I’ve been reading Marvel Comics pretty much my entire life, starting with the ones my dad handed me when I was young in the early ’80s. It’s been nearly 40 years since I fell in love with the House of Ideas, and not one of them has passed without me devouring as many comics as possible – with Marvel eternally at the forefront of my superhero taste. Well, almost none. Then 2025 arrived.
I’ve been about as “Make Mine Marvel” as possible. Even my career has largely focused on covering Marvel. But as the year progressed, I found myself less and less involved in the majority of the publisher’s output. You could say I’ve been disenchanted, disconnected, and just a little tired of 2025’s Marvel comics, to the point where I’ve struggled to find many worthwhile titles to submit for consideration on our best of the year list.
The world outside your window
This is 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 struggling with an ineffective, nostalgia-locked overarching philosophy, and many other series simply failing to develop compelling stakes, Marvel has felt far too static for most of 2025.
Review of the year 2025
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It’s also a bit confusing, because Doctor Doom is my favorite character. I love the idea of him taking over as Sorcerer Supreme, the central concept of One World Under Doom, and writer Ryan North’s Fantastic Four took our top spot in our rankings of best comics of 2024.
But the plot of Doom as world conqueror has stuck around for far too long, with much of Marvel’s output steeped in the event, something that can easily turn into a slump for a story with its own potential. And the X-Men line, while recruiting talented creators, floundered in the shadow of the Krakoa era, which set a nearly impossible bar for any new X title arising in its wake to surpass.
Meanwhile, other popular characters such as the Scarlet Witch are stuck in an endless cycle of limited series that replace an ongoing monthly series, a sales ploy that reflects the publisher’s apparent inability to deliver timeless, compelling comics in favor of meager sales from a dwindling customer base.
Creative woes
This brings me to Marvel’s other major problem in 2025: the shortage of new talent. Yes, there have been a few people dipping their toes in the water, but it increasingly feels like Marvel is circling the wagons around a handful of writers who each helm as many titles as they can hold.
I won’t name names or try to parse the deeper reasons for this apparent strategy, but it probably has something to do with the publisher’s general reluctance to go for the fences. Most importantly, the House of Ideas is starting to feel like it has threadbare walls that do little to support even the most dedicated and committed of its creators.
It’s hard not to interpret all of this — static stories, creative slowdown — as the effect of a loose, sales-driven perspective in which the corporate side of Marvel seems to have more influence over the finish line than the editors and talent who actually make the comics.
This may just be a reader’s opinion. I’m certainly basing this analysis on my own opinions and reading of current Marvel titles rather than hard facts. It seems, however, that Marvel fans as a whole are finding it increasingly difficult not to turn against series that may have not 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 revolutionary characters. The status quo of Krakoa has changed everything for Marvel’s mutants, pushing them toward a futuristic nation of invincible X-Men with fateful stakes that could upend the entire Marvel Universe.
Following an act like that is difficult, especially when just repeating Krakoa’s big twist would almost certainly fail. But returning the X-Men franchise to a purely nostalgic line and reviving the idea that mutants are “hated and feared” by humanity has put an albatross on the one Marvel property that just can’t go back and still feel credible.
Perhaps it was the success of X-Men ’97 that motivated the X-Men’s current approach. Even that indicates that Marvel took the wrong lessons, as the animated revival series won over fans old and new by saying something new with the cartoon versions of the characters.
While the X-Men line isn’t the only corner of the Marvel Universe that feels stuck in a rut, it emerges as a case study in making sausages purely from gristle, with its otherwise talented creators seemingly struggling to find a great escapist moment.
The Future of Marvel
So what’s next for Marvel? For the struggling X-Men line, the response was to suspend or cancel all titles in the line for the trade show trick of relaunching everything as a wave of alternate reality titles set in a possible future for the X-Men. But it’s a paltry transformation when the main line is so battered, even with yet another relaunch on the horizon.
At the same time, much of the rest of the Marvel Universe is still tied up in the aftermath of the recently concluded One World Under Doom event, which has yielded diminishing returns throughout 2025. I’ll put a feather in its cap – it delivered some great Doom moments, even if they were spread a little too thinly by the extended length of the main One World Under Doom series.
I hope 2026 brings a return to creator-driven stories that create stakes for the characters in the comics rather than lashing each title in gimmicky events, which have the potential to stand the test of time among the best Marvel series of all time, 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, vulnerable characters who can become vehicles for stories no other publisher can tell.
Stories like Infinity Gauntlet and Civil War are great 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 are stories that 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.
To get a taste of what the House of Ideas is capable of at its peak, check out our selection of the best Marvel stories of all time.
