At about noon yesterday I was at Fanatics Fest catching up withGareb Shamus, when I happened to glance at my phone and saw that Marvel was moving to the west coast.
If you unpack that sentence, you cover a whole history of comics, publishing, and fan events in a way that would be too outlandish for fiction.
I’ll leave my wider thoughts for a more self-indulgent essay because you want to know some juicy details on yesterday’s big Marvel regime and office location change. I dunno how juicy they are, but here some thoughts and observations:
Stephen Wacker: I believe it was former Marvel eicJoe Quesadawho observed that the job of editor in chief was like a carton of milk – it comes with an expiration date. Speculation over Marvel’s next editor in chief has always been a topic for comic’s hot stove league, and Wacker was always my pick. I worked with Steve way back in the day at DC and he is very smart, very funny, and very good. It’s already been pointed out many times that he was the editor on many Marvel classics, including the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye, the Waid/Samnee Daredevil, the Wilson/Alphona Ms Marvel and even Brand New Day. And of course he wrangled 52, the weekly comic that brought four of the biggest talents – and egos – in comics in on time every week. That alone is a Herculean task. He also edited the digital comicIt’s Jeffby Kelly Thompson and Guruhiru, surely a key point on anyone’s resume.
More importantly, he spent time away from publishing in Marvel’s digital and animation divisions, with credits on Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., Ultimate Spider-Man, Avengers Assemble Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel’s Spider-Man and Rocket & Groot, for which he received an Emmy nom.
Obviously he knows how the comics and animation intersect, and it’s safe to assume he is well known to Marvel television headBrad Winderbaum, to whom he will report. With Marvel Comics now synergizing even harder and at closer quarters with Marvel Studios, this is good knowledge to have.
Wacker’s new position was greeted with near universal acclaim by creators, which is definitely a positive. Obviously, he’s very close toJonathan Hickman, so that will be good news to many readers.Gail Simonealways has great mini essay about the news, and her FB post about today’s developments is well worth reading:
To me the most interesting thing about this story is that Wacker gave Simone a pretty harsh note – the ending wasn’t working – and she admits he was right and it made a better story. I’m not a fan of editors meddling when they don’t need to, but sometimes you do need to push to get people to do their best. That’s a good editor. A good editor also fights for the stories they believe in, which Simone’s story also demonstrates.
Of course these days being editor in chief of a valuable IP farm is a lot different than being a line editor. Marvel faces many challenges in getting its groove back, the first of which is admitting they need to get their groove back. That’s probably what all of these changes were about, but I’ll get back to that.
Whoever is running Marvel Comics needs to have the trust of creators, a sense of what readers will enjoy, and an understanding of how 32 page pamphlets can fit into the workings of a $91 billion <a href="https://comicvibe.com/why-new-zealands-online-entertainment-language-is-getting-more-specific/” title=”Why New Zealand’s Online Entertainment Language Is Getting More Specific”>entertainment company. It’s a tall order, but Wacker seems to check the boxes.
The news was announced just in time for Wacker to make an appearance at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con as the new editor in chief – so all eyes on the Marvel panel, as Tom Spurgeon might have put it.
Juan Soto and Mr. Met star in a new Spider-Man commercial ️ pic.twitter.com/PLuj0ZG6Jp
— SNY Mets (@SNY_Mets) July 16, 2026
Marvel moves to Burbank:Well, we all saw this coming. WhenDavid Abdowas named as Marvel general manager I spotted this on his linked in during his time at Disney Music Group asSVP, Operations and Distribution:
▪ Assisted in fundamental reorganization – combined and restructured myriad departments as shared functions
▪ Remodeled physical worksites and relocated 150+ staff in common offices for the first time
He’s already telling you what he’s good at, and the entire Marvel Comics reorg to run under folks in Burbank made a move almost a foregone conclusion.Paul Levitz,our comics history laureate, had a post about it on FB. Since it’s short I’ll quote the whole thing:
It’s probably hard to imagine, but in the early ‘70s, DC, Marvel, Western, Harvey, Archie, Skywald and Warren were all within about a mile and a half stretch of Manhattan…totally walkable…plenty of coffee shops and hangouts in between, and only another mile or so to the ball fields of Central Park. The comics creative community was tiny, but it was an easy time to form friendships and interact. Several of the newspaper syndicates were in that same neighborhood too. The only outliers were Charlton up in the wilds of Connecticut and Western’s LA office.
Wishing the Marvel folks an easy transition either to Burbank or wherever they may each choose to go next.
(Of course, America’s current largest comics publisher is still in Manhattan…Scholastic’s Graphix.)
The imaginary, fabled Bullpen ofStan Leelore vanished in another century. Perhaps Marvel’s most famous office – 387 Park Avenue South – is a few blocks from where I live, and I visited it more than a few times, or saw people on the street many more times. I should write a whole other essay about the comics culture that ended on 9/11 of freelancers visiting offices, and Marvel and DC hanging out, playing softball and drinking together. That sense of community is long gone, and most contemporary comics workers don’t even know it existed.
AsTHR pointed out, Marvel’s lease on its current office was up in a year so they had to move anyway – DC already proved you could do it, so why not? I never visited Marvel’s current office any further than the lobby, but my understanding is that most people worked remotely anyway – including some of the editors. They went to hot desk/open plan a while ago. All of Marvel’s recent office space was subject to the whims ofIke Perlmutter, and after they left 387, they moved to a space so tiny it hadonly two bathrooms,and VPs were forced to share their cramped offices.
