If Marvel wants to stay the House of Ideas, it needs to come up with some new ones

I've been reading Marvel Comics basically my entire life, starting with the ones my dad would hand me as a young kid in the early '80s. It's been close to 40 years since I fell in love with the House of Ideas, none of which have passed without me devouring as many comics as I could get my hands on – with Marvel perennially at the forefront of my superhero taste. Well, almost none. Then 2025 happened.

I've been just about as "Make Mine Marvel" as it gets. Even my career has largely focused on covering Marvel. But as the year has rolled on, I've found myself less and less engaged with the majority of the publisher's output. You could say I've been disenchanted, disconnected, and just a little tired by Marvel's 2025 comics, to the point that I struggled to find many worthy titles to submit for consideration on our best of the year list.

The world outside your window

That's a first for me, and it's definitely disappointing. With most of the Marvel Universe stuck in the One World Under Doom status quo, the X-Men line saddled with an ineffective, nostalgia-locked overarching philosophy, and many other series simply failing to develop compelling stakes, Marvel has felt far too static for the bulk of 2025.

It's also a little baffling, as Doctor Doom is my favorite character. I love the idea of him taking over as Sorcerer Supreme, the central conceit of One World Under Doom, and writer Ryan North's Fantastic Four took our top spot in our ranking of the best comics of 2024.

But the plotline of Doom as world conqueror stuck around far too long, with much of Marvel's output steeped in the event, something that can easily turn into the doldrums for a story with its own potential. And the X-Men line, while enlisting some talented creators, has floundered in the shadow of the age of Krakoa, which set a nearly impossible-to-surmount bar for any new X-titles arising in its wake.

Meanwhile, other popular characters such as the Scarlet Witch are stuck in a never-ending cycle of limited series that take the place of a monthly ongoing series, a sales gimmick that reflects the publisher's apparent inability to offer timeless, compelling comics in favor of grasping for the meager sales of a dwindling core customer base.

Creative woes

This brings me to Marvel's other major issue in 2025: a dearth of new talent. Yes, there have been a few folks who have dipped their toes in the water, but it feels increasingly like Marvel is circling the wagons around just a handful of writers who each helm as many titles as they can cram in.

I won't name names or try to parse the deeper hows-and-whys of this apparent strategy, but it's likely got something to do with the publisher's overall skittishness at swinging for the fences. The larger point is that the House of Ideas is starting to feel like it has threadbare walls that do little to prop up even the most dedicated and put-upon of its creators.

It's hard not to interpret it all – static stories, creative downturn – as the effect of a craven, sales-driven outlook in which the corporate side of Marvel seems to have more pull over where the line goes than the editors and talent who actually make the comics.

Perhaps that's merely one reader's insight. I'm certainly basing that analysis on my own opinions and my reading of current Marvel titles rather than stone-cold facts. It seems, though, like Marvel fans as a whole are having a harder and harder time not turning up their nose at series that once wouldn't have just moved the needle, but buried it.

Post-Krakoa blues

The X-Men line is a compelling example of what not to do with Marvel's most groundbreaking characters. The Krakoa status quo changed everything for Marvel's mutants, pushing them forward into a futurist nation of unkillable X-Men with fateful stakes that could upend the entire Marvel Universe.

Following an act like that is hard, especially when simply repeating Krakoa's big twist would certainly fall flat. But taking the X-Men franchise back to a purely nostalgia-driven line and reviving the idea of mutants being "hated and feared" by humanity has put an albatross on the one Marvel property that simply cannot go backwards and still feel credible.

Perhaps it's the success of X-Men '97 that has driven the current approach to the X-Men. Even that is indicative of Marvel taking the wrong lessons, however, as the animated revival series won over fans both old and new by saying something new with the cartoon versions of the characters.

Though the X-Men line is hardly the only corner of the Marvel Universe to feel stuck in a rut, it does come across as a case study in making sausage purely from the gristle, with its otherwise talented creators apparently struggling to find a big breakout moment.

The future of Marvel

So what's next for Marvel? For the embattled X-Men line, the answer has been to suspend or cancel every title in the line for the parlor trick of relaunching everything as a wave of alt-reality titles set in a possible future for the X-Men. But it's a paltry transformation when the core line is so bruised, even with yet another relaunch on the horizon.

At the same time, much of the rest of the Marvel Universe is still tied to the aftermath of the recently concluded One World Under Doom event, which has yielded diminishing returns throughout 2025. I'll stick one feather in its cap – it did deliver some great Doom moments, even if they were spread out a bit too thin by the extended run of the core One World Under Doom series.

My hope is that 2026 brings a return to creator-driven stories that build stakes for the characters in the comics rather than lassoing every title into gimmicky events, which have the potential to stand the test of time among the best Marvel runs ever, rather than simply doubling down on relaunches and variant covers to make an impact.

Marvel would do well to remember what made it the number one superhero publisher for so many decades – its unique and vulnerable characters who can become the vehicle for tales that no other publisher can tell.

Stories like Infinity Gauntlet and Civil War are fine touchstones for the power of a good Marvel event, but what we need right now is a fundamental backbone: great pairings of characters and creators with the runway to build something truly spectacular, like Walt Simonson's Thor or Matt Fraction and David Aja's Hawkeye.

What Marvel needs most of all are stories people want to read not just once, but again and again, that excite fans and make new readers feel included in something bigger than themselves.

For a taste of what the House of Ideas is capable of at its high points, check out our picks for the best Marvel stories of all time.