All of it. Captain Marvel isn't really as popular as Marvel and other people think. Her book has been relaunched multiple times over the past few years and regularly settles to numbers which have gotten other, better series cancelled. Marvel are pushing her for no other reason than they're desperate for their own Wonder Woman and most of their better female characters' movie rights belong to other studios.
She is the very definition of a superhero on a team with other superheroes. She's basically an elite level gymnast trained in multiple forms of martial arts and combat, and in the comics she's actually genetically enhanced too with slower aging, faster healing and resistance to disease. If she isn't then neither is Hawkeye which you've used as an example above, or Batman, Robin etc. for that matter.
Gonna need the receipts on the "small minority" of fans calling for a Fury or Widow music.
For some reason I ended up missing this post entirely, so apologies for the last response.
In regards to your post contesting the popularity of Captain Marvel in comparison to Black Widow, I turned to the internet to dig you up some receipts.
I went to the sales in March of this year, when Black Widow's most recent book was apparently still around.
Black Widow hit the charts at
135, selling a reported
17,720 copies.
In comparison,
Mighty Captain Marvel reached the charts at
82, selling a reported
28,649 copies.
So those are your receipts. I hope you find them satisfactory, Sir. When it comes to comparing the popularity of those characters, there's not much more evidence I can really offer outside of sales figures, otherwise I'd just be relying on my own personal perspective.
In regards to your second point, I wasn't actually aware that Black Widow had undergone some manner of genetic enhancements in the comics, so if that's still the case, I would certainly be happy to revise my classification of her being a superhero. Although, just to stray on this point a little longer...I've always been someone who has a slightly more strict defintion of superheroes than other people. The dictionary definition defines a superhero as "a benevolent fictional character with superhuman powers, like Superman". That's always pretty much been my view of the term too, even leading me to regard equally prevalent comic book characters such as Batman or The Punisher more as vigilantes as opposed to fully fledged superheroes in their own right. However, like you say...if Black Widow has undergone some genetic enhancements, she would certainly seem to comfortably fall under that label. So I cheerfully recind my quibbles about that.
Thirdly, in regards to the Falcon and Nick Fury spin-offs, I recall around the time that Winter Solider came out, it was something that a handful of fans were talking about, to the point where
Kevin Feige had to step up and confirm that no such projects were in the works (even though a Nick Fury script has actually been in the works at Marvel for the longest time). Like I said though, I think it was a very small portion of fans who wanted those spin-offs, and the demand for them definitely seems to have fizzled out over time.