7 Big Questions About The All-New All-Different Marvel Lineup

It it really good to be bad?

It’s not like villains have never carried ongoing series before, but it’s a tricky balancing act to get it to work. If you’ll forgive me from using an example from Marvel’s competition, there’s a reason Batman has been starring in his own comics for 75-plus years and the Joker had about nine issues as a headliner.

But man, there sure are a lot of villain-focused books in the new Marvel line — or at least books that we’re supposed to think are that way. The new Illuminati looks like the creation of the Red Hood. The Maestro is front and center in the image for Contest of Champions. Carnage has his own title, for badness sake.

Then there are the series starring good guys who might have gone bad. Ant-Man teases that Scott Lang might be slipping back into some of his old, bad habits (albeit with his fingers crossed behind his back), and Silk looks like she might have gone over to the Dark Side as well.

Surely we’ll find out that some of this is not what it appears. Some of these characters will be working undercover, or forced into bad situations, or brainwashed, or whatever. It’s hard to imagine this many villains succeeding as stars, but maybe Marvel’s creative teams will surprise us and buck history.

Next: Missing: The Architect of the New Marvel Universe