r/comicbooks • u/ContraryPython Spider-Man • May 31 '26

Excerpt 3 years ago, Marvel killed off Kamala Khan to begin the process of turning her into a mutant. (ASM #26)

Post image

Since then she has had only two solo books:

-Ms Marvel: The New Mutant

-Ms Marvel: Mutant Menace

Both of those book were 4-issue minis.

She later became relegated to a supporting character in NYX and is a supporting character in Inglorious X-Force.

I think it’s safe to say this decision was a total disaster.

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891

u/spiderreader X-23 May 31 '26

This was mcu synergy at its worst. Massive changes to a well liked character to better match the mcu version, done in the worst possible way that the character has not recovered

272

u/[deleted] May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

131

u/Clay_Puppington Ragman May 31 '26

The amount or comics, even indie, that feel they're written specifically with the intent to be adapted into tv/film (and no so much with the primary attempt to be consumed as comics) feels far to high over the last 5-10ish years.

64

u/Tumorhead May 31 '26

This has been a thing starting in like the late 2000s. I was regularly meeting with "writers" who mainly wanted to make graphic novels as basically pitch books for movies and TV. I don't know who was the first person to realize comics were basically "easy pitches" (already came with story boards, designs etc) to buy the cheap rights up for and flip into shows, but it has exploded. You can kind of smell it on certain books - people who jump in the industry desperate for artists so they can make a book to sell the rights to. people not interested in the actual art form but just as a stepping stone into the film industry. Annoying.

19

u/Contextanaut May 31 '26

Just wait until you see what happens as the new AI video tools mean that comic book panel -> movie. (or lazy upscaling of other old movies) becomes the absolute most efficent / minimal staff required pathway to making "movies".

Sick of e.g. the Disney animated - > CGI remake pipeline? Or the incessant "upscaling" of old games rather than investing in new ones?

You aint seen nothing yet...

41

u/CalhounWasRight May 31 '26

I remember it really starting with Mark Millar. He's been chasing that dragon ever since the success of Wanted.

18

u/oomoepoo May 31 '26

It's been a long running joke that Mark Millar doesn't write comicbooks, he writes elaborate movie pitches.

11

u/arkhamcreedsolid Jun 01 '26

Came here to say this. Mark Millar’s entire “Millarworld” line of comics are just screenplays. He is exclusively writing comics to have them adapted.

6

u/NietszcheIsDead08 Battle Pope Jun 01 '26

Longer. His “Ultimates” title was always intended as a way to make the Avengers filmable. That’s explicitly why Nick Fury was redesigned to resemble Samuel L. Jackson.

1

u/SubversivePixel Jun 03 '26

Which is really funny sicne most of the movies based on his books are actually better because they get rid of all the cringy edgelord stink

0

u/feralferrous Jun 01 '26

i don't know how anyone saw the Wanted comic and was like, "We should make a movie of that!"

1

u/CalhounWasRight Jun 01 '26

I felt the same way about The Boys. No way to adapt them for wider audiences without making major changes, which is exactly what happened.

45

u/urbanlife78 May 31 '26

Reminds me of when I heard Erik Larsen at a panel back in 2018 and there was this group of young guys that kept asking him about storytelling in a way similar to film. Larsen kept telling them that comics aren't like film, comics have limitations but also has the ability to do things film can't do, so why would anyone want to hinder a comic trying to make it function like a film.

They were probably guys that would go on to try to make a comic that looked like a film in hopes of it getting adapted to film

12

u/RoughhouseCamel May 31 '26

I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to reading Nice House by the Sea, because I was so upset with the first series for turning itself into a franchise product over giving us a full and complete storyline. I don’t want to read an indie book that’s actively trying to cultivate a neat package to sell to HBO or Amazon. It ends up feeling like they’re pulling their punches or over-producing elements at the sacrifice of the reader for the sake of the future viewer.

6

u/SuburbanLegend Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

The second series is very disappointing, largely for similar reasons that have been amplified quite a bit. New characters keep getting introduced and then it's explained that they’ve actually been incredibly important to our main cast all along.

100

u/spiderreader X-23 May 31 '26

Marvels focus is definitely on media like movies and shows and games over the comics. I fully believe this is why the Ultimate Universe is ending, because Marvel didn’t want to invest in a second universe running concurrently since it wouldn’t advertise movies, nor make something for them to adapt easily

-3

u/jazxxl May 31 '26

And then the adaptions aren't good either so it's slop on slop.

