Marvel Comics General

Nope.

They even make fun of the Spider-Man Goblin Queen when she claims the title and he says, "Someone already has that."

Instead she goes by Queen Goblin.

I can't tell if that's stupid or secretly brilliant considering she has Norman Osborn's sins.

"So why is Madelyn Pryor called the Goblin Queen?" Probably because it sounded cool. She consorted with demons rather than goblins,but maybe she figured, eh, close enough.

NGL, the fact that Madeline Pryor kind of looks like Mary Jane does fuel my prophecy that Wells MJ is actually a mind swapped Norman Osborn.

Wait, so is Captain America finding out the president is a supervillain and then going all nomad still canon?

Because the shifting timeline would change it from Nixon to Obama.

It was never confirmed in that storyline that the leader of the Secret Empire was Richard Nixon, only that he was a 'highly placed governmental official'. Plus, he shoots himself in the head when he's caught — which, if he actually was Nixon, would have made for a much greater violation of World Outside Your Window than Adolf Hitler being roasted alive by the Human Torch in his bunker.

So Earth-616 has never had a presidential supervillain. The original Secret Empire storyline was an allegory for the Watergate scandal, but nothing more than that.

That's kinda what MCU vulture did.
The comic don't touch on it that much (probably to maintain the "world outside your window" by having random civilian still be relatively normal.), but it would be interesting to have a Damage Control or Agent of Shield mini all about preventing random people to get their hands on potentially dangerous alien tech, supernatural artefacts shiny green rocks or grey goo.

Hell, I think it would be neat to see more perspective on how civilians feel and think about all the various super hero shit that's been going on.

Classic Ultimate Marvel did a pretty good job on this.

Like, Peter's high school became a media circus ground due to all the weird shit that keeps happening there because he's Spider-Man.

I remember a DC story of Supes catching a guy attempting a robbery with a jetpack he build himself and going "You built this and went for robbery?".

Was a heartwarming thing overall.

Don't forget Marvel's own Shocker. He's a self-taught engineer who invented his own Vibro-Shock gauntlets and the insulated suit needed to use them safely. But a legit career isn't an option for him since he already had a criminal record before he invented those. And it's really hard to get legit work when you've got that on your record.

Superman might take you to jail, but he’s not a dick about it like the other guy.

Invincible had an even funnier take on that kind of thing where Invincible talks a guy who invented a gadget to sell his invention instead of squandering his talent on crime, only for the guy to then sell his inventions to criminals.

We get that all the time though.

It's mostly hate.

The Worst tm

Marvel Civilians are basically if 65% of the entire population was that racist aunt everyone avoids at family reunions.

Would be a good opportunity to show Marvel citizens not being jackasses tho.

And it can even progress the plot. There was one time where a combination of a movie of Spider-Man being made, general heroism, and war criminal Nick Fury giving some words of support, makes Spider-Man the number one hero among New Yorkers. We see reports of people talking about Spider-Man, ETC.

Which the Kingpin exploits and buys the rights to Spider-Man's image to make a profit.

Which....doesn't go anywhere since he gets arrested in that same arc.

We see Marvel citizens not being jackasses sometimes

Like when Captain America moves into and then buys an apartment building, his tenants are pretty cool. Same thing for the people in Hawkeye’s building he managed.

(Geez, managing an apartment building is going to become the new becoming a private detective)

Spider-Man sometimes interacts with cool people who don’t suck in his guise of the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

The people of Broxton were cool.

The most recent Hulk on unlimited has him squatting with some desert squatters and they seem cool.

Basically anytime people exist for reasons other than to form anti-mutant mobs or yell at superheroes, they’re generally pretty cool

I've mentioned it before, but I've always despised stories that go hard on the "Marvel civilians are awful" thing. The reader's responses to the superheroes doing their thing should not be "why are they bothering when all these scumfuck assholes are just gonna try and genocide them tomorrow?". It fosters this disgustingly misanthropic view of people.

