Does Marvel Even Publish Most of Their Own Comics Any More?

Back in 2021, I posited that Marvel was in the process of getting out of the business of publishing comics. They had just announced Alex Ross' Fantastic Four: Full Circle was to be published by Abrams, and my contention was that that was a test to see A) if other publishers could put out good comics about Marvel's characters and B) whether fans would accept (i.e. buy) those stories. The book was indeed well-received and even won an Eisner Award in 2023.

I saw a review last week of the Abrams-published The Avengers in The Veracity Trap! in which the reviewer said it captured "Marvel at its finest." I haven't read the book myself, so I can't personally comment on how good it is, but I do find it interesting that a book called "Marvel at its finest" is not actually published by Marvel.

A news article yesterday noted that Skybound will be launching Hama Files Editions, which will reprint key issues of Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. A comic series that was originally published by Marvel, a fact which is never even mentioned in the article. This new series is after Skybound did a reprint of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #21 -- the famous "Silent Interlude" story -- back in April to help launch some wordless G.I. Joe one-shots. In the article I first read about that, there was no mention of Marvel being the original publisher either.

Penguin Random House continues publishing collections of classic Marvel material. In just a quick offhand scan, I see they've got the following on schedule over the next month or two: Iron Man: Demon In A Bottle, some of Frank Miller's Daredevil, The Death & Rebirth Of Jean Grey, an "archive edition" of Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, and Old Man Logan among others. Now, Marvel's original reprint books back in the '60s and '70s weren't published by them either -- the earliest pocket books were from Lancer and the classic Bring on the Bad Guys was from Simon & Schuster -- but there was a long time when Marvel did all their books in-house. Pretty much from the 1980s onwards. It's only these last few years that where you can start to find Marvel collections published by people other than Marvel.

Not to mention things like the IDW Artist's Editions that publish the original art to Marvel's comics. Arguably, this is a different kind of thing since readers are ostensibly buying it for the artistic production elements alone, and not to read the stories but you can very much do the latter. (While not the case for any Marvel books, I have the original art edition of Justin Green's Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary which I had never actually seen published previously, so I did indeed read that original art edition for the story first, and then went back to study the art later.)

So I'm wondering what the page breakdown is for Marvel's comics these days. How many pages of comics does Marvel publish every month, and how many pages of comics do other publishers publish on behalf of Marvel? They've farmed out a lot of reprint material, obviously, but they seem to be increasingly putting new stories in the hands of other publishers as well. So at what point will we see things tip from being mostly-published-Marvel to mostly-published-by-companies-other-than-Marvel? When does Marvel become the minority publisher when it comes to publishing stories about Marvel-owned characters?

That's assuming we haven't gottent there already!

I don't think if/when we get there that it will spell doom for Marvel. They're clearly doing just fine with movies and action figures and video games and whatever else; there's no concern about them not bringing in money. The question is more along the lines of when does publishing become so minimal a priority that the notion of a cohesive Marvel Universe is no longer valid? The stories they do still publish have shifted largely away from referencing continuity already; they certainly haven't put any emphasis on it for at least 20 years. But when does a cohesive universe become irrelevant entirely because they've got six different publishers putting out different what-even-is-canon stories about the X-Men or the Avengers or whoever?

The readership has changed over the past couple decades and they haven't catered to continuity-conscious readers like myself for a long time. So I don't think sales would be impacted appreciably if/when they finally go that route. But I do think most people haven't noticed this shift and will be blind-sided when Marvel finally pulls the plug on publishing their own books.

Related Items business marvel