Editing Marvel Comics (section)

===The Avengers===
Like DC, Marvel came up with a big meta-team for its superheroes. But whereas the Justice League was built around the idea of "people love these superheroes, so if we have them all adventure together, it'll be even bigger!", the Avengers originally began as a kind of dumping ground for B-lister and C-lister superheroes whom Marvel really didn't think could pull off their own comic lines. Characters like Iron Man, Ant Man, and Thor.

It should be added that the Avengers was originally more of a "place to stay" than a traditional superteam; there was a large mansion donated by Tony Stark, which was effectively the Avengers "clubhouse", with people cycling in and out as they needed a place to stay. The thing is, as so many characters cycled through, and so many minor characters who suddenly got popular had the Avengers in their history, their profile was raised until they became the big "all hands on deck" team Marvel used when they wanted to do a big "event" comic. Nowdays, you'd be hard-pressed to remember that they began as Marvel's league of losers.

With how many different iterations of the Avengers there have been, it's harder to create an iconic line up similar to their Justice League counterparts. Arguably the closest you've got to a "core trio" is Iron Man (who tends to be bankrolling the Avengers), Captain America (who tends to be the team's field leader or at least its emotional center), and Thor (who is usually the heaviest hitter who remains part of the team instead of wandering off like the Hulk). Modern additions that have "stuck" include the Black Panther (who acts as the team's "Batman" in all the ways Iron Man doesn't), Black Widow (the sneaky secret agent character), and the Falcon (literally added as an affirmative action measure in the 70s and unfortunately hasn't grown an identity beyond that, even after they made him Captain America).
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====Thor====
Odin has banished [[Thor]] to Earth in the guise of a mortal to learn humility (later retconned as secretly being to protect him), Donald Blake discovers his true identity and powers during a trip to Norway. Originally just a normal superhero with some Norse trappings, to the point he debuted battling against giant alien rockmen, later authors tied him closer and closer to Norse myth and "Donald Blake" has largely been forgotten except as a continuity gag when Thor has to pretend to be mortal.

Thor's iteration of [[Ysgard|Asgard]] is markedly different from the original Nordic myths in many ways, ranging from the subtle (Thor is blonde, not redheaded) to the overt (Sif is a warrior-goddess instead of a fertility goddess, Loki is Thor's adoptive brother rather than Odin's blood-brother). This is actually explained in-universe as a result of the Ragnarok cycle; the Asgardians and their foes perish during Ragnarok, but are then reincarnated to begin the cycle leading up to Ragnarok all over again, leading to distinct alterations between the different iterations. Regardless, Thor still carries his trusty hammer Mjölnir, lightning powers and all, which can only be wielded by the worthy. They actually went through with the Ragnarok thing in 2004, leaving Thor dead for three years before reviving along with Asgard in a stretch of empty land near Broxton, Oklahoma. This was something you either loved or hated.

Sadly, post 2010 Thor has been more or less universally hated, mainly due to the long and dreary "Unworthy Thor" storyline, in which Thor was stripped of his ability to wield Mjolnir, had an arm hacked off, and spiralled into a deep depression, all the while a mysterious woman (later revealed to be Thor's old on-off flame Jane Foster, [[Wat|who was also undergoing chemo during that period]]) took up Mjölnir and ran around calling herself the new Thor. Even some of Thor's enemies thought that this was a bit tasteless.

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==== Captain America ====
Rejected from normal military service for being too scrawny, all-American patriot and scholar Steve Rogers volunteers as a test subject for an experimental super soldier formula. The formula works, transforming Steve into the "peak human" Captain America, but a spy kills the formula's creator and destroys the lab, causing the formula to be forever lost. Gets a shield made of super metal capable of reflecting stuff, which he can throw as a weapon with uncanny ability. He starts out fighting "spies" because the writers can't have him killing soldiers from a country America isn't technically at war with, though that didn't stop them from printing the now-famous cover where Cap punches Hitler in the face. After Pearl Harbor, he leads America's superpowered forces during World War II against mad scientists and Axis supervillains.

