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Depending On The Writer / Marvel Universe

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Examples of characterization changing dramatically Depending on the Writer in the Marvel Universe.

The following have their own pages:

By Character:

  • John Byrne's Alpha Flight were (despite his protests to the contrary) well-Rounded Characters with depth and interest. After he quit, they rapidly went to being whiny losers and have never been portrayed consistently since, until they all died to show how powerful a random villain was (and pave the way for Omega Flight).
  • Captain America foe Batroc the Leaper was a borderline Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who considered himself lucky to get in a hit on the good Captain on his first appearance, and a Worthy Opponent who gave Cap a very close match in a spectacular fight scene in his very next appearance. Ever since then, he's sort of sine-waved between Harmless Villain and Badass Normal. In general, if he's in a serious story, expect him to be treated as among the best martial artists in the world, held back only by the fact that he's fighting Captain America; if he's in a more comedic story, expect him to be a goofy Punch-Clock Villain who gets lucky on the days when he isn't laid out in one punch. Some writers have also claimed that his Maurice Chevalier Accent is affected as part of his swashbuckler image, others have him even thinking in a thick Funetik Aksent.
    • It's discussed in The Unbelievable Gwenpool, where Batroc is depicted as the Badass Normal Team Dad. When Gwen muses on the fact that her book is being cancelled in one of the final issues, she tells a confused Batroc that his future characterization will be up to the whims of different writers going forward. She tearfully says good-bye to her friend, knowing that writers will likely never use this version of him again.
  • Deadpool: Deadpool has had numerous traits change depending on the writer, such as:
  • Doctor Strange: No one has ever been able to decide exactly how damaged Strange's hands are after the accident. Some writers give him impairments of varying severity to his dexterity, some have him regain the injuries if he begins to heal, and some say that Strange's hands are perfectly fine, and that he doesn't return to surgery due to issues more relating to his ego or morality than physicality.
  • Fantastic Four:
    • Johnny Storm has alternated between self-obsessed prima donna and self-obsessed whiny asshat, while Susan Storm has switched between defenseless butterfly to empowered female. Additionally, every new writer of the book seems to like to take a socially well-adjusted Ben Grimm and throw on the angst about his condition so they can take him out again. Whether Ben has Yiddish as a Second Language or not also varies (it tends to show up when he's written by Dan Slott or Marv Wolfman). Some FF writers, most notably Tom DeFalco, have tried to upgrade Johnny to at least being savvy about his powers and status. Later ones felt the need to make him dumb and dumber both. Also, a character who can end up spending months away from Earth aiding his team and family is frequently taken to task for not going to college. Some courses are crazy, and require you to show up for class.
    • Reed Richards in particular can completely change from writer to writer; he's the iconic Science Hero of the Marvel Universe, and his intelligence is rarely anything less than "the smartest man in the world", but how he approaches that intelligence and scientific acumen is what varies. He can be redoubtably heroic or borderline amoral, he can be a man rushing to the frontlines of adventure or a borderline Non-Action Guy, he can be reasonably social and friendly while tending to get wrapped in his work or suffering from mental issues so severe it's a wonder he ever leaves the Baxter building. He was also canonically a Korean War veteran before the Sliding Timescale kicked in, and whether or not writers treat him as a veteran ranges heavily. In general, if he appears in another hero's book or a crossover, the chances of him being a full-on Mad Scientist caricature start ticking up.
    • None of this compares to Victor Von Doom. Dr. Doom is swung back and forth from being a baby-eating psycho, to practically being an Anti-Villain more noble and courageous then Reed Richards, and everything in between. In particular, the way he runs his country comes under fire from this — does he make it a complete utopia with happy, contented citizens, or is it just a facade the citizens put on because Doom will kill anyone who disagrees, and Doom himself only cares for them as a master would care for his pet? Writers almost always wind up disagreeing with one another about Doom's correct portrayal and declare stories they don't approve of to have been Doombots instead. Mark Waid doesn't believe that Doom has any nobility to him while Warren Ellis, Roger Stern, David Michelinie, Jim Shooter, Jonathan Hickman among others believe he is genuinely noble and can be genuinely heroic in some situations, someone who believes that since he should take over the world and rule it, it is also his obligation to protect it. Jack Kirby, Doom's co-creator believes that Dr. Doom is a tragic figure who thinks only in extremes.
      • Dr. Doom gets an additional layer about running his own country. Does he truly care about his citizens? Does he act the monarch just for arrogant sense of self-entitlement, and to gain access to the resources of a nation and diplomatic immunity? Are the people of Latveria genuinely happy under his rule? Is Latveria a police state where no public display of malcontent is allowed?
