“Give The People What They Want!”

     The title is a watchword – the supreme watchword – in the television industry. Or perhaps I should say that it was, once upon a time. Things have definitely changed.

     You’d think that giving the prospective consumer what he wants would be a maxim for all of commerce. How can you sell something to a man who doesn’t want it, feels no need for it, and might even be repelled by it? You can’t. But if you’ve been watching what the entertainment industry has been doing lately, you’d swear that someone in a mahogany-paneled office thinks it possible.

     There are four foci for this delusion:

• Movies,
• Television,
• Video Games,
• Printed entertainment.

     That last category includes two overarching specialties: textual fiction and illustrated fiction. The first of those has innumerable specialties of its own, which we usually call genres. The latter embraces graphic novels, manga, and what we still call “comic books,” though there’s seldom anything comical about them.

     It appears that all the varieties of entertainment being vended today are suffering from declines in acceptance. I’ve mentioned video games recently. The whole country is aware of what’s been going on with movies and television. Indeed, Hollywood writers, so recently on strike for greater pay and benefits, have largely found themselves out of work. As for manga, which is the province of Eastern creators, things appear to be okay…but not for American comic books:

     The last several months have woken many up to the comic industry’s problems. Retailer Glenn O’Leary blew the doors off of the problems in mainstream comic book content and their “self-insert” characters, which was roundly mocked by industry professionals who felt threatened and identified with his statement. This was followed up by journalist Heidi MacDonald, laying out figures that Marvel and DC Comics were in trouble. Now, buried in another article, it appears DC Comics is in even worse of a position than we’ve suspected.
     The writing’s been on the wall for some time. Comic book retailers are closing shops regularly. Marvel and DC Comics made moves to not even report their sales any longer. All while, the gatekeepers of the comic industry kept posting that there was nothing wrong and that sales were fine.
     We’ve seen reports that IDW Publishing has laid off more than 40% of its staff in the last year, showing signs of wear for the second-string of mainstream comics as the heavily-licensed publisher under Heather Antos has circled the wagons around diversity hiring at the expense of their content quality. Meanwhile, smaller publishers like Aftershock and Scout Comics were outed as not even paying their creatives.

     How did that happen? How could it happen? Comics have been an American growth industry for so long that it’s hard to believe it could be another way. Unfortunately, it is another way:

     In a recent interview, Batman writer Chip Zdarsky finally blew the doors off the comic industry collapse. He admitted massive issues were going on with the mainstream industry, saying, “The problems in comics are a myriad right now. There are so many ways that the industry is being harmed and is having trouble kind of recovering. It’s facing challenges.”

     The nature of those “challenges?” In a word, “woke:”

     While he didn’t elaborate as to sales, after talking with several retailers, reading between the lines of Heidi MacDonald’s shill coverage, one finds that sales have been on a steady decline since the pandemic, as comic readers have mostly gotten out of the habit of reading these books from Marvel and DC Comics after so many of their beloved characters had been changed to be unrecognizable to their classic forms, much of which has been pushing LGBTQ propaganda.
     DC Comics has suffered worse than Marvel. With their Dawn of DC relaunch failing to garner much interest, fans seemed tired of having to completely reboot the DC Universe every few years. From New 52, to Rebirth, a third relaunch in just over a decade seemed like a good jumping-off point. Once DC Comics made changes to Superman, Robin, Hawkgirl, Green Lantern, and more to add homosexual virtue signaling, few wanted to continue with the lines. It’s been a running joke in the industry that Batman is the only thing DC Comics can sell anymore.

     Damn! How about that: You start perverting the characters comics aficionadi have followed for decades, and…they stop buying the comics. Why, you’d think there’s some sort of evil magic at work. This is Superman, dudes! This is Robin! Green Lantern! Hawkgirl! How can loyal readers turn away from these heroes after loving them for so long?

     It turns out that “woke” – specifically, turning those beloved characters into homosexuals – doesn’t sell comics. Or movies. Or television shows. Or video games.

     Approximately 97% of the world population is heterosexual – straight, in the usual argot. Furthermore, the great majority of heterosexuals are repelled by homosexuality and resist entertainment larded with it. We won’t pay for it. We might not say so where others can hear, but the repulsion is there. And it doesn’t matter how often or how loudly anyone says “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

     Translation: On the entertainment front, we’re winning. The wokesters are discovering that they cannot compel us to purchase their message-laden offerings. We’re tuning out in numbers they never expected. Explaining it to themselves is painful. It requires the virtue called humility: the one that makes it possible to say “I was wrong.”

     They can piss and moan about Stellar Blade and the success of “traditional” entertainment as much as they please. It won’t change a thing. The customer remains the king. The vendor must please him, not the other way around.

     It is possible for him who seeks to write tales centered on homosexual relationships to find an audience. However, he must accept that it will be a rather concentrated audience that shares his enthusiasm. In media that require acceptance, funding, and marketing by a mass-marketing mechanism – e.g., movies, television, and video games – his prospects will be poor…at least once the funders and marketers actually confront the sales figures. Business has its own priorities, and the need to move product trumps all the others, no matter how passionately promoted.

     Thoughts, Gentle Readers?