Marvel Comics has been defined by their events in the 21st century, which makes sense. The House of Ideas created what we recognize as the modern event comic with 1982’s Marvel Super Heroes Contest of Champions and would go on to make them an integral part of their publishing schedule. In the 21st century, they’ve become one of the mechanisms by which the Marvel changes their entire publishing line, and have given readers some of the greatest crossovers and battles of all time. There are some brilliant Marvel events, but not every one of them can be some kind of amazing blockbuster.
Some Marvel events have been stinkers for a variety of reasons but some of them should have been better. These events seemed exciting at first and ended up failing at being good stories. These seven worst Marvel events should have been better, but they ended up becoming infamous failures.
Wolverine is one of Marvel’s most popular characters, and the publisher killed him off in 2014, something that was happening to a lot of A-listers in the decade. Logan stayed dead until 2019, when Return of Wolverine, by Charles Soule, Steve McNiven, and Declan Shalvey, dropped. Return of Wolverine is infamously bad, but it didn’t have to be. Soule was seemingly paying homage to classic ideas from the ol’Canucklehead, but gave readers one of the most boilerplate, uninspired story ever. Basically, any other story would have made this comic better; Logan was always going to come back and his fans deserved better than this. It’s a book with awesome art, attached to a story that feels paint by numbers when it didn’t need to.
MCU synergy is a huge part of Marvel Comics nowadays, which has become an equally huge problem. The best way to illustrate this is to read Infinity Wars, by Gerry Duggan and Mike Deodato. This story was meant to take advantage of the possibility that movie fans would go to the comic shop after watching Avengers: Infinity Wars but forgot to include an actual good story. It centers on the mysterious Requiem goes on a quest for the Infinity Stones with a group of heroes trying to stop her and then transforms into a weird multiversal story (you almost certainly saw the Funko Pops back in 2018). This could have been a better story if it wasn’t meant to be some kind of big event but was a smaller scale Guardians of the Galaxy story, and it’s been almost completely forgotten because it swung for the fences in the worst way possible.
Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars was a huge hit and that meant a sequel was forthcoming. Secret Wars II, by Jim Shooter and Al Milgrom, was that sequel but it couldn’t match its predecessor. The story followed the One From Beyond deciding to take a human form as the Beyonder, trying to figure out the beings who had outsmarted him before. It’s something of a fish out of water story at times, which are some of the best parts (the other good parts involve Molecule Man, but then it remembers that it’s part of a massive crossover and it jettisons those cool parts for empty battles and blah twists. This story should have focused more on the Beyonder’s journey, with Molecule Man in the background going on his own journey, and the two colliding with the heroes trying to limit the damage. It could have been cool, but instead it was just a regular event book.
Civil War II is another example of MCU synergy, meant to give Captain America: Civil War fans something to read on the off chance they went to a comic store. This story from Brian Michael Bendis and David Marquez saw Iron Man and Captain Marvel having a falling out over the use of the Inhuman Ulysses, who can see the future. It was basically just aping the conflict of the original story (and Minority Report) with Captain Marvel in Captain America’s place (well, technically she was the Iron Man of this Civil War, the overtly villainous one, but you get it). This story made Carol into a terrible character, and being a Bendis-written event was quite boring. It could have better if the story was more balanced between the two sides and had a writer who was better at action-packed conflicts, but instead we got this.
Infinity Gauntlet is one of the greatest Marvel events ever and its sequel Infinity War was amazing. However, the final part of the Infinity trilogy was a massive failure. Jim Starlin and Ron Lim pit the heroes of the Marvel Universe against the Goddess, a being meant to be the embodiment of god in Adam Warlock, for a story that ended up as mostly mind-controlled heroes fighting non-mind-controlled heroes. Fans were excited for this story and what they got didn’t reach the level of their expectations. It’s hard to figure out just what Starlin and Lim could have done differently for this book, but fans deserved more from it.
Secret Empire, by Nick Spencer, Steve McNiven, Andrea Sorrentino, Rod Reis, Daniel Acuna, Leinil Yu, Joshua Cassara, Sean Izaakse, Java Tartaglia, Joe Bennet, David Marquez, Paco Medina, Juan Vlasco, Jesus Arbutov, and Ron Lim, was the culmination of the Hydra Cap storyline and it ended up as a massive failure. The pacing was terrible, the various artists’ style clashed, and the book just seemed to never come together as anything resembling a good story. It was long, and Marvel decided adding an extra issue was a good idea during the series’ run, making the bad pacing even worse. This story should have been much better planned, because its build-up was amazing, but instead we got a mess that was both bloated and rushed.
House of M is a legitimately terrible comic, one made all the worse because it’s so integral to Marvel history. The 8-issue event book from Brian Michael Bendis and Olivier Coipel saw the Avengers and X-Men teaming up to decide what to do about the Scarlet Witch, leading to her creating a world where mutants were in charge. It ended with the de-powering of the mutant race, but it gets to that point with one of the most boring, badly paced event stories ever. This book honestly needed another writer, better worldbuilding, and way more action. Fans loved this book once upon a time, but it’s always been a bad comic that shouldn’t have been so terrible.
What’s Marvel event do you think could have been better? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