  • Fin Fang Foom's size, intelligence, backstory, and alignment vary wildly between appearances, as discussed here.
  • Gwenpool herself has oscillated on how dumb, competent, and loony she is depending on who's writing her. Gwenpool Strikes Again pushes this on a ridiculously meta level by having Gwen pull her past selves from previous appearances, each one with the art style and personality quirks of their respective runs.
  • The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk has numerous factors of his character that vary between writers; Whether he's a dumb brute that can only speak in Hulk Speak, a completely mindless monster who can't talk at all, or someone with a fairly average intellect with a somewhat odd speech pattern. Also depending on the writer is the Hulk's power level; while it is in a state of flux depending on his emotional state, some writers have him being knocked out by an average python choking him for less than a minute, and dying from being impaled by a trident when he's previously survived wounds that make that seem like a papercut by comparison. Another significantly variable thing is how goodnatured the Hulk is; he can be basically heroic but bad-tempered, amoral and mostly wanting to be left alone, or a monster ruled by pure id who has done far worse than kill people. Greg Pak's Hulk, for a particular outlier, is a flat-out Technical Pacifist who subconsciously avoids killing people even in the midst of a rampage. This is somewhat justified by Banner having multiple personality syndrome and there being thousands of Hulks in his mind, but many of these traits have been ascribed to the iconic "Savage" Hulk personality alone.
  • M.O.D.O.K.'s exact threat factor depends on who's writing his story. At times, he can be a very big threat to foes, while other times, the fact that he's a giant head makes him a joke.
    • Lampshaded in The Unbelievable Gwenpool, where Gwen expects to be facing a comical, ridiculous MODOK but finds that she's facing the much more dangerous version of the character.
  • Namor the Sub-Mariner has had this non-stop since he was first published in the late thirties. He's either a violent and bitter anti-hero with an unjust grudge against humanity, a noble leader who is only seeking the best for his people, a stalwart pragmatist whose loyalty to his comrades is without question, or some combination thereof. In fact, his writing varies so much that Marvel eventually canonized it: he has a disorder caused by his amphibious physiology that manifests in that way.
  • How about The Punisher? Generally a good man who's committed to trying to make sure his family's deaths weren't in vain and others don't suffer the same fate? Psychopathic monster who'll kill people for littering or being junkies? A man on a mission with a singular purpose and great at planning? Barely rational gun-toting lunatic?
    • Garth Ennis' take, as a sadistic torturer who enjoys killing for its own sake. Tricking a crime boss into following him into a polar bear enclosure and riling them up to attack her because he is unarmed? Okay, proactive self defense. Kicking same crime boss, who was an elderly woman and is now a quadruple amputee, into a house fire? Well...
    • Then came Born from the MAX imprint, which puts a stunning twist on his origin: Not only was it was never about vengeance for his family, he (unwittingly) caused their murders. What happened was that in Vietnam, he'd grown to love war, both because he was a master of killing and he liked being able to punish wrongdoers. He made a deal with a mysterious unseen entity (the Grim Reaper, according to the author's notes) that once the Vietnam War ended, he could have his own war which would never end...for an unspecified price. It was only after he returned that he learned that the price was his family.
    • The last four Max arcs (Kingpin, Bullseye, Frank, and Homeless) muddle things even further. It turns out that the aforementioned deal with Death was just a possibility, and that avenging his family was still on the table (although that too was only a possibility). Then in Frank, Frank himself denies both explanations and gives the "punishing himself" rationale given by previous authors (which at the time was mostly an attempt to keep the moral guardians at bay). Bullseye himself lampshades this, spending several days just pondering the possible origins.
    • His relationship with the rest of the Marvel heroes. In some stories, he respects characters like Captain America and Spider-Man deeply, but believe they lack the conviction to do what’s necessary to really change things; other times he has nothing but contempt for their Thou Shalt Not Kill methods and considers them weak and naive. Meanwhile, sometimes the other heroes have sympathy for his lost family and feel he is a good man who has let his pain drive him down a bad path, some writers have even implied that other heroes secretly approve of his killings and have decided to allow him free reign over street-level crime while they handle larger threats; however, other times he is viewed with universal loathing by the entire superhero community, with many considering him little better than a supervillain.
