What can pull Marvel comics out of this mess?

[skyvolt2000]

Yes because these aren't real people nor are they dishes and, other than the Iceman example, all those previous things actually don't have any bearing on the current characters' stories/personalities. If a fan can't get past a previously poorly written arc then a that's on them, really. There's nothing Marvel can do to change what already has happened. ]

I would add too many times fans gripes veer from the actual target.

In Duke Thomas's case-he was fine until Batman made a certain comment "Be better than Robin" and that was it. Then when he was added to Tom King's Batman-folks were boycotting the book over him-even when he barely appeared and then vanished from it in 2018-certain fans blamed HIM and not Tom King's writing for certain story arcs in Batman at that time. With some folks hate buying the books to drawing him out of the book or coming to Marvel boards encouraging fans to boycott his existence.

[B]They've moved on and fans should too.[/B

Fans can't. Let the Inhumans show their faces.

Jaime came out a year after Ted Died. Jaime got EXTREMELY small amount of complaints, compared to tremendous praise.

The main SOURCE for the Jaime and Jason Rusch hate was on the DC message board that DC SHUTDOWN-because the hate for those two and McDuffie's JLA run got that toxic.
Meanwhile McDuffie's JLA SOLD a top 10 book. Jaime's book actually got saved from being axed quite a few times as did Manhunter.

The complaints about Jaime's treatment started with New 52 as many took issue with how he (Static and others) were done as what made him popular was taken away by EDITORIAL.

I liked those line of books and it's also part of the problem. People will ignore these books would rather complain about legacy characters (like that's a new trend the Big 2 just started).

Just like they did with the New Age Heroes. Yet except for 3-those books lasted beyond issue 12. The Terrifics went to issue 30. Silencer went to issue 18.
There are some so-called fan favorites who can't do that.

Silencer, Sideways, Damage and Terrifics all did better than Deadpool and Black Panther spinoffs.

[skyvolt2000]

No.
MARVEL barely acknowledges Blade and Cloaks existence. Thats marvels fault. Not the fans.

WHO doesn't know who Blade is?
The guy with 3 films before Marvel got their act together and 2 tv shows?

It's not fans fault Marvel and DC got piles of characters rotting in limbo. That is on both companies and their editors.

Examples
Leah Williams got the Gwenpool mini DUMPED on her. She wasn't asking for that book. She was pitching for Colossus and I want to say Dazzler. She got Gwenpool because Marvel was defying Disney-who had folks (higher ups) who questioned why did she exist and get rid of her.

Priest the FIRST character DC tossed at him when they were doing Rebirth was Cyborg. He told them where to go and then got offered Deathstroke.
Gail Simone and Ethan Van Sciever did NOT want to do New 52 Firestorm-it was dumped on them.
Redjack who posts here wasn't pitching Solo. Yet he got the book instead of his pitch for Synch (before Hickman).

A lot of these writers are given characters more than what they pitch. As Leah has said-a lot of these writers are fighting for characters to get minis or ongoings.

Its possible that I'm the only one who thinks that's inherently lame, but one more member of the batfamiliy probably should be treated as a war crime. Legacies at DC are just making unused bloat. To each his own though.

I think the issue is Duke added to the Bat Family was treated as a crime, Yet we did NOT see that with all the folks that followed after him like Punchline, Gardener, Ghost Maker, Clown Hunter, Miracle Molly and so on.

So if we are going with the argument of too many Bat folks-it needs to apply to EVERYONE. Not just the one folks don't like. Because Punchline, Ghost Maker and Clown Hunter have done way more than Duke has. Who excluding Batman Urban has been one panel, pinups or on variant covers since September 2021.

Far too many times the complaining that we see targets folks who barely do anything. I have seen folks blame Wonder Woman low sales on Nubia. Who don't appear in the main Wonder Woman book in over a year.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Because characters, and by extension the fans, are still experiencing the negative fallout from all that.

Male Thor and Odin were both written terribly to service Jane-as-Thor. Jane may no longer be Thor but those past depictions are still ascendant in shaping their current depictions.

Captain America was made old, then turned into a Nazi by rewiring time and making the real Cap into a Nazi/Hyda. A simulation of the real cap was created to take his place and fans are just supposed to accept that and treat the Sim-Cap like he's the real thing?

The negative consequences of those stories and countless others are still being felt, and Iceman still isn't restored to who he actually was.

They knocked the dishes off the table, broke them, and you think just putting the broken dishes back on the table somehow fixed things?

Marvel restored Iceman to who he actually was when he came out.

