Does Marvel Need a Relaunch?

DC continues to make waves in the comic book industry thanks to their New 52 relaunch. While there's no telling how well this new push will fare over the long-term, sales are clearly up and more readers are walking into comic shops every week. For an industry that continues to see sales and readership drop, this is a very positive sign.

Many eyes are now turning to Marvel as the New 52 relaunch pushes into its second month. For the first time in years, Marvel will likely be relegated to a distant second place on the sales charts. What should they do to keep pace with DC? What can they do to mimic DC's success and even improve upon it? Essentially, does Marvel need a New 52 of its own?

Marvel has never offered a line-wide relaunch and continuity overhaul along the lines of DC's New 52, but they've certainly made attempts to spruce up specific areas of their catalog in the past. The most notable is probably the Ultimate imprint. In 2000, when sales were down and readers were complaining about the accessibility of Marvel's books, the Ultimate titles offered a clean break and a universe that featured streamlined, modernized versions of popular characters.

Marvel also began to methodically overhaul its traditional books soon after. The process began with J. Michael Straczynski's Amazing Spider-Man and Grant Morrison's New X-Men and eventually hit the Avengers books with Avengers Disassembled and the subsequent relaunched titles.

Marvel has also used events and event aftermaths to draw in new readers. Civil War was easily the most successful attempt at bringing more attention to the Marvel Universe, thanks to its simple concept and mass media-friendly headlines like "Spider-Man Unmasks!" and "Captain America Assassinated!" Most recently, Marvel marketed The Heroic Age as a fresh jumping-on point for readers. No doubt they'll be doing the same in the post-Fear Itself landscape and during the build-up towards next year's Avengers movie.


That's not to say Marvel doesn't face immense challenges moving into 2012. Fear Itself certainly ranks as one of the better-selling books of the year, but its monthly Diamond sales have tended to number around 80,000. By the standards of even a few short years ago, that isn't very impressive, and it's clear the industry was becoming more sluggish prior to DC's New 52.

Marvel faces various problems when it comes to attracting new readers. There's an increasing perception that their books are hard to get into. With so many X-Men and Avengers titles on the stands, where is a newbie supposed to start? Books are becoming increasingly interconnected again through events and crossovers. Marvel's revelations that events like Schism, Fear Itself, and Avengers: The Children's Crusade are all building towards a larger storyline next year may sound enticing to some readers, but just as many might be put off by the notion that everything is tied together and nothing is allowed to stand on its own.

Certainly, plenty of books do still stand alone, but they tend to get drowned out in the noise. There needs to be a stronger emphasis on self-contained stories that break the standard superhero mold. While Marvel generally beats DC in terms of monthly sales, DC's graphic novel sales often outstrip Marvel's. One reason for this is that DC has many more self-contained graphic novels that offer casual readers a clear beginning, middle, and end. Marvel needs more books equivalent to Watchmen or Batman: The Killing Joke and less events that simply bleed into other events. Quality, self-contained series like Mark Waid's Daredevil and Greg Rucka's Punisher need to become the norm, not the exception.

One other area that proves problematic with some readers is the lack of permanency to stories. Some readers are perfectly happy to accept the notion that death is a revolving door and most characters experience repeated cyclical journeys over the course of years or decades. Others find this off-putting. How many mass-media headlines like Superman's death or the aforementioned Spider-Man unmasking have brought new attention to books, only for those changes to be undone within a year? It's a tricky balance. Characters need to be maintained over time. It doesn't make good business sense to truly and permanently kill Superman or leave Peter Parker as a wanted fugitive for the rest of his shelf life. At the same time, there are readers who ignore superhero comics altogether because they feel these stories have no sense of importance or consequence. There has to be a way of satisfying both camps.


The New 52 relaunch is sometimes erroneously referred to as a reboot of the DC Universe. The truth is a bit more complicated. Many core storylines and character developments have been retained, while other stories, particularly those of the Crisis variety, have been wiped out of continuity. The amount of changes varies from series to series. Some franchises, like Batman and Green Lantern, remain largely unchanged by the relaunch. Others, like Teen Titans and Firestorm, are drastically overhauled.

DC continuity hasn't necessarily been rendered more clean and accessible with the relaunch. For some readers it has only grown more confusing as the question of what stories still hold true arises. The relaunch is aimed more at the perception of the DCU as a convoluted, confusing place. DC has gone to great lengths to paint the New 52 as a fresh starting point for new and lapsed readers. The questions regarding older stories will be addressed along the way as needed.

Marvel has always benefited from the opposite perception. Fair or not, the Marvel Universe has tended to be viewed as a more simple and accessible landscape. Its heroes are seen as more relatable and more grounded in reality. Marvel doesn't necessarily have to wage a perception war in the same way DC has these past few months.

With all that in mind, there's little to be gained by rebooting the Marvel Universe so that Peter Parker is back in college and hanging out at the Coffee Bean and the original Uncanny X-Men cast are back in the Xavier Institute. As long as Marvel makes it clear that new readers are being given a clean, fresh start across all titles, audiences will come.