What is the most Important and Impactful Marvel Female Story Arc

[CosmiComic]

For Carol they wanted their "Wonder Woman" equivalent - a lead female superhero. Carol was the best option for this at the time because most of their other female heroes had too much baggage, too associated with a male hero or team, or movie rights were owned by FOX at the time.
In order to do this Carol had to change quite a bit and they pushed her consistently even when selling badly. This naturally led to pushback from people, both fans and not.

I agree that they should get writers to elevate other female heroes, but the wants of fans don't always align with companies. Sadly, Marvel might not see the need to do that with other female heroes especially when they finally have Carol succeeding. Because a lot these women would need pushed similar to Carols for things to stick and that takes a lot of time and effort.

I understand rights issues complicate matters, but what bugs me is this "one above all" attitude towards female heroes. There's no reason she can't be promoted alongside Scarlet Witch, Wasp, Spider-Woman and Monica Rambeau, just on the Avengers side alone, except apathy or indifference towards superheroines. If Marvel succeeded with Carol, they can do the same with other women.

[CosmiComic]

The truth is that the system is rigged.

You look at Iron Man, a second-string hero who has a lousy supporting cast, lousy rogues gallery, and never a top-seller and yet they kept him continuously in print barring I think a small period in the 90s and until he lucked out with RDJ in the movies, he was never a prominent part of the Marvel Franchise and even after the movies his comics do not sell anywhere near the top.

They gave Iron Man second chance after second chance after second chance because he's a white playboy male hero the kind of character marketing always thinks the demographic exists for. But a female hero, never gets the same courtesy or support. It's only in the last decade where the situation is changing where Carol Danvers and Black Panther are given that institutional support and safety net that they extended to Iron Man, so the titles aren't top-selling but since comics is basically a boutique business for Disney and not really a profit-making thing, they can do these kinds of belated stunts.

While I don't disagree with your general assertion, Iron Man was an A-lister and prominent Avenger in the comics. He just wasn't as well known outside of the comics. He didn't sell at Spider-Man levels but no one does. I wouldn't even say his supporting cast is bad, but his villains are lame.

However, I agree that the system is rigged against heroes who aren't White males.

The sad part is that you show signs of Marvel history where female-centered comics like Claremont's X-Men in the late-70s and 80s, at a time when comics readership meant something (as opposed to now), did great and that never enters the conversation. Storm was the first African-American leader of a superhero team and her team was the #1 comics in the world but no Bob Harras and Liefeld and others wanted X-Men to be about Cyclops and others in the mansion or whatever. When Roger Stern tried to follow suit with Rambeau in the Avengers, Mark Gruenwald (who people are getting sentimental over lately) vetoed him and drove him out of the books, and later Rambeau had to lose her Captain Marvel title and the fact that the first woman to be Captain Marvel was African-American was forgotten.

Ugh, the X-men thing bugs me the most because of how it pretends to be about civil rights and minorities but doesn't always respect actual minorities. And Monica Rambeau was a leader too but as has been pointed out in other posts, that doesn't get as much attention as "women going crazy from power"

[GenericUsername]

While I don't disagree with your general assertion, Iron Man was an A-lister and prominent Avenger in the comics. He just wasn't as well known outside of the comics. He didn't sell at Spider-Man levels but no one does. I wouldn't even say his supporting cast is bad, but his villains are lame.

However, I agree that the system is rigged against heroes who aren't White males.



Ugh, the X-men thing bugs me the most because of how it pretends to be about civil rights and minorities but doesn't always respect actual minorities. And Monica Rambeau was a leader too but as has been pointed out in other posts, that doesn't get as much attention as "women going crazy from power"

Iron Man comics struggled for a lot of years. He was not an A-lister really. He did have solos, but was no Wolverine or Spider-man by far. That changed far later on. And now he's A-list.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

While I don't disagree with your general assertion, Iron Man was an A-lister and prominent Avenger in the comics. He just wasn't as well known outside of the comics. He didn't sell at Spider-Man levels but no one does.

Iron Man didn't sell at Spider-Man levels, or X-Men levels, or even Frank Miller Daredevil levels, or Walt Simonson's The Mighty Thor levels, or Lee-Kirby Fantastic Four levels.

