Marvel Universe
Reimagining the Artifact in this franchise. open/close all folders
Comic Books
Comic Books
- This is what Brian Michael Bendis has done with Marvel's lesser or dated 1970s characters like Luke Cage and the first Spider-Woman.
- According to his commentary in an Ultimate Spider-Man collection, this was also Bendis's intention with the introduction of that universe's Venom. The series' treatment of The Clone Saga is a more solid example.
- Likewise, Bucky Barnes. While Robin's reimaginings tend to keep the Kid Sidekick angle as a basis, Bucky, though remaining a junior partner to Captain America, became a kind of shadow assassin that did the dirty work that an iconic symbol like Cap just couldn't be seen to do. The Kid Sidekick turned into a sniper that used "Kid Sidekick" as a cover. The Ultimate Universe had him as a wartime photographer who was assigned to photograph Cap kicking Nazi ass; the Marvel Cinematic Universe aged him up and made him a friend and fellow soldier.
- Rick Remender has stated he's fond of this practice, as he considers it a challenge to use obscure or hated characters from periods like the 90s. He's since made Onslaught, a widely hated 90s villain, the Big Bad of AXIS, and brought back Brother Voodoo, a hero from Marvel's 70's monster era whose obscurity was a Running Gag in Fred Hembeck's gag comics.
- The New X-Men series ditched the standard superhero threads, a Silver Age convention seen as Narm by the writer in light of today's Darker and Edgier comic stories, for black and yellow leather outfits. When the spandex returned in Astonishing X-Men, we're given a good reason for it: The people need to feel like they can trust their heroes, especially the hated and feared mutants, so a "Darker and Edgier kill squad" look was wrong for them.
- Dazzler was created primarily to cash in on the Disco music craze of The '70s, with her backstory being that of a disco singer. She debuted in 1980, just months after disco music went out of popularity. As a result, later writers have kept Dazzler around by having her switch to different music genres that are relevant to the contemporary period.
- In today's political climate, it's next to impossible to unironically portray an American Captain Patriotic character who can be taken seriously, since unquestioning loyalty to the most powerful military superpower in the Western hemisphere is far more likely to be seen as the mark of a soldier than the mark of a superhero. So then why is Captain America still such a popular character? Well, in addition to being the oldest example of such a character still in publication, the modern incarnation of Cap is easy to root for because he fights for American ideals—freedom, democracy, equality and human rights—rather than for America's government. He's actually far more likely to question (or outright challenge) authority figures than many other superheroes, and will gladly disobey any order that goes against his conscience. In his own words: "I am loyal to nothing... except the dream."
- This portrayal of Captain America actually goes all the way back to the 70s, as an attempt to portray him as his Golden Age self in the 50s (just having switched from punching Nazis to punching Communists) completely tanked with readers. In fact, that run was so unpopular that it was subsequently retconned that the McCarthy-era Captain America was actually a government-assigned replacement; a right-wing man who leapt at the chance to defend America from Communism and who was slowly driven mad by the failed reproduction of Cap's Super Serum. He was even brought back in the 2000s as an Evil Reactionary, as a combination of the damage done to his mind and his strong 50s-era Conservative cultural values left him both horrified by the way progressive values had reshaped America since his time and unwilling to come to terms with it. This also extends with the Bucky and Red Skull of the 1950's, who both became their own independent character, the former a fan who eagerly became the new Bucky and the latter a Communist impostor of the Red Skull.
- The Two-Gun Kid was named that because his adventures were set in The Wild West. At that time, any gunslinger under the age of 30 was a 'kid' because it was unusual for people that age to be experienced enough with a gun to make a name for themselves. The miniseries Six Guns, which is set in the New Old West and has Legacy Characters for many of Marvel's western properties, instead has their new Two-Gun Kid be an actual kid.
- The Dawn of X relaunch for the X-Men brand retools some of the old lingering elements that go back decades and seem out of place or passe today, but simply couldn't be removed completely due to tradition.
