Year: 2003

Runaways gets all the awards for this year. One of the best series of all time.

Major Events:

Jim Starlin writes his last Thanos stories for over a decade
Lots of Daredevil books are pushed out to coincide with the Daredevil movie. Like the film, most of these are forgettable
Priest ends his 5-year, celebrated run on Black Panther, and later in 2003 Priest creates “The Crew” (aka “Black Avengers”), which didn’t catch fire the way it should have.
Purple Man rapes Jessica Jones
Marvel’s “The End” minis begin, telling of possible endings for major teams and characters
Tony Stark begins his government career as Secretary of Defense. In a few years, he’ll be selected as SHIELD director. As we all know, American millionaires love to get government leadership jobs.
Geoff Johns begins a run on Avengers that will be remembered, somewhat unfairly, as pretty bad.
In X-Treme X-Men, Chris Claremont offers a sequel to Marvel’s first graphic novel, God Loves, Man Kills.
Brian Michael Bendis’ medium-changing run on Daredevil takes a 5-issue hiatus to allow artist David Mack to tell a story about Echo
Angel gets a healing factor

Best New Series: Runaways (by far), but New Mutants and Inhumans were solid as well.

Major Series Cancellations: Alias, Black Panther, Soldier X, Spider-Man: Tangled Web, Thunderbolts, Venom, Wolverine. Most of these are rebooted or rebranded soon after their final issue is published.

Important Deaths: Sophie (Stepford Cuckoo), White Tiger.

Top 10 New Characters:

The entire cast of Runaways, ranked as a group because I refuse to choose between any of these excellent characters
X-23
Patriot (Isaiah Bradley), who will later be a Young Avenger
Quentin Quire
Phyla Vell
Elixir
Azazel
Milla Donovan (wife of Daredevil)
San and Alaris (new Inhuman teens)
Prodigy

Top 25 Stories: