. So there's also a small group of talented autists who have dreamt of working on their favorite characters who are willing to put up with the bullshit for the opportunity.
Unless their spiderman work is a part time thing and they have a real job on the side, I still think that reflects poorly on them as a writer. Something like Neil Gaiman authoring a few comics alongside his other work doing books and screenplays does not diminish his status as an author. But if you work for Marvel and all you have EVER written is rehashing plots and characters that previous writers came up with, you might be a big fan of Marvel and thats why you are here but that doesn't mean you are not a hack.
>criticism
>"this thing is bad because theres a black woman in it"
lol no
>Crappy CG
>Bloated cast
>Unlikable characters
>Bad performances
>Horrible R&M tier writing
>"Durr you hate it because Kang was black."
You are proving my point. Thing is, you can bullshit all you want but people will still not buy your crap and you will stop getting jobs.
God Janet's actress is so fricking hot and cute with that hairstyle
Again, then criticize those elements. Yet SOMEHOW it's always endless screeching about blacks or gays or trannies.
>Again, then criticize those elements
Again we do, and again go die in a fire you disingenuous c**t.
that kang is black was also a defect of this movie
>to discredit criticism
You idiots do that yourself just fine when you whine needlessly about the stupidest shit
People whine about stupid crap because you're doing stupid crap.
>doing stupid crap
"adding a black character"
"a gay person exists in this book"
>"The movie failed because of toxic racist trolls. I didn't do anything wrong. Can I keep my job? Thanks."
That is because they're associated with the lowest quality crap media
what is the benefit of giving characters a sexual fetish?
straight relationships are legitimate, gay ones aren't
gays are sexually aroused by shit and farting
Man with the downfall of twitter the containment threads are getting better as well
Real talk, Twitter and Reddit eating themselves at the same time is one of the best things that has happened for the internet in a decade. All of the artificial social media manipulation and astroturfing has lost its soapbox, so the contagion cannot spread as quickly. If only facebook died too, we might be free.
Nah facebook can live
Nobody goes there and is basically the retirement home of the internet
It's there so that our parents have a place to talk
I'm hoping they flee to Tiktok, otherwise we'll have another death of Tumblr on our hands.
They'll most likely go to instagram
A lot of artists went there when the tumblr exodus happened
Whatever makes it harder for them to virtue signal. It's like a narcotic and just as destructive to society.
>he thinks twitter and Reddit dying is a good thing
Have you learned NOTHING from tumblr?
yeah
“Good faith” is a buzzword
They were always woke, but it became stupidly woke and partisan post 2010. In the past, they pandered to both political sensibilities and denigrated extreme variants as not being representative of both political ideologies (see: super patriot and captain america)
>they pandered to both political sensibilities
No they didn't. The right and the left just both became way more extreme in the last decade or so so now even something as mild as
>racism bad
triggers the right hardcore.
bad
>triggers the right hardcore
Because the left have been redefining racism to be anything that benefits white people, even if it also benefits everyone else.
Western comic hacks are frogs in a well.
> Western comic hacks are frogs in a well.
I... don't think I know that euphemism? Is it something about listening to their own croaks, or is them them being stuck in the well and can't jump out?
Old Chinese fable. It has a few variations, usually replacing the sea with the heavens not knowing it's bigger than the small disc it can see and thus the heavens aren't anything special.
>There was once a frog that lived in a well. One day, a soft-shelled turtle came by and told him about the sea. "The sea?" Said the frog. "Hah! It's nothing but paradise in here. I assure you, there is no place in the world that is better than inside this well. Why don't you come down here and share my joy?"
>The turtle tried, and failed as the mouth of the well was too small. "Why don't you go see the sea instead?"
Huh. Maybe other versions of the fable work better, but that version feels more like its a case of neither side being able to appreciate the life of the other. The frog would *die* in the sea. There are no saltwater frogs.
Yeah I prefer the heaven one too. It's a lot more clear about ignorant people refusing to see how large the world is. But that's the original 4th century BC one.
>Because the left have been redefining racism to be anything that benefits white people, even if it also benefits everyone else.
