Wrong turns made in storylines Marvel edition

[Dr. Skeleton]

Worse things besides the slap have been forgiven.

Alas, yes. Spider-Man also striked Mary Jane in both Clone Saga and Spidey 3, but most everybody acted like it was no biggie, accidental or not.

[FFJamie94]

Something from the Ultimate Universe again but that's bringing back Peter Parker. Death of Spider-Man is one of the better character deaths, and it allowed another Spider-Man to exist, giving us a replacement that People liked.
Even back in 2011, a lot of People felt the Ultimate Universe overstayed its welcome, so the post Parker era brought back something that was fresh, in many regards rebooting the Universe while also respecting what came before it.
We also had the amazing Ultimate Fallout mini which is a great funeral for Peter Parker.

But then Bendis decided to bring him back while also explaining that Norman isn't dead (and maybe hinting that Harry is also still alive).
It undoes Bendis' own story to give that Character a happy ending, in a Universe that was doomed to die via editorial anyway.
My biggest guess why Bendis did this was because he felt a certain love towards Ultimate Peter, like it was his own creation (and in many ways, it is... Ultimate Parker is different to 616 Parker in a lot of ways).
Yet for me, this was just a wrong move and nothing interesting really came from it. He didn't return for Spider-Verse and the last we saw him was in Spider-Men 2.
Maybe... just maybe he'll turn up in the End of Spider-Verse, or whatever Ultimate event Donny Cates has been planning for years.

It's a wrong turn for me, but it's one that can easily be steered in the right direction if someone knows want to do with it. Who knows, maybe we'll get the meeting of Ultimate Parker and 616 Parker. I'm guessing Ultimate Parker would be seen as something of an antagonist, corrupted by the Ultimates. But now I'm getting into speculative fanfiction for a story that may never exist.

[Lukmendes]

On another similar note, the whole 'Moira is a villain' thing. I was iffy on making her a mutant in the first place, but making her motivation about making mutants into humans who don't know that they could have been mutants makes no sense with having set up Krakoa and the fact that that's already happened multiple times in 616.

It's also weird that Moira being a villain who wanted to depower mutant babies was also done by Hickman, and Inferno vol 2, the story that did this, retconned the conversation she had with Destiny in life 3 to better line up with this idea of Moira being a villain, which makes no sense considering that Omega Sentinel came back in time explicitly to stop mutants since they won in the end, meaning Moira most likely didn't do the "use the cure on babies" thing lol.

13. I am glad that I don't read the X-Men comics anymore.

Cyke wasn't really that too, the closest of something like that was in Avengers vs X-Men, since the story was treating Phoenix as a malevolent entity that makes whoever has her be out of control every time (Which completely ignores how Rachel used her for years, and Jean using her in Morrison's New X-Men, one of the last stories Phoenix was in before AvX, only really did good with it), and Cyke is utterly convinced it'll save mutantkind and isn't willing to hear other points about it.

At the end of Second Coming (A story before AvX), Phoenix did give mutant powers to five other people, so I can see where he's coming from, but he's too overconfident in that possibility without considering anything else.

So yeah, he wasn't a mutant rights fanatic, was more like "someone really desperate to save mutants", and this desperation led to him doing something that could destroy the planet if it failed, so yeah...

I remember Quicksilver was really handled poorly in that era and the guilty party was Steve Englehart. CBR columnist wrote a piece about this a while back.

It started out early in Englehart's FF in issue #304. Johnny had recently given up his love for Crystal after she fell in love with Quicksilver. Their marriage soon followed. Then came the affair with Crystal and the real estate salesmen that occurs in Englehart's "Vision and the Scarlet Witch" mini series and the marriage is on the rocks. Englehart's Quicksilver goes off the rails and kidnaps Alicia because he blames everything on her husband, Johnny.


https://imageshack.com/i/pmMMoeZDj][IMG]https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/xq90/922/MMoeZD.jpg

https://imageshack.com/i/pnh3F58Oj][IMG]https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/xq90/923/h3F58O.jpg

As noted in the linked article, other writers course corrected on Quicksilver but Englehart would go right back to his crazy Quicksilver.

Damn, he really didn't like Quicksilver.

