>>150052257
Because it is a test of consumer power. They want the comic book stores gone. Thus they will sandbag their books by continuing to champion OMD and storytelling with no impact or continuity. Either way if the books are bought or not they will eventually see those stores gone and their plan of entering into book stores and "higher end" places where they can charge more like how Lego only focuses on adults now. Comics have been like that for a while even before woke seeped in but comics still had some level of quality mixed with appealing to kids and inserting adult topics carefully. Look at Child Within or God Loves Man Kills being released in different forms and different demographics back then.
Now they kinda do the same but the creative bite/quality is lost and they charge more for less pages. Who knows if they achieve their transition away from comic book stores they will in turn, actually lower the prices. Probably not.
If consumers dictate what is good writing then their control over other more brainless consumers, unworried over if they are actually buying valuable products, will start to deteriorate. There's only so many artists that can create good variant covers that have some monetary value.
So yeah its a humiliation ritual for consumers who wanted good stories to be made and good writers to be paid. That model doesn't make as much as books with many variants and stories that matter. It also doesn't help out other merch and movie sides of Marvel that just want more character combos like x character combined with y character or what if x character shat 500 years ago and z character came out from the ashes so they can introduce them in movies or toys that then make them the real money.
If they let fans decide MJ is a valuable character and deserves spotlight then that means they were humiliated and wrong themselves. It invalidates their control over the books and then provides contrast between pre-OMD and post-OMD, legitimizing criticism.