During the "War with the Runaways" arc of Avengers Academy, Hank Pym and Tigra plotted to take Molly Hayes and Klara Prast and put them into foster homes where they would never be found by their older "siblings". Predictably, when the Runaways found out, they attacked. While Pym and Tigra's plan sounded cold and heartless, and while Hank Pym is probably the last person who ought to be making decisions about other people's lives, it's worth noting that the arc was, in part, a follow-up to the unfinished "Home Schooling" arc from the Runaways series, the central thesis of which seemed to be that Nico and Chase were god-awful parental figures who seemed especially ill-equipped to help Klara, who was still showing signs of trauma from her near-death experience and who is powerful enough to accidentally kill someone if she gets too upset. Thankfully, at the end, Nico casts a spell to make each team see things from the other team's point of view, and thus the two groups are able to reach a peaceful compromise.
Civil War was supposed to be a nuanced exploration of whether or not compulsory registration for superheroes was necessary to curb catastrophic mistakes and potential abuses of power. Both sides were supposed to have valid points (but supposedly supporting the Pro-Registration overall). Unfortunately, due to insufficient coordination between the writing teams of different books (as well as a serious difference in the skills of the writing teams — the anti-reg side got J. Michael Straczynski), Mark Millar failed at making readers sympathize with the pro-registration side and both sides ended up looking like straw men, with the pro-registration side looking particularly monstrous. For starters, the SHRA criminalized the act of apprehending a criminal when you yourself are an average citizen, as well as SHIELD trying to arrest Captain America for refusing to join the pro-reg side and enforce the law, before it was actually signed into law. To make matters worse, the actual specifics of registration varied from book to book:
In pro-reg books, registration was treated as a prerequisite to a superhero being a crimefighter. Supers were given the option of not using their powers, getting trained in using them properly and to establish that they were not a threat to themselves or others, and going to prison. If they did not want to fight crime after they were finished being trained, then they didn't have to, and there was no indication that they would be forced. It was just shown that a lot of people chose to fight crime because they had made friends with their fellow trainees and they felt like they should use their powers for good. However, the pro-registration side was still not sympathetic because Tony Stark and Mr. Fantastic were portrayed as being jerks, who felt like they knew what was best. But they were making excellent points throughout and if Mr. Fantastic's soothsaying math can be believed, it was the lesser of a few evils.
In anti-reg books, SHIELD forcibly conscripted anyone who happened to have any kind of superpowers whether they wanted to fight crime or not, and the pro-reg heroes were Well Intentioned Extremists. When Luke Cage said he just was going to not use his powers and stay out of it, armed gunmen showed up at his door on midnight of the day the act went into effect. In Avengers: The Initiative, kids recruited were told that they either join the initiative, get their powers taken, or go to jail. Cloud 9, a woman whose power was a little cloud she could fly on, only used her power for joyriding, never crime fighting; Stark sent War Machine to arrest her for flying without a license. Her only alternative to an extended prison sentence was to be drafted, complete a course of sniper training and go on killing missions. In addition, Stark orchestrated an attack on Black Panther, a foreign head of state, because his wife (X-Men member Storm, who had diplomatic immunity) refused to sign up. It was quite clearly a case of "work for us or else".
Civil War II attempted to avoid this trope by making an even-handed approach than the first installment, only this time it ended up botching it even worse by making both sides unsympathetic and unlikable:
Iron Man is supposed to be viewed as "the good guy" due to every criticism he has about the precognitive powers being proven correct and generally being painted as the sympathetic one, despite starting the war in the first place by kidnapping the Inhuman seer Ulysses, attacking the Inhumans and just generally carrying the Idiot Ball, and refusing to even negotiate how to use Ulysses in a non-invasive manner. In comparison Carol is painted as an extremist with no redeeming qualities, despite her behaviour only getting out of hand in direct response to him pushing against her.
