Marvel is an Ouroboros | Opinion

There's always been an issue that happens when media that comments on pop-culture becomes pop-culture. When FRIENDS first aired in 1994, it commented, often, on the biggest television and pop-culture events of the day... but eventually it couldn't do that anymore, because it was the biggest pop-culture thing. Which created this weird un-reality loop... in a world where FRIENDS was supposed to mimic reality and the conversations that people had around the water cooler, what do they do when the thing people talk about is FRIENDS? It creates this weird alternate-reality: what IS the top television show in the world of FRIENDS? Do they all just watch Frasier?

This is a weird way to start an article about Marvel, but I swear to god it makes sense. Because one of the draws of Marvel Comics from its inseption up to the mid-2000s is that it not only commented on pop-culture, but it also was a place that welcomed all pop-culture. It was a universe where your favorite pop-culture fad could go to live forever, untouched by the ravages of time.

People think of the Marvel Universe as Spider-Man and the X-Men, and for a long time I did, too, and that's to its detriment. Because the Marvel Universe is home to a plethora of tones, styles, and genres. Especially that last one: genres. No genre ever dies in the Marvel Universe, they just go away for a little while.

Do you love the revenge films of Charles Bronson like Death Wish? Good news, Marvel has The Punisher, and while it will wax and wane in terms of how much it's published, it likely always will. Do you miss Kung-Fu movies? They have both Shang-Chi and Iron Fist. Love Blaxploitation movies like Shaft? We have Luke Cage, Power Man. What's that, Kung-Fu and Blaxploitation aren't selling that well anymore? Fuck it, combine them together and make it a buddy-cop book, Power Man & Iron Fist.

Westerns survived via Western comics. War Comics. Romance Comics. And the genius of the Marvel Universe is that all these things take place in the Marvel Universe. Western Comics take place in the history of the Marvel Universe. Romance Comics follow the romantic foibles of normal people in the Marvel Universe.

So when does this become a problem? This becomes a problem around 2008, when the biggest thing wasn't Westerns, Romance, Blaxploitation or Kung-Fu: the biggest thing in pop-culture was the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

And for the Marvel Comics, which had always reflected whatever was the biggest thing in pop-culture, it became an Ouroboros. A snake eating its own tail. The comics kept mimicking the biggest thing in pop-culture, but the biggest thing in pop-culture was re-telling their stories from 20-60 years prior. When Captain America: Civil War came out? The comics engineered a reason to have Civil War 2. The comics kept trying to make themselves accessible to people that came out of the theatres, but those movies were based on their own material from 30 years prior, which created this feedback loop of quality issues.

And now, in the past five years, we've gotten to the point where the Marvel Cinematic Universe is starting to adapt those stories that came out during the snake-eating-its-own-tail era of the comics, and they aren't landing, and people wonder: but why? The feedback loop has come full circle, and a hazard to guess what it will mean for the comics themselves.

There's light in the tunnel though. With films like Obsession and Backrooms breaking records, I long for the day when we have indie-horror inspired thrills in the mainstream Marvel Universe.