Missed Opportunities

[Hybrid]

Dark Reign was a big event and status quo where the main villain was Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin, after he rose from Spider-Man villain to big bad of the Marvel Universe in a role not unlike Lex Luthor in the Post-Crisis. While this was interesting, the finale was the standard "Avengers suit up and defeat the bad guy", when this could've been an event that climatically ended with a final confrontation between two eternal enemies. If Spider-Man had defeated him in the end, it would make perfect sense. Instead, all he did was shut him up with a punch during one of his monologues, but that was after he already lost.

In fact, for all of how Dark Reign elevated Osborn to this big bad villain outside Spidey's smaller corner, it's rather disappointing that Spidey himself remained in that corner the whole time. The elevation of Osborn did not elevate Peter in a way they could've done it. Kind of a missed opportunity.

[Digifiend]

Spider-Men II: The Ultimate universe is back, but just as an epilogue: Miles does not return to it (not even just for that specific story and then back). All the questions caused by Miles being transferred from one universe to the other were still there and did not get any reasonable answer. It's not even a story set in it. It introduced the 616 and adult Miles Morales, but both Miles never really interact with each other and he's away at the end of the story.

At least Saladin Ahmed is now addressing that.

[Michael Watkins]

if they had to do it, sure would have been more effective to bring the Ultimate Nick Fury to the current universe than create Marcus Johnson. just saying.

[Digifiend]

In hindsight yes - but Marcus was created a while before Secret Wars, so there was no plans to axe Ultimate at the time.

[Winterboy]

As the title suggests, I want this thread to be about what we feel were missed opportunities in stories. No matter how good/bad the stories were, this is all just personal opinion.

I’ll start with Secret Invasion.

This was a HUGE chance for Marvel, to explain/rectify retcons and almost give Marvel a soft reboot if they needed to. We could have real, BIG impacts as we realised characters we have been following for some time aren’t who they say the are. It could have solved a lot of issues of dead characters returning/staying dead. Instead we got...Elektra? And that was about it. And even then she was taken at an unexplained time.

Secret Invasion, definitely.

Bendis built a very good "Skrull occupation" story that could be developed for years but instead of a interesting thriller / drama, he solved everything in a big fight.

A meticulously planned alien invasion defeated by Norman Osborn.

norman osborn.jpg

[Tony Stark]

Dark Reign was a big event and status quo where the main villain was Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin, after he rose from Spider-Man villain to big bad of the Marvel Universe in a role not unlike Lex Luthor in the Post-Crisis. While this was interesting, the finale was the standard "Avengers suit up and defeat the bad guy", when this could've been an event that climatically ended with a final confrontation between two eternal enemies. If Spider-Man had defeated him in the end, it would make perfect sense. Instead, all he did was shut him up with a punch during one of his monologues, but that was after he already lost.

In fact, for all of how Dark Reign elevated Osborn to this big bad villain outside Spidey's smaller corner, it's rather disappointing that Spidey himself remained in that corner the whole time. The elevation of Osborn did not elevate Peter in a way they could've done it. Kind of a missed opportunity.

But to me it was great that it wasn't Peter that finished Osborn off. Been there done that. Osborn had risen above being just Peter's arch nemesis. For the Avengers to do it showed just how big of a threat Norman had become.

[The_Last_Czarnian]

The Sentry mini from 2018. Potential development launched out of the window for Scourge.

[Huntsman Spider]

Dark Reign was a big event and status quo where the main villain was Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin, after he rose from Spider-Man villain to big bad of the Marvel Universe in a role not unlike Lex Luthor in the Post-Crisis. While this was interesting, the finale was the standard "Avengers suit up and defeat the bad guy", when this could've been an event that climatically ended with a final confrontation between two eternal enemies. If Spider-Man had defeated him in the end, it would make perfect sense. Instead, all he did was shut him up with a punch during one of his monologues, but that was after he already lost.