Oh fricking please, the right sees a black character or a gay character in a book and they chimp the frick out. You're so fricking disingeious
You should listen less to political morons anon. It's really not good for you.
This is the most obvious AI OP post I've seen yet
People on all sides are moronic and always want a single one word answer to blame all their problems on, usually with 2 syllables at the most
Both people, the ones pro wokeshit ans the ones against woke shit, they don't buy comics at all.
Left and right are the same type of moronic. Also, manga is better anyway.
Spy x Family jus mogged most comics in the last 3 decades and Spy x Family is slive of life family adventures with some spy fiction glued in it.
Comics were bad before wokeshit, it's bad with wokeshit and it will be bad without it.
The main problem with the comic industry is that it’s mainly run by two companies who produce the exact same content to where even if you removed all “woke” content you’d still only be pandering to a relatively niche market. Imagine is 80% of the manga industry was centered around two companies who both do overly complicated shonen stories, that’s the American comic industry.
>Imagine is 80% of the manga industry was centered around two companies who both do overly complicated shonen stories
I don't have to. The leaps you clowns will do to ignore the elephant in the room.
???
I genuinely wish female characters fricked off forever. They are never ever good.
This applies to both westshit and asian shit.
Are you asking this question in good faith?
Wokeness happened because they fired all the old expensive guys and hired young CHEAP nobodies fresh out of college. Fast forward several years and you have a dead industry being laughed at by Manga.
On a side note
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/penguin-random-house-accidentally-leak-comics-shops-ordering-data/
What I am supposed to do with this?
Hard to interpret it might be a nothing article; but its implying that we are getting padded/reduced sales in 2023
Obviously not, comics have been dead since the mid 90s.
If you pretend wokeness isn't an issue at all, you're not arguing in good faith.
The CG guys are a bunch of blackpilled or even huckster shills, always whining about the one woke comic put out every 6 months and ignoring the remaining 99% of the industry, and their entire audience is composed of millennials who have never read a comic and haven't got over Gamergatr
>SJWs complain about things, but have you noticed that anti SJWs also complain about things? Curious isn't it?
It's all so tiresome.
When someone defends comics with shit dialogue go nowhere plots and art by a guy that's known as a dollar store ripoff of Rob Liefeld solely on the basis of "at least its not woke" then yeah it's pretty clear they don't give a shit about quality comics and aren't really arguing from a position of wanting good ones.
Have you ever seen Rob Leifield art? Also people are more invested in the big two characters than they are indie stuff. At least the comic gaters make their own comics with their OWN characters.
Also forgot pic related.
>Have you ever seen Rob Leifield art?
Yes. Which is why I can spell his name correctly. But also I'm referring to Jon Malin, who is like a worse Liefeld.
>Also people are more invested in the big two characters than they are indie stuff.
I know. Which is why I know about characters like America Chavez. Were it not for anons posting that Holy Menstruation panel weekly for years to throw a tantrum about it far past its relevance I'd have never heard of the character.
> At least the comic gaters make their own comics with their OWN characters.
I thought people aren't invested in indies? Which is it? Because if people are invested in indies there are hundreds out there already and the market is pretty saturated as is, but oh wait half those comics are "woke" so they're not worth talking about either because maybe there's a lesbian somewhere. And making your own characters isn't all that impressive. I mean shit dude we have anons that do that too.
>Yes. Which is why I can spell his name correctly. But also I'm referring to Jon Malin, who is like a worse Liefeld.
Still not as bad as Liefield I'm afraid, because the worst of Malin still can't measure up to the glorious moronation of captain America with double D breasts. Or the absolute insanity of what this man Liefield will do to the female form. At least Mallin seems to know something about perspective and anatomy.
>far past its relevance I'd have never heard of the character.
Does it matter? The point is that people hold the big two to a higher standard than everyone else because they see them as the flag men of the industry.
>but oh wait half those comics are "woke" so they're not worth talking about either because maybe there's a lesbian somewhere
This shit again, I hate bringing this up but Manga seems to be able to sell stories with gay traps in them never mind lesbians. But why do you have to make arguments that are valid when everyone you don't like is a homophobe.?
