Proposal: Marvel Returns (soft reboot/line-wide relaunch of Marvel Comics)

[Somecrazyaussie]

I am in my mid-twenties so naturally I was not a Marvel reader in 80s. However I have read many comics from past eras and even though they are not my childhood nostalgia, I love both Silver Age and Bronze Age comics. With this I can personally say that Jim Shooter era has the best line of comics Marvel have ever published and not because I have read those comics when I was younger. So without nostalgia factor in play, you can long for to see that quality in today's comics I guess. There were so many great writers and artists who were doing regular work for Marvel at that time.

On the other hand, I don't think Marvel's line of comics in such a bad state right now. Since Cebulski took the helm we started to read better comics. I really feel like Axel Alonso was the problem, by the time he left most of the talented creators were already gone and editors were just not doing their job. I think we read some stories on writers and artists do not want to work under Axel Alonso which are confirming this. Marvel lost their creative staff when Alonso was in charge. When you don't have the talent to make good comics whatever your driving agenda is you will publish bad comics. Since Alonso is fired however, some talented names are back in working for Marvel and there are also new successful names who are doing their first Marvel jobs. On top of that most creators are assigned to the projects where they can shine. Of course there are some series that can be much better. Do I want to read better Avengers or Fantastic Four stories? Hell yes, but you can't expect the whole line to be on the same quality, even though Jim Shooter kinda did that

Jim Shooter did have the greatest number of successes under his reign (behind Stan of course). But he did rule with a bit of a iron fist according to some. So much so that a number of writers held a massive celebration once he was ousted. I like Shooters era because that was when the Marvel universe was interconnected the most. Nothing happened to a character that wasn't referenced elsewhere in the line. He also made sure books were on time and imposed strict deadlines as a result. Not sure if it was him or Defalco, but one of them implemented the practice of having "back up" stories kept tucked away. If a book looked like it was going to be late, one was pulled out and used.

Alonso wasn't a bad editor. But his best work was when he was a editor over at Vertigo. Most of the stuff done at the imprint between 95 - 2000 had him involved. Although I think those successes might have been because of Karen Berger as well. At Marvel he was the editor for Amazing and X-Men. Where Alonso went wrong was in replacing so many characters at once. Which I think he did more as a creative statement (also a knee-jerk reaction to complaints Marvel wasn't "hip" or "inclusive" enough).

C.B hasn't been too bad so far. Where he shines is that he has a good eye for talent. Plus he champions obscure characters that would likely have never been seen again. The only reason we got that Darkhawk and Sleepwalker mini a year or two ago is because he loves those characters. It is also why New Warriors is getting a new series.

[Somecrazyaussie]

As a black man, I appreciate a lot of what I've seen from Marvel, these past few years. I love seeing more minority heroes be given all this attention. I love the push to properly represent other cultures. I love that Marvel wants to be as inclusive as possible (and I'll never understand why inclusivity is considered some kind of "political agenda" as if there should be anything political about wanting equal representation).

Being inclusive and having characters from different ethnic groups or LGBTQ is a great thing. It shouldn't be frowned upon because comics should be for everyone. The issue comes when it becomes the sole focal point. Even though it isn't comics related, the character of Bill in Doctor Who is an example of what I am talking about. Bill was a lesbian. Nothing wrong with that. But in almost every episode she was in there was mention of it. Either by her or someone else. It was constantly shoved in the audience faces.

One thing I will agree with is that making Wanda and Pietro Inhumans (or whatever the hell they are now), as well as that entire "Inhumans are the new Mutants" push, was one of the dumbest things Marvel's ever done. And you would not hear me complaining if those couple of years were retconned away. But that's about it. As a whole, I'm perfectly fine with how Marvel is right now. A few stinkers here and there but I'll take the state of things with them over the crushing disappointment I've felt with DC for years.

Wanda and Pietro were retconned from being mutants in order to facilitate them being in Avengers 2. Now, Marvel and Fox had the rights to use them in their respective franchises. Marvel just couldn't refer to them as "mutants" as they didn't have those rights at the time (they do now with the Fox acquisition). So it was easier to retcon it away for the purpose of "synergy". Marvel are free now to either stay the course or proceed to retcon the retcon (Which I hope they do). If it was me, I would make Magda a carrier of the inhuman gene. Thus making Wanda and Pietro a inhuman/mutant by restoring Magneto as their father. Which would explain why the High Evolutionary was interested in them. They represent a perfect melding of both genes.

The Inhuman push was done for similar reasons. If you can't use mutants, you use the closest thing you have to them: the Inhumans. It is why the terrigen cloud was released and a swath of new characters were created who happened to be inhumans. Then you have the fact Ike Perlmutter has a weird, obsessive fascination with them and made it a mission to push them at Marvel. It has been reported that Ike was against Captain Marvel getting a film (he hated her and felt nobody would watch a film with her in it) and only allowed it to go ahead if Kevin Feige did a Inhumans movie. Kevin agreed. But, instead of a movie, he gave them a series. We all know how that turned out.