So bringing Spider-Man into the mix is disingenuous. Until RDJ, Iron Man was a fair bit away from well-known non-Spider-Man solo heroes -- Daredevil, The Punisher, Captain America were ahead of him. Iron Man's had some notable stories - "Demon in the Bottle, Armor Wars" but he has never had a run on his title or a single story as great as Miller's Daredevil, Simonson's Thor, or a story on the level of say, Triumph and Torment, The Surtur Saga, Under Siege and so on.

And yet they've kept him in print.

However, I agree that the system is rigged against heroes who aren't White males.

The whole 'Voting with your Wallet" is nothing but lies. Because some votes count for more than others.

Iron Man comics struggled for a lot of years. He was not an A-lister really. He did have solos, but was no Wolverine or Spider-man by far. That changed far later on. And now he's A-list.

RDJ's Iron Man is A-List, but not Iron Man the Franchise or Iron Man the comics character by any means. Iron Man comics haven't seen any sales rise since the movies. Aside from Fraction/Larocca there hasn't been any notable run on the comics over the last decade. His villains still suck and his supporting cast is still meh. You can't make RDJ two-dimensional and distill him into panels and words, nor Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper neither.

[GenericUsername]

Iron Man didn't sell at Spider-Man levels, or X-Men levels, or even Frank Miller Daredevil levels, or Walt Simonson's The Mighty Thor levels, or Lee-Kirby Fantastic Four levels.

So bringing Spider-Man into the mix is disingenuous. Until RDJ, Iron Man was a fair bit away from well-known non-Spider-Man solo heroes -- Daredevil, The Punisher, Captain America were ahead of him. Iron Man's had some notable stories - "Demon in the Bottle, Armor Wars" but he has never had a run on his title or a single story as great as Miller's Daredevil, Simonson's Thor, or a story on the level of say, Triumph and Torment, The Surtur Saga, Under Siege and so on.

And yet they've kept him in print.



The whole 'Voting with your Wallet" is nothing but lies. Because some votes count for more than others.



RDJ's Iron Man is A-List, but not Iron Man the Franchise or Iron Man the comics character by any means. Iron Man comics haven't seen any sales rise since the movies. Aside from Fraction/Larocca there hasn't been any notable run on the comics over the last decade. His villains still suck and his supporting cast is still meh. You can't make RDJ two-dimensional and distill him into panels and words, nor Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper neither.

Yeah that's probably the best take on what has happened with the character.

[Crimz]

I think the conversation may be deviating from the intended topic. Maybe make a separate thread? There's a lot to talk about Marvel's treatment of their female heroes.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I think the conversation may be deviating from the intended topic. Maybe make a separate thread? There's a lot to talk about Marvel's treatment of their female heroes.

The fact is if we are talking about Most Important and Impactful Marvel Female Story Arcs it's worth pointing out:
-- The Phoenix and Dark Phoenix Saga
-- The Death of Gwen Stacy
-- Captain Marvel losing powers to Rogue
-- The Elektra Saga
-- Wasp becoming leader of the Avengers.

All of them were far more impactful than any solo Iron Man story arc.

Which is more famous
-- "Demon in the bottle" or the "Death of Gwen Stacy"?
-- Armor Wars doesn't even begin to compare to The Phoenix and Dark Phoenix Saga.

No Iron Man story event is memorialized in Kurt Busiek's MARVELS, Tony Stark was a no-show in SECRET WARS 1984 whereas Rambeau Captain Marvel and Rhodey Iron Man were featured in that immensely selling story arc. Until CIVIL WAR, aka "the event that had everyone take a dive so Iron Man can get a win", Stark was never at the center of any important Marvel story.

So rather than getting involved in a circular firing squad, the point is to assert that female characters have proven their worth more than company pets like Iron Man and yet never get the respect due to them.

[Castle]

Iron Man didn't sell at Spider-Man levels, or X-Men levels, or even Frank Miller Daredevil levels, or Walt Simonson's The Mighty Thor levels, or Lee-Kirby Fantastic Four levels.

So bringing Spider-Man into the mix is disingenuous. Until RDJ, Iron Man was a fair bit away from well-known non-Spider-Man solo heroes -- Daredevil, The Punisher, Captain America were ahead of him. Iron Man's had some notable stories - "Demon in the Bottle, Armor Wars" but he has never had a run on his title or a single story as great as Miller's Daredevil, Simonson's Thor, or a story on the level of say, Triumph and Torment, The Surtur Saga, Under Siege and so on.

And yet they've kept him in print.



The whole 'Voting with your Wallet" is nothing but lies. Because some votes count for more than others.