[marhawkman]

No one ignores or complains about Blade (except for the writing), no one complains about Cloak, no one complains about Rhodey, no one complains about Storm (except storm fans), No one complained about Monica Rambeau, No one complains about T'Challa (again except for the writing), No one complains about night thrasher, or luke cage. No one complains about Jaime Reyes over at D.C...

But...you know what? It MARVEL that ignores Older Minority Characters NOT the fanbase. Consider this: There isn't even a yearly Blade Halloween Annual. Someone said in another thread and it stuck with me.
"Blade succeeds IN SPITE of MARVEL, not because of marvel"



Well... sigh and I shouldn't go down this rabbit hole I'm sure. But at the risk of sounding over critical... Mosaic was a medium concept. Marvels overpowered Deadman.
Also, Deadman isn't popular to begin with so that power set doesn't resonate with people. AND he was apart of the INHUMAN initiative. Why pretend to be surprised when he doesn't' get well received.

Of the rest of those characters "Cassandra Cain" was actually WELL received. In the main book, and in the dceased book. So fumble for DC, not the fans oh well.
Meanwhile Sam, Miles, Ms. Marvel, Moon Girl... X-23 even... They're on some level bad, and people who like them are often just dishonest about it.

If Duke Thomas (laughably called "The SIGNAL) wasn't a black character a huge chunk of his fans wouldn't even give a flip about him. If you only care about a character because of their skin color, you're (Emphasis on this next word) SOMEWHAT [the same as the people who *ahem* only care about a character because of their skin color. Thats bad. No one should listen to those people, because it encourages bad writing, it encourages them to not care about the narrative. It encourages the culture war when you cater to that nonsense. Again... Every Minority character listed are cared about here on these because of their minority status and frankly If white versions of these characters had be chosen the "Fans" of them would be ignoring them too.

So if you have a PROBLEM with people complaining about those characters ... understand that you'd be laughing your ass off at YET ANOTHER ROBIN, named "The Signal" if he wasn't a black kid from gotham.
There are HOWEVER some hella interesting minority characters and even some legacy ones too. I think I'd read a Jakeem Thunder book in a second. Especially if he went off to gotham or anywhere for that matter training and did it so he's a badass with or without thunderbolt. Cloak could/and should grow up to become IMPORTANT to the avengers, or Doctor Strange or SOMEBODY.

I know there's this big push as a part of the cultural wars to try to convince us all that racsim is worse now than it was in the 60's (newflash* its not), but a LOT of whats happening here with minority characters is guided failure.
There was a article/Interview on CBR I think about how they didn't know what to do with wolverine, and the death of wolverine became a thing from that. Seriously, said something about not encouraging the lone cowboy archetype and out of ideas for him. When you can literally push him off through time and have him figthing dinosaurs or dracula or somesuch and people would still buy that. Lean into it, not away way from it because of misguided values... Then they couldn't even commit. OML and Daken, and Jimmy Hudson all showed up. Smh. The big 2 fumble thier minority characters, and LOTS of characters, because they're not incentivized enough to NOT do so. Thats the problem with light monopolies.

Yeah, this is basically what I think about it.

Both DC and Marvel have long histories, and hundreds of "PoC" characters. They never used some of them after their initial appearances, and for reasons that still make no sense made replacements that haven't fared better. :/

Yes because these aren't real people nor are they dishes and, other than the Iceman example, all those previous things actually don't have any bearing on the current characters' stories/personalities. If a fan can't get past a previously poorly written arc then athat's on them, really. There's nothing Marvel can do to change what already has happened. They've moved on and fans should too.

That's looking at it the wrong way. That's like saying "I just wanted to write a good Iceman story." Then... ignoring who the character is and making up a completely new character. how can you call it a "good Iceman story" if it's... not Iceman?

[The Negative Zone]

Because characters, and by extension the fans, are still experiencing the negative fallout from all that.

Male Thor and Odin were both written terribly to service Jane-as-Thor. Jane may no longer be Thor but those past depictions are still ascendant in shaping their current depictions.

Captain America was made old, then turned into a Nazi by rewiring time and making the real Cap into a Nazi/Hyda. A simulation of the real cap was created to take his place and fans are just supposed to accept that and treat the Sim-Cap like he's the real thing?

The negative consequences of those stories and countless others are still being felt, and Iceman still isn't restored to who he actually was.

They knocked the dishes off the table, broke them, and you think just putting the broken dishes back on the table somehow fixed things?

