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Starting a thread for this on it's own to pull the discussion away from another topic as well as to address comments made recently by Marvel and somewhat misinterprited by various comic news sites.
Personaly I think that Diversity in and of it's self is a good thing. The problem I feel is when it is pushed forward by sacrificing an existing character to make room for the "new and diverse" version. Marvel in particular right now I feel is seeing a bit of backlash on this.
The problem with "replacement" characters is that you are doing a disservice to both the old and new characters. Firstly you are shelving/killing/erasing a version that already has a fanbase be it large or small. Right there some people are going to get pissed off.
Secondly the resentment at loosing "their version" of the character then gets dumped on the new guy, deserved or not. Regardless of how and why it happened the new character might just as well have pulled the trigger that killed the old one. That is going to make it hard on the new guy to start out of the gate with people hating him or her.
Creating new Diverse characters is a great move by both companies, but replacing existing characters who happen to be white guys is not the way to do it. To be honest race and gender don't even really matter.
Case in Point - DC's new version of Lobo. This was literally new version kills old version and takes over. The new one was same race, same gender, just an "new sleaker modern look" replacing the old grungy biker version.
and it failed utterly.
it didn't fail because of diversity because nothing had changed on that point. It failed simply because It Wasn't Lobo and it couldn't get a chance to become Lobo because it was hated before the first issue even hit the stands.
We do need new Diverse characters but they have to actually be New Characters, not replacements for older ones that already have fans.
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Well, Iron Man doesn't have a blocky golden suit anymore. The versions and depictions will always change and evolve. It's a different character if they change the fundemental aspects. I for one think in these times diversity is great. It attracts a larger fan base in and of itself. I mean, no one freaked out from a Scottish James Bond. Why not Idris Elba? He's a great actor and portrays the key aspects. As times change, people want different things. We now want more diverse superheroes. They don't really change though. It's basically similar to changing Superman from jumping everywhere to flying. It did take adjustment, but we're fine with it now.
Well, Iron Man doesn't have a blocky golden suit anymore. The versions and depictions will always change and evolve. It's a different character if they change the fundemental aspects. I for one think in these times diversity is great. It attracts a larger fan base in and of itself. I mean, no one freaked out from a Scottish James Bond. Why not Idris Elba? He's a great actor and portrays the key aspects. As times change, people want different things. We now want more diverse superheroes. They don't really change though. It's basically similar to changing Superman from jumping everywhere to flying. It did take adjustment, but we're fine with it now.
In the case of both Superman and Iron man that you mention the character himself didn't change, only his abilities. They were both still the original character, just with new abilities or an upgraded suit.
A closer comparison would be the change from Silver-age Superman to Bryne's Superman.
Even to this day there are a large number of people who hate that change and insist that the "true" version is and always will be the Silver age Superman, who could sneeze away galaxies and crush black holes in his hands. (while completely ignoring the Golden Age Superman who is considered a seperate character)
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Honestly I think its because the dialogue writing was pretty terrible and some of the plot points used to introduce this diversity was hamfisted and ALSO written pretty terribly.
Seriously
"Unsolicited Opinions About Israel" ?
Iceman gets telepathically outed in a "oh ur gay tho" bit.
They could (and should) have done a lot better because frankly new Thor has a really interesting dynamic that STILL plays with the whole "physically feeble person becomes powerhouse" trope that's kind of a necessity for the kind of power fantasy superheros are at their heart.
The criticism toward the new iron man as a mary sue is way off base and pretty unfair though. Spiderman, Mr fantastic, sue storm, tony stark were all presented as wunderkind geniuses doing work far beyond their years in nearly every incarnation, and the handover is being handled in a very traditional fashion for mortal heros, where the former person wearing the mask acts as a mentor to the new hero. Its basically batman for the robins who DIDN'T get rekt by the joker.
Honestly I think its because the dialogue writing was pretty terrible and some of the plot points used to introduce this diversity was hamfisted and ALSO written pretty terribly.
Seriously
"Unsolicited Opinions About Israel" ?Iceman gets telepathically outed in a "oh ur gay tho" bit.
They could (and should) have done a lot better because frankly new Thor has a really interesting dynamic that STILL plays with the whole "physically feeble person becomes powerhouse" trope that's kind of a necessity for the kind of power fantasy superheros are at their heart.
