However, it gets worse for DC Comics, as he writes, “DC had a pretty bad year, with their lowest sales since 2004 – down 25% from 2022 in the bookstore market – even with their highest ever number of titles in the total list. In 2023 they had only 14 titles in the Top 750; in 2013, ten years ago, they had 130. That is a huge and troubling drop – but maybe laying off nearly your entire sales and marketing team is not a great strategy for growth? If someone had been been making a concerted effort to dismantle DC Comics, they couldn’t have been more surgical – luckily, DC still has talented execs like Marie Javins, Jim Lee, Annie de Pies and the rest of the staff who have thwarted those plans. And from what we’re hearing, 2024 will see some more moves to reverse this concerning trend.”
I wouldn't hold my breath.
I get the comic industry has had declining sales going back a long time but giving the middle finger to actual fans, hiring women who hate comics to write, and believing there were waves of female fans just waiting to read comics.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. When I go to the comic store the manga section has all the women since Manga markets to a variety of audiences. Super hero comics have always and will always appeal to men generally speaking and the back issue section is the most popular for super hero comics. Eric July once said that marvel and dc execs need to go to a comic book store and see who actually buys them.
I used to have almost 20 comic subs through Midtown that were mailed to me monthly. Now I have zero subs and just buy older comics
Japan learnt the way to keep women from fucking up their manga:
You have a Yaoi section available along with muscular men doing sports, distracts them from going to our action plus gets their money lol.
You’re presupposing that western feminists have any sincere interest in expanding brands or audiences. In reality, these people are primarily motivated - by hatred and resentment - to commandeer, subvert, and destroy the beloved icons of their political and cultural enemies. Making comics for girls and women would be mind numbingly easy, but that’s not the goal. Wrecking comics for boys and men is the goal.
Exactly why they chose to infiltrate and subvert Boy Scouts while leaving Girl Scouts alone, even though the gaslighting reason they gave us was that Girl Scouts didn't do as much of the "fun" activities that Boy Scouts did.
Its not about giving girls their own equivalent thing, it's always about taking something away from boys and making that "for everyone" (ie mostly catered to girls) while preserving girls spaces and hobbies and clubs.