What about Civil War Iron Man? Nobody cares about that anymore. It proves time moves on.

[80sbaby]

Yeah, this is basically what I think about it.

Both DC and Marvel have long histories, and hundreds of "PoC" characters. They never used some of them after their initial appearances, and for reasons that still make no sense made replacements that haven't fared better. :/That's looking at it the wrong way. That's like saying "I just wanted to write a good Iceman story." Then... ignoring who the character is and making up a completely new character. how can you call it a "good Iceman story" if it's... not Iceman?

No it isn't. It's looking at it as it is in reality. Characters sometimes get written out of character or poorly. That doesn't mean the character is ruined forever. If that were the case then none of these characters would've lasted for decades. They weren't all well written all along but only recently were written poorly.

You're making a straw man, btw. I never claimed you had to like every Iceman story. My point is the bad ones for those characters are in the past and don't affect their present.

[Midnight_v]

No it isn't. It's looking at it as it is in reality. Characters sometimes get written out of character or poorly. That doesn't mean the character is ruined forever. If that were the case then none of these characters would've lasted for decades. They weren't all well written all along but only recently were written poorly.

You're making a straw man, btw. I never claimed you had to like every Iceman story. My point is the bad ones for those characters are in the past and don't affect their present.

hmph. At the risk of sounding puritanically american.... If Im' understanding you correctly it bears mentioning

Changing a characters sexuality is different. end all full stop.

(though I dare say it probably an even BIGGER deal because of how they treated his status overall)

There are a few other things that hit different too. hank pym been around since the beginning of the avengers but his most informative story line will always be him smacking janet around. (regardless of the actual details)
there are a few things that go beyond just being turned into frankencastle or something. but I admit... I'm no expert.

[80sbaby]

hmph. At the risk of sounding puritanically american.... If Im' understanding you correctly it bears mentioning

Changing a characters sexuality is different. end all full stop.

(though I dare say it probably an even BIGGER deal because of how they treated his status overall)

There are a few other things that hit different too. hank pym been around since the beginning of the avengers but his most informative story line will always be him smacking janet around. (regardless of the actual details)
there are a few things that go beyond just being turned into frankencastle or something. but I admit... I'm no expert.

Well yes, changing Iceman's sexuality is different than a simple personality switch, as that will carry over into future storylines. A personality change can be switched from story to story, though. That's why I excluded Iceman's change complaints from the others.

[Midnight_v]

Well yes, changing Iceman's sexuality is different than a simple personality switch, as that will carry over into future storylines. A personality change can be switched from story to story, though. That's why I excluded Iceman's change complaints from the others.

Ahhh. My mistake. I misread. Apologies.

[Username taken]

The Iceman change will always remain controversial. I’m not a fan of changing existing characters race, sexuality etc, I’m very much in the camp of create new ones.

If i were a writer of Iceman, I wouldn’t have gone that route. There are certain things that don’t really help the cause.Joshua Yehl for example is a prominent gay voice at IGN and he didn’t like the change. Now, I am not saying Joshua speaks for all gay people but on issues like these I’d much rather listen to the opinion from the community than the CIS straight writer that changed the character.

This is in addition to the fact the character had established in a certain way and chasing the character so fundamentally invalidates a lot of what has come before. That in my opinion isn’t the way to go with this sort of stuff.

[Celtic1967]

Low key getting to the point where I don't even care about this stuff anymore. MJ married to some fucker named Paul, the X-Men being a supremacist doomsday sex cult on their island (or is it on Mars now?), the entirety of Aaron's Avengers run, etc. It feels like everything I used to like about Marvel and Marvel characters has been systemically weeded out over the past 20 years to the point where now pretty much nothing is left.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

It's a terrible mess right now isn't it.

I've dropped everything except for epic collections of OLDER stories for the first time since 1992.

Spider-man sales at an all time low, MJ married to someone else, Pete a joke.

Avengers is a nothing snooze fest.

Slott writing ANOTHER dull spider verse story.

X-men line ruined by editors and their buddies.

No Hickman, No cates, No Waid. just twitter/tumblr writers.

Not even the try hard woke stuff makes the news anymore, and I even stuck around during the Alonso replace everyone with a diverse character for twitter points era

relaunch ironman and captain America again and again.

I thought DC was bad but oh boy this is awful stuff right now, who are they writing these books for? because it ain't the MCU fans, they don't touch this stuff.

Personally, reboot the whole line into a simple wave of books with REAL talent who know these characters and don't self insert themselves and their dull lives into the story.

