Marvel Comics suffered from declining sales in 2016, which could be driven by any number of potential factors. But in an interview with the trade magazine ICv2, the company’s Vice President of Sales, David Gabriel, identified one potential culprit: The increase of female characters:
When I started telling my daughter about various superheroes, I thought for sure that the Flash or Batgirl was going to be her favorite. But super-speed and total recall can’t stand up to gamma-powered grumpiness: the Hulk has her heart.
A passenger wearing a Black Panther baseball cap has been told to remove the headgear because it—along with a t-shirt with an upside-down American flag—makes the pilot “uncomfortable.”
Yesterday, Marvel announced that Tony Stark would be walking away from his latest suit of power armor. His replacement is going to be Riri Williams, a genius MIT student who isn’t old enough to drink yet. (So no “Demon in a Bottle” storyline for her, I guess.)
It’s 2 A.M. on March 20 in France and Ta-Nehisi Coates is not sleeping. “I’m up learning to make maps so I can make one of Wakanda, believe it or not.”
There are lots of Spider-people in Marvel Comics nowadays but only one of them has the distinction of being the parallel universe version of Peter Parker’s long-dead girlfriend. Making an alt-Gwen into a superhero is a good twist but it’s not the sole reason that readers should check out her adventures.
Squirrel Girl started as a joke, a character so implausibly silly that you had to laugh at her even in her victories. But, a funny thing happened after the character got her own series: people started laughing with her.
The toy aisle, as we've discussed many times, is so thoroughly divided by gender it's like walking onto the set of some heavy-handed Star Trek episode about the folly of prejudice. Well, one store is a little less stereotype-driven today, thanks to one little girl's very annoyed face.
Captain America comes out next week, and the trailers are full of one major selling point: a pumped-up Chris Evans with his shirt off. Will this be the most beefcakey movie about a Marvel superhero ever made? Probably not.
"Not every fight can get resolved by punching someone in the face…but Spider-Girl's gonna punch somebody anyway, just to make sure." A new Spider-Girl hits stores next week. Here, advance images and a Marvel writer on writing multidimensional female characters.
"Marvel Divas" is a new miniseries starring Black Cat, Captain Marvel, Firestar and Hellcat. Firestar fans, brace yourselves: the mutant superhero is revealed to have breast cancer, caused by exposure to the radiation that's the source of her powers. [NYT]