  • Runaways: The portrayal of Chase Stein has always swung between Jerk Jock and Cute but Troubled, but Terry Moore seems to have taken the "Idiot Jock" interpretation and run with it, giving Chase a very immature personality. And Chase wasn't the only one, virtually all the characters were heavily derailed by Terry Moore. Nico went from a leader to a megalomaniac, Molly went from playing naive and innocent to throw people off to actually thinking "we could build a fort!" is an appropriate response to an emergency, Victor stopped being funny, Xavin became too funny, and Klara lost anything resembling a personality. The closest thing to a consistent character is Karolina, who still seems to have lost her backbone.
  • ''Spider-Man': J. Jonah Jameson, editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle, gets this treatment when it comes to the reasoning behind his newspaper's anti-Spidey reporting: to some, it's because he's jealous of the fact the Spider-Man is more heroic than he could ever be; to others, it's just a case of JJ being an asshole. Still others give him a motive that is, on the face of it, reasonable. Even more inconsistent is his personality beyond the Spidey-hate; is he a Jerk with a Heart of Gold to his employees and a decent newspaperman with one unfortunate blind-spot, or is he a Bad Boss and a headline-chasing scaremongerer? What's also often is the indecisiveness of how far his hate for Spider-Man goes. Is it exclusive only for Spidey, or does Jameson have a hatred for the entire superhero community in general? One moment he'd be very hesitant to start going after the likes of the Fantastic Four, and the next he's calling Galactus's first appearance a hoax.
    • How strong is the wall-crawler himself? The 'proportional strength of a spider' goes from "a lot of work to lift a car" to "easily hoisted up a tank and slammed it against the ground, crushing it." The official stat nowadays is 25 tons, up from 10 as it was for a long time, but we've seen both much weaker and much stronger than that. Nowhere is this inconsistency so obvious as when Spider-Man goes up against the Kingpin: most of the time, Wilson Fisk is portrayed as being physically stronger than the wall-crawler, despite the fact that he's nothing but a Badass Normal who logically shouldn't be able to last five seconds in a fight, much less actually pose a serious threat directly. Occasionally, the writers have actually remembered this, like in Back in Black (the arc right before One More Day), when Parker broke into the Kingpin's prison and beat him within an inch of his life in retaliation for Aunt May getting shot by one of Kingpin's assassins. Nowadays, the justification is that he's holding back most of his might so as to not kill his enemies.
    • The Lizard, one of the wall-crawler's most long-term adversaries, tends to vary the nature of his transformation on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes he's just a mindless monster who's at least willing to eat people, and other times he's just as intelligent as his human side and seeks to create a race of reptilian beings like himself. Some sources even vary on just how much control Connors has over the Lizard, some presenting the two as having a Jekyll & Hyde dynamic and others speculating that the Lizard is driven by Connors' anger at the world after the loss of his arm.
    • Mary Jane and Black Cat/Felicia's personal relationship can vary wildly between writers. At times the two cannot stand each other as love rivals for Peter, with various writers playing up one or the other based on their preferences. Other times they get along like good friends who are more than willing to mutually tease Peter and help the other out in their personal lives.
    • Mysterio tends to vary wildly in personality and threat level depending on whose writing him. He's generally portrayed as being a formidable opponent, but he tends to alternate between a vicious schemer who works behind the scenes and brutally psychologically tortures his enemies or a flamboyant, affable Large Ham and Attention Whore. Some days he's a Badass Normal, and others he's a Non-Action Guy who relies entirely on illusions. Even his reaction to his reputation as a Harmless Villain wavers; in some comics (particularly those written by Dan Slott), he's a mellow sort happily embraces it to Troll people, while the Guardian Devil depicts him as a depraved monster who orchestrates murders and rapes just so he'll be regarded as one of the big leagues.
  • Thanos is a quite odd example of this. Jim Starlin portrays him as a great intellect with professorial dialogue who is greatly aware of the real workings of the universe and intended to make Thanos give up being a villain after Infinity Gauntlet, going from a cosmic destroyer obsessed with Death and mystical macguffins to a morally grey cosmic pilgrim; Ron Marz and Keith Giffen try to stay in line with his post-Infinity Gauntlet characterisation, writing him as a neutral force who acts out of curiosity and self-preservation; Jason Aaron's Thanos Rising, at the other end of the scale, suggests that he's simply a very powerful Serial Killer and even that his initial visions of death were ambiguously hallucinations rather than the real thing. Most other writers simply use him as a scary and brutish and thuggish cosmic villain.
  • The teen Vision from Young Avengers had the memories of the original Vision, but the writers were unsure how far to take this. Young Avengers made it clear that the new Vision had his own distinct personality and was for all intents and purposes a new character, while New Avengers and Captain America seemed to indicate he was essentially the original Vision in a new body.
    • The Avengers Assemble annual Lampshaded this by having Iron Man and Hank Pym state that they left the original Vision in storage because the team assumed the new Vision was just the classic version with an upgraded appearance.

