I posted this on the Escapist--where I got to step back into a time machine and have a discussion about Mantles vs. Egos:
As far as I'm concerned, comicbooks are only one peg away from gaming (above or below is anyone's guess) in terms of consumer culture. The difference in this instance is the ease with which hipsters are able to apply their intellectual siege tactics upon an institution long since established prior to their conception. We've already observed the trend of more or less talentless individuals occupying positions of critical punditry over a series of industrial producers. Sarkeesian, Quinn, Alexander, Portnow, Kuchera, etc. hold, for one reason or another, a disproportionate amount of influence over how games portray certain topics, and have become gatekeepers of the market. As such, it would be, and has been, incredibly easy for them to hijack the narrative attached to their adopted market association, telling us what games are and are not, and effectively pressuring developers to direct their craft in one direction or another. Because they have degrees in English and Liberal Arts and belong to a peer group of commentators that are paid to shadow gaming studios, the actual product consumers are in even less of a position to argue with their conclusions than the developers. The fact that they're able to essentially materialize positions of credibility on the basis that they're paid to write about these things--and thus be referred to as "professionals"--is a veritable magic trick. And that is exactly how they compare to comicbook authors.
The reality here is that authors for mainstream comics are glorified journalists that report on and analyze ideas they neither created nor had the capacity to create. In essence, if it weren't for the artists giving form to these ideas and putting a face to the dialogue, the writer would lose relevance (this, of course, is unique to graphic novels). Despite this fact, they are still considered to be largely infallible by token of their assignment to the character. As such, it doesn't matter that whatever they write may or may not be simpatico with the aggregation of character developments that came before him or her. It also doesn't matter that the authorial agenda may be more concerned with pushing a sociopolitical narrative than with portraying a given character. All that really matters is that he or she is credentialed and paid as a comic author and is, therefore, considered to be more relevant to the character than the readers. In which case, it is made that much easier for these set of journalists to hijack the narrative in the comic realm than the gaming realm.
I'm sure gaming journalists envy comic journalists their more advantageous position. That being said, comic journalists (writers) are most certainly apart of the fraternity that composes the entire SJW network, which includes Sarkeesian and friends. So both markets certainly act as repeaters for one another.
Readers weren't 'phased out'. No one is forcing people to stop buying comics. I've been collecting comics for over 20 years and I still enjoy them today. The writers today may be taking the characters in a different direction, but tbh I like seeing new takes on characters every now and then, lest they become stale and we get the same thing rehashed over and over. The idea that you are upset with something like the xmen being a vehicle for social messages is down right baffling, since it's been pretty much that way since their inception.
When you consistently adopt writing and editorial formats that run counter to the general tastes of the consumer, you are removing his incentive to continue reading, leaving whoever is left to buy the book over time. You don't need to force anyone to do anything to remove them from the equation (except for Chuck Dixon and Dwayne McDuffie of course--may he rest in peace).
The issue here has never been different "takes" on characters. They were outright forsaking conventions in the name of enforcing the "inclusiveness" abstraction. For Marvel, it's things like changing Thor's sex and Nick Fury's race among a vast number of other issues. And in the case of X-men, the book used to be an allegory for the affects of discrimination until it became a boring tome obsessed with tokenism. It's one thing to talk about social issues without making the monthly a poster child for your pet controversy.
I was a regular patron for the Batman monthlies until Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, et al. launched a very calculated campaign to change him from an ego into a symbol so they could force him to be more social, reveal his identity to everyone, and more easily slap the logo on a bunch of minorities and homosexuals (see also: Batman Inc., Batwoman). No one ever totally bought the idea that Batman is a mantle rather than an individual, but Dan Didio knows that being seen as socially enlightened is more favorable than making a profit in this political climate. They pulled the exact same nonsense with The Question, effectively killing him off and replacing him with Montoya--another character who, herself, is a victim who of tokenistic identity politics.
Edit: reading back, it looks like Thor is trapped in "mantle" hell as well. So Thor was never really Thor? He just had the Power of Thor because of the hammer? And you're trying to defend retcons like this?
Apparently, more people are pissed off about this than Marvel probably anticipated (no that it's necessarily going to change much). However, the panels themselves are obviously ways to invalidate criticism: double down on the move by giving the villain the lines that question the propriety of the change (epic American History X maneuver) and then give it street cred with the foreseeable proponents by conflating it with a movements that's been labeled by the SJW crowd as "misogynist".
