How Marvel Lost the Comics Formula That Made the MCU Work

There is a paradox at the heart of Marvel Comics that casual readers never notice and hardcore fans take for granted. The universe is enormous — decades of continuity, thousands of characters, overlapping storylines that stretch across dozens of titles simultaneously. And yet, you can pick up almost any issue cold and follow it. That is not an accident. That is design — and it is exactly where Marvel lost the comics formula, the moment the studio confused loyalty for attention and attention for understanding.

Open X-Men #300 and you might find a footnote: Cyclops is referencing something that happened in X-Factor #36. You don’t need that issue. The story in front of you works without it. But if you’re curious, you can run to the comic book store or pull it up online in minutes. One issue. One purchase. Instant context. The footnote is a reward for the engaged reader and a non-issue for everyone else. It’s also smart cross-selling — but the key word is optional.

Marvel Studios spent eleven years building something that worked on exactly that principle. Then they forgot it.

The Infinity Saga Got It Right Without Knowing Why

Look back at the films that built the MCU and what stands out is how well they function independently. Iron Man is a complete story. The Winter Soldier works as a political thriller without prior knowledge of the wider universe. Thor: Ragnarok is a Taika Waititi film first and an MCU entry second. Moreover, the connections between them were genuine rewards — Easter eggs, post-credits scenes, the slow accumulation of Infinity Stones — but none of them were prerequisites.

The post-credits scenes especially served a specific purpose: they gave audiences a compass. After Iron Man, you knew something bigger was coming. After Thor: The Dark World, you knew the Infinity Stones mattered. Each film planted a flag and pointed forward. As a result, the connective tissue was visible, legible, and exciting.

That’s the comics formula translated correctly. You didn’t need to have read the previous issue to enjoy this one. But you were given every reason to want the next.

Endgame was the payoff of that approach — twenty-two films culminating in something that felt genuinely earned. It was event cinema. People who hadn’t read a comic in their lives showed up like it was a World Cup final. What Marvel did with that goodwill afterward is, however, a case study in how not to follow a formula you didn’t fully understand you were using.

Phase 4: A Train With No Destination Board

The Infinity Saga had Thanos. His presence — even when largely offscreen — gave every film a gravitational pull. Phase 4 had no equivalent. The post-credits scenes became cryptic, disconnected, or pointed toward threads that were never picked up. For the first time, consequently, audiences walked out of Marvel films genuinely unsure where any of this was going.

The eventual answer was Kang the Conqueror — but only if you were watching Disney+. Loki introduced He Who Remains in a season finale that was, genuinely, one of the best pieces of MCU storytelling since the Infinity Saga. The threat was real. The stakes were existential. The setup was solid. For anyone who hadn’t seen it, however, Kang arrived as a stranger.

The Streaming Footnote Problem

This is where the comics footnote model breaks down completely when translated to streaming. In X-Men #300, the footnote says: go read X-Factor #36 if you want more context. You can buy it for a few dollars. You can read it in twenty minutes. The story in front of you still works either way.

The MCU equivalent, by contrast, asked audiences to maintain an active Disney+ subscription, watch six to eight hours of television per character arc, and do this before buying a cinema ticket — with no clear indication of what was and wasn’t essential. That’s not a footnote. That’s homework. And not everyone wants to pay for a streamer to do homework before watching a film they’ve already paid for.

There is also an honesty gap the comics never had. A footnote in X-Men #300 tells you clearly: this is a reference, here is where to find it, your call whether you go. The MCU, in contrast, never made that transparency available. You bought your ticket and discovered mid-film that there was context you were assumed to have. The comics footnote is an invitation. The MCU standalone problem across Phase 4, 5, and 6 is that this distinction — between invitation and prerequisite — was never properly managed.

Ant-Man and the Wrong Vehicle

Even if audiences had done the homework, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania had a structural problem that no amount of Loki viewership could fix. Ant-Man is a heist franchise. That’s its identity — small-scale, character-driven, comedic. Scott Lang works because he’s out of his depth in a universe of gods and supersoldiers. That’s the joke, and it’s a good one.

Quantumania asked Ant-Man to carry the weight of introducing the MCU’s next era-defining villain. A man who shrinks things was supposed to make audiences feel the existential threat of a multiversal conqueror. The mismatch wasn’t a casting problem or a script problem. It was, in fact, a vehicle problem. Thanos wasn’t introduced through Ant-Man. He was built slowly, across ensemble films capable of holding that weight.

Kang deserved an Avengers. He got a heist film that forgot to include the heist.

Furthermore, the series had done their job. The cinematic phase hadn’t. And when the external crisis hit — Jonathan Majors’ legal troubles forcing Marvel’s hand — there was no theatrical foundation to fall back on. The build had happened on a platform that half the audience wasn’t watching. As a result, Marvel found themselves mid-saga with a villain who existed primarily in streaming and a film slate that hadn’t established him for the big screen.

