Marvel editor-in-chief: 'Writing comics was a hobby for white guys'; Guardian, 5/26/16

Sam Thielman, Guardian; Marvel editor-in-chief: 'Writing comics was a hobby for white guys' :

"Alonso’s Marvel looks very different: one of two Spider-Men is a biracial kid named Miles Morales, Thor is a white woman, one of the Captains America is a black man, Ms Marvel is Pakistani American and the Hulk is Korean American. All this happened with comparatively minimal backlash from notoriously tetchy readers, because Alonso and the company’s writing and editing teams have made changes carefully, switching costumes among established characters and stacking the deck with popular creators when the possibility of fan rage – which is always at least ambient – seems likely. Marvel has intra-company crossovers about twice a year; when Civil War II launches, its lineup of superheroes will look much, much different than they did in even last year’s Secret Wars...

As the company changes, its iconography grows more powerful: beyond making bestseller lists, Ms Marvel has taken on symbolic value outside her own adventures, with fans pasting cutouts of the character over anti-Muslim bus ads in San Francisco.

This isn’t just a form of altruism. Disney (which bought Marvel in 2009) has excellent business reasons for pursuing a more diverse marketplace. Since the company acquired Marvel, it has given the publisher access to the vast reams of focus-group and test-market data that Disney employs elsewhere in its operations, MacDonald said. In mainstream superhero comics, a minority readership has always been present, if often underserved. Now it makes financial sense for companies to cash in.

“There’s money to be made and that’s why Disney does it,” said MacDonald. “It’s always the right thing to do, to create comics that look more like the real world, but it’s definitely backed up in that way.”"