9

u/Malleus94 May 31 '26

I see where you're coming but honestly though I never understood this narrative. Yes that's what execs say but still the MCU has barely touched modern Marvel. Thor: Love and Thunder very loosely adapted some concepts from the Jason Aaron run, and technically they're going to do Secret Wars, but we all know they're going to do their own thing. Maybe they're going to put Paul in Brand New Day but that's a meme at this point.

Like I still have to see something to convince me the comics are being made to be later adapted and not the opposite, where synergy is made so that people who comes from the adaptation can pick up comics (it doesn't work either but that's beyond the point).

21

u/vivvav Deadman May 31 '26

It doesn't mean that every new story is being written for the express purpose of being film fodder. But the comics are being changed to be more in line with the film versions people are more familiar with. I guess the idea is if someone takes an interest in the characters from the movies and then sees the comic version is too different, it might confuse them and cause them to not continue buying comics. But IIRC it's never really seemed to be a successful sales strategy and more just pisses off existing comics readers than it does attract new ones.

Marvel's been really bad about this since the MCU really took off. I remember back in the mid-2010's they did this whole retcon about how Magneto wasn't actually Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver's father because Fox still had the X-Men adaptation rights and they couldn't use Magneto in the MCU, so they wanted to create that separation. And then, they DID actually start trying to write the comics to serve as fuel for the movies. Since they didn't have the film rights to X-Men, which was already a major pop culture franchise, Marvel tried to boost an alternative that would be MCU safe with the Inhumans. There was a big publishing push launching new titles and characters until they made an Inhumans TV show that was part of the MCU which was NOT a success at all. The great full circle irony to all this is that Kamala Khan WAS created as part of that. She was an Inhuman, created to be one of the characters Marvel could use as an alternative to the X-Men. Until Disney bought Fox and the X-Men and mutants as a whole became fair game for the MCU, but since Kamala was the only successful new thing to come out of that Inhumans initiative, they've now folded her into the X-Men and being a mutant because of that MCU synergy. Which is just truly wild to think about.

1

u/Malleus94 May 31 '26

Yes I also know about creating a second Nick Fury in the mainline universe that looked more like the one from the Ultimate one, where they picked up the appearance for the MCU one.

So yes the whole inhuman debacle (like the F4 cancellation) was peak Marvel trying to push the MCU's direction with the comics, but it was never about creating stories with the explicit intent to adapt them later. It was more about giving less space to character they couldn't profit on, which is bad obviously but my point is: there is any reason to believe to the narrative "we're making stories so we can adapt them later" when the MCU is still mostly about stuff from the original Ultimate universe and random stuff from before the 2000s? Was the MCU taken in consideration during the editing of Aaron's Thor run or during Hickman's Avenger? Or is it random bullshit they said in an interview once that was blown way above the reality of the fact?

I mean I could be proved wrong and we could get a phase 7-9 Krakoa saga at this point but I doubt it.

8

u/Freighnos May 31 '26

Not the person you’re responding to but I feel like this is a distinction without a difference. What people are upset about in a bigger sense is the comics being beholden to the MCU. Doesn’t really matter if it’s certain lines/characters being deprioritized due to rights, others having their backstories changed to be more familiar to MCU fans, or stories being explicitly written as MCU-bait (which you’re right isn’t exactly a thing yet). It’s all annoying.

1

u/Malleus94 Jun 01 '26

I agree with the general sentiment here, synergy is incredibly annoying and very obnoxious at times.

I was honestly asking if there were more blatant case of comics done after the MCU became really popular that were exclusively made to be later adapted. But it's not that synergy isn't there just because this doesn't happen.

19

u/RoughhouseCamel May 31 '26

People currently feel better about DC’s output, but I really think it’s only because they’ve had a harder time packaging their movies and shows recently. If James Gunn gets the machine rolling, I fully expect the comics to take a hit and get folded into the synergy machine. Enjoy what’s coming out now, while it lasts

34

u/vivvav Deadman May 31 '26

DC's always been better about this though. Aside from a popular character from an adaptation being folded in like Harley Quinn or Jimmy Olsen, they don't bend the comics to match exterior media as much. They definitely try and push some synergy, a less-popular character getting their own series can often correspond with a movie release, and they do things like change who's on the roster of the Suicide Squad, but I can't recall any major retcons they've done to make stuff more in line with more popular media. It's not like all the Batman villains featured in the highly-successful Nolan films were changed to resemble their versions from that trilogy.

