10 Amazing Comic Storylines Derailed By Editorial Politics

5. Heroes Reborn

Heroes Reborn
Marvel

In a move that shocked the industry and was, as one editor described, €œcatastrophic to morale€ for those still working at the company, Marvel killed off the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom and a host of other characters as part of the €œOnslaught€ event in 1996, and relaunched the The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and Captain America. But this wouldn''€™t be just another reboot. Marvel relinquished control of its characters and paid millions to the California studios of Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld€“ two artists that had defected from the company to form Image a few years earlier €“ to create these core titles, while other long-time Marvel creators were unceremoniously kicked to the curb.

The editorial decision was met with harsh criticism from those within the industry and outside of it. Writer Kurt Busiek told a newspaper, €œThe Marvel reader is essentially being told that Marvel€™'s long-term history is more or less irrelevant. It€™'s secondary to what will make the character more popular and what will make the company more money.€ And even though the controversial decision was fiscally motivated, in some instances, €œHeroes Reborn€ didn€™'t even help sales.

In one instance, the successful Mark Waid/Ron Garney run on Captain America was cut short in favor of Liefeld€™'s re-imagining of the character (with a laughably disproportion chest), and sales actually went down on the book.

A year later, Marvel ended its experiment and reintroduced all the heroes under the banner, €œHeroes Return.€

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Mark is a professional writer living in Brooklyn and is the founder of the Chasing Amazing Blog, which documents his quest to collect every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and the Superior Spider-Talk podcast. He also pens the "Gimmick or Good?" column at Comics Should Be Good blog.