- The first issue of House of X provides clear and solid definition of what an Omega level mutant was. Before, it was a vague term that loosely meant "mutant who won the Superpower Lottery", and yet it was inconsistently applied and done haphazardly only to be forgotten. Here, the definition is a mutant whose dominant power is deemed to register or reach an undefinable upper-limit of that power's specific classification (ex. Iceman to temperature manipulation, Storm to weather manipulation, Magneto to magnetism, Jean Grey to telepathy etc.) while presenting a list of those definitively considered Omega.
- One of the messiest backstories in the history of the X-Men comics (which is nonetheless a crucial part of an iconic character's backstory) involves Betsy Braddock (Psylocke) swapping bodies with the Japanese professional assassin Kwannon, resulting in her going from a prim and proper white British woman to a highly sexualized Asian ninja. Racial politics aside, this made her so popular that the change stuck, with Marvel even forbidding the writers from undoing it. Over the years, however, changing social mores (and a desire for authentic representation) led to Psylocke attracting progressively more criticism until she was finally reverted back to Betsy Braddock's original body, and made Tamer and Chaster as a result. For many, however, this didn't take, and "sexy ninja Psylocke" remained much more popular with fans than "wholesome British Psylocke". Dawn of X decides to have its cake and eat it by having Betsy become the new Captain Britain and headlining Excalibur (2019)note , while Kwannon becomes the new Psylocke and becomes an Ascended Extra as the main character of Fallen Angels (2019). In other words: Betsy Braddock got to remain in the series, and fans got a Psylocke who looked and acted like the most iconic version of the character—without the awkward baggage of her being a white woman trapped in an Asian woman's body.
- X-Force is reimagined from a dark black ops team of anti-heroes to being the mutant CIA that's equal parts intelligence and special ops. X-Force has a history of this, considering the title was born out of the '90s Dark Age and had to be reinvented numerous times to fit as a current title.
Films
Films
The following have their own pages:
- The Amazing Spider-Man did some of this:
- Aunt May: In the comics it's hard to imagine changing her, but this, like most 2000s adaptations, ages her down on the grounds that Peter's aunt — as in, the wife of the brother of one of a high-schooler's parents — would probably not be in her nineties.
- Intelligence making you a total outcast is something of an exaggeration of how high school works — if anything, you'd probably be pretty cool if you could make gadgets like Peter does! As such, rather than everyone being a dick to Puny Parker, he's fairly popular, though Flash Thompson's still his nemesis 'cause hey, everyone's got an enemy or two.
Video Games
Video Games
- Spider-Man (PS4) has J. Jonah Jameson not as a newspaper editor but as a talk-radio pundit and conspiracy theory podcaster รก la Alex Jones. And it makes a lot more sense than it should. So much sense, in fact, that the Marvel Cinematic Universe would borrow from this game to modernize Jonah similarly in Spider-Man: Far From Home. The Daily Bugle itself, however, is still mentioned as existing as a newspaper separate from Jonah's podcast, with Mary Jane working for them, though it's mentioned that they offer an online edition like many real-life newspapers do in order to stay afloat in the digital age.
Western Animation
Western Animation
- The idea of a wrestler taking random challenges from the crowd might just about have been plausible when Spider-Man's origin was written in 1962, but creators since then have just had to barrel through it and hope nobody asks questions. Marvel's Spider-Man makes an attempt at bringing it into the 21st century by suggesting it's not a normal wrestling event but a Reality Show called So You Want to be a Wrestler? (It's still unlikely Spidey could just turn up, not give his real name, and end up wrestling the champ — for real — the same day, but the basic premise is there.)
- The first film in the Raimiverse portrays it as being much seedier than the implications of the comics, with Peter going there to win some one-off prize money after seeing an ad for it rather than it being a bit of a career that he had as Spider-Man before actually becoming a superhero. It also adjusts the events leading to Uncle Ben's death: Peter actually defeated his opponent in the ring and then was stiffed by the manager for not putting on as much of a show of it for the audience, so Peter spitefully lets a robber who just made off with the prize money run past him as revenge—complete with Ironic Echo to the manager of "I missed the part where that's my problem"—only for it to bite him in the ass and leading to alot of guilt-angsting. In the comics, he'd become a bit arrogant from all his publicity stunts and similarly didn't see stopping the burglar as being his problem, but more because he was just a performer and it wasn't his job to stop some hoodlum. It still leads to the realization that With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, just for different reasons.
