In 2017, Marvel released Marvel Legacy #1, a one-shot intended to move its marquee characters forward after the critical abomination that was that year’s Secret Empire crossover, where a Hydra-fied Captain America takes over the U.S. It was a $5.99 book, expensive for its time, that I fondly remember overflowing from a bin at my local comic shop weeks after its release, reduced in price to $3.99 because the shop couldn’t move it. A book where Wolverine famously comes back from the dead and smashes a giant with a beer truck.
I think about that book when I think about G.O.D.S. #1, a $9.99 event comic by Jonathan Hickman, Valerio Schiti, Marte Gracia and Travis Lanham touted as a big, hairy deal that was going to “build a new Marvel mythology overflowing with daring concepts, intricate systems, and fascinating new characters,” as the original Entertainment Weekly announcement states.
Cut to, five months later, retailers on Twitter saying, “No one’s ordering this book.”
There’s plenty of blame to go around here, but not in the art. There’s a reason Schiti moved from Judgment Day to G.O.D.S. He’s one of Marvel’s best artists, he brings that big Pepe Larraz energy and he draws a technically beautiful comic. Same amount of praise goes for Gracia, one of the best colorists working and the guy you bring out for your big event comic. Together, they are putting every bit of energy into this that they put into previous endeavors.
In truth, I’d like to give Marvel credit for taking a chance on a new concept from a writer who has built up a lot of critical goodwill. But in hedging its bets, Marvel decided to price G.O.D.S. #1 at $9.99, ensuring new readers and average fans stay away and solely milking the wallets of your most stubborn Wednesday Warriors and people who pay for Hickman’s 3 Worlds, 3 Moons content on Substack.
And just like 3W3M, this comic gives you all of the world-building with none of the emotional investment.
In terms of financial investment, Hickman’s last Marvel #1, this summer’s Ultimate Invasion, was $8.99. Inferno #1 in 2021 was $5.99, as was House of X #1 in 2019.
[Insert gif of Annie Edison asking, “What’s a diminishing return?]
Now, G.O.D.S. did not invent the $10 floppy. Also out this week is DC’s Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun, a spooky-season anthology. The difference is with Ghouls you get multiple, self-contained stories featuring a number of creators. It’s a complete work. It’s an album. You may not like every track, but you’re bound to bop your head to one or two of them.
G.O.D.S. #1 is the beginning of something. It’s not a full picture. It’s three issues crammed into one that don’t go nearly far enough to explain what is going on or even make a case for why you should want to know more.
Wanna know how the beginning it is? There are no gods in the book. No Eternity, no Galactus, no Living Tribunal, no Master Order and Lord Chaos, none of those guys who stood around looking gigantic and powerful in early 1990s Jim Starlin comics. Just references to the Powers-That-Be and the Natural-Order-of-Things without explaining what they are or who they serve. We’re meant to be invested in the relationship between Wyn and Aiko, who work for these opposite cosmic forces, and Wyn’s snarky, phone-obsessed sidekick Dimitri. But, uh, nah.
It might help if we were given an existing Marvel character to hang our hat on, someone who would react to everything with awe, like a Kitty Pryde, Ms. Marvel or Miles Morales. Instead, our anchor is Dr. Strange, who spends the comic having a middle-aged-dry-wit-off with Wyn, and our other guest stars are Marvel’s other smarty-pants science and magic heroes — Reed Richards, the Black Panther, Brother Voodoo, Amadeus Cho, etc. These aren’t characters we can relate to; they’re there to get nerfed in favor of Hickman’s Hot New Concept.
They’re all brought together because of a “Babylon event,” something that threatens all life on Earth. But in the process of thwarting this event, Wyn finds an object from another Earth that reminds the Collector of “the great collapse,” the incursion event that spawned 2015’s Secret Wars crossover — a much bigger threat to all existence, and a much cooler story by Hickman, that may lead many to wonder whether, between that and HoXPoX, Hickman’s best stories are behind him.
Does this mean Hickman should have stayed on X-Men forever, where fans were happy with him? Absolutely not. In an industry that pays fuck all, Hickman has as much a right as any to get the bag however he can. But on the off chance this book was the one Executive Editor C.B. Cebulski was talking about when he tweeted about a million-selling comic, rest assured, that it ain’t.
Speaking of the higher-ups at Marvel, I’ll close by being vulgar: Naming the bar where Aiko waits for Wyn Brevoort’s is a blowjob no one is enjoying. Name it after a colleague — Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Aaron, Kieron Gillen — I’d roll my eyes and move on. Name it after a comics legend with a heavy hand in the Marvel cosmology — Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Jim Starlin — and I’d smile. But name it after the Powers-That-Be at Marvel who clearly indulged Hickman’s worst instincts — and it’s just fuckin’ gross.
This is the energy Marvel is choosing to take into New York Comic Con next week. An expensive, self-important comic that insults and gouges fan and retailer alike. A nearly violent example of risk aversion disguised as risk taking, from a creator who should know better. It is, singlehandedly, everything wrong with comics in 2023. Overpriced. Overhyped. Opaque. Forgettable except for the feelings of disgust and anger it leaves behind.
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Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts WMQ&A: The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