The Casual Viewer Problem

Let me be upfront: I watched everything. Every Disney+ series, every post-credits scene, every tie-in special. I am not the casual viewer. Nevertheless, I noticed when they stopped showing up.

The clearest signal wasn’t in box office numbers, though those told their own story — Eternals underperformed, Thor: Love and Thunder disappointed, Quantumania barely justified its theatrical run. The clearest signal was, in fact, Marvel’s own behavior. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law didn’t get a second season. Ms. Marvel quietly faded. Shows that were announced as integral parts of the connected universe were shelved without ceremony.

You don’t cancel the homework when students are still doing it.

The irony is almost too neat. In a recent appearance on Zeteo’s We’re Not Kidding, Tatiana Maslany — who played She-Hulk — admitted she falls asleep during Marvel films with too much plot and too many connected universes. She was cast precisely because she wasn’t a Marvel fan. She is, in other words, the audience Marvel lost — and she was standing in the middle of the machine the whole time.

Eternals and the Problem of Repetition

Eternals deserves its own mention because it illustrates a different failure mode. The film introduced ten new characters in two and a half hours — an impossible ask for an audience that needed reasons to care about any of them. Some of those characters were genuinely interesting. None of them, however, were given enough room to breathe.

But the deeper problem was one of familiarity. The central premise — an ancient cosmic being using a planet as fuel for a larger purpose — had already been done better in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 with Ego the Living Planet. Eternals asked audiences to invest in a denser, more serious version of a concept they’d already seen executed with more charm and economy. The comparison, therefore, wasn’t flattering.

Phase 4’s broader problem was exactly this: it wasn’t just directionless, it was occasionally repetitive. The universe had gotten big enough to start recycling ideas without realising it. The MCU standalone problem here runs deeper than any single film — it is the cumulative effect of projects that existed in isolation while pretending to be part of a coherent whole.

Secret Invasion and the Promise That Went Nowhere

If one project encapsulates everything Phase 4 got wrong, it is Secret Invasion.

The setup was years in the making. The Skrulls were introduced in Captain Marvel as refugees — a displaced people searching for a new home, with Nick Fury as their unlikely ally. That promise of a longer story sat quietly in the background while the Infinity Saga concluded. When Secret Invasion was announced as a Disney+ series, it felt like a genuine payoff. Nick Fury. Skrull infiltrators. A spy thriller format that suited both the character and the paranoia the premise demanded. The casting — Samuel L. Jackson, Olivia Colman, Emilia Clarke, Ben Mendelsohn — signalled serious intent.

What arrived, however, was six episodes that squandered almost every advantage they had. The Skrull threat, seeded across years of MCU storytelling, was contained and resolved within the series itself — a textbook example of the MCU standalone problem in Phase 4. Fury’s arc had genuine moments, but they were buried under plotting that couldn’t decide what kind of story it wanted to tell. The finale landed without impact.

The most damning thing about Secret Invasion isn’t that it was bad. It’s that it didn’t matter. A shapeshifter infiltration of Earth’s institutions should have shockwaves. Instead, the rest of the MCU moved on as if it hadn’t happened. That’s the clearest sign that Marvel lost the comics formula that once made every story matter beyond its own runtime.

Marvel Lost the Comics Formula. Can Doom Bring It Back?

Victor Von Doom is one of the rare Marvel characters who doesn’t need setup. He carries decades of cultural weight. He is recognisable to people who have never read a comic. He is, in villain terms, what the Infinity Saga had in Thanos — a name that means something before he says a word onscreen.

That’s a genuine opportunity. But the real question isn’t whether Doctor Doom can anchor the MCU — it’s whether the connected storytelling around him will fix the structural problems that Kang exposed. A compelling villain placed inside the same broken model produces the same result. Doom as a Doctor Doom MCU connected storytelling fix only works, therefore, if the films built around him are designed to function as complete stories first and connective tissue second.

The fix isn’t fewer connections. The connections are part of what makes the MCU worth caring about. The fix is making every entry point complete — every film a story that works on its own terms, every connection a reward rather than a requirement. In short: the footnote model, not the homework model.

Robert Downey Jr. returning as Doom is the most interesting casting decision Marvel has made in years, precisely because it collapses the distinction between legacy and reinvention. Whether the films around him are built to carry casual audiences as well as dedicated ones will ultimately determine whether it matters.

Marvel lost the comics formula. They invented it for film and then abandoned it. Getting it back won’t require a new villain or a new strategy. It will require remembering why it worked in the first place.

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Where do you think the MCU goes from here — footnotes or homework? Drop it in the comments and follow Prime Time Takes on Threads, Bluesky, and Facebook for more.