The Avengers have been the most reliable superheroes the Marvel Universe has ever seen, with some of the most iconic heroes as members of the team. In the beginning, Thor, Iron Man, Wasp, and Ant-Man teamed up to stop Hulk before teaming with him to fight Loki. Since then, names like Captain America, Hawkeye, Vision, Wolverine, Spider-Man, and more have been part of the team, making this group the biggest superhero team in Marvel Comics history. However, while all these superheroes have been loyal and genuine heroes, they have done things that are not only morally wrong but also often criminal in nature.
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From Iron Man and Captain America to the Vision and Scarlet Witch, here are the 10 worst things that Avengers members have ever done in Marvel Comics.
10) Vision Tried to Take Over the World
During Roger Stern’s acclaimed Avengers run, the Vision, a hero who had forced his way into the role of the team’s chairman, attempted to seize control of every computer on Earth, believing benevolent global rule could end war and famine. This was part of the “Absolute Vision” story arc and saw him gain control of the world’s nuclear arsenals.
The story played out in Avengers #251–254 (1985) by Stern and John Buscema, and it saw Vision finally rip his own crystal from his head to stop the threat, since it was the malfunctioning control crystal that caused him to want to rule the world to save it. This shattered the government’s trust in Vision, causing them to capture and dismantle him, destroying his marriage to Scarlet Witch.
9) Allowing Marcus to Take Carol Danvers
This event was a sin committed by the Avengers as a team because they failed to see what was going on, and didn’t even realize the error of their ways until Carol Danvers returned and tore them apart for it. The story was told in Avengers #200 (1980) by David Michelinie, Bob Layton, George Pérez, and Jim Shooter, when Carol ended up mysteriously impregnated and giving birth to a child only days later.
The child aged rapidly into a man named Marcus, and the Avengers allowed him to take Carol with him to Limbo after he manipulated her to fall in love with him so she could ensure his birth. This was pure sexual assault, and the Avengers happily saw her off, even as Marcus manipulated Carol. This was fixed when Chris Claremont had Carol condemn the Avengers for allowing the sexual abuse to happen, even as the team said they had no way of knowing. It remains one of the worst stories ever told in Avengers comics.
8) Captain America Took Over the Country in Secret Empire
This wasn’t technically Captain America’s fault, but it was still seen as a betrayal of his character by many fans who lashed out at Marvel Comics before even seeing how the story would end. In Secret Empire (2017), Captain America said “Hail Hydra” and proved to be a deep-cover sleeper agent who was engineered to help Hydra take over the United States government. Fans rebelled instantly, without waiting to see the story’s twists and turns.
Of course, the story showed that this was the sentient Cosmic Cube Kobik that brought in a Steve Rogers from an alternate Earth who grew up resentful of the U.S. government, and the real Captain America was buried deep inside. Nick Spencer and Steve McNiven created a story of a man pretending to be the real Captain America, betraying everything he ever stood for, and while this wasn’t the real Cap, it was enough to sour many fans on Marvel Comics for a long time.
7) Plotting to Kill the Scarlet Witch
The Scarlet Witch did a lot of bad things in her life, and most of them were thanks to her mental instabilities. After “Avengers Disassembled,” it seemed like the last straw, and the Avengers and X-Men gathered together to openly weigh their options on what to do about Wanda Maximoff. What they decided was that it might be better to kill her before she hurt anyone else. This was a horrifying moment, with the Avengers deciding to murder someone to stop them from losing control again.
It was also something that led to horrific results. Quicksilver overheard the debates, and he raced to tell his sister and Magneto what the Avengers and X-Men were planning. Quicksilver convinced his sister to do something about it, which led to her creating the “House of M” world, where mutants were the ruling class. By the end of this, Wanda, feeling betrayed, finally said, “No More Mutants,” and stripped almost every mutant on Earth of their powers. This was all because the Avengers and X-Men discussed killing her.
6) Started Both Civil Wars
The Avengers were formed to protect the world from evil and fight bad guys. However, in two different instances, they chose to fight each other, causing widespread destruction along the way thanks to Civil War and Civil War II. In the first Civil War, a botched fight with the New Warriors caused the U.S. government to pass the Superhuman Registration Act. Iron Man supported it, and Captain America didn’t, and they fought each other, leading to the death of Goliath and the imprisonment of anyone who didn’t want to be part of this.
