Gwen, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. She came from a world very similar to the real one, where all superheroes were comic books—so in a sense, she was actually a transmigrator. She believed she understood everything about the comic book world.
But precisely because of that, she had a deeper and more genuine understanding than Deadpool of the "popularity theory" in comics: it was not only unpopular characters who died.
The more audiences liked a character, the more that character was featured, and the more comics could be sold. So perhaps only the fans of less popular characters would accuse comic companies of being overly commercialized.
But that was not the case at all. Fans of nearly every character complained, and the more popular the character, the more viciously their fans complained. The more popular a character was, the more value had to be squeezed out of them. Comic companies relied on those popular characters to make money.
No matter how popular a character was, no one would keep buying the same story forever. But the traits that could be explored in a character were limited. For example, you could not write Superman working out, The Flash going for a morning run, or Batman performing fast-paced comic dialogue—scenes that conflicted with their established traits. There was only so much you could write.
Yet to keep those characters appearing in comics and making money, they had to come up with outrageous stories, using absurdity as a selling point to lure fans in and make them pay.
They would even draw whatever bizarre thing came to mind, whatever grabbed attention, just to meet deadlines and hit projected sales figures. They completely disregarded the character's original setup and relied on spectacle to boost sales.
If a character's popularity was too