10 Most Disappointing Marvel Relaunches, Ranked

Marvel makes a big deal about never having to reboot their universe, unlike their distinguished competition, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t had numerous relaunches. Once upon a time, these relaunches were way less prevalent than they are now, as creators would hand off books to new creators and the new talent would continue subplots and characterization as best they could. It honestly made the Marvel Universe feel more real, kind of like the world outside your window. However, all of that changed as the years have gone on and now Marvel is relaunch king, relaunching nearly every major character and team on a pretty regular basis.

While there have been some excellent Marvel relaunches over the years (Marvel NOW! jumps right to the top of the line), there have also been a lot of very disappointing relaunches. Whether they be linewide or just a character or team, these relaunches just didn’t work for fans. These ten Marvel relaunches didn’t do it for readers, and are rightfully disliked.

10) Marvel Knights Punisher

So, the ’90s were a strange time for Marvel. I’m not going to get too far into the weeds, but eventually, the publisher split its line into families, with the “the Edge” line containing street level heroes. Punisher and Nick Fury fought, and eventually, Punisher was killed. In 1998, Marvel launched the Marvel Knights line, which took B-list characters and relaunched them. This led to the worst Punisher relaunch ever. Marvel Knights’ The Punisher revolved around Frank Castle being resurrected by angels to kill demons. It was an interesting idea, with amazing art by the legendary Bernie Wrightson, but it didn’t fit the character at all. It was the only failure of the opening Marvel Knights line, and led to the vastly superior Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon 12-issue The Punisher maxiseries (if you’ve never read “Welcome Back, Frank”, you need to).

9) Charles Soules’ Inhumans Relaunch

Marvel’s Inhumans push was a massive mistake, but it started out pretty well. Infinity saw Black Bolt detonate a Terrigen Mist bomb to protect a group of Inhumans from Thanos, and suddenly people the world over started undergoing Terrigenesis, becoming Inhumans. Writer Matt Fraction was the creator behind the book Inhumanity, and it was honestly pretty good. However, Fraction left Marvel, and the publisher decided to put Charles Soule, who they had signed an exclusive deal with to some acclaim in 2014 (it was the first time in years Marvel had successfully signed away a semi-popular DC writer so they made a big deal out of it), on the Inhumans, letting him write Inhuman and Uncanny Inhumans, as well as later co-writing Inhumans vs. X-Men. Soule was responsible for trying to make the Inhumans into mutants, breaking up Black Bolt and Medusa, and made all the bad decisions that made people hate the Inhumans. Soule was handed an impossible job and tried his best, but wasn’t able to make the Inhumans a success.

8) The Krakoa Era

The Krakoa Era was wildly inventive, but it was ultimately a failure, which is why it’s such a disappointment. Jonathan Hickman was handed the X-Men after years of marginalization, and created a new mutant nation, using the living island of Krakoa as their home. Hickman assembled a roster of writers and together they created something special. Then, Hickman left. There were still some amazing books, but there were also a lot of mediocre books. So much of what Hickman set up was left behind, and the ending was kind of bad (Fall of the House of X is trash and somehow made even Lucas Werneck’s art look bad; it was a fiasco). A lot of fans love Krakoa, but if they tell you that it didn’t disappoint them in the long run, they’re lying.

7) Marvel NOW! 2.0

2012’s Marvel NOW! was awesome, but the publisher squandered everything it set up (more on that next). Marvel NOW! 2.0 was meant to remind everyone of the success of the original, but it hit at the worst time. It spun out of Civil War II, one of the most maligned event comics of the ’10s, which didn’t really help and was basically destined for failure. See, Marvel had lost all of the creators who made Marvel NOW! so great —Jonathan Hickman, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Rick Remender, and Kieron Gillen were all gone — and no one was really interested in any of the new characters. Add in mediocre X-Men, Spider-Man, and Avengers comics, and Marvel NOW 2.0! was basically DOA.