>I mean shit dude we have anons that do that too.
I love seeing characters made by anons from here, and it's always impressive to see people try their best.
>At least Mallin seems to know something about perspective and anatomy.
Lol no. go check out the interiors that aren't promotional images.
Sure I guess I will.
Literally who?
Jawbreakers, the pic in
Why is it that Araki can do a story about a gay cripple and it goes down as one of the greatest comics of all time, but when Marvel does it with spiderwoman everyone hates it?
Because Jojo is batshit insane in a fun way.
Same reason no one cares when Rosengarten Saga has a chick grow a dick and frick a giant lizard with it.
Comics are just stupid in a dumb, grating way.
My brother in arms.
They're merely ignorant. Not entirely wrong, since it's clearly not well liked.
>Steel Ball Run
>one of the greatest comics of all time
No.
>but because he finds them interesting
It's to provide himself with a different approach to JoJo.
THE John Stossel? Wow.
wokeness isn't really the reason, it's more like the recluse spider venom rubbed into preexisting wounds
No, in fact there's more evidence that anti-woke hurts comics sales way more. Remember those attempts at pro-Confederate comics? Wokeness won't save a comic that was already bad, sure, but the problems experienced by the comic books industry were already in full swing in the 90's if you look at the numbers honestly.
>Remember those attempts at pro-Confederate comics?
No
>Remember those attempts at pro-Confederate comics?
No. And a quick search doesn't show it. We need that shit for the Storytime of Pain series.
>Remember those attempts at pro-Confederate comics?
I vaguely remember a few scattered pinups of a hot confederate bikini babe.
>Are people that solely blame "wokeness" for [insert thing here] not selling arguing in good faith?
No.
Verification not required.
It’s a package deal. Ultimately it’s the extremely weak writing contingent on shock value and shitting on popular characters that hurts the big two, and typically those who carry the “woke” flag don’t know how to write any other way than with no subtlety or creativity. That’s because people who want everyone to know how progressive they are are more worried about public image than storytelling.
How it should work
>Hey guys I made a comic with no plot
>This kind of sucks
>Ok I'll do better next time so more people will buy it
How it works
>Hey guys I made a comic with no plot AND a gay character
>This kind of sucks
>It's sad to see in this day and age the immense amount of homophobia spread by fascists in society. I never thought the glass ceiling would be this thick, but hateful people feel the need to reinforce it with their bigotry.
Bingo.
I honestly look at Superman as proof of the bullshit excuses.
One of the most notable Superman stories is the radio episode Klan of the Fiery Cross. At the time it was popular and now it’s considered a very solid Superman story that tackles the idea of bigotry and racism. While there are moments of soap boxing in it, ultimately it has all the elements of a good Superman story: Clark fighting for the rights of those who can’t fend for themselves, Perry White and Jimmy Olsen getting their time to shine heroically, a despicable yet layered villain, an in depth look into how the villains work and look at what they do beyond just “mwahaha foreigners”, and ultimately Superman effecting a young man for the better. The theme of the story is broad enough to associate anyone feeling mistreated to it and despite some speeches it never feels like the theme beats out the story.
Now look at the recent Jonathan/pride stuff. Very specific to a group with no sense of broad message, extremely dull, no character moments, and ultimately feels like it only exists for the theme with no story to tell. It’s not mocked because it involved gay people, it’s mocked because of how embarrassing the execution was.
The right recently freaked the frick out about Superman Fights the Klan though
Are you SURE you aren't just listening to clickbaiting morons anon? I remember the last time the entire book was posted here, and there wasn't much political reaction at all.
So we've gone straight to gaslighting territory now.
don't be ridiculous anon. I don't spend much time listening to screaming political buttholes. It's quite possible that it happened, and I just missed it. I'm just checking to make sure you didn't see some clickbait, and imagine it actually meant anything.
You could test it out by posting a storytime in a new thread now. It's not as if the people who flip their shit are hard to trigger. Hell. You could even try posting it in pol. I bet you get 10x the coomers over angry republicans.