Near the end of the war, Captain America was lost and frozen in an iceberg, surviving thanks to the serum putting him in suspended animation. He is recovered near the start of the modern age (whenever that currently is) and revived, where he's a living anachronism in a world that has largely moved past him, but he's still the best leader of supermen in the world (if not beyond). After the Silver Age he's been defined by his whole-hearted, idealistic belief in America's self-proclaimed values, which clashes something fierce with whichever grim realities the writer is spotlighting at that particular moment. At various points Steve has either quit the job, been killed off or lost his super soldier powers; when this happens other people have taken up the shield, most notably Bucky Barnes (his kid sidekick from the 40s, who was once up their with Uncle Ben in deadness before being brought back as the "Winter Soldier") and Sam Wilson (the Falcon, and yes they already made the [[/v/|Captain Falcon]] joke so don't bother.) There was also that one time a different black guy took an experimental serum recreation and got Cap's powers, but it was in a limited series and he was effectively written out at the end because it was meant to be Marvel's version of the Tuskegee experiments.

====Iron Man====
Tony Stark, a genius weapon inventor and an eminently hateable asshole playboy was kidnapped by [insert currently politically acceptable villain here]. After being forced to make weapons for his captor, he instead builds a suit of super-armor with which he escapes, although the experience leaves shrapnel dangerously close to his heart, which results in him needing to keep a part of the suit over his heart to keep the shrapnel from migrating. Usually played as a heroic trainwreck: He fights the good fight, but he just as frequently is his own worst enemy. His control freak issues, general assholery, survivor's guilt, and alcoholism are the usual centers of his weaknesses. Although a household name ''now'' thanks to his namesake movie, he was a B-Lister at best before then.

Ironically, despite the fact that his powerset is the most duplicable, Iron Man has a very small "superfamily", perhaps because of his long-running association with the Avengers. The most well-established is James Rhodes, ex-Army and his personal chauffer, who has at various times either worn the Iron Man suit himself or run around in a more heavily armed "combat-focused" suit called the War Machine armor. Also, around 2014, he gained a "successor" in the form of Riri "Ironheart" Williams, Wakandan-American teen prodigy who built her own version of the Iron Man armor just to prove she could... it was just as bad as it sounds, and naturally she got her own MCU series on Disney+ in 2025.

Few people will remember it, but Iron Man also temporarily ran his own team of superheroes called Force Works during the 90s.
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==== Black Panther ====
The most prominent and well-known of Marvel's African super-heroes (Storm arguably doesn't count as her being from Africa rarely mattered), as well as one of the earliest African superheroes from a mainstream comic publisher. T'challa is the heir to the throne of Wakanda, a reclusive and highly technologically advanced African nation. Originally, this was because Wakanda had A: avoided being caught up in the slave trade, B: developed a custom of sending its best and brightest abroad to study the most advanced technologies they could and then apply their knowledge to bettering their people, and C: the only significant deposit of vibranium, which is kind of like if America had been the only country in the world with uranium when trying to invent the atomic bomb. (In some versions of the story the wacky properties of Cap's shield actually come from vibranium, America's limited stockpile being a gift to FDR from T'challa's father T'chaka.) Less intelligent writers retconned this into Wakanda having always been centuries ahead of the world in terms of technology due to said Vibranium, because the original backstory didn't make them special enough. Cue black people IRL [[Derp|thinking Wakanda is a real place]].

As King of Wakanda, T'challa has been infused with a mutagenic/magical plant called "The Heart-Shaped Herb", which has given him superhuman strength, speed, senses, reflexes and agility. In later versions, his costume has also gone from just [[Batman]]-esque stylized bodyarmor to a hyper-advanced suit of [[Power Armor]]. Mostly concerned with keeping Wakanda safe from outside threats, or sometimes with opening up Wakanda to the outside world - it depends on the series/media. Wakanda being characterized as [[Elf|arrogant, elitist, aloof and xenophobic]], this is often a lot harder than it sounds. Usually he does this by joining international superhero teams like the Avengers, where he can upstage Iron Man with his own genius-level smarts and vibranium swag. Also there was that weird time where they hooked him up with Storm, seemingly solely to have an excuse to put Marvel's only big-name black superheroes in the same comics.<!-- July, 1966 -->