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Bad reboots take a variety of shapes and sizes. However, the main problem with them is usually that the ideas set up just don’t work at all, and fans either lose interest or decide to go scorched earth against Marvel and the creators. These ten reboots are the worst of the worst, scraping the bottom of the barrel and angering fans immensely.
10) Return of Wolverine
Wolverine died in 2014’s Death of Wolverine, and readers had to do without Logan until 2018 (although they did get Old Man Logan and Laura as Wolverine in the interim). Return of Wolverine was the big return of everyone’s favorite mutant, as it was revealed that he had been resurrected by the shadowy evil organization called Soteira. Wolverine suddenly had “hot claws”, where he would lose his healing factor and go into a berserker rage but his claws would be red hot. While it’s not that much of a reboot, it still was meant to change Wolverine’s status quo, giving him a new power to deal with, as well as a new enemy. However, the book wasn’t exactly good, and most fans mocked the “hot claws”. Marvel basically swept this reboot under the rug, and no one has mentioned the hot claws since.
9) “From the Ashes” X-Men
The “From the Ashes” era of the X-Men has been ongoing since 2024, and it’s not exactly been successful with fans. When it began, sales were through the roof, but readers soon lost interesting in nearly every title except Uncanny X-Men and X-Men (even Wolverine, a solid top 25 seller, has fallen). The problem with “From the Ashes” is simple — there are no good ideas behind it. In fact, the only idea behind it is to remind people of other eras of the X-Men. A large portion of the books that launched with the line have all been cancelled, and new books don’t sell nearly as well as X-Men did during the previous Krakoa Era. “From the Ashes” isn’t completely terrible and has its fans, but its basically torpedoed the X-Men line.
8) “ResurreXion” X-Men
After the failed Inhumans push tried to deep six the X-Men in favor of characters that Marvel Studios could use in their movies, Marvel put the X-Men books through a “ResurreXion”. Starting with X-Men Prime (Vol. 2) #1, the publisher launched X-Men Gold, X-Men Blue, Astonishing X-Men, Generation X, and various solo titles. With the war with the Inhumans over and mutants able to live on Earth again, the X-Men tried to get back to work. However, it was just a terrible run of X-Men books. X-Men Gold was marred by controversy when artist Ardian Sayif placed anti-Semitic imagery in the book (and the book’s writing was never anything to write home about), Astonishing X-Men was yet another example of why Charles Soule should stay far away from mutants, and X-Men Blue was more of the timelost O5 X-Men who should have went back to their time years before. The only actually good book in the lot was Generation X, and that one get cancelled. “ResurreXion” would have been better served if Marvel had sprang for better talent, but even then, it still wouldn’t have been special, it just wouldn’t have been bad.
7) The Terrigen Mist Status Quo X-Men
The Krakoa Era made the X-Men great again, after years of Marvel marginalizing the mutants because they didn’t own the film rights to the franchise. Marvel had been pushing the X-Men out of the spotlight since the mid ’00s, but it got really bad after Secret Wars (2015). In 2013, Infinity saw Black Bolt release the Terrigen Mists into the Earths’s atmosphere, which eventually became toxic to mutants after Secret Wars. The X-Men were forced to leave the Earth, bringing mutants to Limbo, and at some point Cyclops had died committing a terrorist act against Inhumans. I’m personally a fan of Extraordinary X-Men, although it’s a deeply flawed book, but the Terrigen Mist status quo is easily the worst thing to happen to the X-Men. On top of that, while the X-Men were being marginalized, Marvel tried to push the Inhumans in their place, leading to a bunch of mediocre books that even Inhuman fans didn’t really enjoy. It was a terrible reboot for the X-Men and the Inhumans.
6) Starship Hulk
The best recent Hulk stories are all horror stories, with The Immortal Hulk getting praise as one of the best Marvel series ever. After the end of The Immortal Hulk, Marvel put white hot writer Donny Cates and Invincible co-creator Ryan Ottley on a new volume of Hulk. Fans were very excited for this run, but that excitement soon went away. Cates basically ignored the ending of Immortal, with Banner and Hulk back at odds. Banner was treating the Hulk like a spaceship, using it to travel space and the multiverse. The art was great and the idea was novel, but it wasn’t at all what fans wanted. It was made worse when an automobile accident forced Cates to quit every title he was working on. The Spaceship Hulk status quo made Hulk fans angry, and it ended before it barely get going.