With that said, Captain Marvel turns into a zealot in her pursuit of pre-crime justice, to the point she ends up driving her own allies away with her With Us or Against Us mentality and relying on Ulysses' visions to carry out her objectives, even though they aren't sure they're 100% accurate and are prone to getting misinterpreted. In comparison, even when she's meant to be empathised with, including tie-ins and issues that paint her as being the Lesser of Two Evils, she still comes off as needlessly cruel in her actions, as well as completely unwilling to compromise, even when Phil Coulson presents a valid middle ground they could work on.
At the end of the event, Captain America delivers a scathing speech to both sides of the conflict about how they have completely ruined the public's trust in superheroes and how they dismissed the normal people's opinion in the face of actual threats. But the reader is not supposed to agree with him because he is secretly brainwashed by HYDRA and plans on tearing down American society and replace it with a fascist dystopia in the war's aftermath.
This was so bad that following the event, the writers had to do some severe reconstruction to prove that Carol was ultimately correct in her decisions, as it's revealed in US Avengers that Thanos' attack — which Carol's attempt to prevent resulted in the death of James Rhodes, her boyfriend and Tony's best friend, causing their feud to become so personal- would have resulted in far more death had they not intervened. As well as that, Jessica Jones would then reveal that the woman accused by Carol of terrorism due to Ulysses' prediction that appeared to be innocent was, in fact, actually a terrorist, just one not linked with HYDRA as they believed, and the following Secret Empire storyline features some severe Break the Haughty treatment to give her empathy. Essentially, they realised that no matter how you sided on things, they ruined Carol and needed to fix her quickly.
Thor (2014): The decision to have a female character rather out-of-nowhere take up (re. Hijack) the mantle and the name of Thor was extremely controversial among many Marvel Fans. It got to the point where the issue was addressed when Female!Thor fights the Absorbing Man. In it, he calls out her taking up the mantle & name as absurd, stating to her: "You wanna be a Chick Superhero? Fine. Who the Hell Cares? But get your own identity!" This was obviously meant to be a Take That! towards misogynistic fans complaining about feminism. The thing is: Fans found themselves agreeing with the Absorbing Man's Sentiment. They felt that it would have been better for Female!Thor to create her own mantle instead of taking the role & name of the God of Thunder, which was seen as a massive disservice to one of Marvel's most popular heroes. Not helping matters is the fact that Female!Thor responds to this with a Lame Comeback before knocking him out.
X-Men has always existed uncomfortably with its pro-tolerance message using mutants as a metaphor ("Accept people who are different!") and the fact that mutants in-universe do try to kill billions of people on a fairly regular basis. Very often it seems like is Magneto was right arguing that peaceful co-existence between humans and mutants is impossible, considering that no matter what the X-Men do, the plot never seems to get any closer to reaching that, particularly because people in the Marvel Universe are Too Dumb to Live and suffer from Aesop Amnesia regarding that theme. In many stories they seem willing to easily sacrifice any and all of their freedoms at a moment's notice, so quite often it would seem like the world would be better if the X-Men let Magneto Take Over the World, since at least he doesn't go making the Green Goblin the most powerful man in America. Naturally this has lead to readers leaving the titles.
Robert Kelly's arguments (such as comparing mutant registration to gun control) actually made sense to some readers and viewers. Then they turned an otherwise logical argument into an anvilicious allegory to McCarthyism when they had the senator hold up a "list of names of identified mutants", shifting the argument from "Some mutants are dangerous" to "All mutants are dangerous". Of course, once the killer mutant-seeking robots come in (and they always do), it seems clear that Kelly is Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, even if his arguments do have a grain of truth to them.
The first arc of Cable and X-Force involves the head of a Chick-Fil-A stand-in who bars mutants from eating in her establishments. When confronted, not only does she explain that her daughter was killed during Xorn's attack on NYC, but also points out that superhumans tend to cause insane amounts of collateral damage wherever they go. Thus, her desire to not see her customers and employees killed comes off looking pretty rational, all things considered.