The Inhumans work best when there is only a handful of them. Apart from Kamala, the only Inhumans remotely interesting are the royal family. That's just my opinion.

[Ferro]

Lame idea. Marvel has some of the best books It's done in ages, such as Immortal Hulk and X-Men. Both very exciting and full of fresh ideas. Now, let's just reboot everything and come up with ideas 30 year old. LOL.

yup yup, marvel has actual shining jewels on its crown nowadays, not just writers with big names with big promotions and crossovers that have great number 1 sales then flounder because its just not a good book, we gotta continue on this path not reverse it, also I heard spider man, daredevil are good and agents of atlas has had a pretty good growth as a more diverse propriety.


also its interesting how there's unspoken alliance betwen x-men-immortal hulk since most apreciate the other.

[Somecrazyaussie]

yup yup, marvel has actual shining jewels on its crown nowadays, not just writers with big names with big promotions and crossovers that have great number 1 sales then flounder because its just not a good book, we gotta continue on this path not reverse it, also I heard spider man, daredevil are good and agents of atlas has had a pretty good growth as a more diverse propriety.


also its interesting how there's unspoken alliance betwen x-men-immortal hulk since most apreciate the other.

Their line is the strongest it has been in years. Immortal Hulk is the obvious success story at the moment. A book that is a critical hit with both fans and reviewers. It has actually pulled off the incredible feat of bucking the usual atrophy experienced across the industry by gaining readership month to month. Daredevil has been consistently strong for 20 years odd years and Zdarsky is continuing the traditional. Amazing is a return to solid writing and characterization. Spencer has managed to unify the fan base after years of derision. Slott is finally on a title that he was born to write (F4). Cates is doing resounding work on Venom and Thor. The x-men are strong across most of the titles.

[Ferro]

Every nostalgia driven story in these past years (or even entire runs), have been, for a lack of a better term, complete peeepeepoopoo pants, because guess what! it's not a good story direction to just repeat past events witout any inovation or instrospection to apeal to a demographic that won't be pleased either way.

[jackolover]

Coronavirus will only come up in a historical context. The sliding timescale means having characters suffer from it would date the stories.

There’s been plenty of dated stories in the past. I don’t see Covid-19 references being an issue.

[jackolover]

Since we are dealing with comics-I would bypass that issue for the time being.

It's not required that it has to be covered.

Because if you cover that-folks are going to want George Floyd covered.

And we already know what faction is going to throw a fit about if Marvel does.


To brutally HONEST-I don't TRUST Marvel editorial staff to handle it properly-either case.

I don't want to hear white heroes preach.

I don't want to see Wakandans dying in droves just to appease the Unfans.

I don't want covid-19 to be used like Heroes in Crisis was-get rid of who you don't care for.

I don't want to see POC or LGBTQ sit in the background. A LOT of them need to go off. From Asian flu to praising cops killing black folks-it's past time for many of them to go off.

But we know Marvel won't do that. You know give folks a REAL reason to be mad.

All good points, especially the last part. There is an elephant in the room when discussing the whitish part of Marvel comics history that can’t be easily identified, because, as is mentioned in another post, the old Aunt trying to be inclusive of everyone. But I’m cool if some of these issues are brought up. I know Stan Lee didn’t shy away from them in his day. We shouldn’t today.

I saw that movie on McCarthyism in 1953, how it used media to shut everyone up, like Twitter is doing today. Very similar.

[Frobisher]

Wow, opening post is basically “reboot Marvel comics as #alllivesmatter”.

[Username taken]

Lame idea. Marvel has some of the best books It's done in ages, such as Immortal Hulk and X-Men. Both very exciting and full of fresh ideas. Now, let's just reboot everything and come up with ideas 30 year old. LOL.

Quoted for truth.

Throw in titles like Venom and you wonder what exactly is the problem. The comics are pretty good right now, why try and take things back to a more boring status quo?

[Superfly Frankenstein]

In the event thread I made, I proposed a soft reboot and relaunch akin to DC Rebirth to revitalize the Marvel Comics brand in what is likely their last chance to stay alive. Well, I've put more thought into it, and here's what I propose for such a thing if it were to become real. I think DC Rebirth was their best move in the '10s, and it's a shame that they failed and ended up in a worse place than the New 52. But even still, Rebirth was great while it lasted, so let's capture that and hope to keep the magic.

