Seriously, what hero in the Marvel Universe (besides
Captain America) DOESN'T have bad publicity?
The following have their own pages:
- Captain America:
- The original "Secret Empire" storyline has Cap framed for the murder of a supervillain, at which point everyone in America turns on him.
- After a whistleblower revealed what S.H.I.E.L.D. was doing using Cosmic Cubes, Sam Wilson decided to take a stand and no longer be bipartisan. This has lead to his popularity tanking and people calling him names like "Captain Socialism". This also damaged his friendship with Steve Rogers, as Sam no longer trusts the US Government to do the right thing and only hopes that they can, compared to Steve, who unabashedly believes they will.
- After the modern Secret Empire crossover, Steve Roger's reputation has tanked thanks to the alternate Steve running HYDRA trying to conquer the world.
- Civil War: The instigation for the events of the crossover is a large amount of collateral damage (including a few hundred dead children) due to a villain with the power of blowing himself up. For a brief time, all the heroes have bad publicity — especially the few surviving New Warriors. The government's idea of damage control is, of course, a Super Registration Act that promptly pits hero against hero. Public opinion then gives all the non-compliers bad publicity. When the new 'government-sponsored heroes' turn out to have overlooked a massive planet-wide infiltration by aliens, Iron Man and Spider-Woman wind up with bad publicity. At this point the government decides to put noted psychotic and multiple-murderer Norman Osborn in charge, due to his brief moment of Villains Do The Dirty Work. This works out about as well as you'd expect, thus leaving the reader to wonder if the US government isn't being depicted as a Villain with Good Publicity.
- The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk. In fact, due to the damage he's caused in his career, it would be very hard to find someone in the Marvel Universe with worse publicity who could still be considered a hero. But you really can't blame anyone.
- Iron Man: In the Armor Wars storyline, Iron Man’s fighting against S.H.I.E.L.D, he’s kicked out of the West Coast Avengers, nearly causes an international incident in the U.S.S.R and gets into a fight with Captain America.
- Kid Colt: Kid Colt was branded an outlaw for killing his father's killers in a fair gunfight. (Some more recent retellings have had Colt admit that he is not sure if it was a fair fight or not, as he doesn't remember if he gave them a chance to draw.) Wherever he travels in the Wild West, he is a still a wanted man and has to keep looking over his shoulder for lawmen and Bounty Hunters.
- Moon Knight: Moon Knight is hated amongst the local superhero community, though it's mostly justified. He's garnered a reputation of being a complete psychopath who is just as crazed as the villains he fights or kills, if not more so.
- Ms. Marvel:
- In Ms. Marvel (2006), this is played literally when Carol hires a publicist as part of her attempt to move up to the A-list of heroes (and after not being recognized by D-list villain Stilt-Man).
- In Ms. Marvel (2016), a plot by HYDRA ends up making Kamala Khan look like a total sellout when her face is used to promote new and expensive apartments without her knowledge.
- In Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace, anti-mutant sentiment has become so bad that even Ms. Marvel, a universally-beloved hometown hero in New Jersey, has become hated after it comes out that she's a mutant.
- New Avengers (2015): The whole team has bad publicity, despite pretty much all of the line-up being some of the nicer people around. The American military and S.H.I.E.L.D. are just waiting for the team to step out of line and arrest them all. That they're supposedly run by A.I.M. has a lot to do with this.
- For an added bonus, the team includes Hawkeye and Songbird, who have both been heroes with bad publicity themselves.
- ROM Spaceknight: Rom's a Knight in Shining Armor by any standard, but he's very bad at explaining things. Things like "my gun doesn't kill people, it sends them to a Phantom Zone", "this gadget I pulled out lets me detect shapeshifting aliens planning to conquer Earth", and "those people I shot were shapeshifting aliens hiding among you." Combine that with his faceless red-eyed design and silver full-body armor, and you have him looking an awful lot like a Killer Robot descending from the sky, waving around mystery devices, and vaporizing random humans for no reason. It's really no shock that people are scared of him.
- Squadron Supreme: The team starts off the story as these, thanks to the Overmind brainwashing them into conquering the world for him, and their knowing "trust us, it was an alien godlike being who brainwashed us" would, understandably, never fly with anyone. Rebuilding that reputation and fixing the damage is the impetus for Hyperion's big idea...
- The Ultimates: Loki manages to make Thor look like an out-of-control maniac when he stops some police brutality with excessive force of his own.
- Warlock (1967): Adam Warlock is one of the universe's most powerful and cunning heroes who famously serves as an arch enemy to Thanos and whose leadership helped the universe survive the events of The Infinity Gauntlet. He's also very secretive and enigmatic and has a habit of teaming up with his Arch-Enemy almost as often as he opposes him. This has lead to a majority of Earth's heroes distrusting him at best after the events of Infinity Gauntlet and were actively hostile towards him during Infinity War even after he helped save the universe once again. Him keeping a secret base for his Infinity Watch on one of Mole Man's hideouts and offering protection to the known terrorist in return also didn't do much for his reputation among humanity in general.
- X-Men: The anti-mutant prejudice in the X-Men labels probably qualifies, although this can also be seen as a case of Fantastic Racism. Anti-mutant sentiment is so strong that the original X-Factor masqueraded as anti-mutant crusaders to endear themselves to the public.
