Behold, Marvel’s Latest Generation Of Limbo Bound Characters!

Liberty! Hellrune! Moon Squire! Cadet Marvel! The latest generation of Marvel Comics youthful heroes answering the powerful heroic siren call. These of course are the new protagonists of the recently announced Marvel Comics series New Champions.

A bunch of new ‘sidekick’ characters born of a series of variant covers from 2023 born out of a “give heroes a new young protégé” prompt. They’re here bring some youthful vigor and sprinkled in diversity to Marvel’s present and future.

At least until they’re unceremoniously dumped into the dark back alley known as character limbo.

You know the place. That realm that isn’t a realm where all the characters from Marvel’s toy box go if they don’t happen to be “A or B-list” and no writer currently has plans for them. Think of it like the Void from Marvel’s Loki or Wolverine & Deadpool. A place were all the toys that aren’t wanted at the moment are left to fend for themselves and hope that one day, just maybe, they might find relevancy again.

While the residents of this realm tend to often be lots of older, oft forgotten, characters, in recent decades the youthful lot have been the biggest victims of this practice. What practice you say? Why the one where new writers or editors or editors in chief come along, look at the cast of characters there and tosses any but the major ones aside.

In their place, some new shiny generation of characters (though really most of the young are the same age generation in universe) runs onto the stage. Lots of fanfare is given; they are talked up as the “future of Marvel.” That future being very nebulous, and more often than not these days pretty darn short in a relative sense.

Just ask the New Mutants, Generation X, or Academy X/New X-Men kids over on the X-side of things. Hovering between relevance and purgatory on a semi-regular basis, some of them over decades.

Good thing their space was kept warm since most of them (save some of the Academy X folks getting their moment in NYX & Dazzler) are right back there. No room for them since the X-Line relaunch means time to roll out more soon to be character limbo living fresh mutants. I’d say “Hope they survive the experience” but the toy box of irrelevance they’re going to end up in at some point might be worse than character death.

At least with a character death there is a good chance you’ll get resurrected at some point. Some characters never escape the clutches of character purgatory.

All of this is to say, why are we supposed to care?

Obviously, I’m always happy to see creators get more work. So my question doesn’t stem from the idea of not wanting to see writers, artists, letterers, and colorists get to play in the universe with toys. Supporting them by buying the books is a valid and encouraged thing.

No, my question is more to the overall of Marvel. Why should I care about any of these characters when good money says not a single one will be relevant within a year or two, longer if they are lucky. Because some new crop of characters will rise up and displace them.

“Oh Scott, surely you are exaggerating.”

Why don’t we ask Sam Alexander the high-flying Nova…oh wait, we can’t.

The character hasn’t been seen nor heard from in a comic in quite some time. Despite the fact that just barely about a decade ago he was right there with Ms. Marvel and Miles Morales as the new youthful trinity of Marvel. They were Avengers who stood up to the adults when they were in the wrong, and went on to form a successful Champions team.

A team that saw Amadeus Cho/Brawn, Viv Vision, Riri Williams/Iron Heart, and so many other young heroes have their time in the spotlight extended. This team was around for years in various forms, right up till their most recent mini-series just a couple years ago.

Where are any of them now? Most are gone or show up for brief cameos here or there. Ironheart only gets bumps because she’s connected to Iron Man, featured in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and has her own show coming. Even still, she hasn’t had her own book in a long time.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur have a hit cartoon on, and barely ever show up in comics. Despite having been one of the more successful new characters with a solo series that ran almost 50 issues.

Robbie Reyes was the Ghost Rider for years, bumped up to super important status with the Jason Aaron era of Avengers. Now he’s gone, showing up here or there in Marvel’s requisite ‘diversity’ one-shots put out in heritage months, and the same old Ghost Riders get all the spotlight.

Hell, Kamala Khan is a huge character. She’s one of the few young heroes that caught on like wildfire, unlike any other since the Peter Parker version of Spider-Man. Yet, here we are going on almost four years since she had her own solo ongoing series. Since 2021 she’s been relegated to sporadic guest appearances, a few minis, and a stint in Spider-Man’s book as a supporting character what was killed to give a man something to be upset about.

Even her resurrection as a mutant hasn’t helped her really. Now she’s just one of far too many X-related characters, fighting for even a moment in a book. Sure she’s in the aforementioned NYX, but it’s a far fall for a character who was once at the highest of highs.

Same for her best friend Miles Morales. A best friendship that hardly ever gets a chance to be showcased with their bubble status. Until the current series, Miles was mostly wallowing around getting Peter Parker’s scraps. His previous solo series literally had multiple arcs either stuck on Uncle Aaron or were straight up copies of Peter Parker stories.

This is a character that outside of the comics is huge and known all over the place. He’s got multiple movies under his belt, and bevies of fans across the world. But sure, he should be mostly relegated to his own book and the side in his birthplace of comics.

I mention all of this because I am one of those that bought into all of these youthful characters, none more so than the New X-Men and Ms. Marvel/Spider-Man/Nova led Champions era, only to see them dwindle into the background. Wanting to see more of them only to be denied because Marvel wants to keep filling their toy chest with more toys that are just gathering dust.

Marvel Comics has spent most of the last half decade (the tenure of EIC C.B. Cebulski)  turning much of their monthly output into nostalgia based content. Miniseries from creators of the past returning to tell stories from that past era. Sequels and prequels to things that no one was really asking for. Trying to turn back the clock as much as possible.

The “House of ideas” became the “House of reheated ideas” really fast. Yet, they want us to buy into “new” and “shiny” things that we know they will cast aside quickly. No characters get to reach the levels of or compete with the likes of Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, etc. Not because none of them are good enough, as we have clearly established above, but because they are never given a chance.

Everyone wants to play with the oldest of the toys in the box, and doesn’t want to really play with the newer toys that others created. Nor does the publisher want to showcase the new toys really, their eyes are always turned to the old toy no matter what is happening in their pages.

So yes, welcome to the Marvel Universe New Champions. I would say I hope your time there is better than what happened in the end to the previous Champions, but we know that won’t happen.

Don’t worry though, your space in character limbo is already nice and warm. You’ll be here sooner rather than later.