Marvel's problems don't end on screen - here's the MCU complaint you might not be aware of

For many people, the flipping pages in Marvel Studios' opening graphic are the only comic books they've ever engaged with.

What you probably don't realise is that Marvel Comics editors have been working tirelessly to change that for nearly two decades – but may actually have done some damage in the process.

Ask a regular reader about today's comic book landscape and you'll likely get the same response: DC is on a winning streak, Marvel is in a creative slump, and both find themselves dwarfed by the booming popularity of manga.

There's a lot to say about all three topics, but today, we're focusing on the oft-stated decline of Marvel Comics and its connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's own fading fortunes; both are the wounded victims of their own success.

But how did we get here? And more importantly, how do we get back?

Let's reminisce for a moment about a lovely little year called 2012, when the first Avengers film hit cinemas and surpassed expectations in every conceivable way.

The audacious idea of tying four blockbusters into a subsequent crossover was proven successful – and it changed Hollywood cinema forever. But besides its eye-watering budgets, the MCU came at one additional cost: corporate synergy.

This jargon term describes a symphonic relationship between the brands owned by a corporation, like the Walt Disney Company. In other words, it's why Dairy Milk and Oreos are often grafted onto one another now (you can thank Kraft for that one).

In the realm of comic books, synergy across mediums isn't a new concept.

For example, paper Peter Parker developed the ability to produce organic webbing shortly after 2002's Spider-Man film did away with his mechanical web-shooters, thus creating consistency with Tobey Maguire's version of the character.

(Spider-Man: Brand New Day now appears to be adapting that same 'Man-Spider' story arc, bringing things full circle.)

But as the MCU grew into an unprecedentedly large franchise, so too did its influence become a disruptive force in the eyes of many readers.

Since 2012, Marvel Comics has implemented a number of retcons, personality transplants and design changes, which have resulted in a closer resemblance to its interconnected film and TV universe.

When the MCU was at the height of its success (i.e. up until late 2019), there was some tolerance for these decisions, even if it stuck in the craw of longtime followers of the affected characters – those who now resemble canaries in the coal mine.

Tremors were felt by replacing Nick Fury Sr (more David Hasselhoff) with his son (more Samuel L Jackson); by the James Gunn-ification of the Guardians of the Galaxy; and by Magneto revealing he isn't Wanda and Pietro's father after all (daytime TV producers were thrilled).

But the Richter scale registered a major quake during the tumultuous period from 2014 to 2017, which saw two of Marvel's most beloved teams caught in the crossfire of an apparent corporate feud: the Fantastic Four and the X-Men.

Both, at that time, were out of the reach of Marvel Studios. Film rights rested at rival 20th Century Fox, which had acquired them more than a decade before the MCU's conception and reaped mixed results from adapting them to the screen.

In the stated period, efforts were re-doubled, with ill-fated reboot 'Fant4stic' (as the poster regrettably stylised it) preventing those rights from lapsing, while X-Men prequels Days of Future Past and Apocalypse kept that franchise chugging along.

The idea of promoting these projects or laying the groundwork for future adaptations was seemingly anathema to Marvel Comics' business-minded boss Ike Perlmutter (as reported at the time by industry gossip site Bleeding Cool).

When it became clear that Fox wouldn't be relinquishing its grip on either property, Perlmutter ordered that the historic and decades-long Fantastic Four comic book be axed.

Deemed too popular (read: profitable) to scrap, the X-Men instead saw their status eroded by a heightened focus on the Marvel Studios-owned Inhumans; another race of super-powered oddballs, albeit with a very different hierarchy.

The most notable product of this era was Kamala Khan, a teenage girl from New Jersey, who quickly became Marvel's most prominent Muslim character after her latent Inhuman gene was activated. Her eventual fate is a grand irony.

During this period, Marvel fans had a strong suspicion that MCU-affiliated characters were getting preferential treatment in the comics, but editors were firm in their denials that any such strategy existed.

In one exchange on Tumblr in 2014, Marvel Comics' senior vice president Tom Brevoort even joked that the claims amounted to readers believing they have "magic mind-reading helmets".

Still, the perception bled out of comics and into other mediums, including video game sequel Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite, released in 2017, which scrapped long-standing characters like Wolverine, Magneto and Storm in favour of an MCU-dominated roster.

That same year, prolific writer Jonathan Hickman appeared to break rank in an interview with now-defunct website Newsarama, where he stated that "Marvel isn't publishing Fantastic Four because of their disagreement with Fox".

"We knew a year or so out that the Fantastic Four, as a property, wasn't going to be published at Marvel past 2015," he added.