I’ll take “Things that didn’t happen” for 500, Alex.
Also, the story itself wasn’t that good. Once you’ve listened to the Atom Man saga it feels like a really wishy washy attempt to cover it and shoehorn in the Fiery Cross story.
>arguing in good faith
yes
You should love what you love, and hate what you hate for whatever reason anon.
No. They are fandom tourists who only really want to push their agenda.
There are so many problems.
Stories are shit.
The endless march of World/Universe/Multiverse threats/events.
Nothing matters, deaths/depowering/power ups/status quo changes all will be ignored/retconned way.
Super "families" as a concept, where the popular characters have a whole supporting cast of gender/age/race swapped versions of them. It's LAZY.
Various characters getting powered up to Cosmic/Universal/Multiversal levels. Why is the Punisher not only a Ghost Rider but a Herald? Why is the Hulk now empowered by Angry One Above All? Why is Venom on the fricking level of the Beyonders?
The new characters they add are poorly designed and used. While I don't think you can call Miles "new" at this point, him being in the same area and universe as Peter is stupid. Send one of them to the west coast. Them being in the same are just brings up so many questions.
>arguing in good faith
That's rich coming from the people that spend years telling us that media wasn't pushing a message until it became so obvious that normies realized. Even now sometimes I have to get quotes from the writers because some people feign dementia
I always see people comparing the American Giants to Manga. But I'd like to see a comparison between the U.S and Europe comic patterns (Sales numbers, The types of comics, where they're sold etc).
>But I'd like to see a comparison between the U.S and Europe comic patterns (Sales numbers, The types of comics, where they're sold etc).
It's not really a comparison that exists in the US market because Euro comics don't sell in America because no one publishes/translates them.
One of the few publishers that did just recently ended their consumer-facing operations earlier this year.
>Are people that solely blame "wokeness" for comics not selling arguing in good faith?
Impossible to know since 'arguing in good faith' means they truly believe in what they say, and that requires reading the mind.
That said, wokeshit 100% is a factor destroying the industry. Other factors include incompetent editors, incompetent writers, hiring based on everything except merit or talent, and of course the usual issue of comics never being allowed to move forward in their storylines even a little bit.
Sometimes they don't even have a storyline. I went to my LCS to grab some second hand manga and they were selling grab bags of five comics for a dollar. It had 4 copies of this. Literally nothing happens in it, it's just her meeting random characters and saying "hi" and introducing herself, and then she goes back in time and punches Hitler for some reason.
Isn't this the one where some anon managed to get their mocking letter comparing it with The Room published in a issue?
>kate's only purpose now is to be teased in a will they, won't they dynamic with America
Fricking lel
No
No, of course not. Wokeness is simply a symptom of a larger problem with the comics industry, which itself is a symptom of a problem with modern media in general.
It's just as disingenuous as blaming all of the comics industry's woes solely on The Big 2 boogeymen.
I think its pretty telling that the era of comics the people complaining about wokeness are so nostalgic for was a time when the medium was so inundated with low quality trash that the entire industry crashed, Marvel went bankrupt, and dozens of publishers shuttered their doors.
It's a dumb series but does anyone remember DCU Decisions? It was shit but one good thing about that was the characters were all given unique voices and opinions. It wasn't 6 issues of characters just agreeing with one singular message, it was characters debating concepts with no one truly in the wrong or right. I would prefer that mentality in writing. A lot of modern political writing is either smug lecturing from west coast liberals, or a wet fart where the writer is too afraid to have characters play out a proper conflict because they're afraid of media illiterate morons who think every line of dialogue mirrors the creator's personal beliefs being mean to them on Twitter.
I remember someone posted the whole thing last presidential election cycle. Was far more civilized of a thread than I expected.