In the New Mutants mini-series, Kevin Ford (AKA Wither) is hiding out in a junkyard after accidentally killing his dad with his disintegration abilities. While trying to lay low, he ends up accidentally killing the dog belonging to the junkyard's owner. A confrontation ensues, and at the last second, Dani Moonstar rescues Kevin and beats up his attackers. While we're supposed to root for Dani and not the bigoted junkyard owner, it's hard not to sympathize with him given that a mutant just trespassed on his property and killed his innocent pet. And then when Wither decides he doesn't want to stay at the school, after having no on-panel counselling or training to control his powers, and after having to be stopped from deliberately killing someone, Xavier just lets him go on his way. You're supposed to be on Xavier's side for letting a kid choose his own life, but when the kid has already killed someone and his mutant power is dissolving any organic matter he touches, you kind of feel like getting the cops involved might be a good idea, and maybe the pro-registration crowd have a point.note By contrast, Ultimate X-Men Vol 1, 41—New Mutants (Part II) had a kid who woke up one morning with the ability to kill anyone nearby horribly, and he can't turn it off. He goes and hides in a cave. Wolverine claims that Xavier sends Wolverine to kill the kid (it's later revealed/retconned that Nick Fury was really the one who sent him). The kid doesn't fight it.
Henry Peter Gyrich is to superhumans in general what Robert Kelly was to mutants specifically. On the face of it, Gyrich has a point — super powers can be insanely dangerous — but he's such an unthinking, insufferable bigot that any worthwhile point he might have is completely drowned out. You'd think he'd have been a major character in Civil War, but oddly enough, he isn't.
The Punisher can sometimes get this during crossovers with other heroes, as his arguments for killing a criminal will be all-but ignored. Note that this only applies when talking about legitimately irredeemable murderers; Punisher's tendency to brutally murder people who commit relatively minor crimes (stealing, drug-dealing, defending someone else from Punisher, etc.) is significantly harder to justify than him trying to kill a lunatic like Carnage or Norman Osborn.
Captain America was frequently portrayed as completely out-of-touch with modern society, supposedly a more realistic portrayal of a man who was suddenly transplanted from the 1940s to the 21st Century than mainline Cap and his seemingly infinite tolerance. However, this idea fell flat in The Ultimates 3, where Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch's relationship is explicitly shown to be incestuous, and Cap is presented as being wrong for being Squicked out rather than cooing "Aww, they make such a cute couple!" like Wasp does. Likewise, during an argument between the two, many fans sided with Hawkeye in his disgust about the incestuous relationship instead of Wolverine, finding this to be another black mark to this version of the latter.note prior black marks including sleeping with a barely-legal Jean Grey, trying to kill Cyclops to be with Jean, and trying to sleep with the underaged Mary Jane Watson — while he was in the middle of a "Freaky Friday" Flip with Spider-Man that was caused by him not leaving Jean alone, no less — and Liz Allan
Ultimate Marvel Team-Up: Issue 3 starts with a recap of the events of the previous 2 issues, at the Daily Bugle, under the title "Spider-Man: menace?". Fredrick Foswell wrote: "... gaudy red and blue tights, referring to himself only as Spider-Man, jumped into the middle of the riot. Many witnesses describe Spider-Man behavior as mocking and obnoxious. 'It was like he was purposely trying to get the crowd even more riled than it already was', says pretzel cart vendor Cristopher Allen. 'When Spider-Man showed up, that's when things really started to get out of control'. 'I thought Spider-Man was trying to calm things down', said tourist Denny Haynes, 'but it's hard to listen to reason from a guy dressed in tights hanging upside-down from a street light'". And yes, all of that is coherent with the events seen, just casted under a different light.
Chuck Austen was particularly bad with this in his run on the Uncanny X-Men:
Nurse Anne was supposed to be the Angelic love interest who we want to get together with Havoc. When Havoc breaks up a wedding to get together with Anne, Polaris has a breakdown and threatens Anne. While she certainly escalated the situation by knocking everyone out, but she makes some pretty good points about Havoc breaking up with her at the wedding. Not to mention, she was kind right about Annie.
