Marvel Universe
Truer to the Text in this franchise. open/close all folders
Multiple Media
Multiple Media
Spider-Man
- Spider-Man: The Animated Series got a lot of attention in its day for being the most faithful Spider-Man adaptation ever produced at the time, particularly compared to the two animated adaptations that came before it. It was the first adaptation that really highlighted Peter Parker's snarky, wisecracking personality, the first to include most of his classic supporting cast (Mary Jane Watson, Harry Osborn, Flash Thompson, Eddie Brock, etc.), the first to utilize nearly all of his classic rogues gallery, and the first to portray Peter as an eligible bachelor with multiple potential love interests (although it combined Gwen Stacy and Felicia Hardy into one character for simplicity's sake).
- The Spectacular Spider-Man is the most faithful adaptation of Spider-Man in comparison to most of the Spider-Man adaptations that have been created before. Just like in the comics, Peter is a loner hero who solves his problems on his own without adult mentors or sidekicks, and he balances his school and life himself. It also presents the most comic-book-accurate takes on the titular character, his supporting casts, and villains (such as Norman Osborn, who is portrayed for the first time as "a bad man made worse" rather than a literal split personality).
- Marvel's Spider-Man
- Zig-Zagged. The series is about Peter balancing his superheroics with his normal life, which is something that Ultimate Spider-Man had downplayed for a majority of its run, but still takes itself in a fairly different direction due to Peter's enrollment into Horizon High.
- Gwen Stacy's portrayal as a somewhat stuck up, condescending bookworm actually reflects parts of her early portrayal in the comics, but differs in both kind and degreenote .
- Jack O'Lantern's portrayal is much closer to the comic version than in Ultimate Spider-Man; the one in USM was created by magic and shared the name and appearance but otherwise had no other resemblance to his comic counterpart, while the version here is a mercenary like in the comics.
- The Amazing Spider-Man Series also gave Spider-Man a more snarky and wisecracking personality, as well as web-shooters, in contrast to the previous Spider-Man (who's web shooting was organic and part of his powers).
- Barring a set of wings, the Green Goblin from Miles Morales's universe in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon is closer to the Green Goblin of the actual Ultimate Spider-Man comics than the show's main Goblin, who was a composite of his Ultimate incarnation (a hulking monster instead of a man in a costume) and mainline (using a glider and pumpkin bombs, as opposed to leaping around and being pyrokinetic) selves.
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is likewise a fair bit more accurate to multiple iterations of Spider-Man than before. Its portrayal of Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen is truer than the animation series, Marvel's Spider-Man, where both were teen contemporaries of Peter. Likewise, it is the first version of any cinematic Peter to show him as an adult superhero, which is what the vast majority of comics stories covers, whereas previous adaptations had emphasized Peter as a high school and college student. Both of the film versions of Peter married Mary Jane Watson, who was his wife in the mainline continuity for twenty years (1987-2008) and in a number of long-lived alternate versions (the newspaper strip, Spider-Girl, The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows).
- Venom's version of its title character, especially compared to its last silver screen adaptation, where it wasn't even clear if the symbiote was sapient and a much worse Eddie Brock was behind all the villainy. Here, it's its own character, and is one of the few adaptations to faithfully portray the Venom symbiote's trait of genuinely caring for its hosts, and the only one to make a Heel–Face Turn like the comic character has.
- Played With in the case of the Green Goblin regarding his film appearances. In Spider-Man, he wore a solid green costume that was lacking in both purple details (e.g., the hood and tunic) and satchel from his classic design. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Green Goblin wears this costume in his intro scenes wearing the same costume from Spider-Man 1...before upgrading it in the second act to look more like the one from the comics, purple hood and satchel included. However, the main difference between the comics costume and the No Way Home costume is that the latter design dispenses with the green mask from the original Spider-Man movie, allowing the audience to see Norman Osborn's Nightmare Face.
X-Men
- Wolverine and the X-Men (2009) was largely made with this in mind, being much more faithful to the comics than X-Men: Evolution and the live-action movies, and much more up-to-date than the animated series from the 1990s (which mainly adapted older stories from the comics, while generally avoiding more recent ones). Although the Myth Arc of the series involves an original story, its Ensemble Cast includes nearly every major Mutant character from the comics, and the later episodes freely incorporate plot points from classic storylines like Days of Future Past, The Dark Phoenix Saga and Age of Apocalypse. It also fits in several relatively obscure characters from Grant Morrison's New X-Men, like the Stepford Cuckoos, Dust, and Rover the Sentinel. Not to mention that it features every major Mutant faction from the comics—the X-Men, the Brotherhood, the Acolytes, the Marauders, and the Hellfire Clubnote .
- Marvel Anime: X-Men, the next animated depiction of the X-Men, goes even further, despite the change of setting as the show takes place mostly in Japan and giving two characters an Adaptational Name Change and Race Lift. Still, it follows the same plot point as WATXM, set shortly after Jean Grey's apparent death due to the Phoenix Force, but focuses on a much smaller cast of X-Men resembling the Astonishing X-Men comic (though replacing Kitty Pryde with Storm), and with much more attention given to Cyclops' characterisation rather than Wolverine, fixing a major complaint about how Cyclops was handled in the previous show to make Wolverine look better. However it also avoids doing the same to Wolverine, treating him with respect and characterising him as The Lancer to Scott, to avoid just flipping the problems. It also made use of Armor, a character from Astonishing, and had the relatively obscure villains, the U-Men, as the main villains.