It ain't rocket science OP, the corporations that own the big two, that being WB and Disney respectively make billions of dollars making comic book movies (don't know how long that's going to last but that's a different discussion) so they just don't care about comics in the first place. "Wokeness" certainly isn't helping sell comics because imagine watching Iron Man as a casual movie goer circa year 2016 and deciding you like the character of Tony Stark only to pick a Marvel comic and discover that Iron Man is a teenage girl, Thor is Jane Foster, Captain America is Sam Wilson etc. Not to mention the fact that only such gestures alienate a significant portion of the core comicbook fandom, and the fact that the comic companies have failed to capture the new generation of readers and a lot of people who DO buy comics are in their 30s and 40s if not older. I never understood why the leftist types keep referring to this mythical concept of "good faith" it's almost like tone policing, allowing people to ignore the actual content of information, over some arbitrary nonsense.
>I never understood why the leftist types keep referring to this mythical concept of "good faith"
Well saying that everyone was racist nazis wasn't working, so now "they're not arguing in good faith" and thus can be ignored.
>I never understood why the leftist types keep referring to this mythical concept of "good faith" it's almost like tone policing, allowing people to ignore the actual content of information, over some arbitrary nonsense.
it's the same reason why OP qualified his statement to be people who SOLEY blame wokeness.
Sure there are sincere morons out there, but that's not exactly news.
>it's the same reason why OP qualified his statement to be people who SOLEY blame wokeness.
Does complaining about wokeness mean your "arguing in bad faith" innately or do you have to give a comprehensive break down followed by numerous qualifiers such ass "not all" and "some are actually...." every time you dare question the prevailing paradigm?
>Does complaining about wokeness mean your "arguing in bad faith" innately or do you have to give a comprehensive break down followed by numerous qualifiers such ass "not all" and "some are actually...." every time you dare question the prevailing paradigm?
Don't be silly anon. Nobody has their patreon for their youtube channel, or a fricking milkshake at stake here.
But from first post, are you fricking serious post, this thread is almost begging to be moved to pol, especially with all the r/ and t/ tourists about.
Since we are starting to argue in good faith will you finally admit that Disney and Marvel Comics are pushing a message?
comic books remind me of poetry, you look at the history of poetry and 95% of the greats were white men, now in the modern age white men dont give a frick about poetry and poetry is filled with minorities and women whining about how they be so opweessed.
Comics aren't selling because they are shit; bad plots, too wordy, not appealing to kids / people of all ages.
Sales in "comics" is being carried by 2 things: manga and the Captain Underpants dude.
Wokeness is just a vehicle for dumb writers with no imagination to produce "something" to appeal to people. Without it they would have absolutely nothing.
It's not even all the writers' collective fault: comics, like all art, has been corporatized and corporations make crap artistic decisions.
So they see "hey there are more young trans people, we need young viewers, let's make trans characters". It's that simple and it's that stupid.
And the thing is that young people, regardless of who they are and their politics, want interesting and innovative stories. Just being "woke" by having a character be attribute x or y won't make a comic interesting.
So no, wokeness isn't why comics aren't selling. It's just a symptom of the artistic rot.
And representation IS important to people; demographics HAVE shifted and so opening up characters and creators that aren't white men is a requirement in the present and in the future.
But that doesn't mean you don't need innovation or creativity. You HAVE to have those.
And that's the problem: creators who think their work will be popular SOLELY on "woke" / representation grounds will surely be WRONG.
Creators have to incorporate representation WITH good stories and characters.
>representation IS important to people
The continued success of manga says otherwise.
People don't give a frick except for virtue-signaling
>And representation IS important to people
That doesn't mean your character can get away with being dogshit and it's not something that should be called attention to in your writing. People want to read well crafted stories with characters in an escapist world. Tanjiro is a young Japanese boy but he's not written as a representative of a race. He's just a character. A heardworking kind hearted big brother first and foremost. Even with cultural elements worked into his story, he's used to tell a compelling story not an ideal or abstract concept.
Representation is an abstract concept. Black kids rarely get characters of the same quality as White and Asian kids because their characters are bogged down in this idea that they have to stand for more then the story they're telling. It weighs down writing and is a poor up-your-own-ass way of approaching characters. Just make a good character and don't market them based on their race. That's what got us where we are in the first place. Because corporations started to market shit as "Oh he's Black! Of she's a woman! DEAL WITH IT NERDS" as if anyone gave a frick and people got burnt out on it all. I feel like Kate Kane started that train, and by the time we got Miles it was already wearing thin.
