seriousfic

Except that, if DC's decisions were actually based on consulting a marketing expert, then as seriousfic already pointed out, the front-and-center versions of Green Lantern and the Atom would be John Stewart and Ryan Choi, since that's who most 18-34 males know from the Justice League and Brave and the Bold cartoons, which means that the whole "18-34 males" thing is (just as it is in advertising and movies and TV shows) nothing more than a cop-out which allows the middle-aged males running the show to continue making media that appeals to their own tastes exclusively. Most 18-34 males actually have much broader tastes than the old white guys making this shit, and in cases where they don't support female-centric media, it's often because that female-centric media is such condescending bullshit that even many women consider it unforgivably misogynistic (Twilight, Sex in the City, etc.). By contrast, My Little Pony (of all things) has cultivated such a crossover fandom that even the virulent homophobes of 4chan have become "bronies." Quite seriously, if you can't manage to make superheroes cater equally to both genders, without alienating one or the other, when fucking MY LITTLE PONY can do it, you're too goddamned dumb to deserve to even a fraction of the big bucks that the people in charge of these franchises are earning to premise over their ever-shrinking audiences. Then again, speaking as someone who works in the media, the vast majority of media executives are nothing more than Peter-principled subhuman sacks of shit anyway, so there's that.

The old ways of doing things are NOT WORKING, and the people who are in charge of this mess are RESPONSIBLE for the fact that it is a sea of inexcusable failure. These really aren't debatable points.