Marvel moves from NY to CA, and replaces C.B. Cebulski with Stephen Wacker as EIC

The Hollywood Reporter's announced changes are being made at Marvel, none of them anything to be optimistic about, in both location and staffing:

After calling the Big Apple home for almost 90 years, Marvel Comics is moving out of New York City. And heading to Hollywood.

The relocation was revealed to staff at a town hall Thursday at Marvel’s New York office in Midtown, where employees were informed that its publishing division will be pulling up stakes and transferring operations to Burbank, California, the current headquarters of Marvel Studios and corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company.

Just like DC, right? Considering how artistically and politically bad their owner became over the past decade, this is nothing to take pleasure at learning, unfortunately. Nor is the news of who'll replace C.B. Cebulski as EIC, after he retained the role for nearly a decade:

The development is accompanied by a changing of the guard at the top. Stephen Wacker, a respected veteran comics editor who also earned an Emmy nomination for his work in the company’s forays in animation, has been named Marvel’s new editor-in-chief, replacing outgoing chief C.B. Cebulski, who had steered the division since 2017. Cebulski will still remain part of the family, however, as he will be moving to Japan to spearhead the company’s push into manga, among others things, as editor, Asia originals.

Both changes are meant to reinvigorate the comic book side of the company, which has been overshadowed in recent years by the success of Marvel’s movies, and by a creative slump that saw it lose its position as comics market share leader for the first time this century. Marvel chief Kevin Feige’s installing of the new leadership and the relocation of its comics side to Disney’s Burbank base represents a long-term investment in what he believes underpins the source of Marvel’s storytelling. [...]

Among those joining the Burbank headquarters will be Wacker, who is making his Marvel return after leaving the company in the early 2020s to lead Jonathan Hickman’s worldbuilding project 3W3M and then co-founding the entertainment studio Stone Kite.

A beloved editor with strong talent relationships, Wacker spent over fifteen years at Marvel, overseeing Spider-Man comic runs that included the best-selling “Brand New Day” and “Superior Spider-Man” eras. He was also editor on Daredevil and Hawkeye when those titles won Eisner Awards and was involved in the introduction of Kamala Khan, also known as Ms. Marvel.

"Respected and beloved"? Wacker's the same editor who was part and parcel of the effort to run the Spider-Man franchise into the ground, and they shamelessly gloss over one of the worst editorial mandates Joe Quesada forced upon Spidey when he was EIC. It's just like them to distort and obscure the worst of what was brought about. And all these years, they kept repeatedly dangling carrots as to whether Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson would be reunited as a married couple, which they never did, and Cebulski recently allowed things to become worse by approving a story where MJ's turned into another Venom host. These kind of shock value stories don't improve a dire situation, and that's going to be part of Cebulski's "legacy" going out.

Since Wacker, of course, was party to the degradation of Spidey, he's unlikely to reverse any of Quesada's worst steps of the past quarter century, and unlikely to restore the Spider-marriage. And even if he does, that alone won't make Spidey's adventures readable again. For all we know, Wacker could ramp up the wokeness by galaxies, as though it weren't bad enough already, and he was instrumental in shoehorning Islamic propaganda into the MCU with a character whose instant solo series wasn't marketed on merit, and at least 3 projects translating the Muslim Ms. Marvel into live action films, TV and video were flops, with the Marvels movie becoming a huge dud. Of course, the MSM will doubtless not have anything critical to say about his upcoming run as EIC, and chances are that, much like the now outgoing Cebulski, Wacker won't give many press interviews, if at all. At least that'd be a comfort in a sense, since Quesada gave only so many years ago where he was unendurable. Forbes also addressed the move, and said:

In one way, it is unsurprising that Disney is uniting Marvel’s publishing and film units in Burbank. Comic-based movies, media and games supplanted comics publishing as the economic driver of the business two decades ago. Longtime rival DC decamped from New York to Burbank in 2015, a move also accompanied by a change in company leadership. An internal Marvel company survey revealed that more Mavel creators now hail from the West Coast than from the region nearby New York, and in any case, geography has become largely irrelevant to the production of comics. [...]

Cebulski’s departure was also not a surprise. Though the Marvel editor could claim a range of creative and commercial successes in his decade-long leadership of the company, Marvel’s sales have slipped in recent years, falling behind DC for the first time in a long time according to industry sales data. With longtime Marvel President Dan Buckley stepping down in May, replaced by Brad Winderbaum (head of TV, animation, comics and franchise) and David Abdo (general manager, comics and franchise), it seemed likely that Marvel would get new editorial leadership sooner rather than later.

Wacker will step into the role once held by industry legends Stan Lee, Roy Thomas and Jim Shooter among others. Wacker has been behind some of Marvel’s most interesting and popular comics of the past few decades, including Brand New Day and Superior Spider-Man. He is well-liked within the industry and well-regarded by creative colleagues both at Marvel and on other stops in his professional career including at DC and Jonathan Hickman’s 3W3M.

As surely expected, they too sugarcoat the worst atrocities to come out of the Quesada era at Marvel, and it wouldn't be the least bit shocking if they're fully in the boat for the worst of the overabundant company wide crossovers that're doubtless coming up in Marvel's schedule now. I'm sure there's something to the claim Wacker's "well-liked" inside the industry, since he's bound to be a knee-jerk leftist who could do everything they consider acceptable. But after the Spider-marriage was thrown out so blatantly, do they really think he's popular and well-liked within Spider-fandom? Naturally, the real-life J. Jonah Jamesons at Forbes won't acknowledge that issue.

Anyway, hiring a new EIC doesn't guarantee fortures will improve, if no merit or respect for fandom and past creators isn't emphasized. Sales of mainstream comics have been declining for years, to the point where it's bewildering Marvel and DC are even still in business as publishers. I'd noticed rumors Disney might shut down Marvel as a publisher, but for all we know, they're bound to continue pointlessly for still another decade or so. And within that time, sales, along with "merit", are bound to fall ever further.