It’s a Bad Time to Be a New Marvel Fan

Longtime fans are having the time of our lives. But for newer audiences, it’s the same old gatekeeping.

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I was about 10 years old when I got my first X-Men comic. The Age of Apocalypse storyline started in 1995, and it’s the earliest X-Men plot I can remember: It was an alternate timeline where Charles “Professor X” Xavier was dead, and all of his students—the typical X-Men heroes—were given different backstories. Since all of the characters had a fresh start, it was a relatively welcoming entry point into a wide-spanning universe that is typically anything but inviting. I started reading and kept going for years, branching out to other team-based Marvel series like X-Force and X-Factor. Eventually, I read enough books across the Marvel universe to have a fairly holistic view of what was going on.

I would never do that shit today.

It breaks my heart, but I think that Marvel comics (and DC, the other of the two largest comic-book publishers in the country) are the least accessible form of popular entertainment out there. The challenge to becoming a new comic-book fan is untangling the convoluted web of stories that happened before you picked up your first book. The characters’ interconnectedness makes for a high barrier to entry and a low chance of enjoying a full story as a newcomer. It’s not uncommon to read captions that say things like “See Thor #51” to understand a reference, or to have to search the internet for context for something that happened elsewhere in the universe. Comic universes reward being obsessive.

Marvel’s built-in gatekeeping was once limited to comic books, but after three decades of Marvel Studios, screen adaptations now have enough content to begin to follow the same path: You have to already know the Marvel Cinematic Universe to understand any given installment in it. Its latest series, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, highlighted the point in its season finale.

Marvel Studios

In the She-Hulk finale, which aired earlier this month on Disney+, the Marvel Cinematic Universe doubled down on its rewards to longtime fans of its movies and TV series. I won’t spoil it here, but suffice it to say that the series goes beyond a few Easter eggs and self-referential jokes. To understand its climax, you have to know the larger Marvel history. If you know, you know; and if you don’t, well, it wasn’t made for you. I’m a fan who wants others to become fans, so that made me sad.

I bristle when people say, “I hate comic-book movies.”  There are so many comic book–based stories that such a claim sounds thoughtless to me at best. But I can understand why people might feel that way when I watch something that feels as exclusionary as the She-Hulk finale. Typically, I can tell potential new fans to ignore niche references that they might not understand, and to instead latch onto the larger, isolated stories that can stand on their own. But Marvel has forfeited accessibility for new fans in favor of indulging its most loyal ones. I understand the decision—Marvel certainly has a large-enough fanbase to not need new fans, and if you haven’t joined the bandwagon yet, perhaps you never will—but as someone who wants these stories to be accessible, I cringe at the direction the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going in. And I don’t want to get into the quality of She-Hulk as a series in this essay, but treating fan service as a storytelling device makes for some pretty bad writing.

Perhaps I hate gatekeeping most because I feel like I’m on the receiving end lately. If you haven’t heard, the X-Men comics are good again. Supposedly really good. I wouldn’t know, though, because catching up would mean untangling a web of comics instead of picking up a single book. My friend Omar sent me an email with four separate reading lists, and his own recommended reading order:

Required:

House of X #1

Powers of X #1

House of X #2

Powers of X #2–3

House of X #3–4

Powers of X #4

House of X #5

Powers of X #5

House of X #6

Powers of X #6

X-Men (2019) #1

S.W.O.R.D. (2020) series

Optional:

Marauders #1

Excalibur (2019) #1–6

New Mutants (2019) #1

X-Force (2019) #1

Hellions #1

X of Swords series

Way of X series

Legion of X series

X-Men: The Trial of Magneto series

X-Men (2019-2021) series

Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird #1

Inferno (2021-2022) series

X-Men: Red series

Immortal X-Men series

X-Men: Hellfire Gala #1

A.X.E.: Judgment Day series

Sabretooth (2022) series

When I was a kid, I dreamed of having as much Marvel content as we have available now. But I’ve snoozed Omar’s email eight times so far. I don’t have the same instinct for obsession I did when I was 10. I’d rather pick up a novel, manga, or indie comic with a full story in a single book. I would rather not have to be obsessed. I would rather feel welcome.

I imagine that newer fans haven’t felt welcome since the early days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And, unfortunately, I don’t think they will again soon.

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I’m back from Korea! Thanks to everyone who responded to my last Humans Being, about patriotic propaganda and The Redeem Team. I have a lot of emails to catch up on.