History ValuesDissonance / MarvelUniverse

* Several of the old "irredeemable" Marvel villains have been given more sympathetic portrayals and motivations over the years, in part because their older stories have aged poorly. For example the female villain Nekra/ Nekra Sinclair had powers which relied on her own single-minded hatred, and she was given little to no sympathy. But her backstory is that she was an albino girl ostracized during her childhood, she was a teenage runaway at age 14, she was eventually abandoned by her best friend and lover Mandrill/Jerome Beechman, and she has been repeatedly betrayed and abused by her on-and-off boyfriend Grim Reaper/Eric Williams. Ouch. In recent years, Nekra is depicted as having deed emotional needs for love and friendship, and she is partly treated as a victim instead of an outright villain.

* ''Franchise/XMen''

* ''Franchise/SpiderMan''
** A very early issue of ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' ''ComicBook/TheAmazingSpiderManLeeAndDitko'' has a teacher respond to Flash's bullying of Peter by forcing Peter to challenge Flash to a boxing match. It's been decades since it would be considered even remotely acceptable for a teacher to respond to school bullying in a similar manner. Also, portraying everyone accepting a JerkJock as being popular has similarly become more problematic: the "wimpy" but kind and helpful Peter would be the one depicted with more friends in most modern works.

*** Similarly, Mister Sinister is an immortal from XIX century Britain and some writers, Creator/KieronGillen in particular, like to give him attitude and prejudices fitting that time and place - he once referred to Storm as "Cyclop's colonial pet" and when Loki called him a Frenchman, demanded an apology for a "Galic slur".

** [[{{Pun}} Ultimately]], the differences between original Captain America and "Ultimate" Captain America are a values dissonance between the comics industry of the 1940's and the modern day. At the time, the industry was all about big patriotism and sticking by your country in times of trouble because hey, it's your country. Nowadays, comics are more willing to stick it to the man. Thus original Cap attempted to symbolize everything best about America, while post-[[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] Cap tries to fight everything that's the worst about it.

* ''ComicBook/AlphaFlight'': The "Wanda Langowski" storyline is complicated, but in a nutshell, team member Sasquatch aka Walter Langowski is (temporarily) killed, but returns to the living when his spirit occupies the body of his then-dead teammate Snowbird; the magicks involved altered her body so that it was neither Walter's nor Snowbird's, but a statuesque 30-something woman. Walter makes one attempt at getting his male body back by visiting the mutant Scrambler who could alter human flesh, but his supernatural body wasn't affected by Scrambler's powers. Walter takes the name "Wanda" and resigns himself to living as a woman for the time being. The storyline was written in the 80's before mainstream society had any real understanding of transgender issues. Had it come out more recently, Walter would've more fully explored his options for presenting as a man in his new body if medical transition wasn't possible--cutting his hair, binding his breasts, etc.--rather than just going "Welp, I guess I'm a woman now."[[note]]Walter did eventually get his male body back, which is ''also'' a long story.[[/note]]

* If M'Baku is bad, then the C-list mutant supervillain The Mandrill is worse. First, there's his backstory; his father was exposed to radiation at the same time as an African cleaning woman, and as a consequence, the Mandrill was born with black skin and excessive body hair, resulting in his father [[ChocolateBaby believing his wife had been unfaithful]], a condition that worsened as the kid aged until he literally [[{{Animorphism}} transformed into a humanoid mandrill]] in his teens. Secondly, there's his power: he secretes mutated sex {{pheromones}} that act as MoreThanMindControl on women - and ''only'' women - by acting as [[LivingAphrodisiac an addictive super-aphrodisiac]]. And he's explicitly confirmed as [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain a misogynist who shamelessly abuses his powers]] to get ''any''thing he wants from women, including sex. So, in other words, he's a black man[[note]]yes, genetically he's Caucasian, not African, but nobody can tell[[/note]] who is literally a humanoid ape, and whose power-set is, effectively, "super-rapist"[[note]]he does also have enhanced strength, reflexes and agility, which fits his ape-man body, but everybody just remembers the super-rapist pheromones[[/note]]. Needless to say, Marvel generally wants to pretend that this guy never existed, although he has popped up in some surprising places -- including ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'' and, most notably, ''WesternAnimation/MODOK2021''.

