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Darker And Edgier / Marvel Universe

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Marvel Universe

  • Marvel Year In Review 1993 parodied this in their own titles, by taking characters that this had been done for, and then making new characters that turned it up to eleven:
    • Spider-Man (Super hero with the proportionate strength of a spider) — Venom (Obsessed lunatic with the proportionate strength of a spider) — Carnage (Crazed serial killer with the proportionate strength of a spider) — Bile (Cannibalistic madman with the proportionate strength of a spider)
    • Captain America (Liberalistic flag-waving symbol of democracy) — U.S. Agent (Extremist right-wing hard-nosed American) — The Patriot Missile ("Blow all them foreigners to hell and let God sort 'em out!")
    • Thor (Norse God of Thunder) — Thunderstrike (Norse God of Thunder from Brooklyn) — Godhead (Convinced he is God. Holed up in his compound, waiting for Ragnarok)
    • Wolverine (Savage killing machine with the soul of a Samurai) — Sabertooth (Uncontrollable, savage killing machine with the attitude of a psychopath) — Clawjaw (Unhousebroken, uncontrollable killing machine with poor bodily hygiene)
    • Iron Man (High-tech armored Avenger) — War Machine (High-tech armored Avenger with an attitude) — Terror Device (High-tech armored Avenger with two attitudes and Plausible Deniability)
    • Green Hulk (Mindless rampaging monster) — Gray Hulk (Intelligent rampaging monster) — New Green Hulk (Intelligent rampaging monster with a big gun) — Red Hulk (Intelligent rampaging monster with a big gun and razor-sharp claws)
  • Marvel as much as said at the time that the thinking behind U.S. Agent, War Machine, and Thunderstrike was to have Darker And Edgier versions of Captain America, Iron Man, and The Mighty Thor, without losing the originals. There's even a famous Avengers cover of the two versions facing off. Though created prior to the decade, they would see their heyday as Nineties Anti Heroes.
    • Interestingly, Thunderstrike was probably the furthest from this trope, as he was a man juggling between being a dad and a superhero. The only time he really entered this trope was when he was possessed by the Executioner's battle axe Bloodaxe.
  • New X-Men: Academy X: After House of M, the title was hit by Darker and Edgier hard, but the change was especially marked in contrast with the first half of the series. Under Weir and DeFilippis, the book was fairly light-hearted fluff that focused on relationship drama. When Kyle and Yost took over, dozens of students were immediately blown up, and everyone else was left traumatized by their failed rescue attempts. Then a main character was shot in the head and killed. And another main character betrayed the team, was mutilated, and died. They were replaced by a former assassin Tyke Bomb. Succeeding plotlines saw the entire team sent to HELL, one of them tortured and spending a lot of time crying herself to sleep, and so forth and so forth. In fact, most of Kyle and Yost's work falls under this trope. See also: X-Force, mentioned above.
  • Since his debut Frank Castle, The Punisher had held the rank of Captain of the Dark Age of Comic Books. Then he was the tip of the spear of a darker, gritter run, Marvel Knights that took him and other "heroes" into their own Darker, Edgier works. Then Castle was promoted to full Dark Lord with The Punisher MAX which was a run where, hmm, most may know Jean Grey, she had a Max run that was boarderline lesbian erotica. Now take the Punisher as he was and remove any limits of violence, language, and vigilante gore. Numerous examples were put up as the image source for Pay Evil unto Evil and they were all deemed far too violent.
  • The Marvel Comics two-issue miniseres by Warren Ellis entitled Ruins, a darker take on Marvels where everything in the Marvel Universe has gone horribly wrong and the few characters who aren't horrifically disfigured or horribly killed by the accidents that gave them their powers in the regular Marvel Universe are corrupt and vile. Notable examples include Bruce Banner becoming a barely living mass of tumors instead of the Hulk, Charles Francis Xavier becoming a corrupt president who imprisons mutants and mutilates them to keep their powers in check (e.g. blinding Cyclops to disable his optic blasts and de-limbing Quicksilver to prevent him from using his super speed), and Peter Parker's radioactive spider bite covering his body with a terminal web-like rash.
  • Here's one way to kill the party: Turn cheerful, bouncy Robbie Baldwin from the playfully heroic Speedball into an apparent murderer with a guilt complex worthy of Angel. Now he calls himself Penance, and wears a suit with 612 built-in points of pain, one for each person killed that day. His new powers can only manifest when he is in pain.
    • In Thunderbolts, however, Penance has come to terms with the Stamford incident not being his fault. He reveals to Nitro the real reason for the suit. The suit wasn't for Robbie, it was for Nitro. Robbie captured Nitro in Latveria to punish him for the Stamford incident, put him in the suit and proceeded to beat the CRAP out of him, after which he removes the last spike from his own chest to symbolize that he's freed himself of guilt.
    • He later returns to the Speedball identity as an instructor at the Avengers Academy, but retains his more serious demeanor. He leaves the school after finally coming to terms with the Stamford incident, and has since appeared in Nova with his previous cheerful personality restored. He still occasionally uses the Penance helmet though, as it's apparently the only way he can access his pain-based powers.
  • Superior Spider-Man (2013) runs on this trope. The plot involves Otto Octavius becoming the new Spider-Man after stealing Peter Parker's body, and taking up his predecessor's war on crime while ignoring his Thou Shalt Not Kill rule. He's more vicious, brutal, and condescending than Peter, and even sports a black and red outfit in contrast to Spidey's classic, colorful duds. Fun fact, the costume was originally designed by Alex Ross for the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie. The suit was mostly black because Ross felt it'd make the outfit more serious and realistic. Ultimately, Superior subverts it by having Otto realize that Peter and his Lighter and Softer approach are superior, making Peter the true Superior Spider-Man.