The criticism toward the new iron man as a mary sue is way off base and pretty unfair though. Spiderman, Mr fantastic, sue storm, tony stark were all presented as wunderkind geniuses doing work far beyond their years in nearly every incarnation, and the handover is being handled in a very traditional fashion for mortal heros, where the former person wearing the mask acts as a mentor to the new hero. Its basically batman for the robins who DIDN'T get rekt by the joker.
the poor writing certainly doesn't help. In fact it tends to lend itself to the "forced down our throat" narrative.
Comic book characters are constantly being killed off and replaced. Why not occasionally replace them with characters that look different than the previous one?
have you noticed how many of those Killed and replaced characters end up back with the original though.
Hal is back and headlining the GL books
Barry is back as main Flash
Grunge Biker Lobo is back
Captain America has come back how many times
How many of the main X-men characters keep coming back to life
even the Spectre is back to being Jim Corrigan
and the old JSA are set to make a return as well.
Very few characters stayed dead and in many cases they end up replacing their replacements. Sooner or later it goes back to the core version.
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Diversity is a good thing. It's when it's pushed into every comic story that's it's not imo. Marvel instead of doing the smart thing and slowly introducing diversity just tried to cram it down ever reader throat. Whether readers wanted it or not. As well those calling for diversity the loudest usually don't end up buying the product. As long as Marvel put diversity into the titles they were happy. Purchasing those newly diversified title that were so badly needed....you must joking. It's also not helped with Marvel one moment saying diversity hurt their sales. Then claiming that too many of their fans were too narrow minded to appreciate diversity.
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Comic book characters are constantly being killed off and replaced. Why not occasionally replace them with characters that look different than the previous one?have you noticed how many of those Killed and replaced characters end up back with the original though.
Hal is back and headlining the GL books
Barry is back as main Flash
Grunge Biker Lobo is back
Captain America has come back how many times
How many of the main X-men characters keep coming back to life
even the Spectre is back to being Jim Corriganand the old JSA are set to make a return as well.
Very few characters stayed dead and in many cases they end up replacing their replacements. Sooner or later it goes back to the core version.
I consider this a massive strawman. Hal was 'gone' for over 10 years. Barry was gone for about 25. Jim Corrigan?? I want to say 20 years?
How much classic Steve Rogers/Captain America have we had? He was killed in Civil War... then Replaced by bucky... then aged... then replaced by Falcon... then turned Hydra spy...
So other then a few glitches here and there, fans of Steve Rogers haven't really had him around for 10 years either.
Claiming "Oh they always come back..." is pretty empty if a long time fan has to wait a decade to get their character back. That's not a reasonable expectation.
One of the issues I have with the decompressed storytelling now. The entire Eric Masterson/Thor story line went from 432-459 about 25 issues... about 2 years. John Walker as Captain America was 333-350 AND he split the book with Steve as 'the captain' at the time...
Complaints about shelving/killing or replacing characters really DO have merit. For 60 years Hal Jordan was THE green Lantern. Then they killed him off and ever since he has to fight for a place at the table. Miles is getting a cartoon movie... There's talk about Cap dying in the next movie.
Making a favorite character 'replacable' is bad business. What their telling their fans is 1) Everything we write is temporary... and 2) You don't really need to buy any of these things.
Say what you will about the 90's and before... but when 'SOMEONE DIES!!!' was advertised it was a major thing. Now? We all know the books are going to be rebooted in 2 years so we don't need to buy them anymore. And that attitude has hurt sales. They are losing their 'You CAN'T Miss THIS ISSUE' feel to them.
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As with most things, I think the answer to the OP question is best summed up as "It depends".
Diversity can be good. It can bring in new readers and expand your customer base. And it can even give older readers something new and different.
On the other hand, it can be bad and turn people off (especially older customers). Some people feel that the "diversity" gets shoehorned in via piss poor writing (although that's not always the case). Others feel that it's just engaging in a bit of tokenism and band wagon jumping on, as if the writers and editors don't really care, they just want to be part of the "movement".
That being said, "diversity" is only one facet of why the industry is either succeeding (as it appears DC is doing), or why sales are dropping 9as in the case with Marvel). I've been pretty much on record for a while now that one of my big turn offs is the predilection for storylines which always take more than two issues to complete. I'd read it was a conscious decision, to make it easier to gather things in trade paperback format. Couple that with endless cross overs, and it's difficult for someone to just pick up a single issue of a popular character or of one they might be interested in.
