There is a new teacher in the Marvel Universe, as Matt Murdock is back as Daredevil and he was hired to teach law at a prestigious university. This is also nothing new in Marvel Comics, as there have been plenty of heroes (and villains) who have served as teachers and professors both in their secret identities and as part of their lives as heroes. This is important for Marvel, since the secret identities in many comic book storylines are as important as the costumed vigilantes, and having jobs like teaching makes them even more important in the overall scheme of things.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Here is a look at the superheroes who were the best teachers in Marvel Comics.
7) Matt Murdock

As mentioned, Matt Murdock is the most recent addition to the ranks of school teachers in marvel Comics. The new comic is by Stephanie Phillips (Planet She-Hulk) and Lee Garbett (Death of Doctor Strange) and it sees Matt Murdock return to Hell’s Kitchen to take a job as a university professor, teaching contract law to what appears to be a class that barely cares.
Matt proved from this first issue to have a little change form other teachers, as he doesn’t want students using technology in class when learning, but also offers up a deal with the students (which tied into the idea of contracts). However, it also appears that this will be an important part of the new storylines, as he already has an antagonistic relationship with another professor who teaches professional ethics. This seems the perfect spot for Daredevil in today’s world.
6) Taskmaster

Taskmaster is an interesting case. For one thing, he isn’t technically a hero and has been a villain more often than not. However, he has had his stints as an antihero, and this includes him teaching mercenaries how to fight for everyone from the Red Room to SHIELD. Of course, this isn’t a technical school teacher job, but he was an instructor for people learning specific skills.
In fact, he has trained everyone from villains like Crossbones and Diamondback to heroes like Spider-Woman and U.S. Agent. He was also a teacher working for the U.S. government during the Initiative when he helped train the heroes who registered to operate in the different states in the country.
5) Hank Pym

Hank Pym had a complicated history in Marvel Comics. He was one of the first-ever heroes as Ant-Man and was a founding member of the Avengers. Hank had one of the biggest downfalls in Marvel Comics history when he had a nervous breakdown, physically abused his wife, and ended up arrested after a court martial, only to slowly rehabilitate himself.
He then pulled himself back up and began to train the next generation of heroes in the first Avengers Academy. However, this was something that was never on the up and up because the Avengers recruited some of Norman Osborn’s most dangerous heroes during the Initiative and began training them simply to keep an eye on them and keep them under control. However, Hank Pym was the director and worked hard to help teach these kids while also training them.
4) Doctor Voodoo

Doctor Voodoo is similar to Hank Pym as a teacher. Instead of Avengers Academy, where Hank taught Avengers recruits, Voodoo taught at Strange Academy, where he taught aspiring mystics. However, it was the same situation, where Doctor Strange hired Voodoo to serve as the headmaster at the academy to ensure that the kids they taught got a good education, but didn’t increase their power levels.
All the kids at Strange Academy had the chance to become immensely powerful magical users, and Doctor Strange wanted to ensure that it didn’t happen so if any of them turned into a villain, they wouldn’t be too hard to defeat. Sadly, the kids figured this out and it almost caused Dormammu to invade Earth again. However, as a teacher, Voodoo was much more morally upstanding than Strange was the entire time he worked at the school.
3) Emma Frost

Emma Frost once thought there was no one better fit than her to teach the young mutants how to use their powers and deliver their best education. However, she learned the hard way that she wasn’t always right when her main students, the Hellions, all died under her lead. She quickly learned that Professor X was correct in his main methods and this began Emma’s redemption story.
Emma ended up moving over to the Xavier Institute and continued teaching kids, and she became an incredible professor and mentor to many of the students. She does have her downside, as she often refuses to admit when she is wrong, and she has the tendency to use the young mutants to achieve her goals, but when she is on target, few are better at teaching young mutants.
2) Professor X

There are a lot of reasons to hate Professor Xavier in his role as a teacher. He brought in teenage mutants to teach them, both giving them an education as well as helping them learn how to control and use their powers. However, this was also an attempt to build a teenage mutant army to fight battles and often risk their lives to achieve his goals in the end.
Xavier was also someone who was as stubborn as Emma Frost ever way, treating even the adults in his care (like Wolverine) as children and demanding their complete servitude to him. However, there is no discounting the fact that the Xavier Institute was the best place for mutants to go to find safety and gain the education they needed to move on in their lives, and it all tarted with Professor X himself.
1) Peter Parker

Peter Parker began his career in Marvel Comics as a teenage high school student who was bitten by a radioactive spider and became Spider-Man. Readers then got to follow Spider-Man through his life, as he graduated from high school as a brilliant science student and then worked his way through college. Finally, the time came for him to become an adult and, at one point, he became a science teacher in a high school.
Peter actually returned to his high school and worked as a science and physics teacher at Midtown High. This allowed him to achieve something bigger than himself, helping to influence and mentor teenagers to help them achieve the dreams he only slightly had a chance to do, but had it taken from him thanks to his life as a superhero. No one in Marvel Comics deserved to become a teacher more than Peter Parker.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!








