So About That Whole Thing
LONG COMIC BOOK RANT INCOMING:
Okay some things need to be said:
1. If youâre going to write a smug thunk-piece about the âfailureâ of âdiversityâ in comics, maybe donât use the cover image of a book thatâs had 4 collections on the NYT graphic books bestseller list, won a Hugo and cleaned up at Angouleme. Just because you HOPE itâs on the chopping block, oh Riders of the Brohirrim, doesnât mean it is.
2. I will tell you exactly why Ms Marvel works: it didnât set out to be Ms Marvel. We were originally going to pitch it as a 10 issue limited series. I had a 3 issue exit strategy because I assumed we were going to get canned. There was no âdiversity initiativeâ anywhereâgetting that thing made at all was a struggle. It was a given that any character without AT LEAST a 20-year history would tank. Everybody, myself included, assumed this series was going to work out the same way.
3. That freed usâby âusâ I mean the whole creative teamâto tell exactly the story we wanted to tell. We had nothing to lose, nothing to overcome but low expectations. That gave us room to break a lot of rules.
STUFF THAT IS DIFFICULT TO REPLICATE AND IMPOSSIBLE TO PLAN:
1. Unexpected audiences. We are at a point in history when the role of religion is at a tremendous inflection point. What I didnât realize was that the anxieties felt by young Muslims are also felt by young Mormons, evangelicals, orthodox Jews, and others. A h-u-g-e reason Ms Marvel has struck the chord it has is because it deals with the role of traditionalist faith in the context of social justice, and there wasâapparentlyâan untapped audience of people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds who were eager for a story like this. Nobody could have predicted or planned for that. Thatâs being in the right place at the right time with the right story burning a hole in your pocket. Plenty of other stuff Iâve written and liked has fallen with a huge thud. Thatâs the norm. Exceptions are great when they happen, but hard to plan.
2. The paradox of low expectations. The bar was set pretty low for Ms Marvel, but because of Ms Marvelâs success, that bar got set much higher for similar books that came later.
STUFF THAT IS ENTIRELY AVOIDABLE:
1. This is a personal opinion, but IMO launching a legacy character by killing off or humiliating the original character sets the legacy character up for failure. Who wants a legacy if the legacy is shitty?
2. Diversity as a form of performative guilt doesnât work. Letâs scrap the word diversity entirely and replace it with authenticity and realism. This is not a new world. This is *the world.*
3. Never try to be the next whoever. Be the first and only you. People smell BS a mile away.
4. The direct market and the book market have diverged. Never the twain shall meet. We need to accept this and move on, and market accordingly.
5. Not for nothing, but there is a direct correlation between the quote unquote âdiverseâ Big 2 properties that have done well (Luke Cage, Black Panther, Ms Marvel, Batgirl) and properties that have A STRONG SENSE OF PLACE. Itâs not âdiversityâ that draws those elusive untapped audiences, itâs *particularity.* This is a vital distinction nobody seems to make. This goes back to authenticity and realism.
AND FINALLY
On a practical level, this is not really a story about âdiversityâ at all. Itâs a story about the rise of YA comics. If you look at it that way, the things that sell and donât sell (AND THE MARKETS THEY SELL IN VS THE MARKETS THEY DONâT SELL IN) start to make a different kind of sense.