In terms of attracting new readers, neither diversity nor sticking with familiar faces is going to do much to help. The barrier to entry is too high.
Let's say a new comic was written and it was absolutely perfect to appeal to non-comics-reader X. The character is relatable, the story is accessible and doesn't require you to have read other comics, all that stuff.
Under what circumstances would non-comics-reader X actually buy that physical issue? They're not likely to be hanging around inside a comics shop. They're not likely to be reading internet reviews of new comics. The new issue isn't advertised on television. It won't stay around in the shop for long; it will be replaced with the next issue in a month or two.
The only thing I can see helping make comics a mass-market medium again is some kind of radical new business model, like:
A company releasing no more than a couple of fifty-page comics a month, so everyone can read and discuss the same stories, and a high quality margin can be maintained.
Or making all new comics free to read on phones and tablets.
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The only bad thing about diversity is that many of this «diverse» characters are dull and bland.
When you add a woman whose only concept is «she's a woman» or a gay character whose main interest is just being gay it's boring.
So they are replacing characters that people know and love for another who lack personality. Diversity is great, but if it doesn't come with a good character developement, an interesting personality and a well developed story, the character won't last.
And instead of trying to get further into character developement with these lacking characters they keep bringing more and more characters into action without any of them being interesting.
Diversity is not the issue. Lack of character developement is.
If a character is good I don't care if it's black, white, asian, latino... But I want to read interesting and well developed characters.
Adding diversity is a good thing, but the most important thing is quality.
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You know we're talking about Marvel "forcing" diversity unto their readers. At the same time, Paizo gets flak for introducing transgender characters into their adventures, as they got flak for having a gay paladin in Burnt Offerings or having as much female iconics as they have male ones.
The thing that there are people out there that won't accept diversity for whatever reasons. And the internet makes it way too easy for them to throw a tantrum about it. And unluckily, other people get influenced by this and suddenly start to judge things not on their own merits but through the lenses of the "diversity issue".
And suddenly it doesn't matter if a story is good (and a lot of Marvel comics still deliver those), it just matters if the character is the real Thor (Iron Man, Hulk, you name it) or if it is a so-called pretender that only got invented to promote diversity (ignoring the story potential that comes with that.
And its not that I can't relate to that. For a long time, I disliked the Ultimate Universe just for not being the Universe I was used to. I outrightly avoided the Superior Spider-Man storyline for two or three years just because my utter disgust of Peter Parker being replaced by Doc Ock). In both cases (and maybe other ones I could talk about), I found that I had missed some extremely entertaining, well-written story arcs just because I wouldn't give them credit for trying something new.
So the simple truth is, that many of the so-called fans (myself included) actually ARE way too narrow-minded for their own good (they are called "Fans" for a reason, after all). It's certainly not the smartest thing to do to tell them that business-wise, but I still applaud Marvel to try to break up with the stereotypes. Laura Kinney, Miles Morales, Khamala Khan, Jane "Thor" Forster, Ta-Nehisi Coates' version of the Black Panther, Captain Sam Wilson America, Iceman are examples of what we would have missed if they had just gone with the same, same old. And I'm not only talking about the characters per se, but also about the storylines that came with it. No "piss poor writing" to be found here
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The only bad thing about diversity is that many of this «diverse» characters are dull and bland.
As you might guess from my previous post, that's where I mostly disagree. Iceman was a dull and bland character before his outing (mostly because non of the writers seemed to have a good idea about what to do with him). Now I wouldn't say that Bobby suddenly became more interesting because off the outing, but to me it seems as if this new aspect made the writers think about him as a personality instead of the gimmick he formerly was. And as a result, he has become so much more interesting than he was before. This is only one example, but I really have a hard time to find an example of a newer "diverse" character that qualifies as such.
I might also add that most of the big league super heroes started out as very gimmicky characters. And often there was no real character development for a long time, because that wasn't somethin readers seemed to care about at that time. So a lot of those new characters start out as way more interesting characters than their famous predecessors did. Problem being that readers mostly still don't seem to be very interested about that.
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The thing that there are people out there that won't accept diversity for whatever reasons.
vs.
it just matters if the character is the real Thor (Iron Man, Hulk, you name it) or if it is a so-called pretender that only got invented to promote diversity (ignoring the story potential that comes with that.