RDJ's Iron Man is A-List, but not Iron Man the Franchise or Iron Man the comics character by any means. Iron Man comics haven't seen any sales rise since the movies. Aside from Fraction/Larocca there hasn't been any notable run on the comics over the last decade. His villains still suck and his supporting cast is still meh. You can't make RDJ two-dimensional and distill him into panels and words, nor Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper neither.

Iron Man comics struggled for a lot of years. He was not an A-lister really. He did have solos, but was no Wolverine or Spider-man by far. That changed far later on. And now he's A-list.

While I don't want to stray too much from the topic with Iron Man but the blame here falls of Disney and Feige.

Regardless of Iron Man's world been not good enough , When his movie hit big, Marvel and later Disney could have done more. he could have gotten a great cartoon, a good video game, novels and none of these things had to connect to the MCU. Marvel could have just built him a rich universe in 2008 till present.


what helped Spiderman and X-MEN with their universe been so big, vast and large is due to the fact that they had stories beyond their comics. Disney just contained everything iron man to MCU related, which never made sense to me because earlier back then I could have sworn Disney Marvel wanted Iron Man to be their Batman , rich guys with parent issues, who uses their gadgets to stop bad guys. Batman and Iron had a lot in common.

However I dont recall many comic fans liking Batman based only for their love of the Nolan movies or Burton Movies. Iron Man may not have had much luck in the comics, but his movies could have helped a whole a lot than not.

RDJ never needed to solely define the character and I have to kind of agree. the dark phoenix saga, rogue stealing carol's powers and the death of gwen stacy were more seminal moments in marvel history than any iron man story.

I cannot speak for wasp because I know so little about her.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

While I don't want to stray too much from the topic with Iron Man but the blame here falls of Disney and Feige.

Regardless of Iron Man's world been not good enough , When his movie hit big, Marvel and later Disney could have done more. he could have gotten a great cartoon, a good video game, novels and none of these things had to connect to the MCU. Marvel could have just built him a rich universe in 2008 till present.


what helped Spiderman and X-MEN with their universe been so big, vast and large is due to the fact that they had stories beyond their comics. Disney just contained everything iron man to MCU related, which never made sense to me because earlier back then I could have sworn Disney Marvel wanted Iron Man to be their Batman , rich guys with parent issues, who uses their gadgets to stop bad guys. Batman and Iron had a lot in common.

However I dont recall many comic fans liking Batman based only for their love of the Nolan movies or Burton Movies. Iron Man may not have had much luck in the comics, but his movies could have helped a whole a lot than not.

The problem with Disney and Iron Man is that Iron Man's character archetype and the way RDJ played him in the first half of IM isn't family friendly. A louche womanizing a--hole isn't "Disney-friendly" and some of the stuff Iron Man got up to in the first film (An airplane with hostesses who double as strippers, his treatment of the female journalist, and as the promotion of Black Widow emphasized the sexist treatment of Natalie Rushman in IM-2) went out of favor with #MeToo, and even RDJ wasn't comfortable with that at the time, he was the one who pushed for Paltrow's Pepper to be a bigger part of the film and agreed with Iron Man embracing monogamy in the MCU afterwards. So that aspect of Iron Man isn't something Disney wishes to explore in wider-franchise stuff. Shane Black also said that Disney wasn't interested in any "Leaving Las Vegas" alcoholism stories with Tony in IM-3.

So the Iron Man that succeeded in the MCU is radically different from the comics version and his comics history.

But anyway, back on-topic, the point is that Iron Man has been too coddled by Marvel throughout time despite showing very little substantive reason for such coddling, and female characters and POC characters despite having more story-arcs that were influential and top-selling not getting so much as a thank-you.

[JudicatorPrime]

For Carol they wanted their "Wonder Woman" equivalent - a lead female superhero. Carol was the best option for this at the time because...

...because Marvel's calculation was that someone who looked like Carol would likely prove less problematic for existing readership than every other option. That said character also had "Marvel" in her nom de guerre could only help brand affinity with MCU fans. Sounds a touch cynical, but it's really as simple as that. If they had it to do all over again, they'd make the same call, whether it succeeds or not.

[skyvolt2000]

I'm not sure why that happened to them. What about these 2 is unappealing to modern writers?

It's not so much they are not appealing. I really think the issue is EDITORS not greenlighting stories or projects.

Look at Dynamite Comics-look at how many books Vampirella & Red Sonja keep getting. Toss in Sheena, Bettie Page, Barberalla and Elvira as well.
How can they keep finding writers? They got Priest doing Vampirella and the now ended Sacred Six. PRIEST.