- Logan portrays X-23 as this compared to other adaptations. Laura is prepubescent, unlike her comic version but like her original X-Men: Evolution incarnation. While she uses the Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette comic design, she is Canadian-Mexican. The ethnicity of her character in the cartoon was never stated however she was Ambiguously Brown, making fans pin her as either Latina or First Nation. Backstory wise she is a mix of the cartoon and comic version (for example, she Self Harms like the comic version but has no background in prostitution like her).
- The 2016 Deadpool movie is much more faithful to the eponymous character than his reviled appearance in X-Men Origins: Wolverine- not that this is very hard. For one, he's actually wearing his iconic costume from the comics; two, he doesn't have a sewn mouth, blades that pop out of his forearms, or any of the other changes that pissed off the fans the first time around; and three, he's been restored to his classic Fourth-Wall Observer self.
- Deadpool 2 sees a version of the Juggernaut that's much closer to the original than the one from X-Men: The Last Stand, being an unstoppable force who's far bigger than all of the other characters. Also, he's actually Professor X's stepbrother this time around.
- While created to cash into X2: X-Men United, X2: Wolverine's Revenge takes after the comics more, including the costumes of several characters (though Wolvie's film suit is in as an unlockable suit), Xavier using his '90s hoverchair, and the settings.
Anime and Manga
Anime and Manga
- While the Marvel Anime: Blade takes some cues from the films, it's truer to the comics in many respects, including Blade being African-English (even if Harold Perrineau and several others are Not Even Bothering with the Accent) and Deacon Frost being physically middle-aged with white hair.
Comic Books
Comic Books
- Most Marvel versions of Laufey are Gender Flipped into Loki's father. The Ultimate Marvel version is Loki's mother as in the original myths (although there, his birth father is Odin, so some liberties are still taken).
Films
Films
- In general (and save for exceptions like Spider-Man), movies within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (such as The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Doctor Strange) are significantly more faithful to the source material than those characters' previous Live Action Adaptations were, with the publisher given more direct creative control than for those owned by an independent studio.
- Within the Marvel Cinematic Universe itself, Iron Man 3 was notorious for its adaptation of the Chinese villain the Mandarin. In the comics, the Mandarin had long been a Yellow Peril villain wielding ten Rings of Power; but the film dealt with the offensive stereotypes by making him an intentional in-universe mishmash of "evil foreigner" cliches set up for the media by the real villain, a white man. It was later revealed in All Hail the King that they only "borrowed" the Mandarin image, angering the real one in the process. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (which could get away with it because its hero was also Asian) later introduced the true Mandarin, an actual Chinese man (without being a Yellow Peril stereotype) who had the rings that Iron Man 3 lacked (even if the nature of the rings themselves had changed).
- Avengers: Age of Ultron takes its name from the 2013 comic event which takes place in an alternate future where Ultron has taken over the world. However, the movie shares little in common with the comic outside of featuring the titular robot. The eighth episode of What If...?, What If... Ultron Won?, errs closer to the comic, depicting an alternate take on the film where Ultron defeats the Avengers and moves on to conquer the universe (and then some).
- The film version of the Infinity Stones have a major drawback in that the sheer power of them means a fully completed Infinity Gauntlet can only survive one or two major uses before being irreparably destroyed and most organic beings would die after just one. What If…? (2021) episode 8 sees Ultron gain control of the Infinity Stones, and as he has no organic body to destroy by using them, can perform feats far closer to what a fully assembled Gauntlet can in the comics.
- Thor: Love and Thunder portrays Zeus far closer to Classical Mythology than the Marvel Comics version: a Jerkass God with a thunderbolt weapon, rather than a mostly benevolent deity with innate Shock and Awe powers.
- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: Zigzagged, On the one hand, Bill Everett, as related in the fifth issue of Saga of the Sub-Mariner, never intended for Namor's underwater kingdom to be Atlantis, only inspired by it, and it was not identified as such until over two decades after the character's debut. On the other, its Antarctic location made it clear his kingdom was not intended to be of Mesoamerican origin, as it is in the film.
Live-Action TV
Live-Action TV
- The Daredevil (2015) Netflix series is more faithful to comics than the 2003 Daredevil movie. The show dives into Matt's training with Stick, how he met Elektra in college, as well as how his father is killed by the Fixer and not by the Kingpin as depicted in the movie.
Video Games
Video Games
- The three games based on the Fantastic Four Duology are more faithful to the comics than the two films. The team is like a group of explorers rather than just a generic team. Doctor Doom also has Doombots.
- Hulk and especially The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction are more faithful adaptations of the Marvel character compared to the divisive Ang Lee film.
Western Animation
Western Animation
- The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes is a more faithful adaptation of the Marvel Comics series as well as The Avengers (along with the members of the group as well as their mythos, costumes, origins, enemies, etc) and the Mainstream Marvel Universe in general than older Marvel adaptations such as the ill-fated The Avengers: United They Stand. Earth's Mightiest Heroes is also notable for providing faithful adaptations of stories such as "The Kang Dynasty" and "The Secret Invasion", among others, despite Adaptation Distillation.
- The Marvel Super Heroes is an extremely faithful adaptation of the original comics in comparison to what came before it, in the case of Captain America. The Hulk, Thor and Iron Man are all inversions as their segments were more faithful than what came between this and a few later portrayals.
- The '90s Fantastic Four: The Animated Series restored several elements lost in the team's '70s cartoons, The Fantastic Four (1978) and Fred and Barney Meet the Thing. (At the least, it marked the first time since 1967 that all four members starred in the same cartoon.) The vast majority of the first season consisted of fairly faithful re-tellings and reinterpretations of classic 1960's stories by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
- The Incredible Hulk (1982) is noticeably more faithful to the comics than the 1970s live-action show, including the restoration of Rick Jones' part in the Hulk's origins when the live-action television series omitted him.
