It’s taken me two days longer than intended to write this. I had to be ready, and not simply force it out half-assed. What I have to say is genuine and I wanted to get every ounce of that into my post.

Marvel has a nostalgia problem. A huge one.

There are so, so, so many characters and franchises and ideas at Marvel’s beck and call. There are characters who were written horribly for decades that could really use some revisiting. Characters that were screwed over in various ways who deserve a real, considerate touch. I know this because I’m a huge fan of Polaris. I’ve seen both how she’s been wronged as a character for decades, and how much raw untapped potential she has in her own right. She’s just one character. Marvel has so many others who could be made into something more and greater.

None of that happens. Because nostalgia by people at Marvel gets in the way of any possibility whatsoever at success in this vein.

The current X-Men books are an excellent example of this problem. X-Men Blue is a throwback to the original 5. X-Men Gold is a throwback to the 70s and 80s. New Mutants is a throwback to, you guessed it, the New Mutants book of yesteryear. Iceman and Jean Grey and the upcoming Cable are all books beholden to characters conceived of as having huge fanbases because of the past. Weapon X is all about the Wolverine stuff, because Wolverine was extremely popular.

And then at SDCC recently, they announced X-Men: Grand Design. This is a series about Uncanny X-Men #1-#280, what’s always promoted as the “golden age of the X-Men.” Which, as a Polaris fan, grates on me because this was the worst period in her entire character history.

Yet it’s going to be retold. It’s being held up on a pedestal and treated like revisiting that entire run in summarized form, with undoubtedly all the awfulness of how it treated Lorna (when they can find a spot for it), is how comics should be made.

As a Polaris fan, I have insight into what an uphill battle it is to get Marvel to acknowledge any of what she could offer. It all comes down to nostalgia.

Tom Brevoort was thoroughly dismissive of Polaris being Magneto’s daughter and having anything to do with Scarlet Witch because of his nostalgia telling him Polaris isn’t worth the time of day.

Nostalgia told Marvel that, after returning from space, Polaris “had” to join X-Factor with Havok, who she “had” to be with. Nostalgia tells Marvel that Lorna’s trauma and continuing thoughts over surviving Genosha can’t be explored, because to people at Marvel, such a major and pivotal moment “doesn’t fit” Lorna to them. They think something so major should go to other characters and be explored by them while Polaris gets nothing.

Because Polaris herself is a victim of nostalgia. The sort of nostalgia Marvel has toward Polaris is the sort built by the Claremont era: the idea that she’s a minor character to be thrown into limbo and only occasionally dredged back up for a few brief issues, usually to build up other characters and look stupid or weak in the process. That’s the image Claremont created of her, and people on the comics side of Marvel are so beholden to nostalgia that it’s the image they fall back on.

There’s never any using the past for the future. Polaris could be used to add new dimensions to Iceman’s coming out as gay, because of the love triangle they were in and how far back they go, but Marvel will never use that. Polaris could provide teen Jean Grey with insight into her adult self’s development, since Polaris was friends and teammates with adult Jean well before any other women came along, but Marvel will never use that. Those things will never happen at the comics side of Marvel we see today. Marvel would have to toss off the nostalgia goggles that make them think those connections are irrelevant just because Claremont in the nostalgic “golden age” didn’t do anything with them.

There’s being a fan and building on the past, and then there’s being a fanboy and holding back progress to keep everything in a state that fits your nostalgia. Marvel is all fanboys. It’s all people who revert things back to their fondest memory and hold it there in stasis.

There’s an ulterior motive for the X-Men franchise’s treatment, though. Everything I said above is true across all of Marvel comics. But, the X-Men franchise is specifically being framed by Marvel as a “dying has-been franchise with its best years behind it.” This is deliberate because Marvel is pissy about Fox having the X-Men film rights. They want to diminish the brand to, in their minds (but not in reality), hurt Fox.

A final case study: X-Men Blue. There are many good things, and many bad things, about the book. One of the bad things I’m going to highlight: how it handles cameos of obscure characters.

Every issue is like a smorgasbord of nostalgia. “Hey! Here’s this obscure character!” “Hey, remember this storyline?” “Isn’t it cool we got to see this 20 year old character again!”

But… it lacks anything of substance. It’s empty. These appearances as presented only mean anything if you’re someone beholden by nostalgia. None of them give enough time to really explore any of the obscure characters you see. If you’re a casual fan, you get absolutely no sense of what these characters are really about or who they are as characters. They appear, they disappear, like fireflies.

Meanwhile, Marvel gives Scarlet Witch a solo book that lasts for a year despite low sales, and puts out books starring characters that were the bee’s knees 20-30 years ago but a lot of people don’t really give a shit about today.

And that’s not to say those characters can’t be interesting, but they’re going about it the wrong way, blinded by nostalgia. They’re not seeing things as they are today. They’re seeing things as they were when they were kids.

By the way, this is easy for me to say for one reason: I don’t have the nostalgia problem they do.

I didn’t start to give a shit about Marvel until I found out Polaris existed. Because Marvel acted like she was a pox upon their house for decades, I didn’t find out Polaris existed until I was in my 20s. And I found her by accident. She was my gateway into the Marvel universe. I got to see what could be through her.

And I got to see how Marvel ruined what could be, just to flail at what once was and will never be again.

My examples are X-Men, but like I said, it goes beyond that. One More Day is a notorious example of Quesada wanting to dive into his own nostalgia of a bachelor Peter Parker. One online critic I used to watch noted that Peter Parker was at one point either a professor or a teacher (can’t remember which), but ultimately Marvel sent him right back to being some down on his luck young’un.

Development is anathema to the sort of nostalgia that runs rampant at Marvel.

Which is ultimately why I know for a fact that current Marvel will never understand the potential of characters like Polaris, much less explore that potential. You have to be prepared to look forward and create a brighter future, informed by the past. Marvel is completely incapable of that.

It’s also one of many reasons why I place so much in The Gifted with Fox. It’s not trying to “recapture nostalgia.” It’s making something new informed by the past. Moving forward. Working in the present.

Something Marvel can’t do.