7 Marvel Heroes Who Failed To Save The Earth

Marvel‘s heroes have been saving the Earth for decades. The publisher’s Golden Age heroes helped battle Hitler and won. The Fantastic Four, Avengers, and X-Men have all taken on the greatest threats ever, and the Earth has survived every time it was endangered. However, that’s not always been the case. Over the years, in both the main universe and alternate universes, the heroes have failed. The Earth was destroyed or conquered. This has been the basis for numerous amazing stories, and have allowed fans to see what happens when the heroes lose, how they deal with that loss, and perhaps a last ditch effort to try to set things right.

These kinds of stories have gotten very popular over time, because they give us something that we’re not used to seeing. We don’t often get to see heroes fail, so the novelty can make these tales all the better. There’s also an entire trope of the heroes losing and having to deal with a world where they are at the bottom of the heap. These seven Marvel heroes were unable to save the Earth, failing when the world needed them most.

7) Havok

Uncanny Avengers (Vol. 1) gave readers some of the best Avengers stories of the ’10s. The team was led by Havok, and the enmity between the mutant and non-mutant heroes tore the group apart, allowing the Apocalypse Twins to shred their unity to pieces and destroy the Earth. Havok, as the leader of the team, was supposed to figure out a way to keep them unified. He wasn’t able to bring his team together despite the problems members had with each other, and that led to the end of humanity. He’d eventually figure out a way to fix the whole situation because of time travel, but his failure still stands out.

6) Reed Richards

Reed Richards has saved the world many, many times, but in other universes, he isn’t as successful. One of the best depictions of that comes from the forgotten Captain America classic “Cap Lives”. This story took place on an Earth where the loss of Cap in WWII allowed the Nazis to win the war. Reed Richards on this Earth worked with the OSS during the war, so he had met Cap, but Richards was unable to save the world from the encroaching Nazi menace after Steve Rogers disappeared. The Nazis eventually found Cap frozen in ice, and Richards worked with him to defeat the Red Skull, but he was unable to do it without the help of the Sentinel of Liberty.

5) The Punisher

The Punisher isn’t exactly a world-saving hero, but he did actually doom humanity once. The Punisher: The End, by Garth Ennis and Richard Corben, saw Punisher wandering the wastelands of America after a world-ending war. He eventually finds a bunker full of elites, hiding out after the conflagration they started ended civilization. These were, as far as Frank knew, the last humans ever and he killed them, before walking out to die in the radioactive wastes created by their actions. So, the Punisher not only didn’t save the Earth from the war, he also destroyed the human race.

4) Thor

So, while Havok can be blamed for the destruction of the Earth in the Uncanny Avengers tale “Ragnarok Now”, Thor deserves his share of the blame. He was fooled into enchanting Jarnbjorn with a spell that allowed the ax to kill Celestials by Kang. This played a huge role in the Apocalypse Twins getting the Celestials to destroy the Earth, by killing one of the cosmic giants with the weapon. Thor was able to get his hands on Jarnbjorn and went wild, killing one of the Twins, instead of going out to kill Exetar the Executioner. If Thor would have went after the Celestials’s executioner first, he would have saved the planet, but he didn’t.

3) The X-Men

The X-Men have failed to save the Earth numerous times, bringing some terrible alternate universes into existence. “Days of Future Past” was the first example of this, as the team was unable to stop the human bigots and their Sentinels before they took control. The legendary “Age of Apocalypse” was caused when a team of four X-Men — Storm, Bishop, Iceman, and Psylocke — failed to stop Legion before he got to attack Magneto and Xavier in the past. “Sins of Sinister” saw the team taken over by Mister Sinister, and end up conquering the world. Numerous mutant alternate futures revolve around the group losing the battle against bigotry, and the Earth being lost to the worst people imaginable.

2) The Avengers

Jonathan Hickman’s run on the Avengers saw the team go up against the greatest threat ever with the Incursions. The Illuminati (more on them next) were able to keep them a secret from the greater Avengers team, but once the team found out about the Incursions, they did their best to stop the end of everything and failed. They did learn the reasons behind the whole situation, taking the battle to the Beyonders who started the whole mess, but even then couldn’t win. When the Final Incursion began, the Avengers were able to defeat the forces of Earth-1610, but both planets were still destroyed.

1) The Illuminati

The Illuminati were an interesting idea, a secret group of heroes who tried to save the world behind the scenes. Of course, they caused a lot of trouble, and one of the best examples of that is the Incursions. The group of super geniuses learned about the multiverse-ending threat and tried their hardest to figure out a way to stop it without committing mass genocide by destroying every planet that was thrown at Earth-616. Their secretive nature was their biggest problem; if they would have let everyone know the stakes, there’s a good chance the Incursions could have been stopped. However, that’s not what the group did and it led to end of everything, until Doctor Doom saved the day.

What other Marvel heroes failed to save the Earth? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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