I remember reading this FF story, he talks in such an overly dramatic, and annoying way, and for whatever reason he looks older than Magneto lol.

I know, right?! They took from Ketch the Penance Stare, along with the supernatural Hell-Chain (XD)

Yeah, and while I can understand why they go back to the original characters sometimes, it is annoying to make characters be interchangeable like this.

That's also a problem with Wally on the DC side, Speed Force was introduced with him, but then once Barry returned, the Speed Force became really connected with him to the point Geoff Johns (I think it was him) decided to say Barry is the origin of it... So dumb.

We can stop there.

Marvel OPENLY went after writers who OPENLY confess to hating T'Challa and OPENLY do it on YOUR media.

Who does that??? Who allows that for 7 years to someone whose movie won 3 Oscars and made a BILLION. A black one at that.

Really? This is so weird, why do that to begin with? Is it an attempt to undermine his character? And more importantly, why do people accept jobs to work with characters they don't like?

I disliked the Recon of the Original Beyonder. Though it appears now they are sorta moving back to that. I haven't kept up to speed.

Beyonder is likely never going back to the original Shooter days lol.

The way he's being written now is still the way Hickman was doing, with him being a Beyonder "Child Unit" and all, in Ewing's Defenders Beyond, he even says that him being basically a child who got exposed to super-hero craziness is why he's not right in the head.

Agreed. Though bear in mind, the invasion actually did start decades ago. They retconned Mockingbird's death from the old West Coast Avengers book by saying she was a Skrull, and the aliens had her in suspended animation the whole time.

Eh? Why the ****? I'm pretty sure Bobbi showed up in spirit even after dying, so that was the Skrull all along too?

**** man, they could find a less convoluted way to bring her back lol.

Yeah, if she had to know of them, then the depowered ones would've been most of the well known X-Men, X-Factor (the team her brother was on!), Justice and Firestar (who were ex-Avengers and New Warriors, but never X-Men - Angelica did join later but hadn't at the time) and some villains (including, obviously, Magneto) - the students, Morlocks (who live underground), and non-superhero mutants (i.e. Mutant Town residents) would've been the ones to have kept their powers.

Funnily enough, this would mean the most major mutants would lose their powers while most of the population would keep theirs', in other words, the exact opposite of what the "No More Mutants" spell did lol.

- Making Moira a villain (I thought her being a mutant was actually a really cool idea, but then other writers took that idea and ruined it)

While Moira's characterization became worse after Hickman left, he's the one who made her a villain to begin with, and he's the guy who made the Moira X retcon.

- Making Sandman a villain again after a solid redemption arc. I said something similar in the DC version of this, but it's all driven by creators and editors who remember him as a villain when they were young and can't get past him having evolved past it, so they come up with some ridiculous way to get the character back to their status quo.

Classic Byrne lol.

- Sticking with Hulk, the entire Al Ewing run. Hulk as a horror comic? Of course. Hulk as a manifestation of multiple personality disorder? Works. Hulk tapping into another dimension that he helped to create but fuels his rage while also blah blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzz...you'd think you were reading Fantastic Four, there's so much stretching going on.

Hulk didn't create Below Place at all, it existed before him, Gamma radiation is just TOBA using his power to influence the world by being the source of Gamma's more supernatural elements, and why Gamma radiation only works for destruction.

5) Nick Fury becoming new Watcher and being substituted with his own son. Yeah, no. This is a very weird fate for a character I enjoyed reading about for years. #JusticeForFury

At least Watcher is back and Fury isn't the Unseen anymore, but I'm not sure if he has done anything of note (And I also doubt he's going back to normal, since I think F4#25 had him being a cosmic agent for the Watcher).

Regarding the slap, what really grinds my gears is people forgetting the rest of Hank's arc following that. He literally hits rock bottom and has to work his way up, both in his reputation and in his faith in himself. Him outwitting Egghead's Masters of Evil was a particularly cool moment.

Granted, I think most of the outcriers probably haven't read this stuff, and probably learned about the slap from social media or List-icle type junk.

That's basically what happened yeah, for years I knew about the slap but no context surrounding it.

Shooter likes to say that the slap wasn't supposed to be a slap, but man, Avengers#213 itself contradicts to that considering how characters react (After the slap, Janet talks in a weaker sounding tone, she goes to Pym's court-martial with sunglasses, and when she removes them, Thor comments on her black eye).

