7 Worst Character Assassinations in Marvel Comics

Most well known comic book characters have been around for a long time, a couple decades at least at this point. Since they’ve been around for so long, generations of writers have had time to establish certain truths about these characters’ personalities. Obviously, no two people are going to write the same character exactly the same, and so some variance in characterization between runs and works is to be expected, but generally speaking every character has a distinct personality. Every major character has a specific way they act that identifies them, which helps them feel more real and like actual people. After all, characters can’t exist if they have no coherent personality. Captain America wouldn’t randomly kick a dog, for example. These characters have personalities, and they usually play a big role in why their fans love them. However, for characters that have been around as long as some of these great names, things tend to happen to break the expectations.

Character assassination is when a character does something so wildly different and counter to what they’ve been established to want or do that it is impossible to reconcile what they did with who they are. More often than not, this is to make certain characters look way worse than they are for the story the writer wants to tell. This unfortunately happens a lot with long running characters, usually to “spice up” characters that have gotten “stale,” according to the people who do it. That means cheap shock value, more often than not. Sometimes, these character assassinations are so horrible that they leave a stain that the character never really recovers from, and today, we’re looking at seven of the absolute worst examples of it in Marvel Comics. Strap in and be prepared to get angry.

1) Scarlet Witch: Avengers Disassembled/House of M

“No more mutants” is easily the Scarlet Witch’s best known quote, and probably the worst thing ever done to her character. Wanda had been a staple character in the Avengers for decades, and had long ago lost the children she created out of her chaos magic, her mind being wiped by her mentor Agatha Harkness to spare her the pain. “Avengers Disassembled” saw a mentally unstable Wanda learn about the fate of her children and blame the Avengers for ruining her life. She tore the team apart and her actions here led directly into the House of M event, where she was manipulated by Quicksilver to remake reality into a perfect utopia for mutants, ending with her nearly destroying all of mutantkind by erasing the X-gene from all but around a hundred mutants. Obviously, a longstanding Avenger like Wanda going insane and nearly destroying reality is bad enough, but the real kicker is that she actually knew about her children’s fate decades before this and come to terms with it in West Coast Avengers (1985) Annual #7. Wanda freaking out to this homicidal degree is completely out of character for her, especially considering that the inciting incident is something that she had long since put behind her. These stories were a major disservice to her character, and now it seems like every Scarlet Witch led book has to have her face the consequences of this out of character spiral.

2) Cyclops: X-Factor/Avengers vs X-Men

Cyclops is the definitive leader of the X-Men, and is the one everyone looks to when times are rough and they need to make a stand. He is a symbol of the unyielding will to protect mutantkind and the ultimate soldier for Charles Xavier’s dream. That said, his reputation was all but ruined with fans in X-Factor (1986) and with his fellow heroes in Avengers vs X-Men. X-Factor saw Cyclops abandon his wife Madelyne Prior and their son Nathan the second he heard Jean Grey was back, and in AvX Cyclops became a villain that tried to take over the world and killed Professor X. Now, X-Factor is actually not as horrible as it looks, as he did to check on Jean, but tried to reach out to his family, only being unable to do so due to villain interference and miscommunication. Not his proudest moment, but not unforgivable in context. AvX is straight up a middle finger to Scott’s character. Yes, many of his villainous choices were influenced by the Phoenix Force possessing him, but they still made Scott murder Charles, something he would never do in a million years, no matter how much their relationship had deteriorated. Add onto that how Cyclops said he felt no guilt and would do everything again because his actions helped mutantkind, and you have Scott acting more like ‘80s Magneto than the soul of the X-Men. This was definitely part of Marvel’s tantrum in the 2010s, where they discredited the X-Men because they didn’t own the film rights. That’s a horrible reason to ruin a character, and this is outright offensive to every Cyclops fan.

3) Bruce Banner: Incredible Hulk (2011)

The Hulk has been called a monster ever since his introduction, ping-ponging between being a hero or someone bent on pure destruction. Bruce Banner, in contrast, has always been a noble man who is trying to keep the Hulk from hurting people. He’s never been perfect, constantly making mistakes and being pretty darn arrogant, but he’s almost always been a good person at his core. That was until Incredible Hulk (2011), which saw Doctor Doom surgically remove Bruce Banner from the Hulk’s brain and give him his own body. The Hulk went to find a remote part of the world to live in peace, finally free of the man who he became half the time. Banner, meanwhile, went absolutely insane. He became obsessed with becoming the Hulk again, and went full mad scientist, performing inhumane experiments on apes and going to any length to capture the Hulk. Banner became a full blown monster, with the reasoning being that he had no one left to blame without the Hulk. The later parts of his actions can definitely be attributed to the brain tumor he gave himself with his experiments, and he spent the subsequent arcs making up for his atrocities, but still. Banner has to be a good person to balance the rage of the Hulk. Flawed, but good. Without that, the character doesn’t work as well.

