Tune In Tomorrow For A Special Announcement...

Another garbage person, checking in.

Yeah, I voted for Donald Trump myself. I couldn't stand Hillary Clinton's condescending attitude and all the negative things she kept saying about people in rural America where I live. Things she is still saying. Or her attitude that anyone who didn't agree with her or support her was some kind of monster. Or that conservative women, of whom I personally know many(including my mom, I'm more of a moderate/centrist), are all subservient idiots taking their marching and voting orders from all the men in their lives. Or the way she formed a 'war room' during husband's presidency to attack, discredit and demonize all the women accusing her husband of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape. Bill Clinton himself had to step in and stop her from continuing to go after Paula Jones. Or her dismissing every bad thing her husband was accused of as 'part of a vast right-wing conspiracy'(fake news before there was fake news!). Or Hillary treating secret service agents and members of law enforcement like dogshit because she couldn't get over the Arkansas State Police ferrying women to the Governor's mansion for her husband to screw, and knew they basically had to just stand there and take whatever verbal abuse she dished out. I could go on and on.

Trump was right, Hillary is a "Nasty Woman". A very nasty, hate-filled person. Trump has many flaws, and I don't agree with a lot of what he says and does, but Hillary and her husband are just as bad or even worse as people than Trump, so I had to vote based on what I felt would be better for me and the country as a whole, and that was Trump.

I'm self-employed. I had good, affordable health insurance. Before Obamacare. Then my premiums doubled, then quadrupled. Then my insurance company was losing so much money they got out of the insurance business. So I ended up on the Omamacare exchange, where I ended up with a policy that cost even more, and I got NONE of the promised help paying for it because I ended up in some black hole of assistance gap, and had a deductible so high I may as well have not even had insurance. That's a common experience with many people I know. And all Hilary wanted to do was double-down on more of that.

Hillary and Obama also said manufacturing was dead and done in the U.S. and people would just all have to be retrained for magically nonexistent new jobs. They didn't give a crap about border security when I have friends in Texas who literally had drug-muling illegals routinely running through their back yard. I was personally called for jury duty in U.S. General District court in an MS-13 related murder trial, and Hillary and her supporters were and are saying MS-13 is just a 'Fox News invention'. We kept striking deals with countries like Iran and North Korea that left them getting everything they wanted, and America almost nothing in return. We had horrible trade deals and trade debts and more coming. I've been ranting about the situation with imported steel alone for two decades.

Ultimately, I had to vote for who I felt was going to get America working again. Who talked like our best days were still ahead of us. Hilary's attitude was that America was never great to begin with, that things were as good as the could be and we were just going to have to get use to things getting worse because that's the new global reality.

Trump basically said 'fuck all that', so I voted for him, and I'd do it again. I've seen more positive energy in people and growth in the past year than I've seen in a long time. Obama promised 'hope and change', for people where I live, Trump actually delivered.

Back to comics...

I would guess that probably half or more of Marvel's longtime fans/readers are Trump supporters. They did a poll recently that showed Blue states tend to prefer DC Comics and their characters and Red States tend to prefer Marvel Comics and their characters, the big exception being Blue state New York, where most of Marvel's stories are set. Hell, you only have to look at Rosanne's much-hyped pro-Trump return to TV, pulling in 18 million viewers from mostly in Red/Trump states, or Fox News having higher ratings than all the other news outlet stations combined, to see how Marvel has lost so much of it's audience, especially in rural America and 'flyover country', and continues to do so. If say just 60% of Marvel's longtime fans/readers, the people who consistently buy books of their favorite characters, are conservatives and/or Trump supporters...and Marvel keeps pissing off and alienating them, they are going to keep losing sales to the point they wont be publishing comics anymore. Of course, I think they are about to swing the pendulum heavily back that way, and that it was something they planned to do all along. Marvel generally goes whichever way they think the wind is blowing.

I talked to a retailer(I never pass up the chance to talk with a retailer to help get a boots-on-the-ground view of the industry) from the Midwest a few months back who opened his store in the eighties. Marvel had been the top selling publisher ever since, followed by DC, until just a few years ago. Now DC is his top seller, followed by Valiant, followed by Image, followed by Dark Horse...with Marvel now in 5th place. He still has tons of Marvel comics on his shelves...much of which he didn't order. He estimates that about a third of the Marvel comics he got in one month were over-ships, much of which he can't sell. He said he tried putting them on sale for .25 cents. just to get rid of the excess, but that triggered a backlash among customers that paid full price who then felt ripped off, so he doesn't know what to do.

He also said while a lot of his Marvel fans had switched to DC and Valiant, that many had left American comics entirely, switching over to Manga. I've heard that myself from other longtime Marvel fans I've talked to, the switch to Manga. While I like Anime a lot, I've never been much into Manga with a few exceptions. I can't imagine trying to replace Marvel or DC comics with them, but apparently a lot of fed up fans are doing just that.

Closer to home, I noted at my 'local' shop that they had 5-6 copies of each issue of the recently cancelled Iceman series in the back-issue bins. I was surprised as the owner is not known for ordering much in the way of excess copies, he generally doesn't have many excess copies of recent issues that have made there way from the wall to the boxes, so I asked him about it. "Marvel over-shipped about five copies of every issue". That's a small store, he was maybe ordering ten copies of each issue, max.

For anyone who doesn't know, here's how over-shipping works. Say a retailer orders ten copies of an issue of Iceman. Marvel ships fifteen. The retailer only pays for the ten he ordered, but Marvel gets to report fifteen issues sold. Marvel's argument for doing that is they over-ship to provide fans with available back-issues. The problem with that logic is instead of over-shipping popular titles with a demand for back-issues, they generally over-ship their worst-selling titles, where retailer are often already stuck dealing with unsold issues.

It's all part of the smoke and mirrors act that has become Marvel's stock in trade, to try and hide how badly some titles are selling and to try to hold on to the appearance of having the leading market-share over DC. Marvel maintains it's lead in dollar-share over DC by charging a dollar or more for many books than DC does. That's not counting all the tricks, stunts and gimmicks they constantly use to try and con fans into buying books they normally wouldn't, or all the draconian ordering requirements they use on retailers to get them to buy books they can't actually sell.

The same way they keep having .99 cent sales on digital Marvel comics, including digital trades of issues from recent years. Digital trades that normally go for $20.00-$30.00 or more, all for under a dollar. And then when they tout how well a comic or trade collection is selling digitally, they don't bother to mention that much of that is from sales at 75-98% off regular prices. 98% off?!?! It's all smoke and mirrors.

I agree, America is a good character, and if Marvel had been more focused on getting her a good writer instead of one that checked the same demographic boxes as the character she would be writing, the solo wouldn't have gotten so much hate and mockery, if any. I never heard one person say anything bad about America in the Ultimates, not one. I would have loved to have seen what Al Ewing could have done with an America solo.

I am curious how "a cishet guy" like yourself got so...consumed(maybe not the right word, I intend no offense...not that you seem to care if you give any)...by a desire for diversity, almost to the exclusion of everything else? If you don't mind my asking.

I find it so interesting how we're supposed to be living in such an open, welcoming society, yet people with conservative beliefs are no longer welcome.

News flash. Just because I live my life in a traditional matter doesn't mean I'm a bad person. Nor does it make me racist or a bigot. There's difference between living my life as a conservative and being an asshole. I feel sorry for those who can't differentiate the two.