Marvel’s Move From New York To Burbank Is The End Of Several Eras

NEW YORK CITY – OCTOBER 30, 2017 A man wearing a Spiderman costume is walking through the streets of Manhattan in New York City, USA.

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Marvel Comics, a division of the Walt Disney Company, announced to staff this morning that the company is relocating its comics publishing division from their longtime headquarters in Manhattan to Burbank, California, the home of Disney and Marvel Studios. The company also announced that longtime editor Stephen Wacker will replace C.B. Cebulski as editor-in-chief, a role Cebulski had held since 2017.

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.

The Hollywood Reporter, which broke the story of Marvel’s move, reports that the lease at Marvel’s midtown New York offices was set to expire, forcing the company into a real estate decision one way or another. The move to Burbank will require the relocation of around 100 staffers. Marvel says it will be helping prepare those employees and their families for the move over the summer.

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.

According to Marvel’s announcement, Wacker “served as the editor behind the Eisner Award-winning comic series Daredevil and Hawkeye, the critically acclaimed relaunch of Captain Marvel, the introduction of Kamala Khan, A.K.A. Ms. Marvel, and the Marvel Infinity Comic series It’s Jeff! He also brings experience from the film and TV side, particularly on animated show like Avengers Assemble, Ultimate Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy, which all fused elements from film and comics to provide an accessible onramp into Marvel lore for younger and tween-age viewers.

“Picking up Marvel Two-in-One #50 as a kid is what made me a comics fan, so returning to Marvel as Editor-in-Chief is a full-circle moment that I’m still wrapping my head around,” said Wacker. “I’m proud to join Kevin, Brad, David, and this incredible staff and amazing array of talent to build on the work started by Stan, Jack, Steve, Flo, John, and so many more. I truly believe the best Marvel comics have yet to be written and drawn, and I can’t wait to get to work adding some new floors to the House of Ideas.”

So while big moves at Marvel were almost overdetermined, the dramatic nature and timing of them still hits hard. Marvel, like almost all of the American comic book industry, began in New York in the 1930s and has called the city home for the past 90 years. In the 1960s, Marvel began setting its superhero universe in New York as a way to anchor it to the real world, in contrast to the fictional cities used by rivals.

Both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were quintessential 20^th century New Yorkers, and their New York state of mind came through in the frenetic, in-your-face stories that helped Marvel emerge from the bottom tier of the business to the commercial and cultural vanguard in less than a decade. Notably, both men eventually moved west to the Los Angeles area. Now the company founded on their work is doing the same.

All of this is taking place on the eve of San Diego Comic-Con, the annual gathering of the comics, media, gaming and entertainment industries that draws hundreds of thousands of fans, where Marvel is front and center. At a venue where the storylines of the business over the next year take shape, this is clearly going to be topic number one next week.