Mistakes Marvel Can Never Erase

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The House of Marvel hasn't always been as big as it is today, and not all of the company's history is as heroic as the adventures of Captain America or Spider-Man. Since starting out as Timely Comics in 1939, they've created countless classics and repeatedly breathed new life into a troubled industry...and also done a few things they probably wish we'd forget. Here are a few of Marvel's biggest missteps. 

Martin Goodman's distribution switch was a debacle on two levels. Not only did profits plunge, but because of the bottleneck imposed by National Periodical, Atlas had to fire almost all of their artists and writers. There was simply nothing for them to do.

At the time, Stan Lee was a gatekeeper for Atlas, approving and paying for any publishable comic pages, but Lee himself admitted much later in an interview with Comic Book Artist that he was a poor judge of quality. If he saw something he didn't like, he just assumed that he didn't understand it and paid for it anyway. As a result, the Atlas offices had a closet full of unused artwork that slowly chipped away at their budget. It was thanks to Lee's lack of judgment that Atlas had at least six months worth of comics to publish during their downtime—even if they might have been a little below the company's usual standard.

From the beginning, comics artists have generally operated under "work for hire" contracts with their publishers, and Marvel is no different. What this essentially means is that anything created for and bought by Marvel belongs to Marvel forever. Under these contracts, Marvel can do whatever they want with someone's work without further compensating or crediting the creator for the concept.

One of the worst examples of Marvel's questionable treatment of their creators is the case of Gary Friedrich, the co-creator of flame-skulled, motorcycle-riding anti-hero Ghost Rider. Friedrich took Marvel to court for compensation related to the merchandising of his famous character, but in 2010, he lost the lawsuit. As if that weren't painful enough, Marvel countersued Friedrich for $17,000, and forced him to stop selling anything Ghost Rider-related at conventions. Later, in 2013, a judge overturned the decision based on the questionable language of the old Marvel contracts, and both parties settled out of court.

For a period, Marvel Comics also published Star Comics, a label almost exclusively dedicated to animated series tie-ins like ThunderCats and Fraggle Rock. This effectively kept Doctor Doom's malevolent magic away from the delicate minds of children. This was also the line that published the first issues of Peter Porker, Spectacular Spider-Ham, but that's best left forgotten.

Part of Star's modus operandi was to copy the success of Harvey Comics, both in their distinctive style and also in story. Star wandered a bit too close to Harvey's property, however, why they began publication of Royal Roy. The young millionaire was basically a copy of Harvey's Richie Rich, or a very lazy parody thereof. Complicating matters was the fact that an ex-employee of Harvey had created the character for Star. Harvey sued Marvel for infringing on their property, and Royal Roy was canceled after a handful of issues.

In the early '90s, Marvel didn't have any big plans to make movies for themselves, so they didn't really see a problem with licensing out their characters to a wide array of different studios. It was basically free money just for letting a studio leverage a well-known character, after all. Among the characters licensed out were the X-Men, Spider-Man, Black Panther, the Hulk, Black Widow, Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man—essentially splitting the Avengers into a half dozen different cinematic universes, years before the term had even been coined.

By 2005, Marvel had gained better financial footing and started buying back the rights to their characters—just in time for the rise of the superhero film genre. Over the next decade (and with the assistance of Disney's mighty four-fingered fist), Marvel reclaimed all of its properties except those stuck with 20th Century Fox: the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and Deadpool. Spider-Man remained with Sony, but Marvel wrangled a special deal allowing the character to appear in Captain America: Civil War.

While most of Marvel's actions are arguably defensible, there are times when the company has been kind of a jerk. This is probably most evident in the case of Jim Shooter and Defiant Comics.

Shooter was hired by Marvel in 1976, and by the time he was fired in 1987, he had risen through the ranks to become the company's editor-in-chief. During his tenure, he was credited with revitalizing Marvel and implementing better treatment for creators, but at the same time, he insisted on strict deadlines and complete editorial control. This attitude alienated many top artists, who left to work for DC, contributing to Shooter's ultimate undoing. Marvel's ultimate revenge on Shooter occurred when his new company, Defiant Comics, announced an ongoing series called Plasm. Marvel's UK branch had ownership of a never-used character named Plasmer, and because the two names were somewhat similar, Marvel sued the life out of Defiant, costing the company $300,000 in legal fees and driving them completely out of business.

In 2006, Marvel's EIC Joe Quesada thought it would be a great idea to partner with, of all companies, Procter & Gamble, mostly known for selling Pringles, bowel-loosening Olestra, and the soap opera Guiding Light. Because Wolverine couldn't be seen in diapers and Spider-Man has a known allergy to Pringles, that only left the soap opera.

To that end, Guiding Light aired an episode in which a long-running character was shocked by some Halloween decorations and briefly gained superpowers. Marvel wrote their own version of the story as a six-page mini-crossover, and though the hope was that the cross-promotion would encourage soap viewers and comics fans to walk on the other side, not many did, and Guiding Light only lasted a few more years before it was canceled.

Marvel's failed cross-promotions go back even further. In 1980, Casablanca Records came to Marvel and asked them to come up with a superhero comic which could tie into an as-yet-unnamed singer. The creation, called Dazzler, was given wicked disco clothes and the power to turn sound into energy. While Marvel produced the comics, Casablanca never actually secured a singer to perform as Dazzler on their label, leaving the publisher with a terrible disco-themed hero, just as disco was dying out. Marvel re-edited the premiere issue, which sold in huge numbers due to an unprecedented number of superhero cameos as part of Casablanca's demands. Today, Dazzler shows up mostly in X-Men comics, but is generally a pretty good reminder of how the comic world fares best when it doesn't try to create heroes on the whims of Underoos, Bombay Gin, or International Cardboard Manufacturers.