Locations:

  • Madripoor. Whoever is in charge of the island nation can vary as quickly as whoever is writing the story. One moment, Tiger Tyger is in control and pushing through reforms to transform it into a respectable nation. The very next it's right back into a haven for human and drug trafficking and other organized crime under the control of the likes of Viper or Sabretooth, with no explanation of how the regime changed. It's even happened across issues of two different series released in the same month. While it could be handwaved since Madripoor is often fractious, and divided into territories controlled by different individuals with differing goals, (so Tyger's part of the city is a progressive mecca of legitimate business, while Daken's territory makes Mos Eisley seem quaint) the books rarely actually utilize this, (at least until the gang warring becomes a plot point itself) and applies the current situation across the whole island.
  • How stable is Black Panther's kingdom, Wakanda? Under some writers it's a country full of tribal rivalries and ambitious usurpers, resulting in lots of civil wars and coups. Under other writers it's a strong, internally stable country that just gets attacked by outsiders a lot. Don McGregor and Christopher Priest's runs tend to favour the former, while Reginald Hudlin's run and most of the country's appearances in other heroes' books, Avengers stories, and event comics favour the latter.

Specific Storylines:

  • The Avengers (Jason Aaron) has the Council of Red, an Alliance of Alternates of Mephisto, which includes a cartoon pig version that looks very much like a Spider-Ham character. Except Spider-Bot Infinity Comic has a cameo of Spider-Ham riffing on One More Day with a cartoon bull Mephisto. And before that, Spider-Gwen had Spider-Ham say he'd already done his version of One More Day and the villain was "Mephistork", who presumably would be a stork. Could be justified since all versions of Mephisto are shapeshifters, but it hasn't actually been addressed.
  • A common criticism of Civil War (2006) was that the Superhero Registration Act was this. Writers of pro-registration books tended to treat it as being like a driver's license - give your name, pass a few tests, and the government'll leave you alone from now on unless you're looking for protection or want to do your part. Anti-registration books, on the other hand, approached it like a forcible draft, with even teenagers, mutants born with minor powers or conscientious objectors being pulled in and trained to kill, with resistance being punishable by imprisonment without trial in a hellish alternate dimension. In particular, the Thunderbolts Initiative was either a legitimate attempt to help compliant and registered supervillains redeem themselves, or a gang of Psychos For Hire being used as attack dogs against people guilty of no crime beyond wanting to be left alone. This left a good chunk of readers confused as to what on Earth Marvel was implying by claiming the pro-registration side were the good guys.
    • This is also a problem with Civil War II. One of the main problems is the characterization of Carol Danvers. Sometimes she's portrayed as a heroine who, despite the moral ambiguity of using a precog to stop potential crimes, is conflicted on if she's doing the right thing and relying on other heroes to help guide her in her path, not wanting to have anything like the death of War Machine happen again. Other times, she's depicted as an authoritarian Jerkass who'd happily detain anyone and everyone who even idly dreams of a crime, making her conflict with Tony Stark seem less like a conflict of morals and more of a morality-based dick-measuring contest.
  • King in Black: The threat posed by the symbiote-dragons and Knull's minions varies wildly across the tie-ins. Donny Cates had previously established the symbiote-dragons as being magnitudes more powerful than regular symbiotes — with Dylan pointing out that being bonded to a mere piece of one had made Carnage nigh-invincible — and being capable of devastating whole civilizations and devouring gods. While some of the tie-ins saw them live up to this threat level, others saw them slain in droves by relatively mundane attacks. Compare King in Black: Ghost Rider, in which then-king of Hell Ghost Rider was barely able to singe just one dragon with hellfire, to the S.W.O.R.D. (2020) tie-in, in which Wiz Kid was able to near-effortlessly hold off multiple dragons by way of blowing holes in them with a laser cannon.
  • Ultimate Marvel:

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