6) All-New, All-Different Marvel

All-New, All-Different Marvel started in 2015, three years after the successes of Marvel NOW!. The publisher was still going strong, but decided that it was time to switch things up. Marvel introduced a bunch of new heroes in the name of diversity, but forgot the most important part — the good stories. While there were still some great books coming out — Jonathan Hickman’s amazing Avengers run was still going strong, Ms. Marvel was excellent, and Aaron’s Thor was still awesome — too many of the books were just gimmick character changes. Marvel also lost a lot of the creators who had made the publisher so popular in the early ’10s over the course of All-New, All-Different Marvel. It was a perfect storm of problems, and it led to a middling relaunch that began the downward spiral of quality the publisher is still on a decade later.

5) Jed MacKay’s Avengers

Jed MacKay became Marvel’s next big writer working on Moon Knight, Clea, and Black Cat. Fans loved his work and MacKay was given the helm of Avengers. He set up his run in Timeless (2022) #1, building a story around Kang that led him to team up with the Avengers to battle mysterious enemies even he feared. It was obviously meant to tie into the MCU, where Kang was going to be the next big bad, but Jonathan Major was fired as Kang and the run suddenly became rudderless. Even before this, though, the cracks had already started to show. MacKay did his best, but he’s not all that great at team dynamics, and doesn’t work well with A-list character he can’t do whatever he wants with. MacKay’s Avengers seemed to come at the perfect time, after a middling run from Jason Aaron, but turned out to be more of the same.

4) “From the Ashes”

Despite the Krakoa Era ending badly, X-Men fans were not excited about “From the Ashes”. Executive Editor Tom Brevoort was put in charge of the X-Men books and gave readers the most basic X-Men relaunch you can imagine. There were no new ideas behind the books beyond rehashing what came before, some books even stealing status quos from earlier successful X-Men books, with Brevoort hoping that new readers would make up for longtime X-Men fans who ran from the retreads of the line. However, the new readers left quickly as well, and “From the Ashes” is basically two moderately successful books (X-Men and Uncanny X-Men), some books that don’t sell bad enough to cancel but don’t sell well (Wolverine, Jean Grey, Storm, Exceptional X-Men), and a bunch of cancellations. “From the Ashes” has hurt the X-Men, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get any better in the months to come.

3) Chuck Austen’s X-Men

Grant Morrison’s New X-Men was brilliant, but Marvel chased them off (Morrison said in their autobiography that they were getting into shouting matches with Marvel editorial every week). To replace them, the publisher moved Chuck Austen from Uncanny X-Men to New X-Men, changing the name back to X-Men, and readers got some terrible stories out of it. Austen is the worst X-Men writer of all-time, and him trying to relaunch an X-Men book following Grant Morrison, one of the greatest writers in the history of comics, was a massive mistake.

2) Marvel Legacy

DC Rebirth was a huge success, and Marvel wanted in on that. 2015-2017 had been very bad for Marvel and they needed a shot in the arm. Marvel Legacy was supposed to be that shot, but it didn’t work. There are several reasons for that. DC Rebirth #1 was $2.99 for 80 pages of story. Marvel: Legacy #1 was 80 pages for $9.99 and it was definitely not worth that much as a story. Marvel tried for a DC Rebirth-esque back to basics approach but it honestly wasn’t at all different from what came before: the same creators on the same books telling the same stories. It wasn’t bad per say, it was just sort of there, and it was yet another failed relaunch from the late ’10s.

1) Return of Wolverine

2014’s Death of Wolverine was fine. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great, it was readable. It was Charles Soule’s first Marvel work and it sold well, so Soule would get tapped to write Wolverine’s return five years later (although, honestly, every Wolverine fan who read it, The Logan Legacy, and Wolverines knew he was the wrong choice for any Wolverine book). Return of Wolverine is legitimately terrible. Now, the art by Steve McNiven and Declan Shalvey is fantastic, but the script is horrendous. It followed a brainwashed Wolverine being manipulated by a shadowy group, and introduced a new power to Wolverine — “hot claws”, which would super heat his claws and take away his healing factor. I’ve never met a Wolverine fan who actually likes the story, and everything it set up was ignored in the years after it dropped; in fact, only one book even referenced anything in it. Honestly, most Wolverine fans try to forget it ever happened.

What is you least favorite Marvel relaunch? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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