In fact, for all of how Dark Reign elevated Osborn to this big bad villain outside Spidey's smaller corner, it's rather disappointing that Spidey himself remained in that corner the whole time. The elevation of Osborn did not elevate Peter in a way they could've done it. Kind of a missed opportunity.

But to me it was great that it wasn't Peter that finished Osborn off. Been there done that. Osborn had risen above being just Peter's arch nemesis. For the Avengers to do it showed just how big of a threat Norman had become.

Fair enough, elevating Osborn to an Avengers-level nemesis was a great feat, but at the same time, keeping Spider-Man on the sidelines instead of taking the lead in bringing the fight to Osborn was a disappointment. However, it does speak to the dramatic irony that while Spider-Man is the biggest, most popular and profitable solo hero Marvel has in its roster, the character in-universe is generally treated as a second-stringer at best by his fellow heroes, maybe because he's too busy trying to keep his own life in some semblance of sanity and order to bother with superhero politics unless he gets dragged into it somehow by the plot. That said, Ends of the Earth was another such instance of Spider-Man's enemies being promoted to Avengers-level threats, but that didn't stop Spider-Man from being the one to ultimately take on and defeat them even if he had the Avengers assemble to assist him (and said the words, "Avengers, Assemble!"). Of course, Ends of the Earth was explicitly a Spider-Man story at the end of the day, so that probably factored into it, but still.

[Hybrid]

This is a core difference between Spider-Man and Batman. The real world popularity of Spider-Man never influences the narrative of where Spidey stands in the world. He’s just another hero, not an icon of his own. Doctor Doom’s main beef is with the FF, and following that is his plot for world conquest that puts him at odds with other big teams and heroes. Whenever he meets Spider-Man, he views him as some D-lister not worth his time. In most events that aren’t Spider-based that he appears in, he’s a minor character. I think the most important was Civil War, where he was a supporting character but far from a main one.

Batman on the other hand has become “that guy” of DC, because his popularity means that he’ll be the center of the DC Universe. He’s often a driving force, even for stories that should be way above his weight class. Batman is DC to lot of people in real life, and in-universe as well.

It’s a mixed bag in my opinion. I would like to see Spider-Man be more important especially since elements of his lore have been important before. I think the Parker Industries arc, if handled by a better writer could have been a much longer lasting shift and well earned, but it wasn’t handled well and thus was reverted fast. It would be cool to see a big event or Spiderman saves the world. But we’re unlikely to see that Because Spider-Man is defined as a “street level” hero even if that tag is a bit of a spotty title.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, look at Crisis on Infinite Earths. Batman, Nightwing, Robin, and Batgirl pretty much sat it out. The Earth-2 Robin and Huntress were KIA. Why aren't their modern events like that?

Though Marvel has done similar things. The current Avengers arc is set in space. Black Panther is with them... but can't do much. Black Widow would be even more useless, if she didn't have an Iron Man suit (called War Widow) - handy, since they've lost Iron Man.

[Grapeweasel]

The one thing you couldn't do with Secret Invasion was have Reed slap together a device in 5 minutes that revealed which characters were really Skrulls.

So naturally........

[JKtheMac]

For me, the Secret Wars reboot should have precipitated a far bolder new dawn for the entire line. It presented the opportunity to be radical with canon. Because the universe was reconstructed and incorporated 1610 elements the writers had the perfect excuse to look back at awkward canon and wipe it out. What needed to happen was the smarter writers sitting down together to work out the perfect, logical rehash of canon. Nothing radical, just a realignment. A tidy up if you will.

Instead the whole line, post event, was given too much space by having a gap between it and the start of most (but not all) books, which inevitably led to a continuity mess which just got ignored. Only three or four of the books really acknowledged Secret Wars having changed things, and if you weren’t reading books like Ms Marvel, Black Panther, or The Ultimates you could be forgiven for thinking Secret Wars never happened in canon.

