Wrong turns made in storylines Marvel edition

[D.Z]

Worse things besides the slap have been forgiven.

[HaveAtThee]

Arguably, bringing Jean Grey back after the original Dark Phoenix story.

It robbed the DP story of its emotional weight. Claremont's long term story plans were upended. It made Scott Summers a very unsympathetic character and ruined Madelyne Pryor.

The correct answer. It set a horrible precedent of nothing mattering.

[Zero Hunter]

The worst thing is the bunching up of all mutants in one place every since No More Mutants. First at the Mansions then Utopia and now on super fantastic magical unicorn island Krakoa. It has made the entire line boring as hell and turned most character in background wallpaper behind the dozen or so they actual use.

[Digifiend]

If Wanda had to be aware of each mutant for her spell to work the numbers would be completely reversed, with the number of mutants who lost their powers not being enough to make a dent in the global mutant population. A million mutants lost their powers and a couple hundred kept them. It would be a couple hundred who lost their powers and the remaining million would have kept their powers if Wanda's awareness of individual mutants was a factor.

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.

[Iron Maiden]

I kinda liked No More Mutants, though I wish it were done differently. Less Mutants is better.
Most of my were already said, Clone, OMD.
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.
I loved Captain Marvel losing her powers via Rogue, kinda wish she stayed away.
BECAUSE I love Monica and she should have the mantle of Captain Marvel.
I liked Jean Grey losing it via Dark Phoenix, Now what to do with Madelyne...
Secret Wars 2. How to take an interesting character and make it dreck.
Everyone becoming Venom. Not to mention a whole planet full of Symbonites and then a Symbonite God!
Avengers since the beginning of Time.
Hulkedout over Sexualized She-Hulk.
I could go on and on...

As to the last two, at least it didn't last long and Jason Aaron is leaving the Avengers.

I've only seen it mentioned elsewhere but it looks like there's more tinkering around currently being done with the Beyonders in Al Ewing's Defenders title but I've not been reading that one. I don't know if it's been good or bad so will have to check that out. As for the Beyonder himself, it was a mistake for him to take physical form in Secret Wars 2. He looked like a Disco era reject.

[K7P5V]

I've only seen it mentioned elsewhere but it looks like there's more tinkering around currently being done with the Beyonders in Al Ewing's Defenders title but I've not been reading that one. I don't know if it's been good or bad so will have to check that out. As for the Beyonder himself, it was a mistake for him to take physical form in Secret Wars 2. He looked like a Disco era reject.

Yeah, and that physical form he took was an exact replica of Captain America

[Iron Maiden]

The Beyonder changed the blonde hair to black. He still looks pretty much the same on this recent cover for Defenders: Beyond

[Kaijudo]

A few of mine have already been mentioned:

- The resurrection of Jean Grey (really surprised more people feel this way; could've sworn I'd be all but alone on that one)

- The One More Day deal with Spider-Man (at least someone had the common sense to undo the "Gwen has kids with Norman" component of that same run)

- Hank slapping Jan (written in a time when such things were more casual in fiction, then taken up as main element of the character as times changed, with most recent writers ignoring the elements of the original story that would allow peace to be made between Hank and Jan (which it was for a while until more simplistic writers could only take a black-and-white approach to the incident)).

- 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)

Some others:

- 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.

- 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).

- The whole Psylocke/Captain Britain thing (going all the way back to the garbage mindswap of Betsy's body, which aged poorly, then being unable to let go of either body once they were back in place, so Brian Braddock gets demoted to make Betsy stand out more)

- Avengers Disassembled (Just a ploy to put a big name on a big title...except that big name isn't great at widescreen action storytelling, so let's burn what came before and resign Marvel's premiere team to be as street-level as they realistically can be)

- 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.

- 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.

- Turning Amadus Cho into Brawn. They took an interesting, unique character and basically made him boring Hulk-lite.

- 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.

- 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.

[Dinosaur Hulk]

The worst ones already being mentioned (The Slap, Jean Grey being brought back over and over, OMD), I should throw few others.