The proposal:

Marvel Returns

Marvel Returns is a line-wide relaunch and a soft reboot of the Marvel Comics brand. The goal is not to hard reset the continuity from zero, but to bring back everything that's loved about Marvel Comics. The basic premise is that some kind of time fluctuation (explored in a later story) altered recent history. The last eight real world years of Marvel Comics have been rewritten to be a continuation of what came before it, and the original 2012-2020 era is jettisoned off into an alternate timeline. This allows Marvel to pick what works, change what can improve, and scrap what needs to be scrapped. It's all connected to the pre-2012 continuity, still 616, but the effects and ramifications are explored in later comics and there's some meta commentary on the state of what Marvel Comics became (like Ms. Marvel Carol looking in disgust and sheer horror at the sight of Captain Marvel Carol).

The name has a double meaning. The first is that it's based on the iconic storyline Heroes Return, which was about the undoing of Heroes Reborn, making it an apt comparison. It also means that Marvel, the real Marvel, is back with a vengeance and ready to right all the wrongs of the last eight years, and make the brand better than ever. No more fooling around.

Like with DC Rebirth, there's a unifying Marvel Returns banner on the comics, from floppies to trades, to spread the message of what they're doing. Content is rolled out in Waves after certain periods of time, building off of past success.

General Changes

• Completely revamped creative talent. Many experienced creators from the past rejoin, and bring their skills to the task. Many promising newcomers are hired from sources that aren't Twitter fan art. The driving factor for hiring is not "woman writes woman", "black writes black", "gay writes gay" etc. but rather "how good they are as a creator", the way it should be.
• Emphasis on on good, well-written, agenda-free stories with good art and a hard ban on any Tumblr-esque style. Politics should be handled like '80s Marvel, not like '10s, ie more nuance and mixed in with quality storytelling and other influences besides being disgruntled with the real world and projecting it on the reader.
• Characters are restored to their classic characterizations and personalities. Examples below.
• No events for at least a year, preferably at least 18 months and longer, so as to actually allow a status quo to be set.
• Experiment with new characters, and by that I mean actually new characters, the kind you would see Marvel experiment in the '80s at their creative height, NOT lazy token diversity swaps. I had ideas for characters before, which I will share below to show you later, proving that you can come up with cool new heroes if you put your mind to it. Not even that hard, I've spent 20 minutes thinking of the ones below, and will spend maybe an hour or two typing it. It may sound like me flexing creative muscles, but there's a reason for it: Marvel is known as the House of Ideas. They need to rebuild that house by coming up with cool new ideas. I'll demonstrate how that can be done.
• Related to the above, bring back the classic title Marvel Premiere, which is an anthology that's about telling 2-3 issue stories with these characters as an introduction. If received well enough, they get the greenlight for an ongoing, which further integrates them into the world by having them interact with established characters while taking part in different stories. Sounds reasonable to me, and would be a great way to engage with your customers while adding something new and exciting for a change.
• Overall, it's darker and edgier. I don't mean that in the '90s "dark age" sense, but more like the '80s sort of way mixing idealism with cynicism in proper measure. No pulling punches, basically. Oh, speaking of which...
• In general, the '80s is a big influence. That was the golden era of creativity and storytelling, and that's what should be looked at as a blueprint. A balance is struck between fun superheroes and mature writing, there's a very tight continuity maintained so that everything that happens has an effect and there's synergy across the titles (make sure you get good editors!), new heroes that people would likely want to read about are introduced, you have actual creative teams on a run, and not swapped-out artists, events are contained, more diverse and experimental genre content, actual story progression... you get the idea. Really, just go through this list and try to do as much of that as you can.

Specific Changes

• Carol Danvers is now Ms. Marvel again with the iconic sexy look, with her genuinely flawed but much more likable personality.
• Same with Spider-Woman, She-Hulk, Psylocke and so on.
• Falcon never becomes Cap, X-23 doesn't become Wolverine, Amadeus Cho remains a brainy nerd but doesn't become Hulk. Their characters instead develop naturally.
• Miles Morales exists but has an all new identity and is written more like ITSV and PS4
• Same with Kamala Khan who is also given more depth as a character and less emphasis on her religion/race.
• Wolverine is now an R-rated action hero as a comic book character, like he should be.
• Spider-Man is portrayed like his better stories and not like in Dan Slott's run.
• Iceman is no longer forcibly made gay after decades of being straight.
• The Fantastic Four are the greatest team of the setting and treated as such.
• Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are now mutants and Magneto's children again.
• Jane Foster remains a civilian and never becomes Thor.
• X-Men are now back in Westchester.
• Other characters like Riri Williams, America Chavez, and a lot of the Champions are put on the backburner and HEAVILY reinvented if reintroduced. Characters like the New New Warriors and Children of the Atom no longer exist.

Wave One

Wave One features most of the flagship titles, with some lesser-known but well-liked additions.