Marvel insisted that Fantastic Four was cancelled due to low sales. The comic returned in summer 2018, at the same time that discussions were well under way about the since-completed Disney/Fox merger. Of course, this could be a coincidence.

Cut to: May 2019. Avengers: Endgame shatters records to become one of the most successful films of all time at the global box office, ultimately reaching a staggering gross just shy of $2.8 billion.

Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is thought of by many as one of the most effective producers in Hollywood history, having crafted a franchise that showed no signs of slowing after its 22nd entry.

In fact, the Disney/Fox merger (completed two months earlier) only promised more frontiers to conquer, bringing the X-Men and Fantastic Four 'home' to Marvel Studios and, in conjunction with Sony Pictures' Spider-Man deal, 'completing' the MCU.

Adding to this sense of expansion was the imminent launch of Disney+, which promised new avenues in which to tell MCU stories, such as 'prestige' limited series (these would go on to cause a few headaches).

With so much more work to be done, Feige was handed the keys to the entire kingdom in October, going from president of Marvel Studios (films only) to chief creative officer of Marvel Entertainment (including comics, TV/streaming and animation).

At the time, many fans celebrated that 'nerd king' Feige had essentially defeated the aforementioned Perlmutter in corporate combat. The latter executive was eventually laid off in a March 2023 restructure (via The Hollywood Reporter).

After his sidelining of the X-Men and Fantastic Four, Perlmutter hadn't endeared himself to fans. Bob Iger claimed in his memoir (via Variety) that Perlmutter's office had objected to greenlighting the MCU's first female-led and Black-led films.

"I called Ike and told him to tell his team to stop putting up roadblocks and ordered that we put both Black Panther and Captain Marvel into production," Iger wrote.

By contrast, Feige was the friendly face behind dozens of generally well-received Marvel adaptations. But more than six years on, some comic readers have become apathetic to the machine that he represents.

A source close to Marvel Comics told Radio Times that, since Feige's promotion to CCO, Marvel Studios has not made any attempt to control their creative choices. Any adopted film or TV elements are at the discretion of the editorial team.

Or, as editor-in-chief CB Cebulski put it in December 2023 (via SciFi Now): "If you take Marvel Studios as a body, Disney+ is now the head. The arms are our games and our animation division. The legs are the consumer products – the T-shirts, the bedsheets... but Marvel Comics is the heart."

He continued: "It's a circulatory system – the blood goes out from us and then circles the body and comes back in. There are no bad ideas. [If the] games create a character [or the] movies come up with a cool concept, and we say 'why didn't we think of that? That's awesome,' then you bring it back into comics."

However, if we're to go along with this analogy, one could argue that an infection in a certain part of the Marvel 'body' might conceivably cause a life-threatening case of sepsis in the larger organism.

In late 2023, when Cebulski made this comment, symptoms were flaring.

In that year alone, the MCU had seen a string of critical and commercial disappointments, including Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Marvels and Disney+ series Secret Invasion. It hardly seems a reassuring transfusion.

Five months later, returning Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that Marvel would reduce its output of films and TV shows, acknowledging the franchise's loss of viewership and inconsistent quality since making Disney+ its 'head'.

Yet synergy efforts sustained, from a resurgent Kang the Conqueror in the pages of Timeless and The Avengers (an arc that inadvertently coincided with Jonathan Majors's firing) and a second Secret Invasion that proved as successful in-universe as it did in real life (not very).

More recently, in 2025, Marvel Comics concocted a year-long storyline in which Doctor Doom took over the world, the timing of which was rendered imperfect when Avengers: Doomsday suffered a seven-month delay.

Coming up, comic book event Avengers: Armageddon (is that a synonym for Doomsday?) kicks off its plot in Doom's homeland of Latveria – although the big man himself (soon to be played by Robert Downey Jr) is notably absent.

Red Hulk and Sam Wilson are two of the main characters in the forthcoming crossover, continuing a rivalry that dates back to... January 2025, when the comic versions clashed as Captain America: Brave New World crashed into cinemas.

A source close to Marvel Comics told Radio Times that Red Hulk's central role in Armageddon has nothing to do with the character's recent appearance in the MCU. Rather, it was the independent choice of writer Chip Zdarsky.

Nevertheless, Brevoort did say just last month that it was "common sense" for the publisher to coordinate with Marvel Studios, while insisting that it didn't take a "regimented" approach.

"When there's [an adaptation] going on, you want to have things that can take advantage of that cultural zeitgeist," he said on the Word Balloon podcast.

"It's not like what we do is just following lockstep from whatever is going on in film or television or animation. We put our planning together with an awareness of all of that stuff, and we find places to synergise where it makes sense."