It doesn't help when the response to those two (seperate but overlapping) groups is to treat them the same and accuse them both of racism/sexism. One makes a very good cover for the other one because the later is a very, very real thing with geeks. "you changed it now it sucks" and "thats not how it really happened" (in a fictional universe)
lary wilmore explains (Bleeped out explative: also apologies, the 1 minute breakup was the only format i could find it on, starts at the third minute)
TLDW: Nerds don't have a problem with black people. They have a problem with change. if you the first time you give a nerd oatmeal with maple syrup it better have maple syrup in it EVERY time or it's not oatmeal.
this does create a huge problem with comics though.
(Paraphrasing from "Our gods wear spandex) The reason that comic stories are so good is sturgeons law, + there's so. So. many comic stories. To make a movie you need a few million dollars of cash on hand and a production crew. A comic book writer/artist can break your heart with a piece of paper and a number 2 pencil. comics have 100 years of stories about white guys to draw from, and pull the nuggets out of the dross. Women and minorities.. not so much.
You can try to come up with a minority original concept.. but 90% of those are going to be bad. Not just because no one knows how to write for women or minorities but because 90% of everything is bad. Handing a working character over is going to come with some backlash. Waiting is going to lose a generation at least. (if print comics are still even a thing after that). No answer is going to be perfect. Let the nerds grumble, it's a hobby in its own right.
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I have to aclare that I'm not complaining about characters that represent minorities are dull and bland, but about most of the most recent aditions are. And that's what I think that the problem is. They are not rejecting the minorities. They are rejecting boring characters.
And instead of writers trying to give further developement to this characters they just forget about them and bring more new dull characters. As you have mentioned, a lot of characters started being plain. Wolverine was just a Hulk baddie. Magneto was a regular badass. But they developed them.
I'm totally OK with bringing new characters to scene, specially when the old ones are overused. But I don't find most of the new characters appealing.
I like X-23 a lot, i.e. and her concept is a crossgendered Wolverine. But she's much more than that. She is a complex character with a good backstory. That's what new characters need.
I pay more attention to the concept, personality, background of a character than to his ethnicity, sex or orientation. I like to see representation of many collectives on media, but if the concept isn't good, they won't stick.
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It doesn't help when the response to those two (seperate but overlapping) groups is to treat them the same and accuse them both of racism/sexism.
Well, you may have seen that I included myself into the one group but not in the other. And while I would never consider myself a sexist or a racist, I certainly consider myself as a fan, with all the positives and all the negatives that come with the term.
What I accuse both groups, though, is a certain narrow-mindedness regarding change. I think we can agree about that.
What I disagree is that comment about 90% being bad, because no one knows how to write for women or minorities. The problem might just be that those people who know aren't allowed into the sacred halls of comic writing. Because that 100 years of stories have been about white guys has a lot to do with the fact that those have mostly been written by white guys.
In the meantime, we have great female writers like last years Eisner award winner Marjorie Liu, we have Jim Lee, we have Te-Nahisi Coates (and more9, so it's not as if there were no talent that gets it. You have people like Alex Alonso and Sana Amanat in responsible positions who probably, from their own experience, know more about everyday racism and sexism than I'll ever do.
So I don't see 90% bad in Marvel's work. I certainly don't like everything they are doing, I have my favorite and less-favorite writers and artists like everyone else and I really think that they should change parts of their general strategy regarding comics. But to reach out to new possible groups of readers can never be a bad thing, and there's still enough of the old heroes around for those who don't like change.
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I don't think Marvel's comics sales are tanking because their fans are all racist/sexist/whatever and I think it's unfair to open with that claim.
Genre fandom simply doesn't like having new things forced on them. Unless you've got the rare breakout hit, appreciation for new characters has to build over time. I think the biggest mistake Marvel made after Secret Wars was introducing new characters at the expense of the traditional favorites en mass. You're not going to force readers to read your new content by killing off/retiring all their favorite characters - you're just going to drive them away.
Personally, I'm very slow to warm to characters. I wasn't terribly interested in any of the ANAD characters and my long time favorite character's reboot, while decently written, suffered a complete personality rewrite to the point where I no longer recognize him. As a result I cancelled my Marvel Unlimited sub and stopped buying single issues in the Marvel app. As a customer, the Marvel reboot was a complete failure for me.
If your response to them swapping out your favorite white male with another white male is "I hate it when they change my favorite character!"
