—Kel McKnight, B1Daily

Gwenpool began as an internet joke that unexpectedly grew into one of Marvel’s most inventive meta characters: a regular comic-obsessed girl from the real world dropped into the Marvel Universe, using her knowledge of comic tropes rather than traditional superpowers to survive. Her early solo run stood out because it treated self-awareness as a narrative tool, blending humor with sharp commentary about storytelling, consequence, and what it means to exist inside a fictional world.

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Over time, however, many fans feel Marvel diluted that concept by leaning too hard into chaos, shock value, and confusing reimaginings that blurred her identity and stripped away the thoughtful satire that made her special. The backlash isn’t really about Gwenpool being weird—she always was—but about the shift from clever, self-reflective writing to inconsistency, which made her feel less like a commentary on comics and more like a gimmick. In that sense, the debate around Gwenpool reflects a larger frustration with how Marvel sometimes struggles to preserve the core idea of experimental characters once the novelty wears off.

—Kel McKnight, B1Daily