History TheArtifact / MarvelUniverse

* In the 1980s, Marvel decided to try codifying how strong various characters were in relation to each other, with a "Strength Class" system that topped out at 100 tons. It was very quickly apparent, however, that [[SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfMass the system didn't match the actual events of the books]]; characters would routinely lift things weighing far more than a hundred tons, even ones explicitly supposed to be more in the 50-70 range. That said, while the tracking method turned out to be horribly off, the system did work as a way to establish who was stronger than who (characters who could lift 50 tons were almost always shown as weaker than characters who could lift 80, and those were weaker than characters who could lift 100), so the system stayed in place. Consequently, many sources use terms like "Class 50 super strength", without being all that clear on what Class 50 actually represents other than "more than Class 40."

** Also, the name Young ''Avengers'' became a case of this ever since Creator/KieronGillen worked on it. The original name wasn't just to denote that they were young superheroes, but actually a take after the original Avengers with costumes, codenames and themes inspired by them [[note]]Iron Lad = Iron Man, Patriot = Captain America, Wiccan = originally Thor but later changed to Scarlet Witch, Hulkling = Hulk, Stature = Ant-Man, Speed = Quicksilver. Hawkeye and Vision directly took their names from their inspiration[[/note]]. When Gillen worked on them however, more than half the team were removed and replaced with America Chavez, Noh-Varr, Kid Loki, and Prodigy -- none of them inspired by any members of the Avengers.[[note]]Although it could be argued that America became the new member inspired by Captain America after Patriot retired for good, Loki became the new member inspired by Thor, and Noh-Varr is part of the 'Captain Marvel' legacy, with Prodigy, a member of the ComicBook/NewMutants, being the odd one out.[[/note]]. Nowadays the name lost even more of its meaning, given the existence of the Champions (who are both all-teenagers and mostly inspired by members of the Avengers), and the Young Avengers themselves have been aged to be in the range of 21-23 years old, which still young, it's not younger than what some members like Wasp were when they joined. Also, most of them have been part of at least one adult version of the Avengers by now which renders the joke of them not being 'the real Avengers' completely moot.

** Also, the name Young ''Avengers'' became a case of this ever since Creator/KieronGillen worked on it. The original name wasn't just to denote that they were young superheroes, but actually a take after the original Avengers with costumes, codenames and themes inspired by them [[note]]Iron Lad = Iron Man, Patriot = Captain America, Wiccan = originally Thor but later changed to Scarlet Witch, Hulkling = Hulk, Stature = Ant-Man, Speed = Quicksilver. Hawkeye and Vision directly took their names from their inspiration[[/note]]. When Gillen worked on them however, more than half the team were removed and replaced with America Chavez, Noh-Varr, Kid Loki, and Prodigy -- none of them inspired by any members of the Avengers[[note]]Although it could be argued that America became the new member inspired by Captain America after Patriot retired for good, Loki became the new member inspired by Thor, and Noh-Varr is part of the 'Captain Marvel' legacy.[[/note]]. Nowadays the name lost even more of its meaning, given the existence of the Champions (who are both all-teenagers and mostly inspired by members of the Avengers), and the Young Avengers themselves have been aged to be in the range of 21-23 years old, which still young, it's not younger than what some members like Wasp were when they joined. Also, most of them have been part of at least one adult version of the Avengers by now which renders the joke of them not being 'the real Avengers' completely moot.

** Similarly, the X-Men were originally called "the Children of the Atom" because it was implied it was the experimentation with the atomic bomb that brought on mutations in the first place (Professor X specifically recieved his powers because his parents worked on nuclear research). As time went on, this piece of characterisation became EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, and the X-Men [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke became much more centered on genetics than nuclear physics]], as well as [[{{Retcon}} retconning]] so that mutants like Selene, Apocalypse, the Forevr Man, Burke or Wolverine have been alive since as much as prehistoric times, but the title was so iconic [[RuleOfCool (As well as sounding pretty cool)]] that it's still used to this day. It was later HandWaved by claiming that the detonation of the atom bomb just triggered a boom in mutant natality.

** [[Characters/XMen90sMembers Jubilee]] was one of the depowered mutants after the 2005 ''House of M'' event, but still stuck around as a superhero, initially as the tech-based hero Wondra, and then in the 2010 story ''ComicBook/CurseOfTheMutants'' she became a vampire. While this did make her unique, the fact was that she really only became a vampire because Marvel wanted to appeal to fans of ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'', which was en vogue at the time. It didn't take long for ''Twilight'' to fall out of public consciousness, yet Jubilee remained a vampire for years afterwards, making it seem rather odd when she would show up in other books, such as in ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} or various X-related books, when she herself quite obviously stood out from the other mutants with her mystical-based powers, and seemed like a bit of a relic of yesterday's news. Eventually, Marvel caught on to this. In 2018, Quentin Quire both cured her of her vampirism and restored her mutant status at long last.

