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On March 30, a battered Marvel decided to try and get to the bottom of the problem with a retailer summit — and promptly stuck its foot in its mouth. “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity,” David Gabriel, the company’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, told an interviewer at the summit. “They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not ... We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core...

a-Nehisi Coates, the celebrated public intellectual, faced a setback in his attempt to introduce racial diversity to the world of comic books when Marvel announced that Black Panther & The Crew, which Coates had been writing with Yona Harvey, would be canceled after six issues. Only two issues have been published thus far; The Verge, which first reported the news, said Coates cited “poor sales” as the reason for the cancellation.

In Indonesia, 212 is the number used to denote a specific mass protest from 2nd December last year. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims marched against the Christian governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, over allegations of blasphemy regarding his use of the Qu’ran in campaigning against opponents. The march was organised, in part, with the National Movement to Safeguard the Indonesian Ulema Council’s Fatwa. It was pretty hardline conservative and the protest demanded the government prosecute and jail Ahok based on the council’s fatwa, declaring him to be a blasphemer.

For a lot of comics fans, Marvel just isn't what it used to be. While the comic line that gave us Thor, Captain America, The Hulk, and the X-Men has often been tinged with a bit of politics -- for example, discrimination against mutants is common in the Marvel universe -- recent comics from the company have been overwhelmingly political, and always politically left. Many fans have been less than appreciative. Luckily, it now seems those days are over:

The latest issue of Marvel Comics’ Captain America: Sam Wilson features writer Nick Spencer taking jabs at campus social justice warriors (SJWs). Which seems quite, well, odd given Spencer’s far-left politics and hatred for all things conservative/Republican. As confirmation, readers and fans on Twitter and elsewhere couldn’t figure out whether to take the writer’s latest creation, the “Bombshells,” seriously or not. The Bombshells show up at a college to thwart an appearance by what Heat Street’s Ian Miles Cheong calls an amalgam of right-wing provocateurs Lauren Southern and Milo Yiannopoulos (although the woman’s name is Ariella Conner which indicates to...

Marvel Studios' "Doctor Strange" is expected to draw a massive audience this weekend, providing some much needed medicine for Hollywood during a bruising fall box office season. Analysts expect the visually stylish Benedict Cumberbatch comic book movie to collect $65 million to $75 million in ticket sales from the United States and Canada through Sunday. Some more optimistic industry observers predict the film, about a former neurosurgeon who harnesses mystical powers, may reach $80 million in domestic grosses... "Doctor Strange is a C-level Marvel character, and the fact that you can pull an $80-million debut is ludicrous when you think...

Marvel Comics has once again taken aim at Donald Trump, this time by making him the arch-villain in a new issue of Spiderman spinoff series Spider-Gwen. In Spider-Gwen Annual #1 — which centers on an alternate universe in which Peter Parker’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacey, was the one bitten by a radioactive spider — the villainous Modok bears more than a striking resemblance to the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. In the new comic, Modok is now M.O.D.A.A.K. (Mental Organism Designed as America’s King), a giant-headed villain who plans to rule the world. “If America will not act… M.O.D.A.A.K. must!” the character...

On the same day that supporters of Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump were viciously attacked by a violent Democrat-supporting mob, Politico chose to highlight artwork depicting violence against Trump himself by a would-be Bernie Sanders as Captain America. In an article exhibiting the Sanders-related artwork of grassroots artists, Politico chose the image of Bernie/Captain American punching Trump/Hitler as among “the best art that has been inspired by Bernie’s unlikely and dogged quest for the presidency.”

Vanity Fair has weighed in on the blockbuster movie “Captain America: Civil War” to lament the hero’s “heterosexual virility.” Marvel Studios and Disney’s latest installment wowed audiences in North America to the tune of $181 million last weekend, but Vanity Fair writer Joanna Robinson left the theater disappointed. Her reason: Chris Evans’ character, super soldier Captain America, got nostalgic for his “skirt-chasing” days with best friend “Bucky” Barnes. Robinson said directors Joe and Anthony Russo should not have said fans may “interpret the relationship [with Bucky] however they want to interpret it” since the character explicitly makes clear his attraction...

Ta-Nehisi Coates can be identified in many ways: as a national correspondent for The Atlantic, as an author and, as of this month, as a nominee for the National Book Award’s nonfiction prize. But Mr. Coates also has a not-so-secret identity, as evidenced by some of his Atlantic blog posts and his Twitter feed: Marvel Comics superfan. So it seems only natural that Marvel has asked Mr. Coates to take on a new Black Panther series set to begin next spring. Writing for that comics publisher is a childhood dream that, despite the seeming incongruity, came about thanks to his...