And
Your response to them swapping out your favorite white male with someone who is not a white male is "I hate when they try to shoehorn in diversity!"
Then
You're probably a racist.
Absolutely not.
If something keeps getting your characters* replaced, and it keeps doing it badly. Keeps leading to hackneyed , trite, nonsensical decisions that come from on high and don't fit the story (Captain america, Agent of hydra anyone?) that thing runs a serious risk of picking up a negative reputation. Comics need more diversity, and that need may lead to more shoehorning than a replacement would otherwise get.
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Well, that's a trend that's been going on for a long time now. Might be more formalized with the emphasis on trade paperbacks, but self-contained single issue stories haven't been the norm in decades. Maybe the 70s? Though there were longer story arcs then as well. Nor are basically single issue stories a thing of the past. If anything I'd say this is a long term trend. It also applies to both major companies and thus isn't likely related to sales differences between them.
Actually, single issues were still pretty regular up into the late 80s/early 90s. I've got plenty in my collection. The most you saw were two or three part stories. I think the trend that started earlier was having long-term, over-arching stories that might take months or years to build up.
The truly sucktastic (for me anyway) part was that many titles became all (or nearly all) multi-part stories, all the time. One of the main contributors to that was Legends of the Dark Knight. Not that it was a bad thing at the time. Hell, it was awesome. I just think the industry went too far with it.
And, yes, there's still single issue stuff to be found. One of the best examples of that was Fables from DC (Vertigo). Not only did that series have some great one-shots, they occasionally had issues with a single story on a single page. The current run of Flash has had one or two issue stories, filling in the space between bigger stories.
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Jane "Thor" Forster......Captain Sam Wilson America
While I don't collect Thor, I did always think the route they took to the Jane Thor was pretty cool and made sense. And Sam Wilson taking over as Cap made prefect sense to me, better than when they had Bucky take over.
There's been other good examples of that. The aforementioned, of course. Same with Wally taking over for Barry as Flash after Crisis. And when Dick took over as Batman. And when Rhodes took over as Iron Man.
I would say Green Lantern was a mixed bag, if only because when they had Kyle take over, he had a great run, but prior to him there had already been other human GLs. That's where they mess up with GL, though. Too many from one planet at the same time.
I haven't been following it, but what does Captain Hydra have to do with diversity?
The entire storyline is a "take that" to the fans that didn't like the changes, effectively calling them nazi's for not liking the new directions.
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I never liked Thor so losing the original Thor for Jane Foster Thor didn't affect me much but I understand the complaints from those that were unhappy with the change. They didn't just kill off original Thor, they kept him around to humiliate him. Now he's on some silly quest for redemption which, if I were a fan of Thor, would be way worse than just killing him off.
I would say Green Lantern was a mixed bag, if only because when they had Kyle take over, he had a great run, but prior to him there had already been other human GLs. That's where they mess up with GL, though. Too many from one planet at the same time.
GL kind of makes sense since they are a police force. There is room for multiple ring slingers but I have to admit 6 from Earth (now 7 if we count Hunter) when previously there was none is pushing things a little.
That said I like Jessica, and I'm kind of warming up to Simon now that he has gotten rid of the gun. But then neither of them are replacing anyone, all the other GLs are still around and doing their own things. As a reuslt we have two books; this one has our rookies dealing with things on Earth and the other has our Vets dealing with big cosmic issues.
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GL kind of makes sense since they are a police force. There is room for multiple ring slingers but I have to admit 6 from Earth (now 7 if we count Hunter) when previously there was none is pushing things a little.
Considering how often the earth gets invaded (for some reason) it's just proactive community policing.
I actually kinda like Jane Foster as Thor. It's a pretty interesting take on her character.
Spider Gwen is also sorta good.
I don't like Miles as Spiderman.
I dislike most Inhumans (even some of them are not exactly new).
But I have to admit that many times the issue is not just with the characters being bland, but the whole stories lacking a lot of depth. That's why I think it doesn't have anything to do with diversity but with poor stories.
I don't want to compare with older comics because they had the same issues before (and before there was so much diversity). Poor written stories have always been a thing and people react poorly to them.
Paizo also includes a lot of different characters, and there's always someone who complains about diversity but public overall reacts better to these characters. Why? Because they are interesting. Their stories are well developed.
It's not diversity what people is rejecting from Marvel, IMHO, but uninteresting characters and storylines.