** The infamous ComicBook/OneMoreDay:
*** The point of the story is that it's heroic to do whatever you can to save a life, which is a fine moral... Except that "whatever you can" in this case involves making a deal with the devil, so the moral becomes "do '''WHATEVER YOU CAN''' to save a life."
*** There's the reason behind using a deal with the devil to separate Spider-Man and Mary Jane; Joe Quesada wanted them broken up, but believed divorcing them would send a bad message and so used magic to remove the marriage from existence. For those who don't think divorce is a bad thing when you have a suitable reason for it (which is a decent number of people nowadays), that makes the decision to use magic devil-deals ridiculous. Especially considering that most of Spider-Man's long-established supporting characters of roughly his own age-group were already divorced or widowed before ''One More Day''[[note]]Cleanly divorced: Randy Robertson (who is a few years younger than Peter Parker) from Amanda, and Debra from Mr. Whitman. Quasi-divorced (not married, but went through a very painful separation): Flash Thompson and Sha Shan. Widowed: Betty Brant Leeds (but not before her husband walked out on her because of her (second!) adulterous affair with Flash) and Liz Allan Osborn[[/note]]. To cap it all off, the issue immediately following ''One More Day'' revealed that Harry Osborn was alive and now a triple divorcé, having apparently married two more women after getting a divorce from his former widow Liz.
*** The follow-up arc, ''ComicBook/OneMomentInTime'', compounded this by motivating Mary Jane's decision not to get married to Peter in the altered-by-Mephisto timeline by having her say that she could not envisage raising children with Spider-Man and that marriage without children was meaningless. Which of course is not just out of touch with Mary Jane's established characterization, e. g. her joyful reaction to her pregnancy during the Clone Saga, but also with most readers' ideas about love and marriage.

** The whole series examines the dissonance between Golden Age heroes and the modern world they've found themselves in; while all of them suffer to a degree, Dynamic Man is a particularly ironic example given how he constantly stresses that he's "the Man of Tomorrow."

* In yet another ComicBook/UltimateMarvel example, Iron Man's tenancy to flirt with his female employees was glorified as part of his "ladies man" persona -- and has likewise aged poorly thanks to [=#MeToo=] and Time's Up, with it now seen by many as red flags about his behavior.

** Early ComicBook/XMen comics have some inevitable casual sexism that can be jarring to the modern reader, all the males (including Xavier) spend much of their time making crude remarks about Jean Grey and in one early issue the maid is ill so it falls to Jean to make everyone dinner (nobody questions this, least of all Jean). The fact that Professor X had a full-time maid who prepared meals for the household is itself a bit of values dissonance: it was something to be expected of a man of his social status back then, but to modern readers the idea of having a full-time domestic servant seems weird at best.

* One of Iron Man's first stories features an Asian villain who has blindingly yellow skin, exaggerated features, and very stereotypical speech patterns. His skin color was not fixed for a 2019 reprint, making it even more jarring to modern eyes.

* ''ComicBook/AlphaFlight'': The "Wanda Langowski" storyline is complicated, but in a nutshell, team member Sasquatch aka Walter Langowski is (temporarily) killed, but returns to the living when his spirit occupies the body of his then-dead teammate Snowbird; the magicks involved altered her body so that it was neither Walter's nor Snowbird's, but a statuesque 30-something woman. Walter makes one attempt at getting his male body back by visiting the mutant Scrambler who could alter human flesh, but his supernatural body wasn't affected by Scrambler's powers. Walter takes the name "Wanda" and resigns himself to living as a woman for the time being. The storyline was written in the 80's before mainstream society had any real understanding of transgender issues. Had it come out more recently, Walter would've more fully explored his options for presenting as a man in his new body if medical transition wasn't possible--cutting his hair, binding his breasts, etc.--rather than just going "Welp, I guess I'm a woman now."[[note]]Walter did eventually get his male body back, which is ''also'' a long story.[[/note]]

*** The follow-up arc, ''One Moment in Time'', compounded this by motivating Mary Jane's decision not to get married to Peter in the altered-by-Mephisto timeline by having her say that she could not envisage raising children with Spider-Man and that marriage without children was meaningless. Which of course is not just out of touch with Mary Jane's established characterization, e. g. her joyful reaction to her pregnancy during the Clone Saga, but also with most readers' ideas about love and marriage.

