The Perlmutter explanation is too simplistic. Where the fuck has he been for the last 4-5 years? It's tough to rationalize why he would all of a sudden care about anti-Trump content now. I don't think he's "trying to get fired" either. Who knows what's going on in his head, but he's always wanted power and control on a corporate level. I don't think he wants to get fired, if that would even be possible. He doesn't want "was fired" on his resume or in his biography.
Maybe he's trying to justify getting other people fired? If they keep rebelling against normal demands to not call the president "Hitler" all the time.
But that would presuppose that the recent "terrible chilling anti-free speech" measures are even his decision. I think maybe the decision is coming from higher up than Ike, or is coming from some trustee or corporate board in general.
Or these handful of decisions could just be isolated coincidences. Normal editors wouldn't want contemporary acrimonious political stuff in anniversary issues or in history books for the general public. It could just be a coincidence. Every now and then even Marvel editors do act like normal professionals.
It's just hard for me to imagine that IF Ike cared about this kind of stuff, then why would he let his house be totally infested by radical activist leftists in the first place? It's just hard for me to imagine that at age 70 or whatever he was a clueless innocent baby who thought Sana Amanat was just a "nice sweet person", that Tom Brevoort was a rational person, that Ta-Nahesi Coates was benign, etc. But now all of a sudden at age 76 he suddenly wakes up and wants to clamp down on leftist content in Marvel publications, after hiring all those shitbags.
I just don't fucking get it at all, but "blame Ike" is too easy. Just the fact that SJW minions are blaming him makes me think that there's something bigger at play and the leftists are using Ike as a scapegoat because the alternative would be to realize that perhaps a wider corporate environment is just turning against them finally, at least for now, on the surface? I could be totally wrong.
It took Marvel three months to respond to Black Panther's theatrical success. The BP books that were out when the movie released were all ponderous shit about gentrification or trash books that looked like they were drawn by eight year olds. When the books were rebooted in May (BP came out in February), instead of using the familiar setting of Wakanda that film audiences were familiar with, they put Black Panther in space and had him fighting black aliens.
Eh, Coates' first Black Panther series had already been out by then and, like it or not (I don't like it), the initial collections sold very, very, very well (by Marvel standards) through book channel markets.
I don't know what it is with Marvel, and there is definitely room for improvement, but somehow it seems like no matter what they do there are precious few crossovers from moviegoers to comic readers.
Guardians of the Galaxy completely cratered in sales during the years when the GOTG movies were flying high. The characters were more prominent than ever, but the comics sold worse than they did under Abnett and Lanning a decade ago.
Then again, GOTG had a reboot a year before the movie came out, just like Black Panther had a new #1 a year before the movie. And those new reboot #1s sold like 200,000-350,000 copies. Of course it was all hype and padded numbers, but Marvel COULD get those kinds of orders (if not exactly "sales") a year PRIOR to hit movies. But once the movies actually come out, once the properties are established as mainstream pop culture juggernauts? No one wants the comics. Some of that has to do with the fairly lackluster content of the contemporary comics, but not everything is down to that.
You say Coates' second Black Panter series was better than his first? Okay, but the second series starts in space ffs. Hard to see how "Black Panther in space" is better synergy... And for what it's worth the Bendis GOTG comics at least had pretty great art for the most part. They cratered in sales, and the Duggan run was better in terms of writing but sold even worse. It's like there's just no way for the comics to win at this point. The whole system is broken.
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