Who is Marvel Comics New Editor-in-Chief?

Well folks, I just heard the news. Looks like old C.B. Cebulski is returning to the land of his people. (That's the only one I'll make, I swear.) But with Cebulski gone, the role of editor-in-chief is left vacant. This is exciting news for a lot of comic book fans who have complicated emotions regarding Cebulski's time as EiC. These are opinion pieces, so I won't go mincing words about my own feelings. There's a lot that Cebulski has done that I've really loved. A soundbite from Jonathan Hickman when he was on the podcast Cerebro comes to mind. I'm paraphrasing but he said that Cebulski was special because he could recognize when a story should be told even if it contradicted his own previously developed plans or ideas. That's an attitude I have a lot of respect for; one I hope to emulate in my own career. However, having said that, I've made no secret of the fact that I feel The House of Ideas has been a bit stale since the end of The Krakoan Era.

House of X and Powers of X represented such a monumental shift in popular culture that perhaps it was unrealistic to expect that momentum to carry farther than it did. However, with the themes and ideas that the era championed now firmly behind us, not much has been able to captivate me in a similar way. The clear successor, at least from an advertising standpoint, Imperial seems to be striking a hollow chord with many readers. I'm ride or die for Hickman myself, but I found it difficult to connect with that story or the stories that sprang out of it. Meanwhile, the work that has excited me, such as Duggan's work with West Coast Avengers and now Wonder Man, have only gotten a small handful of issues. Or they're struck down in their prime, like this new Ultimate Universe.

In short, Cebulski did a lot of good in his long tenure as Marvel's Editor-In-Chief, but the time seems to have come for him to step aside. It seems to be an amicable parting from the outside, for what it's worth.

That's all well and good, but it still leaves us with a question. Who is Marvel Comics' new editor-in-chief? Stephen Wacker! If you're hearing this for the first time I can imagine one of two reactions. You're either very excited or you're asking who the hell Stephen Wacker is.

Obviously, I'm aware, as always, that some of you are filled with the white-hot rage of a thousand suns. We're talking comic books after all, it happens. But you guys should know by now you don't have to read the article. Go ahead and jump straight to the comment section, you have my blessing. You're free!

The rest of you probably want some background on this Wacker guy. Well, an EiC can come from a lot of different backgrounds. Marvel specifically has seen mostly writers take on the position. However, going just off of memory I know there's been at least two illustrators who've taken the role. Wacker, however, is mostly known for his work as an editor.

We're finding revolutionary new vectors in common sense over here at the comics industry. (Okay that's the last one, I swear.)

It's not just that he was "an" editor that excites me. Stephen Wacker is a pretty remarkable editor to boot. When he started in the industry, over at DC Comics, he was editing what I consider to be one of the greatest superhero comic books of all time, JLA. Famously the core creative mind behind that book, Grant Morrison, left part way through. Readers know a Grant Morrison comic is its own special brand. While Mark Waid, who continued the book is certainly no slouch, he just doesn't hold the same place in the minds of audiences that Morrison does. And yet! If we took the credits off of the books and you sat down to read JLA from start to finish, I don't know that you'd be able to tell me when that transition occurred. It's a seamless transition with no change in quality or theme. To me, that speaks to a once in a generation editor.

I'm not going to go over everything that Wacker ever did, but I would like to highlight two more books he edited, also all-time favorites of mine. One I re-read every year is Hawkeye: My Life as A Weapon. Typically, I read this in omnibus form, but I have been blessed to read it as single issues as well. That's an important distinction. The omnibus tells an engaging and unique but fairly straightforward story. You start, more or less, at the beginning. You progress to the middle; you finish on the end. We spend an ample amount of time with our characters. Their motivations, even when they're mysterious, are fairly easy to follow. I bring this up because this is not the way the book was published issue to issue.