It later turned out Anne's creepy-as-shit psychic son had been using his psychic powers to make them go on psychic dates which... puts Havoc's change of mind in a much more disturbing light.
Annie was actually quite the repeat offender, in one issue she calls Iceman a homophobe for not knowing that Northstar was openly gay, and follows this up by calling him Racist. Keep in mind that Iceman is serving as the Strawman and Anne is the Creator's pet. Without knowing that, you'd naturally assume Anne was supposed be come off as a loon. Becomes Hilarious in Hindsight when Iceman's sexuality is revealed.
In an impossible twist, Anne herself becomes a retroactive example of this. Her one and only real "flaw" at first is that she doesn't like mutants (a trait we are told she has little reason for, and must get over). Thing is... she pretty much has every reason to hate them, considering her son is using his powers on her, and she gets violently attacked by Polaris for accidentally seducing Havoc in her dreams thanks to it (even if she was a ginormous creep about it elsewhere), ruining her chances at a normal life.
Iceman is presented as being in the wrong when he expresses concern at letting the newly recruited Juggernaut use their mansion and training equipment. The issue is that Cain is one of the longest-running X-men villains around, and has committed actual acts of terrorism. The fact that Cain turns back into villainy and gets several mutants on the grounds killed later is just the cherry on the cake.
Havoc is supposed to be in denial of his feelings for Anne even when Cyclops "proves" his feelings for her are real. Ignoring the fact that he's engaged already, Cyclops's method of proving Havoc's feelings is to hire a shapeshifting stripper to pretend to be Anne, to which Havoc rightfully responds by covering her up. Even ignoring how utterly messed up it is to expose someone else's body to everyone like that, why on earth is stopping her from stripping in front of strangers not simply the right thing to do?
In World War Hulk, the Illuminati get a number of "What the Hell, Hero?" speeches from other characters for shooting the Hulk into outer space and allegedly planting a bomb in his ship that killed Hulk's wife and child. The latter is unforgivable but the former can be excused by the impetus for the decision being Hulk's rampage in Las Vegas which got about 22 people killed. This was also a period in which anti-superhero political forces were just LOOKING for an excuse to enact registration laws. Exiling him was being pretty lenient and arguably doing him a favor since "Leave Hulk alone" is one of the Hulk's catchphrases. And the Illuminati only end up looking even more like designated villains when it is revealed that the bomb that killed Hulk's wife was not planted by them but by loyalists of the Red King who wanted revenge against the Hulk for overthrowing their leader and that Miek, one of Hulk's new friends, knew about this but didn't tell Hulk because he wanted him to become the Worldbreaker.
Films
In Iron Man 2, Senator Stern is presented as an asshole who only wants the Iron Man technology to bolster the US military, but he is perfectly right that Tony's suits of armours are, to put it shortly, weapons more dangerous than anything a private citizen would and should ever be allowed to possess without very strict government oversight.
Making it even more bizarre is that Stern was part of Hydra and even when the military gained access to one of Ironman's armors all they do is give it a paintjob. Even a decade later no one came close to replicating Tony's suits. All of this makes the debate in "Iron Man 2" feel strangely irrelevant.
In Fantastic Four (2015), after the teleporter to Planet Zero is perfected, a scientist announces that he's going to call NASA to get some astronauts to go explore. Victor and Reed protest this because they want to be the ones known for being the first to explore the new planet. Victor even goes on a drunken rant about how everyone remembers the astronauts of the Apollo missions and not the engineers who made it possible. We're clearly supposed to sympathize with them, but given how they do pretty much everything wrong on their drunken exploration trip (wandering off, touching weird rivers of energy, and suchlike), it obviously would have been much better to send trained professionals on this important and likely dangerous mission. Also, as the inventors of the technology, they're too valuable to risk sending on dangerous missions and would be needed to perfect any errors during the tech's first use.
