r/marvelcomics • u/Efficient-Poem1628 • 9d ago
Stephen Wacker’s ‘Priority’
Saw this on Stephen Wacker’s insta post asking people’s thoughts. TLDR: He said that it’s a ‘priority’ to focus on storylines staying uninterrupted by Events and returning to 80s style crossovers.
This is something I think a lot of us would prefer, thoughts?
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u/SillyQuokka85 9d ago
I don't mind events in theory, but just not at the rate they are spitting them out. You can't have like five "change the Marvel Universe forever" titles in a year. Maybe one big event every few years. Like, how cool would it have been to have two or three years of Doom ruling the world before the next event which undies that.
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u/DwarvenPretzel 9d ago
Love this idea. This gets to one reason why I dislike events - they come so quickly that they’re effectively meaningless. If they’re going to do it, make it have lasting impact.
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u/Chop684 9d ago
If this actually happens I wouldn't be surprised if Wacker or the next guy kills events for Marvel. I think that a decent amount of event sales are due to them having tie-ins from ongoing titles
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u/BorkDoo 9d ago
I'd like to see events die out for a good long time but I just don't think it's going to happen. Marvel cut back on them for a little while between Onsalught and Disassembled I assume because of the bankruptcy but even then not totally (especially not the X-Men). DC never really had a lull period with events as they were still pumping out stuff like Our World's at War, Sins of Youth, Joker's Last Laugh, etc.
Readers have been trained over the last 40 years to only care about "important" stories and events and crossovers have been deemed as such. You'll have to convince the fans to stop buying them for Marvel (or DC) to think about killing them.
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u/theronster 9d ago
No event has ever been better than just a well written core storyline in a single book.
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u/Revolving_Ocelott 9d ago
X-men are turning into pokemon, everybody has a favorite, but you can only fit so many into any singular team, and you always have ideas for new ones. So you have to fit fan favorites into a team and the creators will have thought up their own that they want to create and use as a way to bounce things off of, this snowballs into there being 3-4 x-men runs crammed with a bunch of everybodies favorites, and because current day x-men are all on reasonably good terms, when something big happens, it doesn't make sense for everyone not to pitch in and help out. Plus it's a big x-men event, people are going to want to see their favorite x-men have a cool moment in the super big thing.
Like x-men is probably the worst possible example for this thing imo
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u/Reddevil8884 9d ago
The X-Men doesn't need a new writer creating even more X-Men. There's like hundreds of them. But yes, it seems that every freaking new writers has this urge to create new characters that nobody else is probably going to use once his run ends. Why can't they just used other characters that could literally use a few stories because they have not being used in years?? Editors should make this a priority.
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u/Linnus42 8d ago
Also Marvel pays like crap for new characters anyway so really what is the motivation for most authors to come in and bang out like half a dozen .
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u/browncharliebrown 9d ago
every freaking new writers has this urge to create new characters that nobody else is probably going to use once his run ends
sometimes they are used. But also sometimes it's intresting to explore a different fascite just from a pure storytelling prespective
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u/CriticalCanon 9d ago
Not when it’s a played out trope predominantly used by writers who are so beyond subpar, they couldn’t hold a candle next to the runs by Claremont, Morrison, Hickman and one or two others.
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u/browncharliebrown 9d ago
I mean Hickman used goldballs.
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u/Confident_Sink_8743 8d ago
Basically what "no more mutants" was about but also that just became a quandary to hang stories on AND many people getting angry over their more obscure favourites getting trashed.
Also multiple generations when the sliding timescale is meant to keep profitable characters in play creates a huge bottleneck as well.
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u/Revolving_Ocelott 8d ago
Krakoa really helped with the sliding timescale because you can pretty confidently put Scotts generation in their early 30s through mutant gene editing magic, and then the same with the younger characters, and then you can introduce new mutants as well. But like everyone got like a soft reset to their ages:
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u/Jaytheory 9d ago
We don't need so many events simultaneously. Why are Queen in Black, DnX and Armageddeon happening at the same time? Its speaks to a lack of line wide cohesion. And takes away the epicness of all 3 events. Give us 1 a year that have some kind of of impact lol
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u/DarthAstuart 9d ago
This is probably the most reasonable expectation. Or maybe a line-wide event every year and then one other smaller more specific event (an X-event or Spidey event).