Issue to issue, I have to assume, this must have been the hardest book in the world to edit. Characters die with great fanfare in one issue only to be casually alive in later issues with no comment. In omnibus form it becomes clear that these are flashbacks, not because anybody tells us but because the story is structured that way. With months long gaps in between issues, that could have very easily been impossible to follow. However, if you ever get the pleasure to read Hawkeye as individual single issues, you'll find that's not the case. It's incredibly easy to follow even as it breaks traditional rules of serialized storytelling. Part of that, yes, is Fraction and Aja, but a big part of it has to be Wacker as well. You can feel a strong hand on the wheel of that book, keeping it steady as its unique creative identity takes it to difficult places for the medium. As an editor, it's Wacker's job to be that hand. I can only imagine the troubles he had editing a comic told entirely through pictographic depictions of smell. And yet! One of the best single issues I've ever read.

Finally, I'd like to bring up Wacker's work on Ms. Marvel. Whoever was on that book with G. Willow Wilson was always going to have a tough road ahead of them. Not because of Wilson, who I hear is spectacular in every sense. Rather because of the culture at the time. I don't know if you remember America in 2014, but Islamophobia was still very much in vogue. That image of Kamalah standing on top of her house was on Fox News for what felt like months when I was a kid. Yet the entire creative team, as well as Marvel editorial, handled themselves with grace and poise. (From what I remember at least. I was 12 going on 13. So, y'know.)

And of course, on that book, you also get a sense of the other great need for an editor on any level. You can tell that Wacker has a vast and complete understanding not just of the characters but of the stories they inhabit. There's a story in Wilson's Ms. Marvel which I consider to be seminal to my understanding of the character. I can't recall the title, but I remember liking it. In the story, a large collection of children have resigned themselves to a life of passive suicidality because the adults in their lives have convinced them that the only thing they're good for is dying. This leaves them open to be manipulated by a sinister actor who is revealed to be a clone of Thomas Jefferson spliced with the DNA of a parakeet. From just this description, I'm sure you could think of a million reasons to nix that storyline. It's too dark for the younger audience that the book was aimed at. The villain reveal was positively absurd. It was challenging, politically, in a way that would agitate all the bad faith actors who were already looking to tear down the book.

A lesser editor would have stopped the story before it got to print. Not Wacker. I must assume (I don't know these people after all), that he saw in that story the same things that the audience did. Kamalah Kahn, especially in those early books, was a commentary heavy superhero. She highlighted very dramatic realities with the youth of the day. In order to make that commentary both digestible and memorable, Wilson made heavy use of the absurd. It's a very thin tightrope, walked previously by the likes of Spider-Man or The New Mutants. If that story, with all its red flags, and countless others like it, hadn't gone to print we would not today remember the name Kamalah Kahn. Because Wacker believed in Wilson, because he understood the characters and world he was working with, because he made a bold choice, Kamalah has become a semi-household name. Without him, she would've gone the way of Gravity, Academy X, or a million different forgotten teenage superheroes.

I think I've made a pretty solid case for why you should be excited for Wacker's upcoming tenure here. In the interest of due diligence; yes, he's also done some stuff I wasn't crazy about. He played a pivotal role in Marvel Animation during a time where I felt the animation side of things left much to be desired. Even still, he expanded the reach of the brand and garnered some awards acclaim while he was at it.

Admittedly, I was also a kid when that happened. I was unhappy that his show replaced a show I liked a lot. As an adult, I understand that's not his fault. Beyond that, I didn't care for Avengers Assemble because it took characters in directions I did not know to expect or anticipate. As an adult, those are the kinds of decisions I'm desperate for. I'm not exactly going to go back and rewatch any of those Disney XD cartoons, but I suspect they would benefit from a more mature understanding of the world.

They were kids shows though. So, I guess you could read that as a point in either direction. Whatever. I'll leave it in. You can be trusted to draw your own conclusions. UNLESS YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE GUYS THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE COMMENTS SECTION! GET OUTTA HERE! SCRAM!

But I digress. I can't tell you if Wacker's stint as Editor-in-Chief is going to be "good" or "bad." That stuff is subjective. Also, it hasn't happened yet. I can tell you it excites me in a way that Marvel Comics haven't excited me for a hot second now. I'm sorry Cebulski has to leave for it to happen, but I think giving the job to Stephen Wacker is the best idea to come out of that house in a few years.