Jul 16, 2026
Marvel Comics is synonymous with New York City. Many of its most popular characters, like Spider-Man and Daredevil, call the city home. But now, the publisher has announced it’s leaving the Big Apple to join forces with the greater Marvel team in Burbank, California — and the ~100 employees who staff its publishing division have until July 2027 to decide whether they'll follow it across the country.
The news landed at a town hall inside Marvel's Midtown Manhattan office on Thursday, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which first reported the move and obtained the internal memo sent to staff afterward.
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"New York has played a huge part in who Marvel is as a company, and in the pages of our comics," wrote Brad Winderbaum, Marvel's head of television, animation, comics and franchise, and David Abdo, the newly installed general manager of comics and franchise, in the companywide memo. "While our network of writers and artists is now an international operation, New York is still woven into our DNA and that will never change."
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The executives said they “sincerely hope [Marvel staffers] choose to continue that journey with us in California. We are committed to supporting every affected employee throughout this transition, which will take place over the next 12 months."
Orientation sessions for the affected employees and their families begin next week.
Why Marvel is leaving New York after nine decades
The decision, per the memo, was months in the making, but there were a few key forces behind it — particularly real estate. Marvel's lease at its Avenue of the Americas office is set to expire next year, THR reported, which forced a decision one way or another.
Leadership also wanted all of Marvel's businesses under one roof. The company hasn't operated that way since before Disney bought Marvel Entertainment for roughly $4 billion in 2009, a deal that handed Disney more than 5,000 characters.
When new leadership came aboard in May, it audited where Marvel's creators actually live — and it turns out the talent pool, which was once clustered in the New York tri-state area, is now more global. But among U.S.-based creators, there are now more of them in California than in New York.
There's also the matter of the comics themselves, which have hit a rough patch. Marvel lost its spot as the direct market's top publisher for the first time this century, ceding the crown to DC. DC held a 32.6% share of comic store sales in the fourth quarter of 2025, ahead of Marvel's 29.6%, according to sales tracker ICv2 — a pretty major reversal from just 18 months earlier, when Marvel commanded roughly 39% of the market. DC notched a huge win with its "Absolute Universe" line, which launched in late 2024.
Marvel boss Kevin Feige is framing the Burbank move as a long-term bet to win, which is kinda funny considering this is exactly what its main rival DC did about a decade ago.
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We’ve seen this story before
Comic-book lovers will recall DC Comics also left Manhattan for Burbank in 2015 to consolidate near parent Warner Bros., and the same idea was behind that move, too: bring the publishing arm closer to the film and TV machine that had become the company's economic engine. DC, too, gave its New York staff more than a year to plan and offered everyone the chance to relocate.
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At the time, Marvel leaned into its rival's departure. "New York has always been home for the Marvel Universe," then-editor-in-chief Axel Alonso told the New York Post in 2015. "Superman lives in Metropolis. Batman lives in Gotham. But Spider-Man is from New York and lives in Queens."
And, as comic-book lovers also know, New York itself is one of Marvel’s main characters. The creators who built the modern Marvel universe — Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko — worked out of offices on 42nd Street, and all of their mainstay heroes like the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and Spider-Man, also operated out of New York.
For Marvel employees, the silver lining here is that Los Angeles is cheaper than New York — the cost of living runs close to 19% lower, by one estimate — but of course you have to take into account California's top marginal income tax rate of 13.3% and how expensive it is to move across the country.
Marvel is shaking up leadership, in addition to the move. Marvel named veteran editor Stephen Wacker its new editor-in-chief, taking over for C.B. Cebulski, who is heading to Japan to oversee Marvel's manga and graphic fiction across Asia. Wacker spent more than 15 years at Marvel earlier in his career, shepherding acclaimed Spider-Man runs and helping introduce Ms. Marvel, before leaving in the early 2020s. He'll officially join in Burbank the week of July 27.
"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," Wacker said. "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."
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Dave Smith is the VP of Content at Wise Publishing and Editor-in-Chief at Moneywise and Money.ca. His work has also been published in Fortune, Business Insider, Newsweek, ABC News, and USA Today.