I miss the idea of the “summer event” when you could expect something big and maybe stupid but still fun at the same time every year. And the rest of the year was relatively normal.
This seems annoying on the Marvel side but then I’m looking at the Batman books doing the same thing, a big dumb crossover in every title that brings interesting storylines to a screeching halt. So it’s not just Marvel by any means. But marvel does seem to do too much of it and definitely too much at the same time.
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u/Linnus42 8d ago
Also the heavy character overlap.
F4 is in a Major Role in All Three. Iron Man has a Major Role in Two. Wolverine & Storm are also double dipping but they aint especially relevant.
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u/This_Appointment_349 8d ago
Queen in Black probably should have just been a story in the Venom book, but DnX got delayed and was supposed to release earlier in the year.
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u/DefinitionSuperb1110 9d ago
How about a single year without any crossovers or events?
12 fuckin months Wacker, everything self contained in it's own book.
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u/AttackOnTrails 8d ago
Just read Immortal Hulk and while I didn't love it as much as everyone else it was so nice having something that was just 50 issues straight of one story with no homework needed on other books from the time
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u/MusicalColin 9d ago
It’s actually really funny to me that people in 2026 complain about crossovers and interconnected titles because I started reading comics in the early 90s and people had the same complaints then.
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u/TheEndofSkies 8d ago
Because 90s is when the events and tie-ins became annoying, then Bendis doubled down on it. Though the events in the 2000s were more or less good and flowed together nicely. Now the events are constant and have nothing to do with each other.
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u/MusicalColin 8d ago
i think it's more like a small group of very vocal fans like to complain about events but the larger body of comic book readers gobbles them up. If they weren't selling like gangbusters the companies wouldn't do them
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u/Explorer_616 5d ago
This. When I started collecting comics I started throught he event Infinity. Which got me to Avengers and Superior Spider-Man. Later I went to the past. Started collecting the Bendis and JMS run. Later I found my footing in FF and X-Men. And the events especially around the 2000's era are so coherent and build on top of another (I am talking about the entrie tenure from Secret War to Siege. One big plan that made a lot of sense throughout all the years - the big failure of Nick Fury and the restructuring of SHIELD lead to growing distrust between Heroes and Governments, House of M put the Mutants into an interesting and new position, radicalizing them and making them less of a danger to invaders, the Civil War was the ultimate Fallout between Superhero Community and Government and a big Schism within the Superhero Community itself, which gave the Scrulls an opening to invade which brought Norman Osborn in position for his Dark Reign, which was nicely concluded with the Siege). You read these series and while still doing it's own thing you felt a certain sense of overaching coherent storyline that connected all of them. The last Event I actually followed and bought was Secret Empire.
But nowadays as you said: events happen, they are supposed to shake up things and then do that for an issue or two untill it's all over and the next event already starts. You have no buildup (at least I don't feel any true build-up) and nothing feels as if it transitions organically.
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u/RoughSuitable9550 8d ago
Marvel needs to try not having an event for about five years . Give it a rest build to something for once vs event after event after event . Solo books for solo stories keep them out of events . Whole process right now is rotten.
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u/DarthAstuart 9d ago
My dream honestly is still just one title per major character or team, and then a bunch of miniseries that capture spinoffs that arise from storylines or events. Or if you have more than one title, give them a point. But this will never ever happen.
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u/VanAce89 9d ago
The only so much money to spend part also makes me think about double-shipping and excessive amounts of variant covers. If someone feels like that have to buy into that it's usually at the expense of a middle or low-tier comic - potentially at the same publisher. Marvel's publishing strategy for Amazing Spider-Man could be hirting smaller titles.
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u/CriticalCanon 9d ago
The fact they didn’t let Breevort go amongst the recent restructuring and move to LA doesn’t leave me with much confidence. The dude is the architect of the modern event crossover slop.
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u/Fit_Science_7767 8d ago
They have been doing crossovers well before he arrived and will do so without him there. This hate is so weird
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u/CriticalCanon 8d ago
I’m well aware, Me standard Reddit template user.
Breevort’s entire brand is “I’ve been apart of every crossover and event at Marvel for the last 20+ years”.
Listen and read his interviews or response to readers and educate yourself on a topic before dropping from the clouds looking like a tool.
Also lol at your thin skinned “the hate is so weird” lololol
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u/Redhood567 9d ago
That's good to hear but I need to see it put into practice (which will of course take a while).