Spider-Man:

1. The Amazing Spider-Man
2. Marvel Team-Up
3. Venom

Fantastic Four:

1. Main Title
2. Marvel Two-in-One

X-Men:

1. Uncanny X-Men
2. X-Force
3. New Mutants
4. Wolverine

The Avengers:

1. Main Title
2. Iron Man
3. Captain America
4. The Mighty Thor
5. Ms. Marvel (starring Carol Danvers)
6. She-Hulk
7. Hawkeye

Teams:

1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. Thunderbolts

Solos:

1. Daredevil
2. Deadpool
3. Doctor Strange
4. The Incredible Hulk
5. Marvel Premiere
6. Nova (starring Richard Rider)
7. The Punisher

Wave Two

A second wave of new content, a lot of the more more lesser-known properties with the idea of reintroducing them to new readers. Also, a subsection called "The New Heroes", which is six new ongoings about the heroes introduced in Marvel Premiere in Wave One.

X-Men:

1. Alpha Flight
2. Cable
3. Excalibur
4. Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde's first ongoing)
5. X-Factor

The Avengers:

1. Black Panther
2. Black Widow
3. Spider-Woman
4. War Machine
5. West Coast Avengers (an actual, proper relaunch of the classic this time)
6. Young Avengers

Teams:

1. Defenders (a return to being Marvel's non-team)
2. Invaders
3. New Warriors (a PROPER version of this, as an edgy but fun series, taking after Fabian Nicieza's run!)
4. Power Pack
5. Runaways

Solos:

1. Alias: Jessica Jones
2. Cloak & Dagger
3. Moon Knight
4. Power Man & Iron Fist

The New Heroes:

1. Action Five
2. Gremlin
3. The Pretender
4. Quantum & Jynx
5. Suppressor
6. Warbird

After thinking about this and typing it out, I realize it may not be perfect. A lot of people might be happy, but some will be mad and complain. You can't please everyone, but you can make the best decision for your business that pleases the most people. It's fine to like the new stuff Marvel was putting out, but it's also fact that many hated it, and this had caused sales to nosedive each year. There is simply no way you can argue that the new direction was good from a business standpoint, and all that reached a breaking point with New New Warriors right when COVID struck. That said, if you have any criticism, genuine criticism, please share. I'd love to discuss comics with other passionate minds who want to see Marvel recover.

Thanks.

I like it.

[Superfly Frankenstein]

Wow, opening post is basically “reboot Marvel comics as #alllivesmatter”.

But, doesn’t all lives matter?

[FreshGuy]

Sorry I know you've put a lot of work into this but no I think this would be horrible. I love the modern era of comics and I don't want to see it removed and I disagree with all of your specific changes apart from Wanda and Pietro becoming mutants again.

[CrimsonEchidna]

Yeah, that's going to be a hard pass from me.

[Raye]

Oh wow. Just no. Absolutely not.

Neverminding the specifics for a moment, this sort of reset is something I hate. (unless it is something being built toward from the beginning of a story, like Secret Empire, or Superior Spider-Man where undoing the character change was obviously part of the plan from the start) One of the reasons I prefer Marvel, is because they've never reset. I still get frustrated when the 'illusion of change' pops up and resets a character here and there, but at least it's not wholesale, and some characters have escaped that and been allowed to develop. (this is a large part of the reason I have been on the Loki, hell, Asgard in general, bandwagon for the past 10 years or so. The books seem to be very much about moving forward in new directions, and I like that. I'm all for the big shakeup and new roles in Asgard right now.) Always forward, never backward, is the way I like it, just on general principle. Even if a story is bad, it's still possible to move forward from it in interesting ways rather than trying to erase it from existence.

And the specifics, also no. So regressive and just... cringey. In addition to being just boring and vanilla. You say you want Marvel to be the House of Ideas again, and to do actual story progression, while tossing out a bunch of new ideas and story progression to revert to some generic vanilla status quo.

Also, personally, I have very much liked modern Marvel, and seem to like most of the things you want undone. I like Carol as Captain Marvel, I like how Ms Marvel focuses on her family and culture/faith, I like Iceman being gay, I liked Falcap, (and Secret Empire, since they were related) I was glad they took a lot of their women characters out of glorified swimsuits as costumes, America Chavez is one of my favorite characters, (though I did not care for her solo) I liked Jane as Thor, (and like her as Valkyrie now) and am loving Hickman's X-Men on Krakoa. I mean, I think they're a cult, I think it's doomed to go up in flames, and possibly have that corner of things reset with Mora's 11th life, probably after she enacts her real grand plan, and she needs to be stopped, but it sure is interesting while it lasts. So yeah, you are proposing tossing out a bunch of stuff i like.

[CrimsonEchidna]

And let's be real, in light of stuff like the Captain Marvel movie, Into the Spider-Verse, Kamala's upcoming appearances in the Avengers games and her Disney+ series. They're not going to put those genies back in their bottles just to appease a couple of fanboys crying online.