** Spider-Man is fundamentally a street-level superhero like Daredevil and originally his adventures had a realism because TheSixties to TheNineties was TheBigRottenApple era of New York City (where real events like the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977 1977 blackout]] occurred in the page), a time of high crime statistics when the idea of multiple street-level superheroes in a single city had a little verisimilitude. Since the era of Giuliani and gentrification, however, street crime level has dropped down while highly restrictive gun laws have been put into effect. Of course, the presence and activity of supervillains don't depend on that for explanation, but fundamentally the reduction of crime should mean that Spider-Man's hero duties putting demands on his personal and professional life needs more justification than "[[BrooklynRage it's New York]]".

*** Likewise, the idea of "Peter taking pictures of Spider-Man" which is a beloved trope and central to his dynamic of JJJ suffers because TechnologyMarchesOn. In TheSixties through TheEighties, when all photography was done on film and professional photographs were shot manually with analog controls (i.e. selecting f-stop, exposure, ISO with fingers and in-camera in the middle of a shot), it was believable that a superhero like Spider-Man would be too fast to capture and needed an insider as it were to provide the pictures, which made it possible for Peter to gain exclusive rights to Spider-Man's still photographs. But this made it harder with the digital revolution and impossible in the smartphone age, as such the trope started fading in comics in TheNineties and TheOughties and has disappeared in TheNewTens.

* During the mid-'10s, Creator/MarvelComics had been pushing heavily for ''ComicBook/TheInhumans'' as the SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute for the mutants of the ''ComicBook/XMen'' brand as the RandomlyGifted outcasts of the Franchise/MarvelUniverse, under the order of Ike Perlmutter to give the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse their own equivalent down the line, as Marvel did not possess the film rights to the ''X-Men'' at the time. This was seen as a ''massive'' AudienceAlienatingEra for Marvel, as the Inhumans were shoehorned whenever possible and the comics took every chance they could in downplaying the presence of the mutants. This culminated in universally-reviled stories like ''ComicBook/DeathOfX'' and ''ComicBook/InhumansVsXMen'', and not to mention the ''ComicBook/{{Resurrxion}}'' relaunch where they were shoehorned into sharing space as if the two were equals. All of this changed in 2019, when parent company Creator/{{Disney}} purchased Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox in a historic $71.3 billion buyout, thus the film rights to the ''X-Men'' were returned to Marvel, and the ''X-Men'' were immediately treated as an A-list property complete with their very own [[ComicBook/DawnOfX relaunch]]. During this time, the Inhumans only got one miniseries called ''Death of the Inhumans'', which ended with many of the new Inhumans KilledOffForReal and the classic Inhumans being PutOnABus. However, AudienceAlienatingEra as it was, this era introduced a number of Inhumans that are still around, such as [[ComicBook/MonstersUnleashed Kid Kaiju]], [[ComicBook/MoonGirlAndDevilDinosaur Moon Girl]], Inferno, Lash, Synapse, ComicBook/DaisyJohnson (retconned into being an Inhuman), Blizzard (likewise), Toro (again), and biggest of all, BreakoutCharacter [[ComicBook/MsMarvel2014 Ms. Marvel]] (Kamala Khan) who has become ''the'' most successful new hero in the '10s. Their origins are heavily tied to the Inhumans, and it's unlikely to be changed for that reason, and it looks rather awkward now that the Inhumans aren't being pushed in the slightest. They're a weird deal not being mutants, mutates, or any other origin, but rather a now-forgotten relic of time many fans prefer to forget, and yet there's no way it could possibly be retconned because it's hard-written into their origin stories (at least, not without some major and widespread finagling). Had these characters been introduced at any other time, they likely would've been mutants, if not something else.[[note]]Notably, Ms. Marvel was [[WhatCouldHaveBeen originally planned]] to be a mutant until the Inhumans push saw her changed to be an Inhuman, and once her [[Series/MsMarvel2022 Disney+ series]] premiered after the X-Men regained their full prominence, it actually went with her being a mutant.[[/note]]

** The issues of gentrification and high costs in New York, the challenges to print media by digital media, and the rise of cellphones and the internet have also meant that Peter's old job as a photographer for a newspaper, being the guy who "takes pictures of Spider-Man", making a sufficient livelihood off of that (despite being lowballed on the price by JJJ), and still living in New York was harder to accept. It was already dated in TheOughties, that Creator/SamRaimi's adoption of the same in the ''Film/SpiderManTrilgy'' came off to more than a few observers as AnachronismStew (Raimi made it work however by artificially mixing different aspects of New York history). ''ComicBook/TheAmazingSpiderManDanSlott'' had Jameson become the Mayor of New York, which essentially updated the dynamic between Peter and Jameson.