[Lukmendes]

The problem with Magneto/Xorn is that Morrison has a really bad habit of taking complex characters who are anti-heroes or anti-villains and removing all complexity from them to make them more cartoonishly evil than they'd ever be if they cared about how previous writers wrote them. Making Magneto a villain again in the first place was a mistake, but they still kept the idea that he had heroic qualities and wasn't the sort of monster the Red Skull was. Morrison removed all the complexity and depth the character had in favor of making him evil for the lulz. It's not the only time Morrison did this, effectively ruining characters for years to come in the process. Between that and villain deaths being something that never stuck going back to the golden age of comics I give the 'Xorn was just pretending to be Magneto' retcon a lot more leeway than I do the 'Phoenix was pretending to be Jean' retcon.

To be fair, an often forgotten detail is that Magneto was using that "Kick" drug at the time, and a few issues later it's revealed that Kick is Sublime himself, and Beast using it made him be controlled by it, Wolverine even says this:



(New X-Men#154)

"Magneto killed ya, under orders he never understood."

So at least there was a backdoor to undo the nonsense with Magneto, even if Sublime controlling Magneto has its own problems (Why Magneto was still having his own thoughts compared to Beast being completely possessed), but at least, even Morrison left something to undo that ****.

Alas, yes. Spider-Man also striked Mary Jane in both Clone Saga and Spidey 3, but most everybody acted like it was no biggie, accidental or not.

Also worth pointing out that when Spidey backhanded MJ in Clone Saga (Spectacular#226), it was hard enough for her to crash into a wall and to start bleeding.

She was pregnant at the time too.

Spidey, the allegedly responsible super-hero, reacted to this by running away in shame instead of helping his wife.

Something from the Ultimate Universe again but that's bringing back Peter Parker. Death of Spider-Man is one of the better character deaths, and it allowed another Spider-Man to exist, giving us a replacement that People liked.
Even back in 2011, a lot of People felt the Ultimate Universe overstayed its welcome, so the post Parker era brought back something that was fresh, in many regards rebooting the Universe while also respecting what came before it.
We also had the amazing Ultimate Fallout mini which is a great funeral for Peter Parker.

But then Bendis decided to bring him back while also explaining that Norman isn't dead (and maybe hinting that Harry is also still alive).
It undoes Bendis' own story to give that Character a happy ending, in a Universe that was doomed to die via editorial anyway.
My biggest guess why Bendis did this was because he felt a certain love towards Ultimate Peter, like it was his own creation (and in many ways, it is... Ultimate Parker is different to 616 Parker in a lot of ways).
Yet for me, this was just a wrong move and nothing interesting really came from it. He didn't return for Spider-Verse and the last we saw him was in Spider-Men 2.
Maybe... just maybe he'll turn up in the End of Spider-Verse, or whatever Ultimate event Donny Cates has been planning for years.

It's a wrong turn for me, but it's one that can easily be steered in the right direction if someone knows want to do with it. Who knows, maybe we'll get the meeting of Ultimate Parker and 616 Parker. I'm guessing Ultimate Parker would be seen as something of an antagonist, corrupted by the Ultimates. But now I'm getting into speculative fanfiction for a story that may never exist.

It's also just, bad how Ultimate Spidey comes back, Miles defeats Norman 'cause Venom Blast is overpowered, then Spidey awkwardly gives Miles his blessing, before leaving with MJ, completely ignoring why he was a hero to begin with, it can read like a writer dismissing a previous character someone else created to make the new character look awesome, but it was Bendis writing it still lol.

[Agent Z]

I have never been a big Spider-Woman fan, but the one thing I really like about her is her totally different powers. Spin-off characters so often just have the exact same, or very slightly different, powers as the character they have spun off of, like Supergirl or She-Hulk or Silk or X-23, but Spider-Woman had completely different powers than Spider-Man, with her flight and venom blasts and pheremones. (Similarly, the second Spider-Woman, with her psionic webs, was more interesting to me than just another 'Spider-Man, but a woman!') Plus the whole High Evolutionary backstory originally considered was potentially very different and intriguing, although I think I prefer her being a human person and not an evolved bug.

