Marvel Comics isn’t doing as well as they once were, but even when they were on top things weren’t always perfect. Not every good book landed with fans, and some books that fans were excited for get cancelled before they ever come out. However, there’s another failure that was more common than most people want to think. Over the years, there have been some books that never really had a chance. You can debate their quality til the cows come home, but Marvel completely set them up for failure. These books were dead on arrival for a variety of reasons, but the biggest is the mistakes that Marvel made even greenlighting them.
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Marvel had a great reputation with fans for years, but that doesn’t mean it was always earned. The company has never been perfect, despite what some (MCU) fans think, and those mistakes have given us some big failures. These seven Marvel comics were set up to fail, never having a chance to find an audience or even get good.
7) Wolverine (Vol. 8)
2025 was the worst year for Wolverine in a long time, and Wolverine (Vol. 8) is a perfect example of why. The book launched towards the end of 2024, from writer Saladin Ahmed and artist Martin Coccolo. Ahmed has exactly one book that fans like and Coccolo is an artist who can do good work, but does a lot of rushed work. Ahmed does a god job with Wolverine’s voice, but the stories aren’t that interesting. There are good issues occasionally, but most of it is quite blah. Wolverine fans have rebelled, with the book falling from its usual high place in the sales charts. Marvel picked a team that wasn’t right for the book and have seen a hero who once their second bestselling solo character fall from his usual post.
6) Hulk (Vol. 5)
Immortal Hulk was an amazing comic, and it made the Jade Giant a big deal again (at least in the funny books). Fans were excited for what was coming down the pipe and Marvel announced that superstar writer Donny Cates and Invincible artist Ryan Ottley were taking over. Everyone was stoked but the first issue came out and it was a seismic change from Immortal. The Hulk and Banner were antagonistic again, with Bruce piloting the Hulk to do his bidding. Referred to as “Starship Hulk”, this ten issue run was cut short when Cates had a tragic car accident. However, it was already hated by fans for a simple reason: it wasn’t Immortal and it basically ignored everything that book did. Cates and Immortal writer Al Ewing both pitched their stories at the same time years before, and instead of going with Cates first, they went with Ewing. It was a huge mistake, and it made this book into a casualty.
5) Zeb Wells’ The Amazing Spider-Man
Zeb Wells has long been a steady hand, and had one of his biggest critical successes with Hellions in the Krakoa Era. He was shunted over to The Amazing Spider-Man, with artists John Romita Jr., Ed McGuiness, and Patrick Gleason announced for the book. Everyone was excited but they would soon learn they shouldn’t have been. The run made Spider-Man into a bigger loser than ever, which is saying something, and destroyed Peter and Mary Jane’s relationship again, which fans had just got back, marrying her off to new character Paul. He became the most hated character in the Marvel Universe. Oh and they killed off Ms. Marvel so she could resurrected as a mutant. It was abysmal, and fans rebelled. The whole run was a mistake, and Marvel should have known that but they seemingly hoped that everyone would rage read the book instead of rage quitting. They were wrong.
4) The Sentry (Vol. 5)
The Sentry is a low key legend, with a small but devoted fanbase. In 2018, it was announced that the character was getting a new series from Jeff Lemire and Kim Jacinto. Everyone who cared (there were dozens of us. Dozens!) was excited… and then Marvel announced that it was only going to be a five-issue series after first soliciting it as an ongoing. The excitement lessened, and the book was DOA. This is a shame, because it’s honestly a really good series. The hero’s fans were extremely disappointed, especially since the ending was so open-ended.
3) Children of the Atom
The X-Men’s Krakoa Era was quite successful, but not every book worked out. Children of the Atom, by Vita Ayala, Bernard Chang, and Paco Medina, was about a group of new “mutants” with powers similar to various X-Men fighting evil. The book had a twist that no one saw coming and it was honestly a pretty cool teen team book. It was one of several books announced as an ongoing, but Covid happened. It was cut down to five issues and barely advertised, so it never really caught on. There was definitely an audience for it somewhere, but Marvel decided to make it impossible to find it.
2) Fantastic Four: 1234
So, imagine Grant Morrison getting announced to write the Fantastic Four. You couldn’t escape that news, right? Well, let’s go back in time to the year 2000. Morrison joined Marvel in late 1999 and gave readers the brilliant Marvel Boy for the Marvel Knights line. Their next book was Fantastic Four: 1234, by Morrison and Jae Lee. For some reason, Marvel didn’t push the book nearly as hard as they could or should have. Morrison was at the same level of stardom back then, but for some reason the House of Ideas thought it was a bad idea to push this book as hard as they could.
1) Uncanny Inhumans
The Inhumans push was a huge mistake and Uncanny Inhumans, from writer Charles Soule, Steve McNiven, Brandon Peterson, and more over its run, was one of the biggest disappointments of the era. This book was meant to be the flagship of the Inhumans line, but Marvel really should have known better. This book premiered after Marvel decided to further marginalize the mutants in favor of the Inhumans, who they owned the film rights to at the time. The Inhumans were never meant to be like mutants, which is what Marvel tried to make them, and fans weren’t ever going to get invested. On top of that, Soule just wasn’t up to the task of making them superstars. It was a perfect storm of bad decisions.
What Marvel books do you think were set up to fail? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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Images Courtesy of DC Comics