Twisting previous characters just because you need a character to fit a role in a story is only good if the twist is made in a way that could fit the character.
That's a problem specially when different authors write the same characters. Coherence is lost.
And there are some authors, like Bendis, who don't even seem to know what coherence is and twist the characters at their will.
Again, another big issue that hasn't anything to do with diversity.
To me, the trouble with Marvel is that they have a lot of different issues but instead of realizing they have gone the easy way and stated that they are not selling enough because readers dislike diversity.
There will always be racist or sexist people who really do, but I think that the public overall doesn't.
Look dude, if you want to call me sexist, don't beat around the bush and just say it. That said, the point of the matter isn't that girl power is bad. The point is it's bad when you twist previous characters so it can fit with it. As you said, yes, Odin's been an arrogant jerk, but not a sexist. Hence why it annoys some people. Not because they hate empowered women or whatever but because they're character assassinating a character to one degree or another.]Complaining about "gurl power" is another good way to show how unprejudiced you are.
I never found the writing on Thor awful and I don't think it's dramatically improved. The writer was continuing his successful run writing the male version.
The "unsolicited opinions on Israel" thing wasn't him or in Thor, it was in Angela. I can't really comment further since I didn't actually read in in context.
As for Odin being sexist? He's certainly playing Odin up as an antagonist for Thor, which is a long standing tradition. I'm not sure the "sexist" is emphasized as much as the "arrogant jerk" part.
Painting the guy who created an entire cadre of valkyries for whom he gives the authority to judge whether someone is valiant enough to join him in valhalla as sexist and dismissive of strong women is kind of ...eh.
I don't want to call you sexist. I don't know you. I find that particular comment suggestive.
What he's complaining about is that there's a trope that women in fiction inevitably face someone telling them they can't do something because they're a girl.* Odin being changed to be that person, when he's more than dabbled in the magical equivilant of knitting, could be read as character derailment for the sake of plot.
Or you can call them sexist without saying it outright, have them give you the proverbial (and possibly literal) bird, and make it harder if not impossible to have a discussion past that point.
*how this works in a world of comics physics where the physical body is only adding 100 pounds of lifting capacity to someone that can pick up a planet i have no idea.
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I just want to take this time to thank Grey for doing this. I totally love the exchanges and points made here. So let's keep it civil and honest folks.
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That's some pretty terrible writing imo.
As in some of the worst. It's about as bad as Emma Frost going to the dark side because of the death of her boyfriend. The torture and murder of her students somehow did not but the death of Cyclops did. No wonder Marvel lost sales.
I have never seen a villian go "I'm being attacked by a female superhero. Feminist ruin everything" at least until now. (Facepalm, double facepalm). I can't see why fans would be unhappy with the writing nope not at all.
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The entire storyline is a "take that" to the fans that didn't like the changes, effectively calling them nazi's for not liking the new directions.
That's really the way you read it? Instead of what it really is, namely a biting political comment about the social and political realities in the U.S. and other parts of the world in 2017? I don't think that this is about the fans at all. The fact of the matter is that the values of democracy, liberty and freedom are on the defense in a lot of countries, that once held those values high (not to speak of other countries).
You know, as a German, when I learned about Cap America, I initially didn't like him too much, because to me, he seemed to be the personification of the allegedly good America fighting all the big bad Nazis and Communists in the rest of the world (and what annoyed me most whas that it seemed as if germans still were mainly depicted as Nazis 40 years after the fact). As I learned more about him, I started to really like him because I undertood that he was used as defender of the american values even against his own countrymen if necessary (Civil War being a prime example).
So I really, really don't like it at all that he gets nowadays used as the posterboy for all what's wrong in the modern world. But that doesn't change the fact that the things that get critizised in the comics are worth being critizised. namely sexism and racism.
Because, and that's a point where I don't want to be misunderstood: There is no good reason against diversity, whether it's gender, racial or social diversity. There's only sexist, racial and (i guess associal) reason.
So if you don't want to be called sexist or racist, then you'd better not mix those issues with your dislike of the storyline's quality.
Oh, and by the way, Tarik (edit: and, I guess, memorax), those are not examples of appallingly bad writing. Those are examples of what the writers have to daily deal with from so-called fans and other idiots who can't stand Thor being impersoned by a woman. You can actually read this Bs everywhere in commentaries on Marvel going for more diversity.
So this is just Marvel showing those "fans" the middle finger. And I applaud them for that.