Well, Silk has organic webbing which Spider-Man doesn't have.

[Agent Z]

I skimmed throug the thread and I don't think I saw 'the Crossing' get mentioned, which surprised me. xD

It was mentioned on the second page by sunofdarkchild.

[milton75]

I agree with a lot of these, but some in particular jumped out, maybe because they came up less often but rung true.

A few of mine have already been mentioned:
- Making Sandman a villain again after a solid redemption arc. I said something similar in the DC version of this, but it's all driven by creators and editors who remember him as a villain when they were young and can't get past him having evolved past it, so they come up with some ridiculous way to get the character back to their status quo.

Yep, agree with this heavily. Similar story to Constrictor. He was becoming quite interesting in Siege, and then it got thrown away over a misunderstanding that a 10 second conversation could have resolved. It's plotting of soap-opera standards, and that sucks.

- Moving the Agents of Atlas name away from the 1950s characters it originated with. I like the new team that's assembled under the name (minus Brawn), but it defeats the reason they were even called the Agents of Atlas in the first place.

I loved the original Agents of Atlas run and unfortunately I feel that just about all of it has been mishandled since.

- Mystique being Nightcrawler's mother (and never mind what's his face being his father). There's nothing more lazy in collaborative fiction than the idea that EVERYTHING has to connected somehow. This is Darth Vader building C-3P0 as a child.

So true and so annoying.

3) Entire Axis event. Also, please stop killing Xavier, it's a meme at this point, man can't catch a break. He keeps on dying on screen and in comic books.

Unlike many I don't hate most big events. I even felt that some of the most divisive like Disassembled and Civil War at least did something new and were worth a read. Sure they were flawed, but I wasn't completely down on them.

Then we have things like Axis and Fear Itself. Events where not only do I dislike the story, I often don't even really understand why the story exists. And, if you must have a stupid amount of tie-ins, make sure that you are able to get your books out on schedule, so people aren't reading plot-related issues in the wrong order.

5) Nick Fury becoming new Watcher and being substituted with his own son. Yeah, no. This is a very weird fate for a character I enjoyed reading about for years. #JusticeForFury

I'm a long-time fan of Fury, and this still rankles. I understand the practicalities of aligning more with the MCU from a commercial standpoint, but stuff like this shows contempt for fans. Companies like Marvel don't seem to car about long-time readers because it's assumed we'll come back anyway, so they'll happily ditch character development that took decades in another spate of #1s or new versions of characters.
That's not to say fans should react in an entitled comicsgate way either, but it would be nice if comics could try new things without dumping on what they already have.

9) Iron Man dying in Civil War 2 but not really dying but actually he was an AI and a robot and he also has brother.

I still don't get the adopted Tony / having a brother story. And I guess as a side effect it scrapped Iron Man 2020 as a character.

[Omega Alpha]

I'm a long-time fan of Fury, and this still rankles. I understand the practicalities of aligning more with the MCU from a commercial standpoint, but stuff like this shows contempt for fans. Companies like Marvel don't seem to car about long-time readers because it's assumed we'll come back anyway, so they'll happily ditch character development that took decades in another spate of #1s or new versions of characters.
That's not to say fans should react in an entitled comicsgate way either, but it would be nice if comics could try new things without dumping on what they already have.

And it was just stupid because they stopped using classic Nick Fury, but they aren't using the new version either, because nobody cares about him, and you can't draw from decades of stories and interactions he had with characters like Wolverine, Cap. America, Bucky, etc.

I still don't get the adopted Tony / having a brother story. And I guess as a side effect it scrapped Iron Man 2020 as a character.

It was stupid. Like I said at the time, Howard Stark adopting some random kid and he also grows up to be the greatest genius engineer and weapon designer in the planet is like Isaac Newton adopting some random kid and that growing up to be Einstein, or Michael Jordan adopting some boy and he grows up to be Lebron James. It's already hard enough to believe two geniuses of that level can come from the same family with a genetic connection, let alone without.

[Darkshadow]

And it was just stupid because they stopped using classic Nick Fury, but they aren't using the new version either, because nobody cares about him, and you can't draw from decades of stories and interactions he had with characters like Wolverine, Cap. America, Bucky, etc.