* Early ComicBook/XMen comics have some inevitable casual sexism that can be jarring to the modern reader, all the males (including Xavier) spend much of their time making crude remarks about Jean Grey and in one early issue the maid is ill so it falls to Jean to make everyone dinner (nobody questions this, least of all Jean). The fact that Professor X had a full-time maid who prepared meals for the household is itself a bit of values dissonance: it was something to be expected of a man of his social status back then, but to modern readers the idea of having a full-time domestic servant seems weird at best.
** Similar to the treatment of Sue Storm throughout most of the early ComicBook/FantasticFour stories. Even tales that tried to demonstrate her value to the team - like "[[http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=61747 A Visit to the Fantastic Four]]" in FF #11 - come out painfully sexist now (as for the old running gag with Namor... let's not even go there...).
** One early issue showed the team training in the Danger Room, with the male members fighting a robot while Jean - who went into combat alongside the men all the time - practiced using her telekinesis to sew.
** One very early issue showed that every male member of the team was lusting after Jean, even Professor Xavier, who believes the biggest obstacle to a romance between them is ''his wheelchair'', not that he's her teacher and twice her age. This has almost never been mentioned since then, and when it is brought up it is one of Xavier's greatest personal shames.
** ''{{ComicBook/Sabretooth}}'' has a habit of casually referring to women as "frails." The term being slang from the 18th century -used to refer to women back when they were seen as the weaker, more frail, sex. Creed was born in the 1800s, and seems to have stuck to the name. He usually refers to many women he speaks with as "frail" or just simply "girl." Even after his Inversion, and becoming a good guy, he still does it. Rogue, Mystique, and Monet have expressed dislike of being called "frail." But Creed continues to do it, telling Rogue that if he stopped, he may as well be neutered completely. Also an example of possible racism comes up with him condescendingly referring to Silver Fox as Logan's "squaw", which could be seen as offensive now.
** Similarly, Mister Sinister is an immortal from XIX century Britain and some writers, Creator/KieronGillen in particular, like to give him attitude and prejudices fitting that time and place - he once referred to Storm as "Cyclop's colonial pet" and when Loki called him a Frenchman, demanded an apology for a "Galic slur".
** The depiction of Wolverine in ''ComicBook/UltimateXMen'' has aged rather poorly since the book first saw print. While it was intended to play up his image as a bad boy and ladies' man, in a post [=#MeToo=] and Time's Up world, his sexual proclivities, which included sleeping with a barely-legal Jean Grey and trying to sleep with the very-underaged Mary Jane Watson (during a FreakyFridayFlip with Spider-Man, to boot, which happened because he wouldn't leave Jean alone) and Liz Allan make him come across as creepy and with the latter two, he looks like a pedophile and attempted rapist.
* This idea was played with in ''[[ComicBook/XForce X-Statix Presents: Dead Girl]]'', where the Golden Age heroine Miss America was portrayed as an unapologetic racist. Ironically, she ended up in a romantic relationship with Anarchist, a black superhero she had earlier hurled a vile slur at. Miss America's racism was later used by artist Nick Dragotta as part of a justification for making the new Miss America a [[AffirmativeActionLegacy Latina]]. He pointed out the delicious irony behind making the successor of an out-of-touch bigot a woman of color.

** A very early issue of ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' has a teacher respond to Flash's bullying of Peter by forcing Peter to challenge Flash to a boxing match. It's been decades since it would be considered even remotely acceptable for a teacher to respond to school bullying in a similar manner. Also, portraying everyone accepting a JerkJock as being popular has similarly become more problematic: the "wimpy" but kind and helpful Peter would be the one depicted with more friends in most modern works.

* Likewise, the ComicBook/BlackPanther villain who used to be his ArchEnemy, M'Baku the Man-Ape, has become increasingly sidelined due to the fact that caricaturing Africans as apes or monkeys was quite popular throughout the first half of the 20th century. This makes a big burly African man who dresses up in a gorilla costume and calls himself "the Man-Ape" very inappropriate these days.[[note]]When the ''Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse'' got around to featuring M'Baku in ''Film/BlackPanther2018'', the gorilla theme remained associated with his tribe and he briefly wears a bit of gorilla themed wear for a TrialByCombat early in the film, but he would undergo AdaptationalHeroism and never call himself Man-Ape.[[/note]] Lampshaded in the 2nd volume of ''ComicBook/{{Thunderbolts}}'', where the African-American ElementalShapeshifter Coal has to temporarily disguise himself as M'Baku and complains about the racism in making the black guy dress up like an ape.

* The infamous ComicBook/OneMoreDay:
** The point of the story is that it's heroic to do whatever you can to save a life, which is a fine moral... Except that "whatever you can" in this case involves making a deal with the devil, so the moral becomes "do '''WHATEVER YOU CAN''' to save a life."
** There's the reason behind using a deal with the devil to separate Spider-Man and Mary Jane; Joe Quesada wanted them broken up, but believed divorcing them would send a bad message and so used magic to remove the marriage from existence. For those who don't think divorce is a bad thing when you have a suitable reason for it (which is a decent number of people nowadays), that makes the decision to use magic devil-deals ridiculous. Especially considering that most of Spider-Man's long-established supporting characters of roughly his own age-group were already divorced or widowed before ''One More Day''[[note]]Cleanly divorced: Randy Robertson (who is a few years younger than Peter Parker) from Amanda, and Debra from Mr. Whitman. Quasi-divorced (not married, but went through a very painful separation): Flash Thompson and Sha Shan. Widowed: Betty Brant Leeds (but not before her husband walked out on her because of her (second!) adulterous affair with Flash) and Liz Allan Osborn[[/note]]. To cap it all off, the issue immediately following ''One More Day'' revealed that Harry Osborn was alive and now a triple divorcé, having apparently married two more women after getting a divorce from his former widow Liz.
** The follow-up arc, ''One Moment in Time'', compounded this by motivating Mary Jane's decision not to get married to Peter in the altered-by-Mephisto timeline by having her say that she could not envisage raising children with Spider-Man and that marriage without children was meaningless. Which of course is not just out of touch with Mary Jane's established characterization, e. g. her joyful reaction to her pregnancy during the Clone Saga, but also with most readers' ideas about love and marriage.
* A very early issue of ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' has a teacher respond to Flash's bullying of Peter by forcing Peter to challenge Flash to a boxing match. It's been decades since it would be considered even remotely acceptable for a teacher to respond to school bullying in a similar manner. Also, portraying everyone accepting a JerkJock as being popular has similarly become more problematic: the "wimpy" but kind and helpful Peter would be the one depicted with more friends in most modern works.