The 10 Most Controversial Marvel Comics of All Time

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Controversies are almost inevitable in the publisher-reader relationship of the comic book industry. Every big publisher has a massive editorial slate of dozens of books, often with a shared continuity and universe, each staffed by different and sometimes multiple writers, all percolating their ideas of what direction a story or character should go next. It’s practically inescapable that fans’ expectations, various creative teams’ visions, and editorial oversight will clash at some point, occasionally in spectacular and memorable fashion.

The most controversial Marvel comics of all time are a veritable smorgasbord of classic comic hot topics, ranging from actual nightmare fuel to fans just being resistant to change. Marvel’s most controversial comics seem to cluster around one shocking key point: People like books that are written well. Marvel shows a development towards consciously writing about important matters: sexual politics, the implications of superpowers, race, ethnicity, agency and consent are all subjects that inherently invite controversy.

Revealing a New Black Spider-Man Generated More Talk Than Any New Character in Decades

When Ultimate Spider-Man pulled off his mask in the final panel of Ultimate Fallout #4 to reveal a young Black man, there was a cacophony of vocally positive and negative reactions. Three years before Sam Wilson became the first Black Captain America, criticism surrounding Miles Morales as the choice for Spider-Man was a spectrum between knee-jerk “storytelling concerns” and outright racism.

Since that introduction in 2011, Miles has gone from strength to strength. With his own various titles running for over a hundred issues and acting as the lynchpin protagonist for the wildly successful Spider-Verse franchise, Miles has proved something that writers have been trying to say since the 1960s: that being a white guy from Queens has nothing to do with being Spider-Man.

9

Chuck Austen’s EntireUncanny X-Men Run

This Storied Run Is a Staggered Tour of Virtually Every Hated X-Men Storyline

Chuck Austen’s predecessor, Chris Claremont, openly called him “the most hated man in comics” during his divisive and lengthy Uncanny X-Men run. Kicking off in 2002, this run received consistent fan backlash for its inconsistent characterization, cloying melodrama and ambitious changes to canon. Precipitating a decline in sales for the title, many of the changes introduced by Austen have been retconned or reversed, save for him kicking off the redemption of Juggernaut.

Gripes with the Austen era include (but are not limited to): Creepy and inexplicably weird Angel/Husk sexcapades despite their prominent age-gap, retconning Nightcrawler to be an actual demon, not one but two botched coming-out storylines for Iceman and Northstar, clunky and uncompelling love triangles and unpopular pairings in general, bad original characters and disliked new mutations for pre-existing ones, Killing Sammy the Fish Boy, and the bloated inglorious trainwreck that became Xorn.

Partially Redeemed, Partially Reviled, Spider-Man’s Clone Saga Was a Flashpoint of Mixed Opinions

Although widely lauded nowadays as an ambitious storyline that got dragged out into a bad ending, Spider-Man’s Clone Saga was a divisive and extended storyline that attracted massive outcry with its choice to replace Peter Parker as Spider-Man. Back in 1975, Jackal cloned Peter Parker, leading to a confrontation between two Spider-Men who both believed they were the original. The arc concludes with one clone being killed by Jackal, and the other deducing that he is the real Peter. The Clone Saga asks: What if he were wrong?

Comprised of two hundred issues that spanned over two years of publication, the saga was ironically first pitched as a way to simplify Spider-Man’s mythos, but ultimately ended up a vast, convoluted mess. There was also a host of unpopular redesigns of iconic Spidey villains, as well as new foes like Judas Traveller and Kaine, who ended up feeling frustratingly inconsistent in their power levels. There were absolutely high points to the saga, in particular the introduction of fan-favorite clone Ben Reilly, voiced by Andy Samberg in Across the Spider-Verse, but overall, the changes were too radical and not thought through well enough for many fans to get behind.

7

Frank Castle, Temporary Black Man

Marvel Made Frank Castle Black For Three Issues. Not “The Punisher.” Frank Castle.

In “Final Days,” Frank Castle’s life is systematically ruined by Kingpin, a plot heavily reminiscent of Daredevil: Born Again, but instead culminating in The Punisher being incarcerated in prison and brutally disfigured by Jigsaw. After his escape, Punisher enlists a plastic surgeon to change his heavily scarred appearance with a skin graft. Fans were bewildered and unimpressed with the revelation, to say the least, feeling it to be a shallow and offensive way to bring Luke Cage into the series in the following issue.

According to writer Mike Baron, this particular storyline was mandated by editorial. This lack of creative oversight and the considerable backlash in response almost certainly influenced his departure from the title immediately after the arc’s conclusion, ending his five-year streak of writing The Punisher. The storyline wrapped up hastily within three issues, with the improbably titled “Fade…to White,” as Castle’s complexion reverts to normal, and has blessedly not been referenced since.

6

Starfox and His Sleazy Powers Get Put On Trial

The Eternal Eros, AKA Starfox, Got MeToo’d Over A Decade Before Hollywood Did

Starfox was originally known as the Eternal named Eros, born on Titan with his older brother, Thanos. A gregarious, womanizing adventurer, Starfox’s unique powers can stimulate pleasure centers in the brain, making him able to manipulate others with ease. The creepy implications of these abilities and how they could be used to impede the free will of others were largely left unaddressed until Slott and Conrad’s She-Hulk #6.

The issue follows a woman from Earth pressing sexual assault charges against Starfox following an encounter with him, and She-Hulk acting as his defense attorney. The sensitive subject matter is actually handled with a modicum of grace and tact, taking time to consider the difficult optics of victims and perpetrators, and Jennifer’s positionality relative to this case as a woman. Although the topic of the book is fundamentally sensationalist, Slott seems genuinely interested in exploring the nuance and political ramifications of questions of agency around women and sex.

