5 Marvel Heroes Who Can Be Hard to Root For (Including the MCU’s Most Terrifying Powerhouse)

Marvel Comics quickly became the coolest purveyor of superheroes when they got back into the game in the ’60s. Marvel heroes were the ones that readers could empathize with, their adventures taking place in the world outside of readers’ window. The Marvel Cinematic Universe brought the Marvel approach to superheroes to the biggest possible audience and it has become one of the most popular fictional universe ever created, if not the most popular. Their most well-known characters have become icons, household names that children pretend to be when they play and have theme park rides and t-shirts. The word “Marvel” has become synonymous with superheroes for the general public.

Different characters have different kinds of fandoms. Some of them create fandoms that love their character, but some of these fanbases are more based on hate than love. There are some heroes out there that fan enjoy hating and this helped a lot of them become more popular, although not always for the best reasons. Readers love to hate these five Marvel characters, including the publisher’s first anti-hero.

5) Daredevil

Daredevil is a character with a very fervent fanbase and for good reason. The Man Without Fear has had some of the best comic runs of the 50 years. Sure, there are some that aren’t as great as others, but there’s something about Daredevil and bringing the best out of a creative team. However, Matt Murdock has also become a character that a lot of fans love to hate as well, mainly because of the character’s success. They like to point out the man Gary Stu tendencies of the character – his tendency to win every fight, the fact that every character likes him no matter how bad a human being he is, all of the woman falling in love with him – and take a certain joy from hating on him.

Hating Daredevil is hard, though, because you’re missing out on some amazing stories, so even his haters end up reading his best runs and stories, grudgingly enjoying them. Readers will complain about him in one breath and then recommend his stories to others. Daredevil has starred in the best crime comics in the Big Two’s history, so even his haters are well-read and enjoy his stories.

4) USAgent

Johnny Walker was basically a sacrificial lamb. He was a character who was shunted into the mantle of Captain America for the express purpose of being a bad Cap. He was meant to be hated by his fans when he first showed up and he soon became the villain of the story when Steve Rogers decided to get the shield and costume back, compounding the disdain readers already had for him. However, Walker grew on fans and he started to show back up as USAgent, the more right-wing Captain America, becoming the main shield-slinger of the West Coast Avengers. He was a D-lister for years and then the MCU happened. Suddenly, everyone was talking about John Walker again.

John is a character who is made to be the one you don’t like, and you don’t, but then he starts to grow on you. The idea of this more conservative Captain America, one who is often used as the mouthpiece for bad ideas but just wants to use his skills to help as many people as possible, is one that really appeals to fans. Just look at the way that fan discourse on Walker changed after Thunderbolts; fans didn’t like him as a person, but they loved the character. This has been the magic of John Walker since the beginning.

3) The Sentry

The Sentry was introduced as a modern Superman pastiche, one that took the idea of the all-powerful hero and protector and added in the kind of real world complexities that made Marvel characters to appealing to fans. Robert Reynolds was a troubled young man who ended up injecting a super soldier serum while raiding a lab for drugs. He gained godlike reality-altering powers, making himself into the Golden Guardian of Good, the Sentry. However, this also created something else, the terrible summation of all the darkness in Reynolds’ soul, and the Void was born.

The Sentry made something of a splash, but quickly became passe. His mid ’00s return would see him become a major character, the unstable powerhouse that would get called in when things were at their worst. This became his place in the Marvel Universe; he was the powerful guy who would show up and either go crazy, starting a whole new battle as the heroes scramble to fight the Void, or save the day. Readers didn’t really like the character, but they enjoyed him as the boogeyman who could pop up at any time.

2) Deadpool

On the one hand, there are legions of fans who actually love Deadpool as a character. The Merc with a Mouth is one of the most tragic characters out there, a man who traded his sanity and any hope of having a normal life for a chance to survive cancer. He’s a lovable screw-up and there are a lot of fans who have a deep love and sympathy for the character. However, there’s another portion of the Deadpool fandom and they think he’s one of the most annoying character imaginable, a big joke that they enjoy watching suffer. It’s honestly kind of hard to tell which portion of his fandom is bigger.

Deadpool became popular because of the over the top humor, but that same humor is what caused a lot of fans to not take him seriously. There are a lot of people out there whose favorite part of a Deadpool story is when the other heroes are being mean to him. There’s a certain kind of X-fan who hates him, an anti-fandom that seems to know just as much about him as the people who love him do.

1) Wolverine

Wolverine is the best there is at what he does. He was Marvel’s first major anti-hero and would go on to become one of the most popular heroes in comics. You could make the argument that he didn’t become popular because of the X-Men, but that the X-Men became popular because of him. Over the years, he’s starred in every type of media imaginable and has become one of the most beloved characters of them all. However, this has meant that the character has been overexposed to an obscene extent, to the point that Wolvie has as dedicated a group of haters as he does fans.

Being a Marvel readers means that even if you don’t like Logan, you’ve been forced to read hundreds of stories with him in it. You’ve seen your favorite characters take a back seat to him in their own book. Wolverine has what I’m going to call from now on a “hatebase”. These people hate him with a passion; they read his stories and know everything about him, all so that they can better hate Wolverine.

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