1) Aunt May should have stayed dead. It's time to let her go. I don't get why we should have storylines about her having cancer... just for the sake of it.
2) Whole "Death of Wolverine" thing was unnecessary and dissapointing. It was obvious he didn't die. You can't even call this death.
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.
4) I wasn't a big fan of direction in which Deadpool has been written after Daniel Way. Agent of Shield? Daughter? What???
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
6) Thanos becoming your regular punching bag. Very overused and totally mischaracterized by a lot of writers. Leave him alone, stop throwing into every cosmic event.
7) Let's forget Rick Jones was ever called "A-Bomb".
8) Entire Magneto/Xorn thing was very confusing. Bendis didn't help when he brought him back in New Avengers.
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.
10) Also entire Civil War 2 should be erased from memory of people as well.
11) "Puppet Master that orchestrated his whole life" trope. For example, Logan and Romulus. Now the same thing is "kinda" happening to DD. Can we stop doing that? This is just lazy.
12) Age of Khonshu. Nuff said.

[K7P5V]

Definitely, my next choice would be when TPTB killed-off Rich Rider: Nova & had him replaced

[Triniking1234]

I thought Claremont brought back Magneto in Excalibur before Bendis?

Also Age of Knoshu made me hate Moon Knight.

[BlueElf94]

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.

[sunofdarkchild]

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.

[Nomads1]

Arguably, bringing Jean Grey back after the original Dark Phoenix story.

It robbed the DP story of its emotional weight. Claremont's long term story plans were upended. It made Scott Summers a very unsympathetic character and ruined Madelyne Pryor.

Agreed. The Dark Phoenix saga was ground breaking in many ways. It made a hero the bad guy. It showed that actions must always have consequences (even, and especially, for the good guys). It showed the death of one of the founding members of the X-Men, something that was not so common (far from it), back then. Plus, it served as an exit door for the eternal leader of the X-Men, a character that, arguably, up to then, had always been the main character of the series. Did I like all this? Of course not. Cyclops had always been my favorite X-Men. Arguably, no other character was so affected by the storyline (other than Jean, of course). I obviously was rootoing for the happy ending. However, The Phoenix Saga is still one of Marvel's best storylines ever, and I love it. Jean's return, IMHO, cheapens all that, not to mention the damage it did to the character of Cyclops, turning the moral compass of the X-Men, one of the most strong-willed and righteous of all the members, into a weak and insecure character who would turn his back on his wife and son, and on his own future, to run back to his past. AWFUL. X-Factor was also an odd duck. It started in a certain direction just to make a 180° turn in just a little over half a dozen issues.

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

Calm down. I've just arrived. I'm getting there.

The worst thing is the bunching up of all mutants in one place every since No More Mutants. First at the Mansions then Utopia and now on super fantastic magical unicorn island Krakoa. It has made the entire line boring as hell and turned most character in background wallpaper behind the dozen or so they actual use.

Agreed. Always prefered the X-Man as a team, rather than as a race. Making it into a nation was, for me, the final shovel of dirt on the franchise.

Now, my pick (for now. I'm sure to post others in the following days) would be the cancellation of West Coast Avengers. During most of its run, WCA was often the best Avengers book in the stands, featuring many of the classic mid-tier mainstays of the team (Hawkeye, Wonder Man, Hank Pym, Wasp, Vision, Scarlet Witch, etc...). However, Roy Thomas set a lot of obstacles in the Whackos path, which Marvelsaw as an opportunity to end the book, and relauch it with an "edgier" 90's hook. Now, Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed FW and even the Crossing, however, the cancellation of WCA, IMHO, was ground zero for a serious of the worst decisions involving the Avengers. The pointless, and I'd say even absurd, death of Wonder Man, Teen Tony, Bug Wasp, and so many others, that probably would have been avoided had the book continued on, a book much more in synch with the Avengers and Avengers characters than FW ever was (and, as I've posted in the Make Your Own Marvel Team... thread, I was even open to having the WCA and FW co-existing at the same time).

Peace

[sunofdarkchild]

On the subject of Wanda, John Byrne's petty decision to have Vision disassembled so he could break up their marriage because he hated that she had married a machine was a major wrong turn. Vision and the Scarlett Witch were probably Marvel's premiere couple after Reed and Sue since Spider-Man and MJ only got married in the late 80s. In one fell swoop Byrne destroyed both characters, undoing decades of development for Vision who had been growing more and more human before Byrne got his hands on him, and setting what would prove to be a horrible precedent of Wanda going crazy. Neither character has ever truly recovered from that disaster, which in surprisingly similar to One More Day in the damage it did.