I've been mildly curious as to how all this happened with Fury. I've never been a big fan, but he touches other titles I read. How did we go from Nick Fury of the `60's to Samuel L. Fury?

[Zero Hunter]

Regarding the slap, what really grinds my gears is people forgetting the rest of Hank's arc following that. He literally hits rock bottom and has to work his way up, both in his reputation and in his faith in himself. Him outwitting Egghead's Masters of Evil was a particularly cool moment.

Granted, I think most of the outcriers probably haven't read this stuff, and probably learned about the slap from social media or List-icle type junk.

And not just that. Hank gave up heroing all together for a while and only came back when Hawkeye needed him in West Coast Avengers. Even then he was not in costume and just went by Doctor Pym. There was a great issue of WCA where after Wasp had joined that team her and hank had a nice deep long talk where they worked out the whole slap thing with Jan forgiving him and leaving them as friends. I think Jan even apoligized for not helping Hank get the help he needed when he first started having problems. It was a good issue.

Then latter hacky writers dig it back up out of a grave it had been in for over a decade at that point and make it a central issue again.

[krazijoe]

- Resurrecting Guardian in Alpha Flight (liked James Hudson well enough, but like Jean Grey his death was so impactful on that team. Bringing him back really lessened the growth Heather encountered after he passed. And on a sidenote, giving Heather a costume/codename versus leaving her as a "normal person" who just happened to be in charge of Canada's super-team).

- Going back to Alpha Flight, making Puck the victim of a curse versus, you know, just a kick-ass dwarf character. You think that would fly today? Definitely something that needs to be undone.

- Red Hulk. Have no idea how this character/concept has its fans but, for everyone complaining about Aaron's Avengers, Red Hulk was the Aaron's Avengers of its day...just anything goes, whatever sticks on the walls, with no oversight.

Agree on Alpha Flight and Puck! Let dead people stay dead! Especially when their death had meaning!

As for Red Hulk, now about we get rid of all Hulks except Bruce Banner!
His Anger and body chemistry along with the Gamma made him, now everyone and their brother can be one just by taking a few shots of Gamma. So asinine. Red Hulk, Blue HUlk this hulk, that hulk, Vulture Betty! ALL STUPID SH...STUFF!!!

[Lukmendes]

And it was just stupid because they stopped using classic Nick Fury, but they aren't using the new version either, because nobody cares about him, and you can't draw from decades of stories and interactions he had with characters like Wolverine, Cap. America, Bucky, etc.

On random times I've seen him being used, he was just the usual Fury but, uh, kinda there too.

I've been mildly curious as to how all this happened with Fury. I've never been a big fan, but he touches other titles I read. How did we go from Nick Fury of the `60's to Samuel L. Fury?

Fury has random sons around, Fury Jr. is just one of 'em, and Marvel got rid of Fury in Original Sin, where it's revealed his Infinity Formula isn't working anymore for some reason, after Watcher was killed, Fury was forced to take his place as the Unseen.

That name is really fitting too, 'cause he barely showed up afterwards lol.

Anyways, after that Fury Jr. took his place at some point (I forget when), and I don't think he showed up much, then Shield was disbanded, probably making him show up even less lol.

[Nomads1]

Alas, yes. Spider-Man also striked Mary Jane in both Clone Saga and Spidey 3, but most everybody acted like it was no biggie, accidental or not.

Not to mention that Reed Richards has also done a couple of times to Sue, to "bring her to her senses". But mentaly ill at the moment Hank? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Peace

[Omega Alpha]

Not to mention that Reed Richards has also done a couple of times to Sue, to "bring her to her senses". But mentaly ill at the moment Hank? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Peace

The key difference is that Marvel would never allow any writer to bring that up for Reed or Peter because it would cause problems to the brand, but they allow writers to bring it up over and over again for Hank, and then they complain they can't use the character.

[Digifiend]

I still don't get the adopted Tony / having a brother story. And I guess as a side effect it scrapped Iron Man 2020 as a character.

No. The sliding timescale and time passing in real life did that. They retconned him as being Tony's brother, instead of a descendent from 40 years in the future, because 2020 became the present day. Now it's in the past. The same will eventually, decades from now, happen to Spider-Man 2099 (not that I'll be alive to see that considering I'll be 115 years old by then).