It’s kind of in Marvel’s DNA from the start

Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and X-Men all had the premise of saving an ungrateful world. Hulk too, kinda, but Hulk often lived down to peoples fear

Notably though, of the first three, only X-Men has religiosity stuck with that since it ties into the mutant metaphor.

Spider-Man became friendly neighborhood as often as not and Fantastic Four became beloved heroes. Ben Grimm, once the one most likely to cause a panic became “the blue eyed idol of millions”

Edited by Bocaj on Mar 28th 2024 at 9:43:00 AM

Sincere TY for giving me some non-awful examples of Marvel civilians.

I’ve occasionally wondered precisely what the Franchise Original Sin was for the over-the-top monstrous portrayal of the civvies was. Maybe Operation Zero Tolerance?

Edited by HamburgerTime on Mar 28th 2024 at 11:42:56 AM

My guess is 'most Spider-Man issues.'

Up until One More Day, Spider-man was probably the most pro-civillian book at Marvel. We'd know the name and inner thoughts of every single person who Peter ever interacted with and they'd all be treated as valid.

I think a big aspect of it is Flanderization. The early comics had plenty of civilians who didn't like the heroes, but they often had legitimate reason for it, weren't demonized as being a step away from genociding anything slightly different from them, could be swayed otherwise, and were balanced out by people who appreciated and liked the heroes. But later comics homed in on the jerks and seemed to think that was what made Marvel unique and not the fact that they presented varied viewpoints.

So for Spider-Man, for instance, yeah, there are people who didn't like Spidey, but they often had pretty understandable arguments beyond just general dickishness unless they were a full-on villain, and Spidey is just likely to meet someone who really liked and supported him. Hell, J. Jonah Jameson has developed from Spidey's biggest hater to one of his biggest supporters.

I think a good way to observe what I'm talking about is the case study of Bolivar Trask. When he was first introduced way back, he was a tragically misguided Anti-Villain who created the Sentinels out of Cold War paranoia and a genuine desire to protect all of humanity, even the mutants he feared, and when the Sentinels go wrong and he's confronted with the humanity of the mutants, he heroically sacrifices his life to save the X-Men and atone for his mistake. Yet despite all of this, many later comics talk about the guy like he was genocide incarnate and built the Sentinels to mass-murder mutants because he was massive psycho racist Hate Sink, which is not what he built them for in the original story nor how he acted. And bad adaptations - hell, sometimes even good ones - tend to portray him in the latter light. All moral nuance is stripped away, he temporarily opposed the X-Men and was a normal human, so he must be the fucking Devil cheering for Holocaust 2.0.

I'll also note how the writers who defy this sort of nonsense and write things more like the early comics did - giving sympathy and reasonable views to the civilians - are generally the GOOD writers, while bad writers rely on the Humans Are Bastards shit as a crutch to justify their shitty decisions. Just look now at the contrast of how Johnathan Hickman wrote Orchis and humans in general at the Krakoan Era (as intelligent human individuals just as capable of good or evil as the mutants with reasonable fears and opinions that made the conflict very morally grey) with how Duggan and company are writing them now in Fall Of X (as vile neo-fascists who just want to genocide all mutants and conquer the world because they're all just a bunch of stupid racist man-babies who fall for the flimsiest of lies).

Edited by immortaleditor on Mar 28th 2024 at 10:47:41 AM

As far as later comics go, I think the Messiah Complex arc where Bastion resurrected Trask and a bunch of other anti-mutites had a fairly sympathetic portrayal of Trask. He's pretty much the Token Good Teammate of the Human Council, understandably distraught that he's indirectly caused more mutant deaths than any of the others but unable to rebel because of the circumstances of his resurrection, and asks to be put out of his misery when the X-Men find him.

The Avengers United digital comic finally wrapped up. Geez, it was a long one. Fairly good too once the looong fight against the Fear Teacher on Earth wrapped up.