Marvel is the biggest purveyor of superheroes in the world. The MCU has brought the Marvel Universe to the masses, and the company's comic output dominates the sales charts. Marvel's heroes and villains have always been iconic. The company helped change the way superhero comics worked throughout the Silver Age, bringing a more down-to-earth sensibility to the genre.

RELATED: 10 Marvel Teams That Exceeded Expectations

As great as Marvel can be, that doesn't mean they're perfect. The company has a lot of cringey aspects, some that are recent and some that are much older. Marvel may be nearly universally beloved by comic and casual fans, but there are a lot of problems in the House of Ideas.

Warning: This article discusses Marvel's history with using incest as a theme in its comics.

10 The Biggest Company In The Industry Has The Worst Paper Quality In The Industry

Marvel Comics Releases Header 9-14-2022

Marvel is the sales leader by a far margin. They make more money per month with their comics than anyone else, and they have MCU money. On top of that, Disney owns the whole thing, meaning they are part of the biggest entertainment juggernaut in the world. That's why it's so embarrassing that their paper quality is so bad.

Marvel's comics have a paper quality that ranges from okay to single-ply toilet paper with some sheen to it. Marvel is worth billions of dollars, yet the company can't spring for better paper. Even taking the pandemic into account, the cheapness of Marvel is pretty cringe, especially considering they sell comics that are more expensive per page than any other company.

9 Every Marvel Attempt To Create A Mature Readers Line Is A Hilarious Failure

Rawhide Kid Marvel Max Scandalous

DC's success at creating Vertigo was a huge moment in the comic industry. It gave readers stories that were mature, with violence, nudity, and profanity, but also thought-provoking. Vertigo's success wasn't just because it was mature and graphic, but because readers could tell that the books were about more than that.

Over the years, Marvel tried to copy that success, and the results have always been super-cringe. Whether it's '90s horror lines that were blatant rip-offs, or Marvel MAX, which was mostly edgelord superhero violence, Marvel's lack of understanding of what readers wanted from mature comics has always been hilarious.

8 They Made C.B. Cebulski Editor-In-Chief Despite The Akira Yashida Thing

CB-Cebulski-Featured-Image

C.B. Cebulski rose to prominence at Marel during the '00s. His entire job was bringing Japanese talent to Marvel, something he proved very good at, securing Japanese writers and artists for the company. One of those was Akira Yashida, a brand-new writer who impressed everyone. Strangely enough, there were also no pictures of him, and no one ever met him.

RELATED: 10 Best Marvel Gateway Comics

The reason for that is because Cebulski was Yashida. He pretended to be Japanese to get a job writing at Marvel while an editor. This was all discovered eventually, and he was not only never punished for pretending to be Japanese, but he was eventually made Marvel Editor-In-Chief, the cringiest possible outcome.

7 The Publisher's Stan Lee Worship Downplayed How Much Work Everyone Else Did

Stan Lee Cameo in Ant-Man and the Wasp

Stan Lee was a massive part of Marvel's success. The writer-editor was the publisher's biggest fan and spokesman. He did groundbreaking work on The Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and more. The problem is that Marvel has given him the lion share's of the credit when he didn't do nearly as much work as Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, and many other artists.

In fact, even calling Lee a writer isn't completely correct. He helped plot the comics with the artists, who then fleshed that plot out by coming up with all the panels themselves, with artists like Kirby and Ditko often writing the dialogue as well, and Lee coming in afterwards to script, if needed, and edit. He didn't do as much work, yet he got all the credit, fame, and money.

6 2000s Marvel Was Edgy In The Cringiest Way

Ultimate Captain America France

'00s Marvel saw the company pull out of the doldrums of the '90s and lay the foundations for its future dominance. However, a lot of their success depended on being as edgy as possible. Trends from earlier decades can always be cringe when looked back upon, but '00s Marvel is especially bad in this respect.

