Examples of The Scrappy in the Marvel Universe franchise.
Marvel Universe characters who have been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap have their own page.
A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Examples shouldn't be added until six months after a character is introduced or becomes hated, to avoid any knee-jerk reactions.
- Annihilation: Few fans of Annihilation: Conquest liked Wraith, a new character introduced in a tie-in miniseries. In an arc full of lesser lights and very humanized characters, a motorcycle-riding uber-Space Elf with ill-defined darkness powers and a fantastically wangsty backstory stuck out like a sore thumb. After the miniseries ended, Wraith only appeared as a supporting character in Conquest itself before returning over a decade later to be killed off by Knull in Web of Venom.
- The Avengers:
- During the Busiek/Perez run, new character Triathlon wasn't held in very high esteem among the fandom. Some of this was due to being a member of a Church of Happyology, some of this was due to his being foisted on the team by politics, but mostly due to his acting like a Jerkass to the established characters people actually like. After he left the group, any enmity against him was largely forgotten — until he mercilessly killed Crusader at the end of Secret Invasion (2008). He's since reappeared in Avengers (2023) as an agent of the anti-mutant terrorist group Orchis, apparently as their "Avengers expert." His dialog makes it clear he's mad about all the flack he received for killing Crusader, and still refuses to feel any guilt for it.
- Wonder Man earned this reputation back in the 80's, when he was a member of the West Coast Avengers. The fan reaction to the infamous storyline where he tried to break up Scarlet Witch and The Vision so that he could date the former earned him the ire of a number of readers.
- The Sentry: The Sentry was originally received well enough (largely because of his interesting origins and his jaw droppingly cool fight with the Green Scar Hulk), until World War Hulk or Secret Invasion. Unfortunately, Bendis got hold of him and turned him into Norman Osborn's pet killing machine with the mentality of a child, and gave him more powers than Silver Age Superman. This, combined with the fact that writers kept changing Sentry's origin and his relationship to the Void (The Void is Sentry's split personality! The Void is the real Bob Reynolds, who was a druggie! The Void is the Angel of Death!), meant that eventually every reader had stopped caring about who the Sentry really was and just wanted him to go away. Even then, his "interesting" origins were a cause for a broken base considering they consisted of him stealing a random vial that somehow made him strong enough to fight off Galactus. That same one that much more technologically advanced Galaxy spanning empires like the Skrulls can't stop but a much more primitive lab's random vial is just the trick.
- Spider-Man:
- The first Madame Web, mainly because she gave a lot of vague prophesizing and warning without ever actually helping Spider-Man with the threats she keeps saying are just around the corner. It wore on people's nerves after a while. Even in-universe Spidey doesn't like her all that much. You can imagine the collective facepalm Spidey fans had when Sony revealed the Madame Web trailer.
- A lot of the villains introduced during Brand New Day, like Freak or Paper Doll, were rather hated by fans due to replacing many of Spidey's established foes as well as the new villains established during JMS's run. At the same time many of said villains lacked the traits that made the old bad guys likable or cool. The only exceptions to this are Mr. Negative and Overdrive, who have managed to establish themselves as lasting and worthy new additions to Spidey's Rogues Gallery.
- New "hero" Alpha due to basically being the antithesis to everything Spider-Man stands for (has zero responsibility, wastes his gifts, has an ego the size of a mountain, etc.).
- Carlie Cooper's portrayal resulted in a massive backlash from fans.note Originally it was more along the lines of Replacement Scrappy for MJ, but it escalated when everyone, from past girlfriends to best friends, kept telling Peter how 'right' she was for him because she's his 'intellectual equal'. It was REALLY not helped by the fact she would get mad at Peter for the stupidest things, was pushed as a Woobie because her hero cop dad supposedly died only to be revealed he wasn't a hero and wasn't dead, act like a hypocrite, amongst other problems. She's also received ire for having similar characteristics as four of Peter's past love interests: troubles with father (MJ), Nerds Are Sexy and attempted Adorkable (Deb Whitman), loves Peter for him (MJ, and an invert of Black Cat), is old friends with Harry Osborn and a tsundere. You could make the case that the writers are trying to evoke Gwen Stacy in her character, but in the end comes off as a lot like Lana Lang in Smallville. In the aftermath of Spider-Island, she was demoted to a supporting cast member without romantic interest in Peter. However, in Superior Spider Man, the hatred for her increased tenfold, with Carlie somehow being the only one who investigated why Peter was acting massively out of character. She discovers what happened by doing what can be considered the barest minimum of detective work. Again, fans were not amused at Carlie getting such an easy win, and rejoiced when she was Goblin'd... only for it to inexplicably not work on her, and her alone. Fortunately, after that she left the Spidey books entirely.
