http://comicbook.com/blog/2011/11/18/te ... -part-one/

Fun reading.

I liked the idea of the Ghost Detectives, it's a shame they didn't do much with it. The only time they appeared after 52 was in Dixon's recent Batman and the Outsiders run.

I would really like to hear the argument against this.

I guess they haven't posted Part Two yet.

The biggest squandered opportunity would have to be Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Secret Invasion could have fixed so many problems at Marvel and they totally whiffed it.

Yep, I completely agree.

The whole "kidnapped and replaced by Skrulls" idea could've paved the way for a return of some much loved characters; and could've done so in such a way that it would've been as if they'd never been gone.

But yeah, they completely messed it up.

Also; why wasn't Mandrill included in Marvel Apes?

If The Gibbon could pass himself off as a local on Earth-Ape, then surely Mandrill could've done so as well? These young writers today have no respect for Marvel's classic characters.

It really was. It was as if their ego's could not admit mistakes were made and so undo them, the'd rather live with the awfulness. Can you imagine the cool stories that could have been told with a Hank Pym who NEVER married Jan or built Ultron, and was just Giant Man? He was, after all, a bio-chemist NOT a robotics expert. His reactions to all that happened under his name? Jan's reactions? Or an Iron Man who didn't betray his friends or a Spiderman who never married (much better than how they undid that). The potential for starting off points were infinite, it would have been a GREAT ending to Secret Invasion and Civil War, and would enable you to get back to basics, without confusing continuity like 52 and their weird timelines.

Hell it could have been cool if Norman Osborne was one of their leaders (I hated him coming back anyway)

I agree with some of Allen's ideas, there. Especially the Spider-Man and Hank Pym stuff.

But the more I think about it, the less I care about Marvel these days anyway.

Mandrill being omitted from Marvel Apes is an unforgivable sin, IMO.

The problem with that kind of fix is that, like what happened with Ben Reilly, you end up pissing off a lot of readers who are suddenly told that the character they've been reading for the past 20-30 years is not the "real" one.

True enough, but considering what Marvel have got now...anything would've been an improvement.

The deserve my ire for that thing with Mandrill, though. Damn them!

The problem with thinking that Secret Invasion could've "fixed" things presupposes that Marvel believes things are broken.

And I doubt they do.

(Since when is Hank and Jan's marriage is one of those "broken" things?)

Maybe they were just thinking of Jan's jaw?

Too soon.

I only meant I agreed with ditching the whole "violent and treacherous self-hating psycho loser" Hank Pym thing, not their marriage specifically.

How about the Clone Saga? After realizing it was a long, drawn-out failure, the powers that be at Marvel had an opportunity to wrap things up and just end it once and for all.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

IMO, they made matters worse by resurrecting Norman Osborn and making him the mastermind of the whole thing.

'Nuff said.

(I always get confused about the whole "clone saga" as the "clone saga" *I* recall happaned in, like, 1977 or something)

I think in the eyes of most, "Clone Saga" refers to the overwrought, misbegotten pile o' crap that Marvel dished out the mid-'90s.

The story that started it, in 1975, is referred to as "The Original Clone Saga."

Great idea, poorly executed

The "First Wave" line DC came out with a few years ago was such a wasted opportunity. Batman, emerging in a universe where Doc Savage, the Spirit, Tarzan, etc. exist? Awesome. But the whole line had no uniting vision and they didn't keep a regular schedule at all either.

I think that the most squandered opportunity in comics was what Wolfman and Perez did with their New Teen Titans. This book helped revive DC in the early 80s and should have been the anchor for the company during the 80s.

But Wolfman had to age the characters, which in turn aged their mentors, which, contributed (along with Crisis, also by Wolfman) to an over-complication of the DC Universe that eventually caused a lot of readers to just give up.

The biggest squandered opportunity was the comics rage of the early 90s, kicked off by the 1989 Batman. Comics had the most eyes they've ever had on them in modern memory -- and most comics featured some of the worst material ever seen in comics. If some of these multiple cover #1 issues of stunt events actually had a good story to go along wiht the hype, maybe some of the speculators would have stuck around.

Wolfman even burned himself out by the late '80s. Even Perez's short-lived return failed to get the title back on track.