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"To a certain extent," says Tom Brevoort, "For all that it's driving us absolutely crazy, I like the reaction to Paul."

In case you don't understand which Paul Marvel's longest-serving editor is talking about - and thus aren't staring open-mouthed at this comment from behind your laptop - Brevoort is talking about Paul Rabin, largely considered one of the least popular (or most hated?) new Marvel Comics characters in recent memory. First introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 from 2022, Paul was Mary Jane Watson's new husband who became involved with her during a stretch of time when Peter Parker had gone missing. The character's introduction was met with a staggering amount of vitriol by both old and new fans of Marvel's wall-crawler.

But according to Brevoort, that's better than the alternative. 

Brevoort made his comments on the Word Balloon Comics Podcast with host John Siuntres, on which he was a recent guest. During the podcast discussion, Siuntres asked Brevoort about what he thought of fan reactions to particularly unpopular narrative decisions by Marvel, such as the choice to make Steve Rogers a secret HYDRA agent in the lead-up to Secret Empire. In case you weren't aware, that decision also led to a mountain of online vitriol.

"I always get in trouble for saying this," Brevoort told his interviewer, "But I honestly kind of like it when they go all in like that. Because it just shows that they are invested in the story and they haven't seen the rope trick so often as to be jaded and not buy into the drama of what's going on. Because the drama of what's going on is the whole thing. I absolutely want them to take it seriously."

As Brevoort is insistent to clarify, "taking it seriously," doesn't include death threats to creatives, which are sadly a reality in entertainment these days. But for fans that are just a normal amount of upset, some pushback on a narrative decision can be a healthy thing, and it behooves no comic book creator to try and avoid it.

"I don't ever want to see another comic book story where a character dies," the current X-Men editor says, "And another character stands around and says. 'Don't worry, he'll be resurrected soon.' Because that's crap! That's trying to be more clever than the audience, or trying to tip your hat or wink or go, 'Yeah, you shouldn't take this seriously - it's all just fiction and it's all just BS that doesn't happen in real life.'"

Spoilers ahead for Venom #256.

Since this Brevoort interview, Rabin was apparently killed in Venom #256 after Torment stabbed him with a kitchen knife. Carnage, who was nearby at the time, said from what he can tell he is definitively dead, saying "He's dead , Parker. We know death -- he's gone."

This makes what Brevoort said next mean even more.

"If you're going to kill a character off, big or small, the rest of the characters in your world had better take that as seriously in your world as you do in yours when someone in your life drops over dead. Otherwise, it's nonsense and trying to be meta and winky and so forth about it. It helps nothing, it doesn't make the story dramatic or better. It just cuts the legs out from everything that you're doing."

"So when fans can actually get in on that," he continued, "And go 'Oh my God, they killed Captain America in Civil War and he's actually dead! What's going to happen to the Captain America comic?' and go on that journey even though - inevitably, invariably, eventually - Steve Rogers is going to come back... the fact that you can have that experience and that purity of response is great. So I love it whenever they do that."

Brevoort concludes by saying this same mentality stretches to the reactions toward the man that fans blame for breaking up Spider-Man and Mary Jane, "Because it means they care. It means they're feeling something; they're having a reaction to this piece of fiction. I'll take that over studied indifference every time."

That's a great way to look at it, Tom. Still, we don't envy the amount of angry emails you and the team get about this kind of thing. 

Want more? Make sure you've read our list of all the best Marvel Comics stories of all time, and get ready for all the free Marvel comics coming as part of this year's Free Comic Book Day 2026 / Comics Giveaway Day  2026 events.