4) Bishop: The Messiah Complex

Bishop is a mutant who was born in a dystopian future who came back to fight alongside the heroes he idolized, the X-Men. Raised in an authoritarian state and working as a police officer in that future, he initially clashed with the more freedom-aligned X-Men, but eventually came to understand their view and let go of that mindset. He was a true hero who fought to save the world countless times, until the “Messiah Complex” event, where he dedicated his entire life to killing a baby. Hope Summers was the first mutant born after “House of M” wiped out most of the world’s mutants, and everyone wanted to control her. Bishop said that Hope’s life would bring about the worst systemic mutant persecution that the world has ever seen, and so he decided he had to kill her while she was still a child. He spent years chasing her, until he was eventually convinced that Hope was good for the world and he gave up on his quest. I don’t need to explain why a hero trying to kill a literal baby is character assassination to the highest degree. Bishop is a great character with a strong moral code, so him going so far to do this is entirely out of character.

5) Ant Man: The Avengers #213

This is easily the most famous example of character assassination in all of comic books. This issue sees Hank Pym, then going by Yellowjacket, slapping his wife. Ever since, Hank Pym has been known as a wife-beater, but that’s not all there is to this. According to the artist Bob Hall and controversial writer Jim Shooter, the infamous panel was supposed to be the mentally unstable Hank throwing his arms in the air and accidentally pushing Janet, but Hall wanted to meet the standard overexaggeration for Marvel action, and turned it into a full on smack. Hank was already on a self-destructive path before this, ranting and raving about how he was a failure at both science and heroing, but this was all at Shooter’s hands. Hank wasn’t a popular hero before, but this single moment catapulted him into comic book infamy. Shooter’s entire run was built around tearing Hank down and making him into an unstable, mean-spirited person, culminating into this horrible moment. Literally no conversation about Hank Pym can be had without talking about this, and countless stories always call back to this single moment. Before this run, Hank would never have done something like this. He was far from perfect, but this single moment permanently altered the course of his character forever. This one moment became his entire character.

6) Charles Xavier: Deadly Genesis

Professor X is the heart of the X-Men, founding them to fulfill his dream of a world where mutants and humans can live together in harmony. He’s always been a bit controlling and self-righteous, but it is his ideals that have inspired generations of mutants to stand up and fight for acceptance and harmony. Unfortunately, nowadays most people consider Charles everything short of a supervillain with a god complex, and it all started with X-Men: Deadly Genesis. This comic revealed that after the original X-Men were captured by the sentient island Krakoa, Charles sent a different team before the team that would succeed. Moira McTaggert was training her own group of young mutants at the time, and Charles recruited them to save the others. This was their first mission, and the group wound up almost all dying, including Cyclop’s long lost brother Vulcan. After this tragedy, Charles wiped everyone’s minds of this team’s existence and even used his telepathy to convince everyone that Krakoa was fully sentient instead of animalistic to help sell it. That second part was quietly retconned as of the Krakoan age of X-Men, but still, this story introduced the idea that Charles used his powers to manipulate those closest to him when he didn’t want him to know or think certain things, something he’d never done to his family before. This opened the floodgates to Charles lying to and manipulating his allies with his abilities, turning him into a sanctimonious hypocrite. His character doesn’t work if he’s not a good person, and this story is responsible for making it cool to ruin Charles’s reputation for shock value.

7) Captain Marvel: Civil War II

Without a doubt, one of the worst moments of character assassinations in all of Marvel. Civil War II is infamous for being one of Marvel’s worst events and butchering every single character inside it, but Carol Danvers got the worst of it. She’s a superhero who has been an Avenger for decades, and yet this story saw her become a Minority Report-style fascist, locking up people before they commit crimes based on visions of the future she knows are unreliable. This comic didn’t just leave a massive stain on Carol’s character, but ruined her in the public’s eyes, maybe permanently. This released when Carol was reaching her height of public awareness, with her first MCU movie having been announced and her gaining popularity in the comics to a massive degree. Yet even to this day, people use this story as a reason to hate Carol’s character, saying that she’s unforgivable and totally ruined. This story was abysmal in every regard, but it forever changed Captain Marvel. The comics have tried to forget about this story and move on, but the fans never have, and maybe never will.

So there we have seven horrible instances of character assassination in Marvel Comics. Plenty of these characters have been heroes for decades, but it only takes one bad event, one edgy run to totally besmirch their character for decades to come. It’s never fun to see characters you love do something you know they never would, and moments like this can drive people away from the medium entirely. People love these characters for who they are, and stuff like this only hurts that. Which moment of character assassination was your most hated? Let us know in the comments below!

10 Best X-Men Stories of the ‘00s