To be fair, it isn't the case that all of Marvel's comics look identical to the MCU, with notable experiments including its horror-tinged Hulk stories ('Immortal' and 'Infernal') and the twisty Ultimate Comics line (set in an alternate reality).

But these have been viewed as exceptions at a publisher playing it safe, if not overtly mimicking its live-action arm with titles like TVA, Wiccan: Witches' Road and 'Thunderbolts' (later renamed New Avengers in a stunt matching that of the film).

In Cebulski's own words, the current style of storytelling is intended to grant "easy access" to the world of comic books for those who have first encountered Marvel via films, streaming shows or video games.

The billion-dollar question is: how many of these multimedia consumers have successfully made the jump into habitual comic book reading? Due to the arcane nature of comic sales reporting, it's tough to say for sure.

According to industry trade ICv2, the North American comic book industry was commercially stagnant between 2016 and 2018, while the MCU was in rude health and synergy was operational (see event books Civil War II and Infinity Wars).

It grew by a respectable 11 per cent in 2019, but the entire market ($1.21bn) amounted to less than half of Avengers: Endgame's box office gross ($2.79bn). This doesn't paint a picture of movie-goers migrating en masse.

In October of that year, Variety even wrote that "comic books create relatively little revenue for Marvel", before disconcertingly describing the artistic medium as "R&D [research and development] for TV and film" – as if it were a Silicon Valley start-up.

And when the comic book market boomed during the pandemic, almost doubling in size by 2022, the sharp rise of manga sales and strong performance of children's graphic novels took much of the credit (per Publishers Weekly).

In short, while sales data is not comprehensively available to the public, the connection between Marvel's box office success and its total readership has never been strikingly obvious from what we do know.

Yet in courtship of an audience that may or may not exist in abundance, Marvel editorial has stirred up ill-feeling among its core fanbase – as any frequenter of comic book forums (guilty as charged) can freely observe.

As far back as February 2015, IGN columnist Jesse Schedeen was warning that a fixation on MCU-affiliated characters could cause Marvel's comic books to "become boring and repetitive".

More than a decade later, this reliance on a set of overused heroes is only the tip of the iceberg, as Marvel Comics is widely considered to be outpaced creatively by its Distinguished Competition.

Both of the 'big two' publishers have found recent success in boldly re-imagining their characters as part of surprising and subversive alternate universes (see Marvel's aforementioned 'Ultimate' line and DC's range of 'Absolute' comics).

The commercial success of these initiatives – which deliberately stray away from the status quo – seems to contradict the view that comics must closely resemble their most famous adaptations in order to resonate with the general reader.

Indeed, the Ultimate line has been a source of comfort to anyone disillusioned by the editorial's comparatively pedestrian stewardship of the main '616' universe (i.e. the majority of titles).

Heavy hitters such as Spider-Man, Venom and the X-Men have weathered underwhelming comic runs as of late, while titles starring second-tier characters rarely reach 10 issues before being cancelled or relaunched.

It's a situation that starkly contrasts with life at DC Comics right now.

Current editor-in-chief Marie Javins has been praised for her hands-off approach to the Absolute universe and the main DC continuity alike, giving creators a loose leash to interpret characters as they wish – and earning glowing reviews in the process.

In a notable example, writer Skottie Young expressed relief to Off Panel podcast that his new monthly Lobo comic wasn't expected to line up with Jason Momoa's version of the character (featured in this summer's Supergirl film).

"My biggest fear was... I don't want to do this if I have to start off, right out of the gate, taking cues and notes from any side of the Hollywood stuff," he said. "Even though I love that stuff, it's just so hard to make a comic book by committee."

Fortunately, that proved not to be the arrangement. "I really can't believe they let me do some of the stuff I've done in that first issue, and say some of the stuff I've said," added Young.

DC usually has a smaller market share than its Marvel competitor, in part because the latter publishes a larger number of comics per month. But the balance reportedly tipped in its direction late last year.

Estimated figures suggest that DC Comics took pole position in the fourth quarter of 2025 (via ICv2), fuelled by its Absolute titles, action-packed event DC KO, and a popular range of budget-priced manga-sized collections, dubbed 'Compact Comics'.

Of course, aggressively pitting Marvel and DC against each other is a hobby best left to schoolchildren – you can, and should, enjoy both! – but there is clearly evidence that one company's strategy is proving more fruitful than the other right now.

It's not schadenfreude or fanboy-ism, but genuine disappointment that is fuelling dissent in the community.

In the short-term, Marvel readers have less to be excited about. But further ahead, the adaptations regularly homaged by today's comics would also suffer if the stream of original ideas slowed down to a trickle.