When I was a young boy, I and Julio—not the one from down by the school yard, but the illegal Guatemalan refugee who lived with us for a while—used to enjoy watching “Wonder Woman” together. I enjoyed seeing a superhero dish out justice. Julio’s motivations may have been a tad different. We are talking Lynda Carter’s incarnation, after all. Of course, this was problematic, and not for the reasons laid out here. Wonder Woman, while a woman, was ostensibly a straight woman. At least I think she was. Again, I was seven years old. But Julio, despite his limited understanding...

Legendary X-Men character Bobby Drake, aka Iceman, is set to come out of the closet in a new issue of the “All-New X-Men” comic book series. In issue #40 of the comic book series, which features the superhero group’s travel back in time, Iceman admits to fellow superhero Jean Grey that he is gay after Grey tells him she can read his thoughts, according to ABC News.

These numbers remind us of the extent to which the continued Jewish commitment to the Democratic Party has become an anomaly. All the other ethno-religious groups that, like the Jews, formed part of the coalition forged by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s have followed the rule that increasing prosperity generally leads to an increasing identification with the Republican Party. But not the Jews. As the late Jewish scholar Milton Himmelfarb said in the 1950s: "Jews earn like Episcopalians"—then the most prosperous minority group in America—"and vote like Puerto Ricans," who were then the poorest. Jews also remain far more...

Predictably, the UK’s far-Left Guardian is thrilled that authoritarian thugs defaced Pamela Geller’s AFDI ads calling attention to Islamic Jew-hatred in San Francisco buses. They either do not realize or do not care that once the principle is established that an unpopular group’s freedom of speech can be forcibly silenced, it can be turned on them: one day they may be in the group that is out of favor, and then they will regret the position they took against the freedom of speech. But at that point it will be too late. Anyway, as these Leftist goons applaud the extinguishing...

Like thunder, the news reverberated far and wide when Marvel Comics released it in July, the same week the Disney-owned comics publisher announced a black Captain America: Thor, formerly the brawny, bearded god of thunder, would now be a woman. The change has left many thunderstruck since the new character was unveiled on "The View." "Thor is a chick," Tucker Carlson declared disapprovingly Sept. 21 on "Fox News Sunday."

JULY 19, 2014 A Thor Subject The comics industry grapples with attracting women readers. By Jim Geraghty The surprises came in a trio: First, Marvel Comics announced that the character of Thor, based upon the Norse God of Thunder, would become a woman. The second surprise was the venue in which the switch was announced — ABC’s feminine-minded daytime talk show The View — but perhaps that was predictable, considering that Marvel and ABC Television are both owned by Disney. But the third, and biggest, surprise is that anyone thought this was a good idea. “This is not She-Thor,” senior...

<p>‘as time goes on, weirdly, I’m growing less liberal. I’m more like, ‘No, religion is ruining the world, you need to stop!’.</p>

Kamala Khan isn’t your average New Jersey teenager battling a cultural identity crisis. She has superpowers. And she’s here to smash the stereotype of young Muslim-American women.Marvel has a comic book superhero named Kamala Khan, a Muslim teen from New Jersey. This idea is refreshing. It’s important. It reminds me of the late ‘60s film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. That was a revolutionary story about interracial marriage in America at a time when it was taboo. Like that film, Kamala will shatter taboos, too. Ms. Marvel (Kamala’s alter ego) will open the eyes of a new generation of comic...

By any honest measurement Barack Hussein Obama has been a dismal failure as a President. Few if any Presidents have been given as much power in their first term as Obama and done so little. In fact for two years he had an unassailable super majority in congress and still his administration has been unable to do something as simple as craft a budget much less control runaway unemployment, a crippling deficit, and the terrorist overthrow of the middle east. While contemplating how anyone could do much worse than Obama, it came to me: Obama is such a failure that...

The role was initially supposed to go to Mads Mikkelsen, but with the Danish star unavailable thanks to his leading role on TV's Hannibal, word is now out that Christopher Eccleston has been tapped to take on the part of Malekith The Accursed in the upcoming Thor 2. The leader of the Dark Elves of Svartalfheim, Malekith is one of Thor's major opponents in the comic books and it would appear the part is in good hands with Eccleston. Though most known recently for his stint as Doctor Who, Eccelston has a long, long list of stellar performances in intense...