Most radical power creeps and nerf

[Sutekh]

Power creep: The Scarlet Witch. She used to only be able to manage three or four hexes (none of which she could control) and she'd be exhausted. Now she is what she is.

What's annoying is how amazingly good her 'bad luck bolts' were, back in the Marvel Handbook days. She had, through training, developed to where she could cast hexes back to back *for hours* and reliably control exactly what 'bad luck' happened. (Which was a good thing, because she'd be handing out aneurysms and random car collisions and other fatal 'bad luck' if she didn't hold back and just make people's guns jam or have an awning fall on their head or something.)

But she totally could, if she wanted, give some mega-threat a stroke. Or have a falling plane part or chunk of 'blue ice' land on him from 3000 ft. Or have an out of control citibus ram into them. Or a gas main explode beneath their feet. Or an electrical line fall off the pole and wrap around their neck. Her power was endlessly creative and amazingly potent, and it got replaced with this brainless reality manipulation BS.

[mung]

Black bolt is a weird combo of both. He used to do all sorts of energy and matter manipulation now he might shoot some beams, but is mostly a flying brick that screams. Then there is his voice. It was nuke level at first and as writers leaned more into it as bb's main gimmick it became planet level and him ripping holes in reality with it.

The Eternals use to be straight up immortal, everyone could manipulate matter, everyone had telepathy, zuras was sky father tier and able to go 1v1 with zues. Guy

[Galerion]

What's annoying is how amazingly good her 'bad luck bolts' were, back in the Marvel Handbook days. She had, through training, developed to where she could cast hexes back to back *for hours* and reliably control exactly what 'bad luck' happened. (Which was a good thing, because she'd be handing out aneurysms and random car collisions and other fatal 'bad luck' if she didn't hold back and just make people's guns jam or have an awning fall on their head or something.)

But she totally could, if she wanted, give some mega-threat a stroke. Or have a falling plane part or chunk of 'blue ice' land on him from 3000 ft. Or have an out of control citibus ram into them. Or a gas main explode beneath their feet. Or an electrical line fall off the pole and wrap around their neck. Her power was endlessly creative and amazingly potent, and it got replaced with this brainless reality manipulation BS.

She can still do all those things. Sounds more like you have a problem with the lack of imagination of the creators involved.

[MichaelC]

She can do all those things, but doesn't need to use that kind of cunning, because her powers have reached the point of rendering cunning superfluous.

[Galerion]

She can do all those things, but doesn't need to use that kind of cunning, because her powers have reached the point of rendering cunning superfluous.

Not sure I can follow this logic. Steve Rogers doesn't need to use any fancy moves against random street thugs either since he is a super soldier. One punch and they are out. That's kinda the point of superpowers.
The kind of people that are able to challenge Wanda won't be standing at every single corner but they exist and then we are back at square one. That's true for every single powerful character in existence and I have yet to see critique about the fact that people like Hulk or Thor can just bulldoze through random nobodies with zero thought.

[Force de Phenix]

Crystal was much more powerful and dynamic in the 70's to 90's when she was on the Avengers and Fantastic Four, and she even cleaned a part of Earth's atmosphere so to make it safe for inhumans to breathe and lifted Attilan from an island. In her last iterations they hardly used her powers to that extent.

Black Bolt was also nerfed and his last appearance ignored 99% of his powers.

[Omega Alpha]

Iceman started off as a guy that could make ice and throw snowballs. Now he's some unstoppable elemental god that can freeze molecules and such.

Likewise, Jean Grey could original move objects with her mind, small objects, usually no more than she could physically lift herself. Now? Even without getting into the Phoenix stuff, she can remind and control minds halfway across the planet and can telekineticly toss around buses.

Iceman was a case of writers realizing the consequences of someone that would have his powers. Jean Grey was written as weaker because all women were.

[Cap808]

Which Marvel characters have experienced the most radical power creep?

Of the top of my head:

Wolverine: The guy has gone from struggling to heal bullet wounds to being more of a single cell organism.
The Hulk: Since he's gone World-Breaker, it's been upwards and onwards since then. Seeing someone like The Thing even fight him for more than 5 minutes now looks odd.
Venom: He's gone from being a little stronger than Spider-man to full on god now.

On the other hand, we've seen some guys get nerfed. Some like:

Iron Man: This guy could go toe-to-toe with almost every Earth based superhero in the Marvel universe before. Now, everyone it seems can damage and tear up his armor.
Spider-man: In his current run, Parker seems to get his ass kicked by everyone.
Moon Knight: This guy was superhuman before but now he seems to just be well trained or something.
Thor: He's supposed to be infused with the Odin force, but he doesn't seem to able to use it.
Black Panther: Writers seem to have forgotten that he's an enhanced human.
Gambit: This guy used to be fast enough to block bullets with his staff, now he gets kicked around by everyone.

Pipe dream, but I wish editorial would have someone in charge of not letting these things happen just to help a writer tell the story THEY want to.

[Sutekh]

Black Bolt was also nerfed and his last appearance ignored 99% of his powers.

Black Bolt has been reduced by modern writers to 'the guy who screams', which kind of ignores that his voice is *his weakness.* It'd be like Superman running around with a kryptonite bat and hitting people with it. His powers allow him to boost his already super-human strength to the point where he can grapple with the Thing, erect force fields like those of Invisible Girl, project powerful force blasts, levitate objects including himself at great speed, etc. He's single-handedly tanked the entire Fantastic Four *without* falling back on his voice, which he hesitates to use willy-nilly anyway, after that time he accidentally murdered his parents with it...