Perhaps the most contentious example of perceived MCU synergy involved the distinctly wholesome Kamala Khan aka Ms Marvel.

As mentioned above, the geeky teenager gained extraordinary abilities when her Inhuman gene was activated (at a time when the fictional group was getting more attention as a proposed substitute for the X-Men).

Of course, we all know what eventually happened: Disney swallowed Fox; the X-Men came home; the Inhumans suffered 'death by under-funded network television show' (it's a horrible way to go).

When it came time to introduce Ms Marvel to the MCU, the Inhumans were effectively a non-entity in live action (besides an isolated Black Bolt cameo in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which ended rather badly for him).

As a result, Kamala's powers were revealed to be caused by her mutant gene instead.

It's ironic that a character created as part of a wider effort to chip away at the X-Men's monopoly on misfit young heroes would ultimately defect to the more popular team. It also sent Marvel's comic book universe into violent convulsions.

Suddenly, the comic and live-action versions of Kamala Khan – a potential heir to the post-Secret Wars MCU – were knocked out of alignment in a major way.

Ms Marvel was killed off in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man in May of the following year, having nobly sacrificed her life to save Mary-Jane Watson... from a throwaway villain named 'Emissary' (don't worry, it's not important).

Of course, any savvy reader will have known this wouldn't be the end of her story – very rarely is death permanent in a comic book universe – but the speed and functionality of Kamala's return struck a nerve with the readership at large.

In fact, Ms Marvel was gleefully bounding back into action by July of that same year, with her comeback being announced (through Entertainment Weekly) a mere two days after her poignant funeral comic in a baffling piece of scheduling.

When Kamala resurrected, she did so on the mutant island of Krakoa, where it was revealed that her DNA was part-Inhuman, part-mutant. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to suggest that this storyline was a means to an end.

A source close to Marvel Comics told Radio Times that, contrary to a heavily reported claim made by comic book writer Cody Ziglar, there was no pressure from the film and TV division to turn Ms Marvel into a mutant.

Additionally, co-creator Sana Amanat revealed to Empire that Kamala's mutant status was actually the original vision for the character. Her Inhuman connection was a later development, perhaps for the reasons discussed earlier – Amanat didn't elaborate.

Following the Disney+ series, Marvel Comics editors saw the potential to tell exciting stories with Kamala in the X-Men books – and they weren't wrong to do so. In the years since, she has somewhat settled into that corner of the universe.

But the backlash was less about Kamala's mutant status being transferred over, and more to do with the manner of its implementation; a strange sequence of events widely considered rushed and not befitting of such a meaningful figure.

This heavy-handed amendment exemplifies how Marvel Comics' approach to film and streaming synergy is often perceived; not subtle or gradual in its execution, but simply hammered into long-standing continuity with blunt force.

It's a technique that has left scars across the universe, appearing to place characters and storylines at the mercy of MCU plans.

Around the time of Kamala's induction, the wider X-Men books experienced another shock as the high-concept 'Krakoan Age' came to an end sooner than expected, essentially reverting the characters to a more conventional set-up.

Speculation quickly simmered that this decision may have been influenced by the return of the classic X-Men in Avengers: Doomsday and the brewing plans for an MCU reboot that would likely hew to a traditional team dynamic.

Of course, that may well be completely wrong.

But the knee-jerk reaction to blame synergy when controversial choices are made speaks to a lack of trust in Marvel's editorial independence and the wider fatigue felt towards the MCU.

A source close to Marvel Comics told Radio Times that, over the past year or two, the publisher has been busy making plans that are distinct from the MCU and should please readers calling for greater experimentation.

This includes the mysterious Avengers: Armageddon and the top secret projects set to follow it.

In September 2022, Marvel editor Jordan D White explained that comic book creators were instructed to "stay five to ten years ahead" of the MCU, with the goal being to produce "fun and interesting stuff that [Marvel Studios] can do down the line" (via AIPT).

Recently, readers have questioned whether the comics are honouring their side of that agreement. Of course, nerds getting angry about stuff is not, in itself, headline news, but in this case, there is at least a valid argument to be heard.

Notably, Marvel Studios is yet to recover from its 2023 crash, with Deadpool & Wolverine's huge success being undercut by last year's trio of box office disappointments – Brave New World, Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps.

After years of ever closer union with the MCU and a recent editorial tendency to 'play the hits', it's not hard to imagine the comics themselves falling into a similar lull, unless bolder creative choices do materialise. Synergy giveth and synergy taketh away.

Marvel films and TV shows are available to stream on Disney+. Sign-up to Disney+ from £5.99 a month.

Check out more of our Sci-fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.

Add shows to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.