Does the world of comic-book superheroes have a diversity problem?

The question matters a lot for investors. Here’s why.

Consumers pay up for good, original content. And comic books come through in spades. They spawn a colorful array of endearing superheroes, followed by profitable movie spinoffs, action figures and collectibles.

Thus superheroes play a significant role in sales trends at Time Warner US:TWX and Walt Disney Co. DIS, -3.08% , home of DC Comics and Marvel Entertainment, respectively. They also impact sales at Netflix NFLX, -4.18% , which has produced two popular series based on comic-book characters, Cinemark CNK, -5.99% , Regal Entertainment US:RGC, AMC Entertainment AMC, -8.25% , Hasbro HAS, +1.89% and Mattel MAT, -0.04% .

So if the new wave of “diverse” superheroes has caused the recent slump in comic-book sales growth, that’s a trend investors need to sit up and notice.

In the past few years, Disney’s Marvel Entertainment has rolled out an Afro-Latino Spider-Man, a Muslim Ms. Marvel, a female Thor, a gay Iceman, a Korean Hulk, an African-American female lead in Iron Man, and a lesbian Latina America Chavez.

Now fans accustomed to more “traditional” characters may have come down with diversity fatigue. And they could be walking away in protest. Consider the following.

• At a Marvel meeting with retailers and distributors during the New York Comic Con in October, several comic book sellers pushed back hard on diversity, blaming it for slumping sales. The meeting quickly got ugly and Marvel shut it down, according to ICv2, an online trade publication that tracks the business of “geek culture.”

Unlike most books which you can buy practically anywhere, comic books are still distributed largely through specialized stores. So this kind of feedback from specialized retailers is significant, even if it’s anecdotal. Marvel doesn’t disclose sales.

• Video bloggers on YouTube channels dedicated to diversity in comics don’t like the changes one bit. “We just want our old characters back,” says one. “Give us all of them back. Your sales are pathetic.”

Critics claim “social justice warrior Marvel” is forcing its politics on fans, abandoning many of their popular characters, and driving away readers. (These commentaries often veer off into ugliness and threats of personal violence, so I don’t want to fan the flames by linking to them.)

“ “There’s a struggle going on over what a comic book is and who the audience should be.” ” — ICv2 President Milton Griepp

To be sure, other factors could explain the sales drop. Maybe comic-book writers are simply producing blasé story lines. Because comics companies don’t break out sales data by title or character, it’s unclear which characters aren’t selling as well.

But if comic-book publishers are hurting themselves by tangling with the tricky issue of diversity, the industry could risk a sustained sales slump.

Already, the trends don’t look good. Last year, sales growth of comic books, graphic novels and digital offerings cooled off to 5.3% as revenue hit $1.08 billion, says ICv2. That was significantly lower than the 9.9% annual average growth during 2010-2015.

This year could be even worse. ICv2 President Milton Griepp says comic-book store sales fell 10.5% in the first nine months of this year compared with the same time in 2016. He doesn’t yet have hard numbers for digital and regular bookstore sales. But he doubts they will be strong enough to offset the steep decline at comic-book stores, which account for over half of sales.

“Marvel and DC Comics are trying to appeal to a new market but hold on to the old market,” says Griepp. “There’s a struggle going on over what a comic book is and who the audience should be.”

No easy task

Unsurprisingly, comic-book creators have no easy task when tackling diversity. This is the age of “social justice warriors,” populist “alt-right” and anti-immigration sentiment, and a highly divisive political climate. So publishers face big challenges in introducing minority, gay and lesbian characters.

On the one hand, they risk angering traditional fans with “too much” diversity.

Conversely, they may alienate younger, hipper, diverse and minority fans by not going far enough. “We have been reading books by white men for years, and we have been enjoying it. But we have a story, too,” says Regine Sawyer of the Women in Comics Collective, which aims to promote the role of women in the industry.

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Sheena Howard, an associate professor of communication at Rider University, and the author of the Encyclopedia of Black Comics, understands the pushback by many fans. “People have an attachment to these characters. They don’t like to see their superheroes change colors. They feel like it is gimmicky, and it is.”

But she rejects the idea that diversity hurts sales. Many “diverse” characters are actually wildly popular, and why not? A Disney film featuring the character Black Panther, due out in February, is one of the most anticipated movies of the year. “Captain America: Civil War,” which also featured Black Panther, had a bigger opening weekend in 2016 than the year’s Star Wars installment, according to Box Office Mojo.

Netflix recently had big hits with a series featuring a black Marvel superhero called Luke Cage, and another superhero series with a strong female lead named Jessica Jones.

Best sellers with more diverse superheroes

Marvel also pushes back on the theory that diversity hurts sales. It won’t back its case with sales trends on specific characters, and public information is spotty. But Marvel notes that its Muslim Ms. Marvel single-issue and trade paperbacks have been best sellers since the character’s launched in 2014. Its “Miles Morales: Spider-Man” (featuring an Afro-Latino Spider-Man), and “Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet” books were on the New York Times Young Adult Hardcover Best Sellers List for several weeks this year. And its comic book featuring a female Thor was a top seller in 2017, as well.

So Marvel is sticking to its guns. “We have had such a great opportunity to create new and interesting characters that are truly representative of the way the world is,” says Sana Amanat, Marvel’s content development director who helped create Kamala Kahn, the popular Muslim Ms. Marvel. “We have made great strides, and we have more to go.”

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Griepp at ICv2 notes that many of the comic books featuring diverse characters did quite well in the first year or two that they were rolled out, and sales only started to decline in 2016 and 2017.

This suggests the sales decline could be more about writers’ slump than diversity. Tellingly, Marvel recently replaced its top editor Axel Alonso with C.B. Cebulski. During his 15-year Marvel career, Cebulski wrote and edited popular comics, played a big role in recruiting talent, and helped expand the Marvel brand in Asia.

Try alt-right vs. social justice warriors in comics?

Here’s a suggestion for Cebulski, from the cheap seats.

Your company, Marvel, loves to say it reflects the world outside your window. If so, why not step up and launch a series that features alt-right characters battling it out with social justice warriors? For better or worse, this theme has done wonders for cable TV news ratings.

Handled correctly, it could do the same for comic-book sales and, who knows, maybe teach us a lesson or two about how to cope with all the ugly and tiresome divisiveness.

Michael Brush is a Manhattan-based financial writer. At the time of publication, he had no positions in any stocks mentioned in this column. He has suggested NFLX, DIS, AMC, HAS and MAT in his stock newsletter Brush Up on Stocks.

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