

If anything, I think Marvel’s actual mistake was having all of those characters off-stage at the same time – you look around the “Marvel Universe” and you recognize almost none of the characters… well, that’s jarring. Watch and see: after they come back, some creator will be trying to replace them again within five years.

Now I, for one, find this particular complaint pretty drastically overblown: despite the new consensus of the internet, I would argue to you that characters like Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and “original Thor” are actually really uninteresting characters who have, largely, outstayed their welcome – there’s a reason that these characters keep getting replaced with new versions again and again and again: unless you’re exclusively mining nostalgia, it’s hard to keep these characters fresh and relevant at all. Let’s take those more or less in order, starting with “the real” Marvel characters.