>Because corporations started to market shit as "Oh he's Black! Of she's a woman! DEAL WITH IT NERDS" as if anyone gave a frick and people got burnt out on it all.
NTA I think we actually regressed when it comes to diversity in media, the 2000's was very diverse but nobody cares about race, now people feel the need to defend dogshit characters because of their skin color, only went Black Thor appeared people admitted that Miles had no personality. That's another problem nowadays, certain opinions are labeled as alt-right talking points until the left repeats them and they become ok, for example saying that superhero comics weren't selling or that modern Disney movies are bad
Yeesh
We have because it's not about writing, it's about ideology. And if you work at DC making potential residual money. Gotta dump 20 new characters into your run and hope one gets adapted into a movie or TV show.
There's been a specific shifting of objectives, where the previous objective was to stop racisim, end racist practicies, de emphasize race, the new idea is "antiracism", which call for continuous positive racisim to make up for past injustice. See Coates books or the Crystal Gem PSAs for examples of the new ideals
>the 2000's was very diverse but nobody cares about race
People did care, you just weren't cognizant of it. You complaining about wokeness now are using the same arguments that people complaining about "political correctness" did back then. Often verbatim.
I'm going to generally disagree anon. Modern anti-racisim is a new, and I would argue regressive thing. But that's really more LULZ' department.
>We didn't care as much about race in the 2000s
Think beyond black/white racism and ask yourself if anything happened around mid 2001 that might have impacted race relations in America.
I'm not seeing the connection between that and anti racisim anon. America wasn't big on islam or that part of the world since the Reagan administration with the Iran embay crisis, Sadam hussein, Quadaffi, the achille lauro, ect, ect ect.
I'm inclined to drop the thread as we're way off the reseservation as far as pol shit, and the thread is already kind of garbage.
Casual image search showed me absolutely nothing that wasn't a 90's ish splash page. I can almost smell the holofoil from here.
I didn't say we didn't care about race in the 00s. I said we tolerated it in our media and every other moron didn't flip the frick out when they saw a black man or woman of any color in their media like it was the end of the world and people didn't act like a movie starring a non-white lead was the second coming of Christ.
> I said we tolerated it in our media and every other moron didn't flip the frick out when they saw a black man or woman of any color in their media like it was the end of the world
Because in the 00s it was the arabs turn.
Disagree. Not that there wasn't racialshit but political correctness was much more geared towards language policing. Which has always been a problem. With race it was always just snickering at obvious tokenism like Captain Planet or the BK Kids Club but there wasn't as much pushback towards it as there is now. Someone might have said "Oh well of course you need a black guy" But it wasn't "They're replacing every white man by making a movie staring a black man." Not on the widescale we see now.
Literally nobody was complaining about things like KND or the multiple asian protagonists in cartoons, people only started to complain went diversity was advertised while the quality of the product decreased. Like anon said
a problem is the focus on the race and culture of the characters, back in the day race was literally just a skin color to the point that the ethnicity of a character could even be ambiguous like with Number 1 in KND
Nobody complains about asians now either. The bug up collective asses has always been black characters.
Except for the Boondocks
Or Black Dynamite
Or Static Shock
Or Storm
Or Afro Samurai
I want to say Craig of the Creek, but I didn't watch that one or go in the threads. Seemed popular.
>So they see "hey there are more young trans people, we need young viewers, let's make trans characters". It's that simple and it's that stupid.
>And that's the problem: creators who think their work will be popular SOLELY on "woke" / representation grounds will surely be WRONG.
The idea that comic writers do it as marketing falls apart when you see that they spend several hours a day complaining about republicans and attacking potential customers, and they have done that for years even before getting their job.
I think it's just a vicious cycle of having no money and hiring activists willing to literally starve if they are able to push politics which in turn decreases money.
Yeah, representation is only important to writers
Can we finally let this thread die? Someone keeps bumping it when it gets to page 9
Is more of a page 10 rightn