7 Marvel Comics That Ruined Their Main Character

Marvel Comics have built some of the greatest characters in the history of fiction. There’s a reason that the Marvel Cinematic Universe did so well with viewers; creators had spent decades refining these characters into forms that would appeal to just about everyone. Over the years, the House of Ideas has more than lived up to its name, using exciting new ideas to take its characters to places that no fan could ever imagine. When done right, a good Marvel story will give readers a great conflict between good and evil, building up the characters and making them into better heroes than before. However, not every story can be so successful.

Sometimes, instead of making a character better, a story will make a character worst. This can be on purpose, but other times creators drop the ball completely, and make stories that actively make everyone worse by the time they’re over. These seven Marvel stories ruined their main character, doing tremendous damage to some of the most beloved heroes ever.

7) The Teen Iron Man Storyline

Iron Man has starred in some amazing stories, and plenty of his tales have tried to swing for the fences in order to join that pantheon of hits. They have often failed and one of the biggest failures was the teen Iron Man story that began with “The Crossing”. This story revealed that Tony Stark had been under the control of Kang for years and the team had to go back in time to get teen Tony to beat his older self. This whole idea was completely asinine to begin with – how could a younger, dumber Tony beat his older, more experienced self? – and keeping the character around was a massive mistake. Of course, we’d soon get “Onslaught”, which would cut this plot short, but that was almost as bad as this. It was the lowest point in ol’Shellhead’s life and one his fans want to forget (or don’t know about).

6) The Inhumans Titles Post-2016

The Inhumans push ended up being a massive mistake, especially after it switched gears after 2016. See, around this time, then Marvel head Ike Perlmutter decided that since the company didn’t own the film rights to the X-Men, they’d replace the mutants with the Inhumans in the comics; there were still X-books, but they were put in a corner while the Inhumans would get all of the stories they would usually get in books like Uncanny Inhumans, Inhuman, All-New Inhumans, and various solo titles. The problem is the Inhumans aren’t made to be a civil rights metaphor; they’re made to be a eugenics-based slave owning monarchy. Fans rebelled, the books were bad, and the Inhumans are in a worse place than they were before the push.

5) Avengers vs. X-Men

Avengers vs. X-Men, by Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Jason Aaron, John Romita Jr., Olivier Coipel, and Adam Kubert, was meant to take advantage of 2012’s The Avengers film, with the two teams battling over the fate of the Phoenix Force. This story was all about making Earth’s Mightiest Heroes look good, so it had to make the X-Men allied with Cyclops look terrible. The book tore down the leader of the X-Men the most, ending with him becoming Dark Phoenix, killing Professor X and betraying his lover Emma Frost beaten and carted off to prison where Cap and Wolverine sass him one last time. However, the irony of the story is that a modern re-read of the story reveals that Scott Summers was right the whole time, despite the book itself doing its best to ruin him.

4) Steve Rogers: Captain America

When Sam Wilson first became Captain America in the mid ’10s, Steve Rogers was aged to elderly status. Eventually, thanks to come Cosmic Cube shenanigans, he was given his youth back and got a new solo book from writer Nick Spencer – Steve Rogers: Captain America. This book dropped a bombshell on readers, revealing that Cap had always been a member of Hydra. This was a massive change to the character, ruining Rogers on purpose in order to create a story about him taking over the United States from within and instituting his own fascist government (right around the time the US was getting more fash… must have been a coincidence). Love or hate this idea, it tore down who Steve Rogers was and made him into something else.

3) Civil War II

Civil War II, by Brian Michael Bendis and David Marquez, was meant to be something that MCU fans who walked out of Captain America: Civil War and decided to buy comics could pick up. Name recognition and all that. The story pit Iron Man against Captain Marvel over the Inhuman Ulysses, who could see the future. The book made Captain Marvel into the worst version of the character possible. This Minority Report wannabe took a character on the rise and put a stop to that, damaging Carol Danvers at time when her push was just starting to work. It’s honestly kind of impressive that a cash-in event title could do so much damage to Marvel’s latest pet project and they actually planned it that way.

2) “One More Day”

“One More Day” is the worst Spider-Man story ever. This story by Joe Quesada and J. Michael Straczynski was meant to destroy the marriage of Spider-Man and Mary Jane by trading it to Mephisto for the life of Aunt May. It shows Peter Parker doing the one thing that is completely against his character: run from responsibility. He doesn’t want to face the consequences of his actions and so he and his wife get rid of something that made their lives, and the lives of many others, better to save an old woman who half dead anyway and hasn’t really been all that important since. It’s a story that completely misunderstands who Peter is and should be, all to regress him so that he could become the “true” Spider-Man again (aka the one that Quesada grew up with).

1) Civil War

Civil War is a massive part of Marvel history, but it did a lot of damage. The story by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven pit Captain America and Iron Man against each other after a disaster forces the Superhero Registration Act on the heroes, leading to a war between the rest of them. Iron Man was meant to be the protagonist of the story by Millar and Marvel editorial, yet he was at his most villainous the whole time, doing scummy stuff and betraying friends. Fans learned to hate him and a book that was meant to launch him to the top of the Marvel Universe made him into a character that fans wanted to see destroyed. The whole thing is made even funnier when you remember that Iron Man hit theaters after a year after this book, so any fans who picked Marvel books would be surprised to see how hated ol’Shellhead was.

What Marvel stories do you think ruined their main characters? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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