[DrewBlank]

I would guess Star Wars is still shipping in way smaller numbers than Star Wars, and it doesn't have as many media tie-ins or bigger vehicles and box sets like Star Wars, but the comparison does seem fair up to a point. My children have been asking for obscure Marvel characters the way I used to ask for cantina aliens (my daughter demanded a MODOK and an Abomination) and both properties have their own mythology.

I'd say where it falls apart is that ultimately Star Wars has a single continuity and is a multigenerational story, whereas Marvel is awkwardly frozen in time and keeps telling the same stories a different way. My children and I can talk about Star Wars because every new property adds another layer to the story, whereas Marvel is stuck repeating itself forever, then rebooting and starting again.

There will always be new Star Wars characters and there's enough room to let popular characters die and change. Twenty years after this round of Marvel movies, we aren't going to get an expanded story with new characters, we're going to get the same stories over again. Peter Parker will be bitten by a spider. Captain America will fight in World War II, Iron Man will build a suit of armor.

If any license has the depth of characters and story to become the next Star Wars, it's Marvel, but I don't think it will ever happen because they're making too much money by turning their big characters into commodities. Instead of selling and expanding a story, their giving us eight different origins for each of their main characters, teenage spin-offs, dead characters that don't stay dead, SUVs painted like Iron Man's armor, and Spider-Man in cargo pants and a ski hoodie.

Marvel licensing is so desperate to be loved that it will go home with anyone, and in the short term that works, but long term the property is going to be used up and saggy and no one's going to want to touch it after a while.