The biggest problem was that editorial took the opportunity to over-hype the Avengers line. Creating multiple books to try and refocus the universe on that franchise. Financially this probably made sense, but story wise it felt arbitrary and artificial. Talking of artificial the X-Line leant into the controversy around Inhumans supposedly taking over their space and created an entirely cynical war between fans before mostly abandoning just about all of their apparent plans once they realised it hadn’t really worked and they could potentially ruin some key IP in the X-Franchise. Spider-Man had huge potential to explore the ramifications of suddenly having two of them but instead both stories stayed mostly separate and the Spider-Men II event only served to muddy the waters by appearing to revive the 1610 despite that not making any logical or canonical sense, leading to more confusion about the canonical stance of Secret Wars.

Overall the golden opportunity was wasted by editors taking their eye off of the ball and focusing on the wrong things, and not giving a clear enough direction to their writers. I think they imagined the writers would magically sort it all out for them. They didn’t.

[Digifiend]

The one thing you couldn't do with Secret Invasion was have Reed slap together a device in 5 minutes that revealed which characters were really Skrulls.

So naturally........

They didn't need a device, there was already someone who actually had that ability in their powerset... 3-D Man, formerly Triathlon of the Avengers, who is nowadays one of the (old) Agents of Atlas. Unfortunately, he wound up killing a superhero, Crusader, who was a Skrull, but actually loyal to Earth.

[Hybrid]

For me, the Secret Wars reboot should have precipitated a far bolder new dawn for the entire line. It presented the opportunity to be radical with canon. Because the universe was reconstructed and incorporated 1610 elements the writers had the perfect excuse to look back at awkward canon and wipe it out. What needed to happen was the smarter writers sitting down together to work out the perfect, logical rehash of canon. Nothing radical, just a realignment. A tidy up if you will.

Instead the whole line, post event, was given too much space by having a gap between it and the start of most (but not all) books, which inevitably led to a continuity mess which just got ignored. Only three or four of the books really acknowledged Secret Wars having changed things, and if you weren’t reading books like Ms Marvel, Black Panther, or The Ultimates you could be forgiven for thinking Secret Wars never happened in canon.

The biggest problem was that editorial took the opportunity to over-hype the Avengers line. Creating multiple books to try and refocus the universe on that franchise. Financially this probably made sense, but story wise it felt arbitrary and artificial. Talking of artificial the X-Line leant into the controversy around Inhumans supposedly taking over their space and created an entirely cynical war between fans before mostly abandoning just about all of their apparent plans once they realised it hadn’t really worked and they could potentially ruin some key IP in the X-Franchise. Spider-Man had huge potential to explore the ramifications of suddenly having two of them but instead both stories stayed mostly separate and the Spider-Men II event only served to muddy the waters by appearing to revive the 1610 despite that not making any logical or canonical sense, leading to more confusion about the canonical stance of Secret Wars.

Overall the golden opportunity was wasted by editors taking their eye off of the ball and focusing on the wrong things, and not giving a clear enough direction to their writers. I think they imagined the writers would magically sort it all out for them. They didn’t.

Yeah, they could've used it to quietly change and retcon things that don't quite fit, and better clean up the continuity, without going full reboot. For example, I'd have Psylocke always be Asian, and instead was Brian adopted sibling. It's a weird situation where Psylocke had all these racial politics from the body swap, but yet was still cooler and more popular as the Asian ninja. Just retcon it to have always been the case.

This was a golden opportunity to introduce new ideas, and help make the timelime of Marvel make full sense, without starting from square one (I don't see them doing that like DC because it didn't even work for DC, and Marvel is too interconnected for it).

All it really did was transplant Miles Morales and his cast into the 616 universe. Anything else was easily missed.

[Michael Watkins]

In hindsight yes - but Marcus was created a while before Secret Wars, so there was no plans to axe Ultimate at the time.

for no reason at all. there wasn't a need for him. they had already gone through the trouble of introducing Daisy Johnson and established her as original Nick's replacement. and Ultimate Nick had already been displaced into the squadron supreme universe. so there was that for precedence. they clearly wanted to use a Fury that looked like Samuel L Jackson. so why not just do that?