Announced last summer, Marvel’s latest publishing initiative gave us a lot to get excited about. Marvel Legacy promised storylines that would celebrate our new era of heroes by connecting them back to decades of Marvel tradition. The past and the future would come together, and titles would honor that continuity by renumbering, keeping sequence across various volumes and series reboots. Those homage covers were a fantastic precursor (albeit somewhat ruined by the lenticular publication; hard to visualize either cover when you actually pick up the variant book).
And then the one-shot that kicked off this business, Marvel Legacy #1, became the single highest-selling comic book of 2017. Future Avengers, a Black Panther planet, the possible return of the Fantastic Four and Wolverine… so much happening in the coming months!
For a variety of reasons, however, Marvel’s Legacy initiative has been widely regarded as a failure. The company has been embattled by a number of issues since last fall, most of which have nothing to do with the actual comic books being published. Controversial firings, surprising departures, and rumbles from readers and retailers alike who somehow haven’t been able to get onboard with Marvel’s push for diversity, have coincided with declining sales. So while we await the directives from the new editor-in-chief, and news of possibly another series re-start, we brave Idlers take a look back in an attempt to assess the positive aspects of this latest launch.
We zeroed in on 53 series in all, new ongoing titles or storylines announced during the first Legacy press release. We excluded one-shots and mini-series, except for one: Spirits of Vengeance, despite being billed from the onset as a limited run, was listed among the initial debuts, and it came with one of those snazzy Marvel Value Stamps. So it counts.
There was a lot to love in these first few months of Legacy. And a lot we won’t be sorry to see go. Fifty-three comics, from worst to first. Let’s take a look!
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Other comics rankings:
All-New All-Different Marvel
DC Rebirth
Marvel NOW! (2017)
ResurrXion Ranked
The Institute of Idle Time 