It wasn't the #1 target, rather it was the Belgium of mediums. They wanted movies, TV, and ultimately video games. The soft underbelly of entertainment where a wink and a smile from 5/10 made fat nerds hand over the keys to the castle.
Not so sure comics were some kind of top priority for destruction as much as they were just a piece of the pop culture puzzle that needed to fall in line with the rest of the media's shift towards idpol and social justice retardation. Granted it's an even more important piece than it was 10 years ago since Hollywood has been strip mining comics for ideas in earnest since 2012.
It wasn't them alone, but instead a series of bad decisions over course of decades. Comics have been circling the drain for a long time, and people were ringing alarm bells even in late 80s and early 90s before implosion became obvious. Most of these bad decisions were made in pursuit of short term profits at the expense of everything else. People hired in last decade and a half certainly accelerated the decline, maybe even to a level nearing 90s situation. This time we do not have as many good indie comics, but at least quality foreign imports are plentiful.
The left is not trying to demoralize america by making capeshit woke. Culture is downstream from politics. SJWs are right that historically comic creators have leaned progressive to a-political. Many characters/series may have "right wing elements" but the number of consistently right wing comic creators is pretty small in the grand scheme of things (Steve Ditko, Dave Sim, Frank Miller, Chuck Dixon). The issue has never been politics but bad writing. Alan Moore is the second best comic writer regardless of what you think about his politics. Corporate comics have been going down the shitter since the 80s with trite, event driven melodrama. Any badly written political commentary is down stream from just bad writing. Comicsgate's issues with comics seem to be that they want to be fed the same slop they were fed for decades. Wake me up when EVS and his buddies instead of making shit like cyberfrog make actually quality content like From Hell, Cerebus, or a Contract with God. Bonafide Graphic Novels made when a prominent creator broke off from the big two.
Comics is the dorly guy who would date the ugly and deranged chick out of desperation.
I don't think comics were ever the number one target, just a side effect. The number one targets were the media and education system. Because of this all mainstream news stories, books, articles, are now more likely to have a progressive agenda and/or focus on women, minorities, LGBTQ+ etc. The old "ripped from the headlines" style of writing for TV, movies, and even comics will be packed with these issues as a result. But not every consumer is going to give a damn and this leads people who are fleeing these politics in comics and other entertainment right into the arms of grifting anti-SJW YouTubers. A lot of their predictions are wishful thinking, hopium like Doomcock's Star Wars rumors that never pan out. Impending doom is a story that sells, great clickbait to get the marks in the door to milk superchats or sell product. But in reality Marvel and DC publishing going completely defunct any time soon is kind of bullshit. Even IDW is still around despite years of videos about their imminent demise. I'll believe it when it happens.
Just wait till Warcampaign starts spamming Trudeau with rainbow dildos. That'll show him.
Marvel and DC will never go defunct because they’re not real businesses, they’re the worldly incarnation of valuable IP. Disney and WB don’t EXPECT them to make money, and total comic book market is such a drop in the bucket compared to Disney/WB’s actual business ventures that even if they lost all of the money used to make comics, it would still be worth it to keep them around.
But... but... but... They'd doing Shang Chi. Morbius. Craptain Marvel. They're doing also-rans, because they ran themselves out of the valuable characters, and they were such a success that they kind of laid the foundation of their own demise. You can't really re-cast Tony Stark, or Thor, or any of these guys who are/will age out. So they're digging deeper into Marvel lore and hitting the sewage lines.
Probably Dave Sim he is an utter loon but has an ear for dialog and an complete commitment to creative freedom.
Marvel ain’t done with well-known characters yet, they have at least another decade to milk out of the X-men once they’re inevitably brought into the MCU.
When Marvel will eventually ditch the MCU because it's more bombs than hits at one point, nothing will stop them from rebooting and re-imagining everything, but I agree we'll probably see a multiverse reboot attempt first.
Hard No!
Almost all of these can be summed up as plot vs story. If you go into Cerebus wanting a series of defined events and foreword momentum where the story closes to a period after the bad guy is gone. A key motif of Cerebus is Cerebus the character's desire for happiness putting him in conflict with the main narrative demanding he do things. Its a satire of traditional heroic tales where the central hero is utterly ignorant of everything going on around him and a passive actor rather then an active one. Writing for the trade is an entirely neutral thing. Dave Sim pulls it off as he can actually fill the spaces with interesting stuff vs modern comics where its filler fights and bad dialog punctuated by fight scenes. One of my major issues with Tom King's writing is that he seems to choose 12 issue minis, and since Tom King is working for DC he has to fill the books with content that is reader/corporate friendly rather then really go to interesting places.