Spider-Man: Far From Home: Mysterio thinks Peter Parker, a teenager, should not have access to the world-spanning deadly drone system he has inherited from Tony Stark. It's hard to not agree with him, since Peter nearly blows up himself and all of his classmates when he first gains control of the drones.
Daredevil (2015): Mitchell Ellison made the right call not to print Ben Urich's article on Wilson Fisk killing his father, on the grounds that it was based completely on the hearsay of Fisk's senile mother. Unlike his article on Union Allied, all of Ben's information regarding Bill Fisk came from informant testimony with no hard evidence. Ben is trying to take down a major criminal who's got good publicity with the press, using nothing but hearsay, and wonders why no one would listen. The show itself seems to acknowledge this as Ellison is ultimately revealed to only be a Red Herring for Fisk's actual mole at the paper, meaning everything he said was genuine.
Ellison has another case of this season 3. Upon word of Fisk being released from prison, he makes clear to Karen (who's having dinner with him and his family when the call comes in) that she can't be a part of the Bulletin coverage of Fisk because she's biased. Karen thinks he's being unreasonable, countering that she knows more about Fisk than anyone else on staff, and the Bulletin is going to have bias problems regardless of who reports on Fisk between Ben's death and the reveal that one of Ellison's own staffers was in Fisk's pocket (and as far as the public was concerned, Ben was still working for the paper at the time of his death, since he was killed literally the same night he was fired). But in this case, Ellison's call is rather reasonable: unlike all the other reporters on the staff, Karen was actively involved in the events that led up to Fisk's arrest, including the Union Allied scandal and Fisk's two attempts to have her killed over it (plus things Ellison doesn't know about yet like her murder of James Wesley). This means Karen has a major conflict of interest, with Ellison pointing out (after he finds out Karen's been investigating Fisk against his explicit directions), "If people see your name and your connection to Fisk, it compromises this paper!" especially when Fisk could smear Karen with a libel suit. So this is a case where Both Sides Have a Point. (There's also an implication that Karen might be on thin ice with Ellison given her prior misuse of Bulletin resources to aid and abet Frank Castle during The Punisher (2017) season 1, which may not have happened that long before Daredevil season 3.)
While it's framed partially as Ellison being angry over Dex wounding him and murdering several reporters in the course of his attack on the Bulletin to get rid of Jasper Evans, Ellison's demand for Karen to tell him what she knows about the real Daredevil is semi-reasonable since Karen knows information that might help the police in their investigation.
Rafael Scarfe may be crooked and on Cottonmouth's payroll, but when he gets in an argument with Misty about Luke's raid on Crispus Attucks about celebrating a vigilante helping cops out after years of investigation with no payoff, his argument makes a lot of sense. There was basically no danger to Luke and he doesn't kill anyone, so even if he wasn't trained like Misty complained, Luke was able to storm a place full of armed gangsters without really putting anyone in danger. Sure, Scarfe is corrupt, and he basically advocates the NYPD giving up and Holding Out for a Hero, but Differently Powered Individuals exist and considering they couldn't stop Luke either, so they might as well take the help.
Another instance occurs in the final episode of season 1 with Misty. Inspector Ridley slams her for not trusting her fellow officers enough to protect Candace Miller, and the show seems to paint Misty's poor judgement as the reason Mariah Dillard goes free. However, this seems to ignore the fact that this was the same NYPD recently revealed to be mired with Dirty Cops, one of whom was Scarfe, Misty's own partner. Coupled on with the fact that it's only been a matter of months since it was uncovered that large numbers of NYPD officers were in Wilson Fisk's pocket, it's not hard to see why Misty would've had reservations trusting her colleagues.