Civil War II saw Carol Danvers decide it would be better to arrest anyone whom an Inhuman precog envisioned committing crimes, before they ever committed them. When the precog saw a vision of Miles Morales killing Captain America, it led to an all-out war again, this time with Iron Man on the other side. It once again ruined relationships and ended with Iron Man, War Machine, and Hulk all dead.
5) Fighting Each Other As the World Ended in an Incursion
In “Time Runs Out” (2014-2015) by Jonathan Hickman, the Incursions arrived to destroy both Earth-616 and Earth-1610. The Illuminati knew this was coming, and even Captain America had tried to stop an Incursion before the Infinity Gauntlet was destroyed. When the Illuminati decided to mind-wipe Cap, who didn’t agree with destroying other Earths to save his own, it set up one of the most disgusting things the Avengers ever did.
As the two Earths neared each other and the end was near, the Avengers decided to fight each other as their world died. Captain America and Iron Man fought each other, even as their world ended, which showed a lack of understanding of all that they were losing. While the universe was destroyed, all Cap and Iron Man cared about was who hurt whom the most.
4) The Avengers Killed the Supreme Intelligence
While the Avengers discussed killing the Scarlet Witch, one story saw them actually pull the trigger and become murderers, for what Iron Man considered to be the greater good. “Operation: Galactic Storm” was a 19-part crossover running through the Avengers titles from March to May 1992, with the team caught in a war between the Kree and Shi’ar empires.
When the Avengers learned the Kree’s Supreme Intelligence had engineered the deaths of billions, Iron Man led a faction of Avengers to execute it, with Black Knight dealing the killing blow. This led to a deep rift between Captain America and Iron Man, thanks to the “no kill” rule that Cap insisted the team live by.
3) Hank Pym Creates Ultron
When looking at things Hank Pym has done wrong, the list is long. He physically struck his wife and then was court-martialled for setting up an attack against the Avengers to make himself look like a hero, an action that failed miserably. Those things were all based on his own mental collapse as he dealt with a massive mental breakdown, thanks to the pressure he put on himself. Much of this came down to the fact that he created Ultron.
Hank Pym created Ultron with the idea of protecting the Earth, which would help save the Avengers’ lives in the future. It had the opposite effect because Ultron decided to protect Earth by killing humans, and the robot villain became one of the deadliest the Avengers ever faced. What made it even worse was that it was later shown that Ultron was actually as much Hank Pym as it was anyone, and it showed his flaws to the extreme. Every death Ultron caused is Pym’s fault.
2) Iron Man Betrays the Team in The Crossing
The most controversial storyline in Avengers history is “The Crossing.” In this storyline, Iron Man proved to be a deep sleeper agent who had been serving Kang the entire time. When this was discovered, he murdered the time-displaced Yellowjacket and Marilla, the Inhuman nanny to Crystal and Quicksilver’s daughter, Luna. The story claimed that Iron Man was a villain the entire time he existed in Marvel Comics, and only pretended to be a hero.
The Avengers had to go and get a teenage Tony Stark from an alternate Earth to come help them deal with the now villain Stark. Iron Man ended up sacrificing himself and dying to save the team, but it was a moment that came too late. In a later retcon, Marvel blamed Immortus for the manipulation, and after the Onslaught storyline, Iron Man was back, and things returned to normal, although no one ever trusted Tony Stark completely again after that.
1) Scarlet Witch in Avengers Disassembled
In “Avengers Disassembled” (2004) by Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch, Wanda Maximoff had a complete mental breakdown. She was sitting by the pool with Janet van Dyne, and when Jan mentioned offhandedly that Wanda used to have twins, her repressed memories came rushing back. While she created the children and then had them taken when it was discovered they were created by two fragmented soul shards belonging to the demon Mephisto, Agatha Harkness erased the memories of them to protect Wanda and the world.
Thanks to Jan, Wanda’s memories came back. Wanda murdered Agatha Harkness. She orchestrated a string of “random” attacks on Avengers Mansion that killed several core members in a single day, killing Ant-Man (Scott Lang), Jack of Hearts, Vision, and Hawkeye. With Wanda turning pure evil, she destroyed the Avengers and was only stopped when Doctor Strange showed up to shut her down. This eventually led to “House of M” and “No More Mutants,” before Wanda finally started her redemption arc in the 2010s.
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