5

Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver’s Incestuous Love Story

Pairing Siblings Wanda and Pietro Together Was A Wild and Widely Derided Choice For the Ultimate Universe

The first Marvel Ultimate Universe had a slow but fairly torturous decline, Ultimates 3: Who Killed the Scarlet Witch? being one of the final three miniseries of the alternate universe imprint. As time begins to run out for Earth-1610, Wanda Maximoff AKA The Scarlet Witch is murdered in cold blood, leaving the rest of the X-Men to play detective. This sleuthing also leads to some unexpected and downright strange revelations concerning the nature of Wanda’s relationship with her brother, Quicksilver.

There are dozens of core changes between Marvel’s primary Earth-616 and the Ultimate’s Earth-1610, but none struck fans as strangely or as unnecessary as Jeph Loeb giving Pietro and Wanda the full Cersei/Jaime Lannister treatment. Although their father’s abuse is centralized to explain their enmeshment, the pairing still added virtually nothing to the plot besides making readers uncomfortable and is viewed as one of the many damning awkward choices that hurried along the death of the original Ultimates Universe.

4

Iron Man’s Betrayal as a Double Agent

The Crossing revealed that Iron Man Worked For Kang All Along

What if Captain America’s infamous Hail Hydra wasn’t a clone fake-out? Decades before that notorious double-bluff, Bob Harras and Terry Kavanagh committed entirely to the premise that an Avenger could be a secret double-agent. Avengers: The Crossing reveals that Iron Man spent years as a mole for Kang the Conqueror, in a confusing and ill-formulated twist that resulted in his death and the Avengers travelling through time to recruit his nineteen-year-old self onto the team.

Fans and critics alike found the twist uncompelling and unconvincing, with marked inconsistencies and weak storytelling that couldn’t support such a monumental revelation. Subsequent storylines went out of their way to retcon the core consequences of Avengers: The Crossing, with the aftermath of Onslaught reinstating an adult Tony Stark and Mr Fantastic integrating him with the old version of himself in Avengers: Forever to effectively wipe the slate clean.

3

The End of The First Ultimate Marvel Universe

The Incredibly Gory Conclusion of the First Ultimate Universe Was Critically Panned

Although the art has some high points, Ultimatum is widely viewed as a terrible send-off to the original and much-beloved Marvel Ultimate Universe. Hyped and kicking off to incredibly strong sales, the five-issue miniseries was immediately controversial for its excessive violence and choppy characterization. Loeb and the creative team were seemingly dedicated to killing off every major character in the most garish and destructive way possible, inadvertently alienating all of their fans in the process.

The list of truly upsetting moments includes: Blob cannibalizing The Wasp and having his head bitten off by Ant-Man, Magneto snapping Dr. Xavier’s neck, Cyclops being shot in the head, Dormammu crushing Doctor Strange to death, and so much more. Ultimatum soured opinions on the Ultimate Universe so much that the series became retroactively less acclaimed, coming to be seen as an edgy, tasteless version of Marvel. After Ultimatum, Marvel left its alternate universe to cool off for almost a decade before 2023’s critically acclaimed revival of the Ultimate Universe.

2

“The Rape of Carol Danvers”

Captain Marvel is Coerced, Impregnated, and Then Assaulted By Her Own Son in This Horrendous Bicentennial

In Avengers #197, it was revealed that Carol Danvers, then Ms. Marvel, was pregnant. There was a supernatural twist at work, as her pregnancy lasted a total of three days before she gave birth to a child, who grew into adulthood overnight. That child, Marcus, revealed that he was the son of Immortus. He pulled Danvers into Limbo, manipulated her mind, and impregnated her with himself.

Far from landing a mind-bending Grandfather Paradox for the 200th issue, this convoluted, misogynistic slop was largely reviled. To add insult to injury, at the end of the issue, Danvers departs the team to gladly be Marcus’ wife in Limbo. The following year, she returned in Claremont’s Avengers Annual #10 after Marcus’s death, revealing that she was essentially abducted under mind control, and she rightly rebukes the Avengers for their part in her abuse. The words of lead writer James Shooter surmise it perfectly: “Avengers #200 is a travesty.”

1

Mephisto Wiped MJ and Peter’s Marriage from Reality

“One More Day” Ruined a Romance That Had Been Building and Blossoming for Over Forty Years.

In One More Day, a bullet meant for Spider-Man strikes his beloved Aunt May. Desperate to save her, Spider-Man is approached by Mephisto – the Marvel Universe’s equivalent of the Devil – who offers him a deal. Aunt May’s life in exchange for his marriage to Mary Jane Watson. Not in the sense of “get divorced,” but in the sense of “your marriage and all your memories of it are erased from existence.” The pair agreed to his terms in what fans felt was one of Spider-Man’s worst decisions ever, executing a clumsy in-universe retcon that cast aside years of storytelling.

Virtually all the other controversial storylines in this list have either been retconned out of existence by other writers or never happened in the main continuity to begin with. One More Day, conversely, has been upheld by Marvel editorial despite fans’ longstanding hatred of the storyline. A great deal of the praise for Hickman’s current best-selling Ultimate Spider-Man concerns its exploration of Peter and MJ’s life as an adult, married couple, speaking to the overwhelming fan desire to see these characters growing and maturing in a stable relationship.

“}]] From superhero assault trials to a mole in the original Avengers team, these unforgettable controversies sparked serious debate among Marvel fans.  Read More