Marvel Comics' sales VP David Gabriel has blamed a recent slump in sales on women and diversity. Yep, seriously.
Despite multiple TV adaptations and crossovers, Marvel sales have steadily been declining over the past couple of years, and according to Gabriel, women are the problem. Oh, and diversity.
During a recent interview, Gabriel said "female characters" and "diversity" were to blame for the sales slump as fans "didn't want female characters out there" in the first place.
Insert eye-roll here.
"What we heard was that people didn't want any more diversity," Gabriel told ICV2. "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," he added. "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," Gabriel continued.
Gabriel later reached out to ICV2 to clarify his statement, adding that many individual characters like Miles Morales, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Gwen, and Moon Girl are popular and won't be going away anytime soon.
Meanwhile, Brie Larson is starring as Marvel's first ever onscreen female lead in 2019's Captain Marvel.
"I feel a great responsibility," she told The Sunday Times. "I want to create this symbol of strength and humour for women that I really wish I had had growing up. It feels so valuable.
"We need to break through that glass ceiling — women go to the theatre to see a movie with a male lead, and men will go see a film with a female lead. We're all equals here," she added.
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