Heck lets look at Nadia's book. Guess who that book was REALLY about? Bumblebee at DC-that was the pitch DC rejected.
Gwenpool's last book. NOBODY wanted to do that book. It was dumped on Leah Williams-because Marvel was DEFYING Disney who don't get Gwenpool. They wanted her gone.

The fact Sue just got a mini recently is mind-blowing.
The fact your most success black female with a solo at Marvel & Dc is Moon Girl. Not Storm. Not even when she was married to Black Panther. That would have been a perfect time.

[Raz]

If the Phoenix stuff had ended with Rachel Summers I would have said the Dark Phoenix Saga for sure - the Phoenix has been so diluted since then though it's really hard to comprehend as a modern reader just how massive a status quo shift it was when it was first written.

Personally, I think it's Storm's whole arc from weather goddess to uber competent but powerless leader of the X-Men in the 80s - Marvel had other normal women leading teams like Heather Hudson and Candy Southern, but only Ororo really earned her place in the field when she became leader (Heather definitely did that later down the track, but when she started leading Alpha Flight it was difficult to see what she brought to the table). I think Storm's story is also more significant because a) the nature of the X-Men being mutants adds whole extra layers of meaning to them being led by a woman who is for all intents and purposes an ordinary human now, and b) to this day, the closest any other woman of colour has come to achieving what Storm did was Monica Rambeau leading the Avengers in the 80s and that was so poorly received by the conservative old guard that she was almost immediately taken off the team and has barely appeared since. Storm is really unique among the big two in that respect.

[ed2962]

I'm not sure why that happened to them. What about these 2 is unappealing to modern writers?

I think those characters are great and have a lot of untapped potential, but the fact is that they weren't that popular with a big chunk of comics audience who wanted all Deadpool all the time.

[MaximoffTrash]

John Byrne is not my favorite person by any means but it should be pointed out that his run on She-Hulk is the longest continuous title for any female superhero in 616.

Overall that would be Spider-Girl [She's an AU but she's the first and so far only Marvel female superhero to reach 100 issues in an ongoing].

Chris Claremont certainly did more than any author to increase female representation in Marvel (not that he was perfect or without flaws).

If you look at Marvel's Top 10 women with most appearances (circa 2019):
Storm – 1889
Invisible Woman – 1821
Captain Marvel – 1424
Scarlet Witch – 1408
Wasp – 1280
Jean Grey – 1269
Black Widow – 1261
She-Hulk – 1214
Mary Jane – 1170
Kitty Pryde – 1134

Four of those characters (Storm, Captain Marvel, Jean, Kitty Pryde) owe their status to his work, including #1 Storm (who is also the only woman to feature in marvel's top 10 characters with most appearances), another one Scarlet Witch certainly owes her status to Claremont's work boosting the X-Men which allowed her to feature in the history of two major teams (Avengers, X-Men). Kitty Pryde of course is a character he co-created. Claremont also wrote the first major extended run on Carol Danvers, and rescued her from the evil that was Avengers #200.

Uhhh? What? Wanda moved to Avengers in the 60s, how is Claremont's X-Men's success has anything to do with Wanda's stay in Avegners? Dude is great but he is not the savior of everyone and everything.

[ed2962]

For Carol they wanted their "Wonder Woman" equivalent - a lead female superhero. Carol was the best option for this at the time because most of their other female heroes had too much baggage, too associated with a male hero or team, or movie rights were owned by FOX at the time.
In order to do this Carol had to change quite a bit and they pushed her consistently even when selling badly. This naturally led to pushback from people, both fans and not.

I agree that they should get writers to elevate other female heroes, but the wants of fans don't always align with companies. Sadly, Marvel might not see the need to do that with other female heroes especially when they finally have Carol succeeding. Because a lot these women would need pushed similar to Carols for things to stick and that takes a lot of time and effort.

Ehh...Carol is the epitome of baggage! She's had three or four different superhero names, ill defined powers, a couple of controversial storylines that her fans dislike, support casts that disappear when writers change and not much of a rogues gallery. And she started out as a spin-off of an even more obscure character! If Marvel just wanted a female headliner, it would have made more sense to use the half dozen female heroes that were more popular either with comics fans or the general audience. Really, Carol's so called push is more about securing the "Captain Marvel" trademark than anything else.


As far as the backlash, that's all about overlapping anti-SJW crowds on internet.