Marvel made some important strides toward fair representation in Hollywood with Black Panther, but sadly it took the studio longer to find the nerve to do the same for gender equality. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has been discussing the possibility of a Black Widow movie for what seems like forever. Speaking at a press conference in support of the release of Iron Man 2 on DVD back in 2010 (via Screen Rant), the producer revealed that he had a few "concepts" for a Black Widow feature and had even spoken to Scarlett Johansson about them, but "The Avengers comes first."

The Black Widow movie was bumped to the bottom of the pile in favor of new male-led franchises and sequels in the years that followed. It wasn't until Warner Bros. and DC took the initiative with 2017's Wonder Woman and emphatically proved that female-led superhero movies could work that Marvel got on board with the idea, greenlighting Black Widow and fast-tracking Captain Marvel. But why did it take so long for Marvel to give a female superhero center stage?

"I think there are a lot of reasons," Feige told Entertainment Weekly. "Not the least of which was fighting for many years the erroneous notion that audiences did not want to see a female-led hero [film] because of a slew of films 15 years ago that didn't work. And my belief was always that they didn't work not because they were female-led stories, they didn't work because they were not particularly good movies."

Kevin Feige made his intentions crystal clear when he announced that the cast of Black Panther would be 90 percent African or African-American — Marvel movies were going to embrace diversity going forward. We've already covered the upcoming Asian-led Shang-Chi movie and the fact that the studio is belatedly embracing female heroes, but that's just the movie branch of the company. For a while it seemed as though Marvel Comics was going to follow the same path, but in a 2017 interview, Senior Vice President of Sales David Gabriel appeared to complain about the company's new emphasis on diversity.

According to Gabriel, sales figures suggested that it wasn't what Marvel fans really wanted. "What we heard was that people didn't want any more diversity," he told ICv2. "They didn't want female characters out there... We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character — people were turning their nose up against."

Naturally, the interview led to a backlash, and Gabriel was forced to release a statement clarifying his comments. He claimed that Marvel bosses were "proud and excited" about the new range of diverse characters, but they did little to push them. "Marvel hoped new, diverse characters would reach a diverse audience but it seems they hoped they would do so on their own," ScreenRant reported when the Marvel Legacy relaunch was canned less than a year after it was introduced.

In 2017, a Marvel comic made headlines across the world for all the wrong reasons. The company re-launched its X-Men line in April of that year, but what should have been a time for celebration quickly descended into controversy thanks to Ardian Syaf, a Muslim artist who decided to hide political and religious references in X-Men: Gold #1.

On top of referencing the date of a protest held in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, Syaf drew X-Men leader Kitty Pryde (a Jewish character) in front of a jewelry store but made it so the first three letters of the word were particularly prominent. He also drew fan favorite Colossus in a T-shirt with "QS 5:51" daubed across the chest, a reference to an anti-Semitic and anti-Christian verse from the Koran.

"Do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies," the verse in question reads, per the BBC. "Whoever is an ally to them among you — then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people." It's easy to see why readers were upset about the message Syaf was secretly peddling, a message that goes against the theme of X-Men comics.

"These implied references do not reflect the views of the writer, editors or anyone else at Marvel and are in direct opposition of the inclusiveness of Marvel Comics and what the X-Men have stood for since their creation," Marvel said in a statement. Needless to say, Syaf was fired.

Secret Empire wasn't the first time a Captain America story arc kickstarted a political debate. Steve Rogers took a back seat in 2010's Captain America #602, with Bucky Barnes instead leading the line. During his investigation into an extreme right-wing group called the Watchdogs, Barnes and Sam Wilson find themselves surveying a government protest in small-town Idaho. There's nothing wrong with portraying a fictional protest, but this demonstration was quite clearly based on the Tea Party movement, a hot topic in American politics at the time.

The slogans on the banners carried by the all-white protesters were lifted directly from those seen at Tea Party gatherings, with phrases like "Tea Bag The Libs Before They Tea Bag YOU" making it pretty clear who these people were supposed to be. Fox News reached out to Ed Brubaker (writer of the controversial issue) for comment, and he told them that somebody in "lettering or production" must have added the slogans at the last minute. "I don't know who did it, probably someone who thought it was funny," Brubaker claimed. "I didn't think so, personally."

Joe Quesada (Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time) acknowledged the mistake in an interview with CBR, but for many, Marvel's real error was apologizing. "It may not play in every corner of the country, but for a company that makes its bread telling tales of heroic ideals, standing up for something might be just the kind of great responsibility that goes with their great power," Comics Alliance argued.

Brian Michael Bendis joined the Marvel writing staff in 2000 and quickly made a name for himself working on the Ultimate Spider-Man series. His Marvel career got off to a flying start, but his relationship with fans would turn sour in 2004 when he was given creative control over Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Buoyed by the success of his Spidey run, Bendis went in hot and decided to shake things up big time. Instead of easing himself into the title, he chose to "blow things up" and disassemble the Avengers, killing off Hawkeye and scattering the remaining team members.

"Some fans liked it, and some hated it," Bendis said. "There were a lot of arguments online, and a fan said to me, 'We're Avengers fans. All we buy is Avengers, and we have no idea who you are, but you came over and kicked all our toys over.'" The writer held his hands up and admitted to his mistake, but Avengers Disassembled would hang over Bendis for the rest of his time at Marvel. 

In November 2017 — some 18 years after he first put pen to paper for Marvel — he jumped ship and signed an exclusive deal with DC. When he spoke to CBR a few months later, the new Superman writer pledged that he wouldn't make the same mistakes that he made on The Avengers. "It's not that I would have changed the story of Avengers," he explained, "but the glee with which I did things, I could have been more cool with."