  • Supreme Power is a darker and edgier reimagining of the original Squadron Supreme, with some of the grittier details including Hyperion becoming more cynical and distrustful towards humanity after learning he had been used as a tool by the government, Nighthawk being a violent vigilante who has no issue with killing criminals, Doctor Spectrum being controlled by his own Power Prism to go on bloody rampages during blackouts and Emil Burbank being a sociopathic rapist who manages to make his depiction in the original Mark Gruenwald series look like a saint.
  • Ultimate Marvel deconstructed most of the characters from Marvel Comics, bringing them back to their initial premise and placing them in a Setting Update. In many cases, they became Adaptational Jerkass as a result. The superhero team The Avengers was reimagined as a military operation in The Ultimates, and the supervillain group the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants was reimagined as a terrorist group in Ultimate X-Men (2001).
  • X-Force demonstrated the trope more than once:
  • X-Men were always one of the darker comic books since the 80s, what with their focus on a discriminated minority group who often fought against extremists and genocidal bigots who were A Nazi by Any Other Name, and storylines such as the Morlock Massacre. But in the 2000s, after House of M came the Decimation, where mutant numbers were dropped down to barely past 300, many of whom were immediately murdered, forcing the X-Men to abandon traditional heroics and move towards a more pragmatic, militarised and compartmentalised structure. Not helped was that shortly before this saw Jean Grey, arguably The Heart of the X-Men, be Killed Off for Realnote  and her place as the main female lead being replaced by Emma Frost, who functioned as an Anti-Hero Substitute for Jean.
    • What's commonly pointed to was the Character Development of Cyclops, who started this period suffering from PTSD after an incident with Apocalypse, and then manipulated by Emma Frost into a psychic affair during their therapy sessions followed by Jean's death and Cyclops being psychically forced into a relationship with Emma afterward. This combined with everything the X-Men were going through prompted him to take decisive action to maintain the survival of the mutant race, even as he was forced to make moral compromises other heroes dared. This was best shown by the formation of X-Force, a black-ops hit-squad taking the best and most capable killers among the X-Men's ranks, as well as a Boxed Crook or two. Even Wolverine was a little disturbed by the lengths Cyclops was willing to go to, which eventually caused a bloody falling out between the two.
    • The whole "Professor X is no better than Magneto" creep from the Ultimate to the main universe that was exemplified by Deadly Genesis, where it was revealed that Professor X led a team of X-Men to their deaths in rescuing his original team from Krakoa and just mind-wiped everyone into forgetting that it happened and trying again with another new team. And that Professor X later realized that the Danger Room was becoming sentient, but ignored it, leading to Danger being created years later.
    • This all came to a head with the finale of Avengers vs. X-Men, where Cyclops snapped and killed the Professor while possessed by the Phoenix Force. Now he's on the run with his own team of outlaw X-Men, though this is somewhat zig-zagged, however. With mutant numbers restored, Cyclops' team actually returned to the old 'hated and feared' roots, going out of their way to protect those who would harm these new and re-powered mutants, while Wolverine (who had seemingly became Lighter and Softer after a falling out with Cyclops over the aforementioned extreme actions) regularly comes off as a thoroughly sanctimonious and Holier Than Thou hypocrite considering his past. He's not alone in it either, something which, after Battle of the Atom, Kitty Pryde, moral centre of the X-Men, calls them out for. Indeed, Cyclops' team is arguably still fairly idealistic - specifically, when Magneto reprimands Teen Jean for trying to mind control Teen Angel into staying with the O5, he says, "That is not what Charles Xavier taught you, young lady!" It was overall more a case of the team being subject to a lot of Informed Wrongness from Wolverine and his team that made them seem Darker and Edgier, especially as while Wolverine's book got weirder briefly, also lead to an arc where Wolverine loses his powers and becomes so much of a toxic Jerkass as a result it alienates most of the people who cared about him before he was then killed off.
      • And then there was the whole Terrigen Cloud/M-Pox plot, which led to Inhumans vs. X-Men. This particular era was regarded as such a huge Audience-Alienating Era in large part because it tried to app the previous Darker turn, when it was barely even old history and most fans were calling it out on repeating the same story beats, only without Cyclops to act as the scapegoat for the X-Men's harsher actions to survive. Not helped was that the Inhumans/X-Men conflict was intended as a Both Sides Have a Point plot, but the Inhumans' desire to force the mutant population to just deal with a painful and uncurable pathogen that was wiping them out and objected to their attempts to stop it because of its cultural importance to them instead just turned the Inhumans franchise into a Villain Protagonist group.
      • Following ResurrXion, however, there was a decided swing to the Lighter and Softer end, with the X-Men being more traditionally heroic. Jean Grey, long-dead during the aforementioned periods, was resurrected and lead an X-Men team that was all about making the world a better place, while Kitty Pryde, the moral centre after her, became their new leader. This unfortunately didn't last and things got even darker with Uncanny X-Men (2018), starting with the Dissassembled storyline and the subsequent run by Matthew Rosenberg which saw Cyclops and Wolverine, back from the dead, struggling to maintain what's left of the mutant community in the wake of the apparent death of the X-Men and the forced mass curing of the mutant population. The series was a lame duck, put out to pass time until X-Men (2019) relaunch, so the creative team just decided to have 'fun' by making everything as depressing and bleak as they can.

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