10 New Year 2018 Resolutions Marvel Comics Should Make

8. Stop Stumbling (And Creating) PR Disasters

Marvel Comics

With each month that passed us by last year, it often felt as though Marvel had a new controversy waiting in the wings.

Whether it be former Editor in Chief Axel Alonso downplaying the integral and amazing role the medium's artists have to play in selling books, or new EIC C. B. Cebulski offering a belated apology having defrauded the company years earlier by pretending to be a Japanese creator, nothing has gone according to plan for Marvel. Just this month, the terms and conditions for the new 'Create your Own' platform were dragged for stipulating that creators refrain from depicting 'alternate lifestyle advocacies', 'social issues' and other 'controversial topics', a fact made worse by the fact that Marvel had only just cancelled two of their main comics featuring LGBT* leads.

It's beyond tone-deaf, and emblematic of Marvel's apparent unwillingness to tackle the zeitgeist head on when it matters most. Given the publisher's roots, it's frankly embarrassing, and beyond frustrating for fans desperate to rekindle their interest in a universe that, for the last year at least, has failed to live up to its own legacy. Y'know, the one founded on Steve Rogers socking Adolf square on the jaw.

Marvel simply have to do better this year, and while the untimely cancellations of books like Hawkeye, America and Iceman have already ensured they've gotten off to a torrid start, there's still time to make amends.

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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.