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.
The untapped female comic audience isn't being offered anything at all by Marvel and DC. They're not entirely wrong about that audience existing, as evidenced by the legion of Yaoi fangirls, but the slop those two publishers are releasing isn't being written for a female audience. Honestly I think that's a large part of why manga does so well with women in addition to men. They don't have this ideological poison that prevents them from honestly acknowledging how men and women actually are and as a result they're able to write stuff that appeals to both.
Exactly. Nothing wrong with marketing to men or women. Romance novels always sell
Oh I mean even within a single work. If you portray men and women as they are then there's more for both to engage with. It's how you can get some dumb battle shonen that's targeted at boys, but because you have actual healthy and realistic gender dynamics being portrayed there's plenty of girls who will latch onto the franchise as well.
Oh. That is very true. Also I think you have writers who really don’t like romance between men and women due to trying to avoid “heteronormativity”
I was talking to some dude on the comic book subreddit the other day who had mentioned that Marvel had a policy of straight up never allowing anyone to remain in a successful romantic relationship or something to that effect. It's incredibly destructive in my opinion. There are forces out there actively discouraging the portrayal of healthy relationships for people to model themselves after or aspire to. No wonder everything is so fucked up.