The other day when I was at the grocery store checkout I noticed my cashier had had a lot of Flash gear on and I asked her about it and she went on about how much she loved the Flash and then I asked her if she ever read any of his comic books and she looked at me like I had said the most offensive thing and said no.
Obviously people are free to like what they like and you do need normies to make money. Normie isn't a bad thing as I am a normie in some areas (I mentioned before that I am working my out out of normie status with Anime/Manga). I guess my annoyance is that the people who act like experts about the MCU for instance are the same people who wouldn't have been caught dead reading a comic book or the same people who clap like seals with every "reimagined" butchering of source material. I don't know how many people I've seen in comments section saying that it doesn't matter that Halo/Wheel of Time/LOTR doesn't follow the lore.
I get that casual fans bring in money but in a perfect world shouldn't the people who are in charge of the IPs appreciate the more hardcore fans who actually read the source material. Like Amazon should've taken into account the people who actually read WOT before hiring a douchebag who didn't care or maybe Marvel shouldn't hire showrunners who openly admit to never reading comic books. I get if you have never been into them but if you get a job to direct a show based on a comic book character shouldn't you at least do some research?
As a life long Star Wars fan one of the worst examples is Disney erasing the EU. I get that they wanted to do their own thing but the least they could've done was continue making stories in that universe along with their own as a tip of the cap to the fans who kept Star Wars going by reading books/comics or playing the video games when there were no movies. Or maybe they could've done Clone Wars style animation of some of the better stories. It does make me chuckle to see how Disney will keep re-releasing the EU books because they make money.
Sorry for the long post, rant over.
It's the case that effort takes time and money so the West would rather take work that's already been done, wear it as a skinsuit than adapt by reading the materials and then move onto the next like locusts. Marvel got lucky in that it started with people that did read the source materials but too much diversity and now I doubt a lot of them read nowadays. And it's reflected in the casual audience than the hardcore as the hardcore just went back to the material they had and noped out of the new stuff.
I would also add there's a larger issue with the west in general with our fiction in that we stick with one character all the time and reluctant to explore the same concepts but with a different characters. Doctor Who actually managed to get around this for a long time but that got ruined think how many reboots of Marvel and DC we've gone through than completely new characters.
In regards to comic books there are a ton of characters that you could use. They always say that nobody is willing to give new characters a chance. The problem is that with these young woke writers their new character is simply an avatar of themselves whose goal is to push "the message". Like you said all my comic books now are from 2014 and prior and pretty much all the books I read unless I get a recommendation. I will support indie books where I seen them. Like I ordered Eric July's comic book and will buy Razorfists book.
I watched Dr. Who up until the female doctor's 2nd or 3rd episode. All they had to do was have a doctor go through time and space. Why they were so insistent on a female doctor instead of spinning off a female time lord is beyond me.
As I said, skinsuit but combined with self-insertion "why does the doctor have to be a man, why not a woman like me? And also represent my issues.." and that's how you kill a franchise.
I've not seen that much from Japan thankfully as we're getting a guy that has chainsaws come out of his body in October and a guy literally Reincarnated as a vending machine announced as an anime.
I'm sorry but if you have more people excited for guy reincarnates as a vending machine than Batgirl, please hand in you pen, pencils and sketchbook and apply to McDonald's for your career.
Mate, we begged for YEARS for a season 2! Thankfully we are getting sequels and conclusions more often now.
The only other one I can think of that is being meme'd about never getting a season 2 is No game no life
Then there's the ones that will never get a sequel (poors one out for High School of the Dead)
And the books are now completed after 21 volumes, meaning if they fuck with it, we'll know.
The Devil is a Part-Timer was fucking great.
What do you like reading? Shows?
Current stuff, finished Starship troopers, just started Atlas Shrugged, both books I finally started reading after putting it off too long
In terms of shows, mostly anime and YouTube, anime I'm really enjoying right now is Classroom of the Elite and Overlord with this weird new one Lycoris Recoil really intriguing me