YMMV / Marvel: A Fresh Start

• And You Thought It Would Fail: There was a Collective Groan by some of the community at Marvel doing another relaunch just seven months after their last, and it was thought that it would only continue their Audience-Alienating Era some people thought they had been stuck in for a good portion of the '10s. Fast-forward a year later, and the general reception is that Fresh Start was what had finally gotten Marvel out of the Audience-Alienating Era, with new creative teams, new ideas, new stories and generally being more in-tune with their actual audience, having reinvigorated the Marvel brand. It helps that they've stopped their Character Shilling of the Inhumans at the expense of the X-Men, while putting mutants back as a core pillar of the Marvel Universe.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: The Inhumans have gotten this reaction as of Death of the Inhumans, who even with all the promotion they've gotten in the past couple of years at the expense of the mutants, some felt like killing them off was just pandering to the hatedom of these characters, and just wastes any potential of writing them into the relaunch. However, most of the main cast survives only to be Put on a Bus with only a few references about what happened with them.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A few days before the reveal of the Multiple Man title, writer Peter David responded to a Twitter comment about Madrox's status as "most certainly not dead". At first, this looks like a case of PAD applying Word of St. Paul on a character, however, it looks like he knew a thing or two!
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • There's the fact that Peter Parker was gradually shunted back into poverty, moved back into NY and now lives in a shoddy apartment, and rooms with Robbie Robinson's son again, meaning that Peter is once again the "relatable loser". Many of Peter's fans didn't take that well.
  • Laura Kinney being thrown back from her Wolverine mantle while it was given back to James Howlett wasn't well received by some, especially in light of her new comic book being titled "X-23", hinting she'll go back to a codename she actually hates. That said, her comic focuses on trying to find an identity for herself, so there is still hope for her to find an identity of her own that doesn't involve her trademark codename, just like Gabby did. Eventually the writers settled for her sharing the codename of "Wolverine" with Logan (with the approval of the latter at that), in a slightly similar case as Spider-Man and Miles Morales.
• Old Guard Versus New Blood: Fresh Start panders to the older Marvel fans whose heroes had been gradually sidelined from Original Sin and All-New, All-Different Marvel onwards, whereas many of the newer Marvel characters get benched instead. Naturally older fans are mostly pleased by this whereas Marvel's newer audiences that got on board for these characters (and older fans that liked the newer heroes regardless) are less pleased. This seems to be slightly reversing with the revival of Nadia Van Dyne's title.
• Pandering to the Base: With "Fresh Start", Marvel is being heavily accused of this in regards to fans who wanted the old status quo back at any cost. With many of the new generation being shunted aside (Riri Williams and Amadeus Cho losing their solo books, with Champions, a series that's also likely to get cancelled soon, becoming basically the only place they can appear), shafted back onto their old aliases (Laura Kinney and Sam Wilson/Falcon), depowered (Jane Foster), or even killed off (The Inhumans), while the old generation takes their place back. There are a lot of older fans who feel happy about this as Marvel, to them, spent the last few years pandering to about everyone but the fans of the classic comics, and there are naturally a lot of new fans who aren't too happy with this as it derails many of the characters that got them into Marvel in the first place.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Quite a few creators on different titles have gotten mixed reactions to them.
  • Dan Slott's Iron Man, there are fans who are utterly wary of Slott's description of "Rick and Morty meets Black Mirror" — some are assuming that this means we're looking at fantastical sci-fi things the same way we saw Slott's take on Silver Surfer, others have taken this literally and are assuming we're looking at the advent of Pickle Tony Stark.
  • For Mark Waid's Dr. Strange, he's coming off of the popular run by Donny Cates, thus he has a Tough Act to Follow. This is also because many fans feel like Waid's been off his A-Game since The Avengers and Champions.
  • Readers are also concerned about Mariko Tamaki taking over writing X-23 after Taylor's well-received All-New Wolverine, particularly citing the tepid reception to and poor sales on her run of She-Hulk.
    • There is a big concern about forcing Laura back into X-23 codename and costume when part of her character arc in All-New Wolverine was outgrowing her past. In regards to Mariko Tamaki there are people who believe she is much better fitting on Laura than She-Hulk but are irritated that this is the second time she is given a book with what appears to be an editorial-mandated premise.
  • The announcement of Slott on Fantastic Four has been heavily mixed — there are fans who know that Slott can write the team properly, having seen his Thing series, his Spider-Man/Human Torch mini-series and the times he's used them in Amazing Spider-Man. There are those, though, who are still burnt by his Amazing run and didn't like his Silver Surfer run at all who think not giving it to Chip Zdarsky, who is still writing Marvel 2-in-One, is a slap in the face.
• Unexpected Character: Or rather "Unexpected Series" in this case.
  • The appearance of a brand-new series starring The Sentry. With the character being both a laughingstock and a sign of things wrong with Marvel, one would think they would stay away from him.
  • West Coast Avengers was a series that no one thought would be revived, considering it's been disbanded for twenty-four real world years without any talk of ever bringing them back. Granted, only Hawkeye carries over from the original team as the rest are new characters introduced in the '00s and the '10s, but still.
  • The revival of Iceman. The original title didn't last long, but has gained more attention over time with strong trade sales, which may have had something to do with it.
  • Even more surprising was the revival of The Unstoppable Wasp. Initially, the comics sold poorly and barely got noticed, and was released during what many consider an Audience-Alienating Era. However, trades sold well and so Marvel is willing to give it another go. It helps there's a new guy in charge. That said, it's still surprising when one considers that the theme is bringing back the old guard as opposed to Legacy Characters, so them bringing back Nadia as a legacy title is still quite a deviation. What possibly justifies it is that Janet, Nadia's predecessor, will be playing a more active role as her mentor.
  • The announcement of a Shatterstar series definitely raised some eyebrows. While not without a following, Shatterstar isn't exactly iconic, and his film debut earlier that same year in fact had him dying before he could even fight as a gag C-List Fodder character alongside the rest of the X-Force.
  • Domino hasn't headlined her own series since 2003, and is usually put in team books as opposed to being solo, making it look left-field. Though, the interest in her character spiking after Deadpool 2 may have had something to do with it.
  • Even if they're only One-Shots, the revivals of classic titles Love Romances, Gunhawks, and Ziggy Pig - Silly Seal Comics were a surprise.
  • How many people thought Black Cat was ever going to headline her own ongoing?
  • Though it's only a one-shot, Power Pack getting revisited, by their original creators no less, was a definite surprise.
  • Character-specific example. Who could have expected Dark Agnes to appear in Conan: Serpent War let alone even get her own comic series. Agnes was an obscure Robert E. Howard character that had only three books published in the 1930s and made very occasional appearances in the Dark Horse Savage Sword of Conan series.