Physical office space seems to be irrelevant to the workings of Marvel Comics in the post Pandemic era anyway. The move to Burbank probably won’t be as hotly contested as DC’s move, since folks already know how it works. Hopefully Disney doesn’t pulla bait and switch like Warners did with DC.
I dunno – office space is such a weird thing now. First business wanted everyone remote so they didn’t have to buy them Keurig cups. Now they want people back in the office so they can keep an eye on them.
Still, Marvel and DC both in Burbank, attendants of their respective studios, is really a statement on comics as IP more than anything.
Of course now the clock is ticking on who will make the move. WillTom Brevoort? WillNick Lowe? WillWil Moss? A move is also a chance to clean house in many ways. As we saw with DC, there is a very very human element to this, with families making tough choices. We mustn’t forget the human cost.
C.B. Cebulski: The overwhelming reaction on social media yesterday among non-comics creators was “Hooray, Akira Yoshida is gone!” Let’s just get it out of the way that adapting a Japanese pen name and pretending the person really existed was dumb and offensive. But Marvel seemed to have put it behind them, so for the purpose of this piece, so am I. Before he became Marvel editor in chief, Cebulski was located in Shanghai as theirVice President of International Business Development & Brand Management. Before he ever worked at Marvel, he worked at CMP, a manga publisher, and when I first met him, he was way more into manga than western comics. His move to Japan to become Marvel’sEditor, Asia Originals is an ideal job for him, and very much in alignment with the interests he’s shown his whole career. I personally think C.B. would probably have been happy living and working in Asia this whole time.
But he didn’t – he became Marvel’s editor in chief and presided over a time that had some hits – Krakoa! – but by the end, seemed to be spinning its wheels creatively, and relying far too much on variant covers.
A couple of posts from BlueSky seem relevant here:
even putting aside how rare it is for marvel to publish anything but a 5 issue mini about a woman these days, it really seems like Cebulski prefers 1 kind of cover, doesn’t it
man, remember THIS era of Marvel?
It’s worth remembering that by the time he left Marvel as editor in chief,Axel Alonsowas pretty much the whipping boy for everything wrong with comics, but looking back….man, that was a fun era! A lot of new things were tried, and new, valuable characters were created or old ones repurposed. The biggest problem at the end of Alonso’s tenure, as I recall it, was theendless rebootsthat didn’t go anywhere and got rebooted every nine months. Cebulski ended the diminishing reboot returns, but even back in 2017, when he took over, people were complaining about Marvel’s sales, just like they do now.
Part of this was the backlash from a segment of the community that branded everything they didn’t like as “woke.” Ironically, the anti-wokers are still saying Marvel is too woke and wishing to return to a previous time – when it was actually way more diverse in demographics AND content. That’s because these folks don’t seem to actually pay attention to facts or logic.
What must Marvel do now?I’ve written about this many times here before, but the Buckley/Cebulski/Gabriel/Bogart regime at Marvel operated for a long time under the weird ways of Ike Perlmutter. Weird ways like not promoting the X-men or the Fantastic Four when they were at a different studio, and not having a functioning backlist, and other stuff. From a piece I wrote all the way back in 2011, when Marvel was undergoing seasonal budget cuts:
The current problem seems to stem from a publishing forecast that didn’t get hit when the actual numbers came in. It doesn’t matter that Marvel isstill a very profitable company. This is not a matter of losing money. It just wasn’t as profitable as it thought it might be. The shortfall in the margins wasn’t huge — it was less than 5% in an economy where that’s practically considered stable. But whatever the shortfall was, instead of looking at ways to build the business or bolster areas with huge potential — books, anyone? — Ike’s only reaction is to slash, slash, slash.
It’s also led to arcane practices within Marvel to keep the budget low. Reportedly, Ike gives new Marvel execs a book that says the best way to make money is to spend as few rel employees are kind of like the rats in those caloric restriction experiments. They’re given the lowest possible amount of rehas to be purchased, it’s half of what was asked for
I think a lot of old timers at Marvel were never able to escape from this orbit, although a lot of them tried. Shaking things up as drastically as we’ve seen over the last few months was the only way to make any real change.
So what must Marvel do? Most urgently, they need to raise their rates and become competitive about hiring top talent. They need to stop cancelling books after 10 issues and let people run with it. They need to start thinking long term about projects that will have a shelf life and continue to sell AND contribute to the IP bank. They need to get people excited about their line again by doing all new, all different things.
Given that they have some of the world’s most beloved characters at their disposal, this isn’t going to be that hard. But it will begin with letting top creators and new voices have fun again. As Chris Claremont once told me of his X-men run, “We figured that if we weren’t having fun, the readers wouldn’t have fun.”
In other words, let them cook.
Well, that’s what I would do anyway. The people who actually run Marvel Comics probably have their own ideas. I sincerely wish them good fortune. A healthy Marvel turning out exciting bangers will help everyone.
A note on the header image: As I started to write this, I knew I wanted to find an old picture of the Marvel Bullpen. I looked atEliot R. Brown’s pagewhich has a lot of great archival materials – from 545 Madison even! But then I found this drawing by Rick Parker on FB. Long ago days, but this is the era that is ending forever.
