Marvel Comics has recently been in a rough spot, with flagging sales, and interrogated some on the matter in a meeting with retailers, who let out their own grievances in the difficulty lately in selling some of Marvel's books. One possible culprit among others got attention: Diversity in their titles, and readers turning up their nose at them.

This did not sit well with others, the idea that retailers and Marvel would blame these books for low sales - and it didn't sit well with me, either. So I've hunkered down and put in the hours researching sales data reaching back over a decade in Marvel, and looked for what could possibly be the true culprit in their sales problems.

"Shut The Fuck Up, Marvel" is a nearly 30k long essay, a spiritual sequel to The Problems With Comics, a deep dive into the true issues with Marvel's economics and business - and how an obsession with short term profit, the constant renumbering and relaunches and events, all compounded by a complete inability to understand basic marketing techniques or outside audiences, has absolutely destroyed the sales stability of many of their former best selling books, all as they condescend to those who criticize them on their stories, or on how they try to sell comics.

This is a twine project - simply download the HTML file and open it in your browser, clicking the blue text to go to the next page. Safari users have reported difficulties opening twine, so try other browsers if possible.

