10 New Year 2018 Resolutions Marvel Comics Should Make

by Ewan Paterson

1. Support Comics So They Can Develop An Audience

Black Panther and The Crew
Marvel Comics/Marguerite Sauvage

By far the most frustrating thing about Marvel's year was how many fan-favourite books they ended up cancelling. Black Panther and the Crew only got two issues in before it was marked for cancellation, and both America and Hawkeye were cancelled a little over a year since their initial debuts. Irrespective of your thoughts on those titles, it's evident that Marvel aren't doing enough to support their own comics.

Marketing, at times, feels like an afterthought, and some books get no time at all to develop a following before they're pulled off shelves. Arguing that fans aren't doing enough to support them either (as has been the case recently), feels remarkably tactless, especially when - as previously mentioned - not all fans are able to support books right off the bat, instead preferring to wait for trades to release later in the year.

Marvel have the biggest potential audience for a comics publisher out there, and yet we're still waiting for them to capitalise on it fully. Comics aren't advertised on TV, film, or anywhere else (in fact it's the reverse, bizarrely, where TV shows and films are advertised in comics), and we've even seen creators themselves pick up the slack in the absence of real support.

Something has to change this year, and it's the kind of change that will only come with a concerted effort from top to bottom, at every level of the industry.

Do you have any resolutions in mind for Marvel? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.