Thomas Ridenhour in season 2 is another case of this. While he's stonewalling Misty's efforts to investigate Mariah, and is a former high school sweetheart of Mariah's, he's as invested in trying to stop the criminal violence in Harlem as the other NYPD detectives. Just...he's not as good at it, as shown by his efforts to use Comanche as an informant.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Regardless of how much they're presented as Obstructive Bureaucrats who jumped to labelling the Flag-Smashers as terrorists to avoid having to actually consider their problems, the GRC are right that dealing with the sudden reappearance of half the world's population all over the globe is an extremely complicated affair that will leave lots of people unhappy. Also, regardless of how sympathetic the Flag-Smashers' cause is, their actions (such as blowing up a government building with people still inside) are textbook terrorism.
Western Animation
Avengers Assemble: Tony during the Avengers Disassembled arc. Cap says that Tony's ego is the reason they get beaten so badly by Ultron and the Avengers that leave with him agree along with other flaws in Tony's leadership style. While they are right to a degree there is more to the situation than just his ego. He refused to finish off Ultron so he could try to save Arsenal, something Cap calls him on but is similar in his desire to help Bucky. There was also Tony calling Cap on bringing Life Model Decoys along to battle Ultron which while not directly responsible for the destruction of Stark Tower allowed Ultron to fool Tony into believing he was trapped. Tony's decision to basically destroy everything he's worked toward is treated by the others as a consequence he brought on himself but the fact was that if he hadn't, Ultron would have had a significantly deadlier arsenal to work with then he already was using. Tony honestly comes off looking like the better man because he doesn't shove it in Cap's face that he gave Ultron the tools to get as far as he did in the first place while Cap refuses to let Tony forget his role in letting Ultron stay active.
Ultimate Spider-Man: Throughout the first two seasons, Peter Parker is often depicted as a jerk for wanting to work alone. While it's true that this incarnation of Spider-Man starts off as waymore impulsive anddickish than usual, Spidey's arguments to defend himself are actually pretty valid. His new teammates and self-proclaimed "friends" are a bunch of jerkasses who frequently harass and disrespect him for little to no reason at all, force themselves into his life without any consent from his part, and know much more about him than he does about them. And that's not forgetting about Nick Fury, who for all his claims to be a responsible authority figure, has little to no respect for his recruit's privacy and promises (he placed security cameras in his house, and their initial agreement clearly stated that Peter doesn't need to work in a team if he doesn't want to). Therefore, Spider-Man has no actual reason to trust any of them, completely ruining any lessons about thepositives of working in a team. This comes up again in "The Incredible Spider-Hulk" where Fury dismisses Spidey's complaints about his PR problem as just immature whining when it's clear that Jameson constantly berating him has truly begun to affect his ability to fight crime.
When Lance joined the X-Men, Scott does not trust him and eventually accuses him of being behind a series of joyrides which have totaled the various X-Vehicles. He is presented as being in the wrong for not trusting Lance and being so apprehensive, in order to motivate Lance to stick with the Brotherhood, even after Scott realizes he was being a dick about it and apologizes. However, Scott had every right to be suspicious as Lance had been an aggressive criminal and was only interested in joining because of his crush on Kitty. Scott even did try to welcome him at first, but became dissuaded when Lance repeatedly did things for the fun of angering Scott including lying about going on joyrides when he did not.
Magneto had schemes such as evolving the mutants he deemed to be 'worthy', and assembling a group of followers to his cause, in preparation for the inevitable war against humans when the world finds out they exist. Xavier always felt he was taking an extreme stance against humanity and opted to reveal themselves when they were ready...except there was one rogue SHIELD agent who deemed mutants a threat to humanity and built a Killer Robot with advanced weaponry to go after Wolverine and the larger X-Men and Brotherhood members, though Magneto ensured the battle was brought to the world's attention. The result is a widespread witch-hunt against mutants leaving them on the run. Xavier was conveniently out of commission thanks to Mystique, but one wonders what his reaction would be to see police around his school.
with the Absorbing Man's Sentiment. They felt that it would have been better for Female!Thor to create her own mantle instead of taking the role & name of the God of Thunder, which was seen as a massive disservice to one of Marvel's most popular heroes. Not helping matters is the fact that Female!Thor responds to this with a Lame Comeback before knocking him out.