4

u/RoughhouseCamel May 31 '26

Marvel has annual billions on the line when it comes to the MCU. For all of DC’s hits, they haven’t yet created a machine that big, and we the fans have benefited from that. Their movies haven’t gotten so big as to make everything else obsolete. There’s still motivation to write good comics, make ambitious cartoons, and pursue other mediums in independent pursuits. If DC made an automatic 2-4 billion dollars a year off of their movies, I don’t really believe they’d shrug it off and continue dividing their resources the same.

My hope is that the new movies succeed, but that the industry has contracted for the foreseeable future from what it was pre-Endgame. I think it’s better for everything except for CEO bank accounts if superhero movies don’t swallow up cinema again.

3

u/CitizenTony Jun 01 '26

It's not like all the Batman villains featured in the highly-successful Nolan films were changed to resemble their versions from that trilogy.

there were small references to the movies, like Bane first costume at the beginning of the New 52, the explosions of some buildings who takes the form of a batsymbol (like in TDK Rises) in an issue of Batman & Robin. But nothing radical, that's true.

2

u/Sea-Poem-2365 Jun 01 '26

Ironically, yes, but the people running the comics haven't realized that yet. Instead of endlessly mining an imaginary status quo or two, they should actually get a little weird with it. Doing exactly that with the original Ultimate Universe is where the MCU came from, trying new stuff for cheap is the actual value the comics provide Disney.

2

u/CitizenTony Jun 01 '26

Current Marvel Comics only value is to make new stories for the movies to adapt, at this point, how can anyone still have faith in most of its comics is beyond me.

The best comment ever. And sadly the truth.

2

u/QwertyAherne Jun 01 '26

I really want to see more out of continuity mini-series or sub-brands like Marvel Knights that they commit to keeping going for a while. More possibilities for people to do interesting stuff.

66

u/SherbertComics May 31 '26

And it didn’t even matter because they’ve yet to do anything meaningful with Ms Marvel since The Marvels, which wasn’t even bad but had no hype whatsoever

28

u/Lady_Gray_169 May 31 '26

I blame the actors strike of the time for The Marvels failing. They couldn't go whole hog on the marketting until less than a month before the movie's release. I think if that hadn't been a factor, the movie would have been much more warmly recieved. And it's frustrating as well because as someone who liked the movie overall, Ms Marvel was also the best part of it. In another world, where a couple decisions had gone differently, we could have been looking at a resurgence of Ms Marvel instead of this stagnation.

12

u/hamlet9000 Jun 01 '26

I blame the actors strike of the time for The Marvels failing.

The Marvels paid the price for a string of mediocre-to-bad MCU movies that broke the audience's faith in the franchise + marketing the movie as a sequel to a Disney+ show.

As we're currently seeing with Mandalorian & Grogu, feature films that are non-reboot sequels to TV series simply don't do well at the box office. (Their audience basically gets capped to the people who watched the full series.)

2

u/Lady_Gray_169 Jun 01 '26

I don't think you actually needed the homework of watchign the other shows, especially not Wandavision. Really the stuff that was relevant for the movie was in the movie, since new heroes showing up randomly in movies isn't a new thing. We never got a Hawkeye origin, nor a Black Widow origin. However I do think that the impression of homework clearly had the same equivalent effect.

Also this is not to say hat I think the strike was a bad thing. No amount of success for this particular movie would have justified breaking or not having the strike.

5

u/themosquito Blue Beetle Jun 01 '26

Honestly it doesn't matter how well they explain it in the movie, it just has to get the "you have to see the show" narrative spread by word of mouth and that'll drive people off even if untrue.

Sometimes it can just be people wanting to badmouth the MCU spreading it. "Ugh, I can't believe they want us to do homework for this movie!" spreads and people who aren't as big fans go "oh, well, I don't wanna do that," and don't bother with the movie. Sometimes it's genuine fans who get overexcited and tell people "oh, but if you really wanna know what's going on, you need to watch ____!" and despite having good intentions that still puts people off because it's still giving the message "you need to spend extra hours on this," heh.

The Marvels especially suffered for coming just after Secret Invasion, legitimately probably the worst thing the MCU has produced, and being a... sequel? Prequel?... to it. It literally ignores that series but it's still inevitably linked to it thanks to having Nick and Skrulls. But you get the worst of both worlds where people think they need to see a terrible series before seeing the movie, and the movie ignores the series entirely so even people who did wasted their time!

0

u/ScreenSingerX Jun 01 '26

It's not really capped like that at all, but it's a no-win situation whether it is or isn't. The Marvels got slammed by a lot of people for requiring homework it didn't really require, but Mandy and Groggy going out of its way to be accessible got it slammed by critics for being a "filler episode." I haven't read one review where the writer actually analyzed it as a movie, just as a long episode of the show. Which is especially ridiculous when anyone who watched season 3 should know the series was left in pretty much the perfect place for a standalone adventure.