Let the characters grow a little, this is why Manga utterly wipes the floor with western comics right now, people want development.

Marvel and DC are like long running soap operas. I don't think a reboot would work longterm as the same people running the show would make the same mistakes.

Manga is more creator driven so its likely to make decisions that stick versus marvel and DC. They tend to be status quo driven and will undo whatever doesnt sell. So it what it is and you just gotta ride out the wave.

[Anthony W]

Low key getting to the point where I don't even care about this stuff anymore. MJ married to some fucker named Paul, the X-Men being a supremacist doomsday sex cult on their island (or is it on Mars now?), the entirety of Aaron's Avengers run, etc. It feels like everything I used to like about Marvel and Marvel characters has been systemically weeded out over the past 20 years to the point where now pretty much nothing is left.

s3e62lcm7gc51.jpg

There is always back issues.

[Solid Snake]

I think it is not possible to make healthy inferences about the current state of Marvel comics by just looking at what kind of political agendas are pursued, not that I think there is a matter of that. So that is not the real substance here and I am willing to put that subject aside. From my perspective, I do not think there is a lack of good runs or storylines either. However when you look at the current line of comics, it seems that there is no drive or a destination, it feels like the group editors do not even try to come up with a vision or ideas anymore. We used to have periods like Dark Reign or The Heroic Age in the past.

And until the last two or three years, there used to be at least several creator team runs that had the potential to tell some big stories, line-wide events. To the point that at times, some of them gave the feeling that they are dragging on cause they are on the queue for the next big summer event, like the example of Aaron's Thor until the War of the Realms. Devil's Reign had spawned out from Zdarsky's Daredevil, King in Black from Cates' Venom, Secret Empire from Spencer's Captain America. Nowadays, I feel like only Kieron Gillen is writing his stories with this intention/ambition in mind. Most of the writers seem happy with playing on their corner without have to deal with the continuity. I honestly think that the editors should not be okay with this all the time. If you are writing a big name series, you should always be ready to take the wheel of the MU when the opportunity comes. What I am trying to say is, you might come up with lot more good storylines if you are going with a self-contained approach on the series you are writing, but if you are writing X-Men, Avengers, Captain America or Fantastic Four; the editors should be pushing you to go bigger. Remember that five writers were named as "architects" of the MU a decade ago? Now it feels like no writer wants to be in that kind of gloves.

[marhawkman]

No it isn't. It's looking at it as it is in reality. Characters sometimes get written out of character or poorly. That doesn't mean the character is ruined forever. If that were the case then none of these characters would've lasted for decades. They weren't all well written all along but only recently were written poorly.

Yeeah, but they're not well-liked because of being badly written.

You're making a straw man, btw.

No u.

I never claimed you had to like every Iceman story.

And when did I say that? I wasn't talking about what you as a reader do. I was talking about writers actually writing things in-continuity.

My point is the bad ones for those characters are in the past and don't affect their present.

The present is shaped by the past.

Since you don't like the Iceman example, how about Nuwa? Who you may have never heard of. AFAIK she's only been in 2 stories. Nuwa is a Chinese Mutant who debuted as a "terrorist".

The first of the stories with her was actually a freedom fighter opposing a totalitarian dictatorship who was trying to use Mutants as slave labor. Also, her powers weren't just "make people sleepy". It was precisely targeted and seemed to work almost all the time.

The second was part of Manifest Destiny as a side-story. Nuwa was robbing random stores for no apparent reason, and literally said nothing other than "Nuwa"... once. And Boom-boom beats her by drinking a lot of caffeine to counter-act the sleep induction. Hunh?

This was one I remember from a rather long forum discussion about just how many ways the writing was wrong. 1: Nuwa was previously a very talkative person and had very detailed reasons for doing things. 2: Nuwa was seemingly engaged in petty theft... but previously she'd been a freedom fighter. 3: she was never even seen in the US prior to this. 4: This was Tabitha Smith written AFTER her stint in X-Force where her team had faked their own deaths, and killed some alien force trying to convert the Earth into a living starship. And she's suddenly acting like a teenage ditz. 5: She was no longer using the name Meltdown.

As a reader, it was my first time seeing Nuwa as I'd never read the book she debuted in.... and I was thoroughly confused since it was obvious she was being written WRONG, I just had no idea what she was supposed to act like.

As someone who's dabbled with writing, I have to wonder, if Nuwa shows up for a third time, which of these will be used to inform that direction of the story and how Nuwa is written? My pessimistic side thinks a writer might use the second one since they had no idea the first story even existed.