It's just super-lazy writing. He's got amazing powers, and modern tales have Iron Man talking up how he made a gadget to scramble his sonics, as if they would do bupkiss to him, since he's a powerhouse *who also has a destructive voice* and would still be a top-tier threat no matter how much sonic-scrambling-woo-woo Tony throws at him (or that AvI scene where Dazzler negates his sonics long enough for Emma to throat punch him, which would have failed to work because A) he doesn't lead with his voice, and B) he's tough enough that a throat punch from Emma would just annoy him, and C) he could have used his force fields and force blasts to blow them both away). Had the choice not been the lazy 'Black Bolt screams, and everyone expects it and has a plan to stop it, 'cause that's literally all we ever allow him to do, fail to scream', Emma by herself could have just used her telepathy to take him down. That's literally her biggest gun, and one of the things Black Bolt is only 'above-average' at defending against, so she'd bake his noodle.

[mung]

Black Bolt has been reduced by modern writers to 'the guy who screams', which kind of ignores that his voice is *his weakness.* It'd be like Superman running around with a kryptonite bat and hitting people with it. His powers allow him to boost his already super-human strength to the point where he can grapple with the Thing, erect force fields like those of Invisible Girl, project powerful force blasts, levitate objects including himself at great speed, etc. He's single-handedly tanked the entire Fantastic Four *without* falling back on his voice, which he hesitates to use willy-nilly anyway, after that time he accidentally murdered his parents with it...

It's just super-lazy writing. He's got amazing powers, and modern tales have Iron Man talking up how he made a gadget to scramble his sonics, as if they would do bupkiss to him, since he's a powerhouse *who also has a destructive voice* and would still be a top-tier threat no matter how much sonic-scrambling-woo-woo Tony throws at him (or that AvI scene where Dazzler negates his sonics long enough for Emma to throat punch him, which would have failed to work because A) he doesn't lead with his voice, and B) he's tough enough that a throat punch from Emma would just annoy him, and C) he could have used his force fields and force blasts to blow them both away). Had the choice not been the lazy 'Black Bolt screams, and everyone expects it and has a plan to stop it, 'cause that's literally all we ever allow him to do, fail to scream', Emma by herself could have just used her telepathy to take him down. That's literally her biggest gun, and one of the things Black Bolt is only 'above-average' at defending against, so she'd bake his noodle.

Black Bolt is actually quite good on psychic defense, particularly when he is expecting it. Combination of strong will, genetics, his powers, and writers needing a reason for why Maximus can't just mind control the whole family. Still it's more feasible to get around that, than to just overpower him. Also they probably just didn't want Black Bolt and Karnak to be taken out in the same way, they really should have swapped methods.

[mung]

Oh that reminds me Karnak. His flaw seeing ability was purely physical until Jenkins Inhumans, they do a couple neat things with it in the 00s like seeing the weakness in fighting styles. Then they just go freaking wild in the 10s, The man basically jump kicked his way out of another dimension to come back to life.

[Sutekh]

Oh that reminds me Karnak. His flaw seeing ability was purely physical until Jenkins Inhumans, they do a couple neat things with it in the 00s like seeing the weakness in fighting styles. Then they just go freaking wild in the 10s, The man basically jump kicked his way out of another dimension to come back to life.

Yeah, that was a little overly weird for me. I liked the sense-weakness-in-combat thing, and could even see it extending to seeing the weak points in governments and corporations and scientific theories and people's psyches/emotional landscapes (all sorts of potential there!), but when it started getting really metaphysical, it got a little far afield and into magic 'I can punch/break/do anything!' territory. (Shades of DC's laughable 'Superboy punches reality' thing, which Marvel itself mocked at least once, with Carol Danvers getting 'reality punched' into one of her old costumes once.)

I have a paradoxical threshold for weird and far-out. Talking monkeys and faster-than-light travel and flying super-people who can read minds and shoot lightning? Sure, I'm still here for this ride. This is what I'm here for! But reality bullets and doing math that can alter space/time and other stuff that sounds more like random buzzwords from people who don't science, but want to sound really smart and highbrow? Stop the car, I want out.

[Grapeweasel]

Narf: Pinky.

[Force de Phenix]

that AvI (IvX*) scene where Dazzler negates his sonics long enough for Emma to throat punch him, which would have failed to work because A) he doesn't lead with his voice, and B) he's tough enough that a throat punch from Emma would just annoy him, and C) he could have used his force fields and force blasts to blow them both away). Had the choice not been the lazy 'Black Bolt screams, and everyone expects it and has a plan to stop it, 'cause that's literally all we ever allow him to do, fail to scream', Emma by herself could have just used her telepathy to take him down. That's literally her biggest gun, and one of the things Black Bolt is only 'above-average' at defending against, so she'd bake his noodle.

That whole event depended on everyone not using their brains, power levels, or ignoring select powers. And that's exactly how it should've/would've gone down. The saddest part is that people took that event seriously and hold that bad writing against them. The worst part of Death of Inhumans was none of them using their powers AT ALL, and Black Bolt being reduced to just his voice... again. I don't think some of today's writers have read Kirby era books, or purposefully decide to ignore them to make up for lazy writing.

[Gaastra]

Wasp-went from girl who could shrink with wings to a boost in the 80s where she is now stronger and can now bend steel with her hands, can use her wings in almost human sized and can grow too giant sized! Then some future writers ignored all the power upgrades!