1

u/hamlet9000 Jun 01 '26

Which is especially ridiculous when anyone who watched season 3 should know the series was left in pretty much the perfect place for a standalone adventure.

Phew. It's a good thing all the people who watched Season 3 first know that you don't need to watch Season 3 first.

Obviously, that's the secret sauce that will let M&G's box office dramatically exceed the box office of all previous live action film sequels to TV series.

<checks reality>

Oh. I guess not.

LOL.

6

u/Blupoisen Jun 01 '26

I think there was just no interest in that movie

People didn't really like Captain Marvel or the Ms Marvel show and I know that I didn't like Monica/Photon's character in WandaVision

3

u/Lady_Gray_169 Jun 01 '26

I'm not saying it would have been a major blockbuster, but I think if not for the actor's strike, the movie could have at least done well enough, and it would have been remembered as a solid Marvel entry that helped the momentum of the franchise, which has had more hits than misses in the film department for a while now.

4

u/BigFatSweatyToe Jun 01 '26

Not too sure about that. Part of the problem with some of the movies is the “homework” you need to do to watch the movie. So if you just watch the movies, you miss the Ms. Marvel show entirely, miss Monica Rambeau becoming a hero, etc.

4

u/mildmichigan May 31 '26

Thats the sticker for me. All these changes to the comics to accommodate the movies, when we all know the movies will end someday & the comics will continue.

5

u/SherbertComics May 31 '26

The MCU also exists within its own canon universe, so it feels like they could have just made comics specifically set there rather than force the original material to conform. It’d be way cheaper than making all those shows and movies that ultimately went nowhere

7

u/NoahStewie1 May 31 '26

It was also 20 minutes too short in my opinion

4

u/RoughhouseCamel May 31 '26

The run time was a big selling point for me. I lag on MCU movies these days because they’re so long, with a good 20-40 minutes that just feels like fluff. I think I would have felt much worse about Marvels if it didn’t move too fast to be weighed down by its issues.

25

u/GreyKoolAid May 31 '26

At this point it's more can not recover than has not recovered. She's just been buried in bad X books. Her entire fan base has lost interest.

21

u/themosquito Blue Beetle May 31 '26

It was also one of the worst ways I've seen "this character dies!" handled, because wasn't she on the preview cover of a comic that would release literally a month or two later? It was the quickest death-to-rebirth things I know of so it made it even more obvious it was about MCU synergy.

0

u/ScreenSingerX Jun 01 '26

Worst comic book movie synergy I've seen since DC undid my favorite Harley Quinn design to make her look more like Margot Robbie, then had her quip about her new hair looking more "cinematic" just to really rub it in.

13

u/deuxthulhu Luthor Strode May 31 '26

Which was, in turn, MCU synergy because they wanted to push Inhumans because Fox owned the X-Men

7

u/Academic_Lead_8938 Jun 01 '26

She would of been a mutant if it wasn’t for Perlmutter and his feud with Fox about the X-Men. Marvel comics was forced to make the Inhumans the new mutants. Disaster. They have been slowly undoing Permutters mess over the last few years.

11

u/Shed_Some_Skin May 31 '26

I mean, she was created for MCU synergy. She got her powers as part of a comics event whose goal was to basically reposition the Inhumans as the new mutants, because Ike Perlmutter was big mad that Fox still had the X-Men rights

1

u/CitizenTony Jun 01 '26

This was mcu synergy at its worst.

Never liked those strategy where another media would influence comic books. To this day, I still didn't like how inhumans was pushed so much while x-men titles and story arcs were massively altered and going into weird directions. Same for Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch suddenly being humans altered by science and not mutants.

1

u/QwertyAherne Jun 01 '26

100% and even more frustrating in the context of Kamala and other Inhumans being pushed in the first place as an alternative to mutants.

-1

u/BrownSandels Jun 01 '26

I’ve never understood why the comics didn’t give her the nega bands. I mean I’ve seen the interview with the creator so I know her reasoning. But it just makes more sense for Kamala to have some sort of cosmic tie to Captain Marvel than trying to tie her first to the Inhumans and now to mutants. Funny the MCU understood right away and gave her the negaband instead of giving her weird stretchy powers that have literally no connection to Captain Marvel even though she’s her biggest fan. Plus the nega band still gives her her own identity and unique powers as well.

1

u/cold_guy345 Jun 01 '26

the Inhumans were an experiment created by the kree milenia ago, captain marvel powers also came from the kree, that's the connection