Sorry all, I'm gonna be breaking up this quote/reply for easier reading.
This is what Disney finds profitable *as branding.* But keep in mind that the least selling Marvel books out perform the strongest Dark Horse/IDW/etc titles, and that they make up a lot of income from merch, licensing, trades, Marvel Unlimited, etc.
Which isn't saying much as these have always been smaller publications, with Dark Horse & IDW getting most of it's profit from licensing and/or niche titles that appeal to a certain subset of readers. Compare Marvel & DC to pretty much any manga publisher and the money the comics make becomes a joke...which is why Disney is trying to buy-up exclusive rights and control over manga publishers.
If you want to be very cynical about it, corporate America - with all the metrics, research, and experts they throw millions if not billions of dollars at every year - is making a clear statement about what ideology is winning the culture war with who they decide to pander to, and which ideology is increasingly irrelevant within the marketplace of ideas. And that goes well beyond just Disney.
I argue against that. When Disney was focused on making a great Marvel product (
almost everything up to Endgame) that catered to the comic fans, each movie (save one or two) made profit. Maybe not as much as they COULD have if (roughly guesstimating) $300,000,000 wasn't spent on marketing and advertising along with production, but $1B on $300M is still a good return. After Endgame...what the heck happened? Disney tried to use the Marvel "license to print money" to shore-up its mega-expensive/barely-profitable Disney+. They scaled back on the production (even for movies) and let lesser-known writers and directors in to save money. People who really weren't that good at their profession given their previous works (generally speaking and IMHO).
Now, if a certain ideology is "winning the culture war", then why is there a war to begin with? Some would have people believe that it's "wacist/sexist neckbeards" vs "University-Enlightened" but...is it really? Why is it then that the post-Endgame projects have all been "critically praised/viewer meh"? Why is it that the people who are being pandered to...aren't spending money but just typing about it on Twitter/X or whatever instead? If I were running a business I would start asking questions to the Marketing folks. Of course, this also calls-in the various
whispers that the ideology we're all skirting around like an
elephant-in-the-room here is being directly pushed and funded by a very specific person who runs a very profitable company that handles the 401k's and other investments of hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people for his own reasons.
I would also argue that the ideology isn't winning, it's getting pushed back against harder than ever as the regular folk start to understand just what that ideology is all about.
But in the end the only ideology that matters is Rogue's ass.
This is true.
