Team titles offer the most obvious opportunity for publishers to increase diversity in their output. Both publishers lean heavily on their biggest characters to sell their team books, but the same books offer a chance to build an audience for new or lesser characters. This is the technique Brian Michael Bendis used to great effect to elevate the African-American character Luke Cage and other favorite characters in the Marvel Universe. Team books allow publishers to bridge a gap. On the one hand they can satisfy readers who want to see Batman and Wolverine; on the other they can introduce readers to characters they might learn to love. In effect the current audience underwrites the R&D for new or minor characters that may appeal to audiences that want to see themselves represented.

This strategy seems so self-evident that it frustrates me that it’s so often squandered. I accept that solo books with female leads have proven a hard sell for a male-dominated audience, but I don’t see why any team book with seven members should ever have only one or two women. I understand why Cap, Iron Man, Wolverine and Spidey need to magically appear on multiple teams at once in addition to their own books, but I don’t understand why all those other white people need to be there. I don’t understand why Monica Rambeau isn’t on any team at all.

The answer that editors, creators and some fans typically give to these questions about diversity is that story comes first. Story is what matters. Good stories are the most important thing.

But that’s a red herring, and such a pious one that it might be a holy mackerel. There is no binary choice between “good story” and “better representation.” The “good story” line is popular nonsense. One might as plausibly defend bad spelling by saying “we put story first.” No one has suggested that diversity should come at the expense of story, and there is no tension between those expectations. Story should come first, but, “a better reflection of the diversity of the world wherever possible” should be somewhere on the same checklist.