Jed McKay might change that trend. He feels like a big picture kind of guy and he was doing the Kang story "Timeless".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.