From most of the Ultimate line to nearly everything Mark Millar wrote to the MAX line and more, Marvel was putting out edgy comics that didn't age well at all. Going back and reading those books is cringe-inducing.

5 The Ultimates 3 And Ultimatum Are A One-Two Punch Of Ultimate Cringe

Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum

The apotheosis of '00s cringe comes from two infamous comics. The Ultimates 3, by writer Jeph Loeb and artist Joe Madureira, and Ultimatum, by Loeb and artist David Finch, are among Marvel's most disliked comics. They feel like the edgelord tendencies of the '00s boiled down to their essence and used to create comics that fans would deride from the moment they were published.

Each comic was cringey for completely different reasons, as well. Ultimates 3 played up the incest angle between the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, something that had merely been a joke before. Likewise, Ultimatum was horribly violent, with emphasis on the horrible. In a decade of cringey comics, these need to be highlighted as the cringiest.

4 Marvel Dropped All The Subtext Once Hickman Left The X-Men Books And Glorified An Ethnostate

Apocalypse and a host of villains accept amnesty on Krakoa

The X-Men went from the bottom of the sales charts to the very top, but Marvel not controlling their film rights led to them being an afterthought in the late '10s. After Disney purchased 20th Century Fox, that all changed. Marvel put superstar writer Jonathan Hickman on the book. He spearheaded the Krakoa status quo, creating a homeland for mutants with actual world power.

Hickman loaded the whole thing with a creepy subtext, because this was an ethnostate built on secrets and lies. However, fans ignored that and focused on the utopian aspects of it, mostly because writers who weren't Hickman did the same. Once Hickman left the books, they went to full-on glorification of the ethnostate, something that is extremely cringey.

3 The Obsession With Making Scarlet Witch Blameless Has Defanged Great Stories

Doctor Doom and Scarlet Witch from Avengers Childrens Crusade

Scarlet Witch has often done terrible things, but Marvel is constantly trying to let her off the hook for them. In the past, she'd sometimes attack the Avengers, whether it be because of mind control or her powers. However, in the mid-'00s, starting with Avengers Disassembled, she took this into overdrive, killing Avengers, rewriting reality, and depowering the mutant race.

RELATED: Every Marvel Hero's Civilian Job

Scarlet Witch's actions opened her up for a redemption arc and perhaps even stories that dealt with how trauma could affect a superhero, but instead, Marvel just retconned the whole thing to it being Doctor Doom's fault. It was a cringey way to deal with something that could have been smart and groundbreaking.

2 Marvel Editorial Constantly Pushing Gwen Stacy As Spider-Man's True Love Is The Height Of Cringe

Gwen Stacy looking at a spider hanging from its web.

Being a Spider-Man fan hasn't been easy in recent years. Between One More Day ending Spider-Man and Mary Jane's marriage in the worst possible way and middling runs on The Amazing Spider-Man, the Wall-Crawler and Marvel's flagship book, fans have been highly critical of Marvel's treatment of their favorite. What makes it worse is the blatant Gwen Stacy worship of Marvel editorial.

Stacy was Peter Parker's first love, but she's been dead for decades. Most current fans never read an original story highlighting their relationship. For Marvel to push that she's still Spider-Mans true love is so cringey, like someone who can't get over their first love decades later.

1 Marvel Plays Pick Me To MCU Fans

Agent Coulson tells Ms. Marvel to stretch paper thin under door

The MCU is obviously the most successful part of Marvel. It has diehard fans, but the interesting thing about those fans is that as much as they purport to love Marvel, the vast majority of them will not read comics. The bleedthrough of MCU fan to Marvel comic fan is infinitesimal, which makes Marvel changing their comics for MCU fans exceedingly cringe.

Marvel is using the comics to play "pick me" — making themselves as appealing as possible in a cringe attempt for affection — to a demographic that doesn't care about comics at all. It's a desperation move that looks terrible.

NEXT: 10 Most Charismatic Marvel Superheroes, Ranked