10 Shocking Cover Ups Marvel Comics Wants You To Forget

As seen in the final pages of recent series The History of the Marvel Universe, Marvel superheroes have always had one simple mission statement: "with great power there must always come great responsibility." If only those behind the scenes followed the same rules.

Back in 2002, then-president of Marvel Bill Jemas made a bet with writer Peter David that he could write a comic more popular than David's Captain Marvel reboot. Because apparently, even though he was president of the entire company, Jemas still had time to write one of the weirdest, dullest and most nonsensical comics ever made.

The result was Marville, an attempt to satirise superheroes and, oddly enough, the AOL-Time-Warner company. It was an impenetrable read, that needed an extra page just to explain all the industry in-jokes it contained. The thing was, knowing the backstory behind every joke somehow made them even less funny.

After a wholly unsuccessful two issues, Marville moved away from comedy and started to focus on "the origin and the meaning of life." Jemas's ideas on this subject were, frankly, incomprehensible. After six issues that sold almost no issues, the series finally ended, with Jemas proudly announcing:

“Marville has been a story that would never have been published if I didn’t happen to have this here job as President of Marvel.”

Jemas did not keep his job as president for much longer, and Marvel (as well as anyone who read the thing) has since been happily pretending that Marville never existed in the first place.