Opinion: Diversity Isn't the Problem at Marvel

From a PR standpoint, Marvel didn't have a particularly good weekend. The company held a retailer summit last Friday to discuss their shifting publishing strategy and address concerns about slumping sales. These retailer summits are always interesting because, ostensibly, they are private events where Marvel's reps seem more willing to speak frankly about industry matters. However, ICv2 was there to cover the meetings for the public, which is how we came to hear about the controversial remarks made by Marvel's Senior Vice President David Gabriel.

Essentially Gabriel said that, according to retailers he talked to and sales data, Marvel's push towards diversity was the reason for the sales drop. "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." Gabriel later elaborated on those comments in an interview with ICv2. There he said, "We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against. That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked."

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