>>150053161
This is what David Gabriel said about the meeting:
>I don't know if that's a question for me. I think that's a better question for retailers who are seeing all publishers. What we heard was that people didn't want any more diversity. They didn't want female characters out there. That's what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don't know that that's really true, but that's what we saw in sales.
On the same day Alonso was saying something radically different:
>Fortune released a piece on Marvel’s editor-in-chief Axel Alonso, which stressed and lauded the success the company had found by promoting a diverse line of characters. Specifically, Fortune said that “the rush to diversify characters has more to do with business than politics, in Alonso’s telling.”
David backtracked:
>A day later, Gabriel gave ICv2 a considerably different statement, which appears to further complicate his argument. In it, he says that the “sticking factor” of titles like Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel and The Mighty Thor were continuing to prove that Marvel’s audience is “excited about these new heroes.”
So there you have Gabriel admitting diversity hurt sales, whilst the Editor said something different and then David backtracking.
I think it is also HEAVILY worth nothing how Ms Marvel plays into this. Ms Marvel was HEAVILY pushed in the YA book market. Her trade sales of the first two series making up 10 trade paper backs sold A LOT but actually the only thing selling was volume 1, making up about 50--60% of total sales. And some publishers reported being given too many copies. This is what the creator of Ms Marvel said:
>“On a practical level, this is not really a story about ‘diversity’ at all,” Wilson said. “It’s a story about the rise of YA comics. If you look at it that way, the things that sell and don’t sell (AND THE MARKETS THEY SELL IN VS THE MARKETS THEY DON’T SELL IN) start to make a different kind of sense.”