- Cindy Moon aka Silk was this when she was first introduced (she got seriously Rescued from the Scrappy Heap when her ongoing came out though). Created via retcon as a girl who was also bitten by the same radioactive spider as Peter Parker, Silk was a huge Creator's Pet and Replacement Scrappy who was introduced to be both Peter's new love interest and crime-fighting partner, whose debut storyline also featured the highly controversial Face–Heel Turn of Black Cat. Besides her powers being essentially 'Spider-Man's only better', she also had Strangled by the Red String as an actual part of her powerset, as she produced pheromones that made herself and Peter unable to stop trying to make out when together, something that raises serious questions about consent. All of this combined with her It's All About Me disposition, and her inexperience in superheroingnote made her heavily disliked...and yet, for some reason Marvel decided to give her an ongoing series.note
- All of the Inheritors except Morlun and Karn. While some dislike Morlun, most are ambivalent towards him and he had a mysterious and scary vibe that made him a decent addition to the Rogues Gallery. The others on the other hand are generally considered boring and annoying at best, and ruin Morlun's style at worst, and fans despise how Dan Slott seems obsessed with constantly bringing them back to try and use them to slaughter beloved characters for shock value. Two stand out in particular:
- Daemos, Morlun's bigger, dumber, eviler brother. Mostly for having very few personality traits beyond... "big, dumb, and evil." Also because he killed MC2 Peter Parker and Spider-Man Unlimited.
- Morlun's father Solus too, for being an Invincible Villain capable of killing Captain Universe!Spider-Man with little effort, despite the latter being a Physical God.
- Paul. Mary Jane's mysterious new beau in The Amazing Spider-Man (2022) quickly became this due to how sudden he showed up to derail MJ and Peter's relationship just as it seemed that they were back together in the previous run. The fact that Mary Jane absolutely refused to explain everything and left readers in the dark for about a year did not help in trying to endear readers to him. His only point as a character is to enforce Status Quo Is God by keeping Peter and MJ apart, because he has very little personality outside of that. To make matters worse, he's clearly not meant to be a Hate Sink, because most of the time, he's actually nice, which actually only makes him worse in the fans' eyes, to the point that he's gained an ironic fanbase around this.
- Venom: Lee Price is widely regarded as the single worst Venom host ever and hated accordingly. Mostly because he was an angsty, misanthropic Jerkass, Villain Protagonist, and Creator's Pet who lacked any of the likable qualities of any of the other Venom hosts, while also seeming to stick around for an obnoxiously long time even after the symbiote was rightfully given back to Eddie and getting no redeeming moments, just continuous Kick the Dog scenes directed at actually popular characters like Mania. It may not surprise you that the readership cheered when Price was finally disposed of by having Carnage kill him in a hilariously brutal and humiliating fashion, so much so that it actually helped Carnage himself get a lot more fans then he used to have.
- Ultimate Marvel: Ultimate Deadpool, primarily amongst fans who had come in from the original Marvel Universe. 616 Deadpool, while having originally been created as basically a rip-off of Teen Titans villain Deathstroke the Terminator, is well-known in current pop-culture for going so deep into Chaotic Stupid that he emerges in the deepest part of Chaotic Awesome, glorifying in surreal, bloody-yet-wacky antics and lots and lots of fourth wall breaking, perhaps being the best known comic version of the Fourth-Wall Observer. 1610 Deadpool, on the other hand, is a horrifically mutilated cyborg; not only is he an active participant in a mutant-phobic country's sick program of kidnapping mutants from other countries and then hunting them down to slaughter them on national live television for entertainment, he's fully aware that they are usually innocent. He just hunts them anyway because he finds it fun. In other words, Ultimate Deadpool is crazy, but in a sick and horrifying way, whereas Mainstream Deadpool is pure Crazy Is Cool, and so the fans of the original revile the Ultimate version — the closest Ultimate Deadpool has come to being Rescued from the Scrappy Heap is when he appeared as a Composite Character (Ultimate Marvel appearance and rough MO (still runs a reality show), Marvel Comics personality) in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. Ultimate Deadpool would eventually be unceremoniously killed off in Deadpool Kills Deadpool by the main Deadpool, with few readers mourning him.
- X-Men
- A notable example is Maggott. A mutant with a very disturbing power who spoke in thoroughly annoying South African slang and was hyped up as being awesome, amongst other complaints. Fortunately, they got rid of him after a short-but-not-short-enough amount of time. And now he's dead.
- The third man to go by "Thunderbird", Neal Shaara, by virtue of having absolutely no right or reason to use that namenote ; the original Thunderbird and his brother were both Native Americans with superhuman strength, durability, and speed. Neal is/was an Indian with fire/energy powers. Having the popular Psylocke dump the also well-liked Archangel for this guy also rubbed people the wrong way.
- More than practically any other teen X-Men character, Ink from the very short-lived Young X-Men series was hated by many fans. The fact that the writer went to extreme lengths (like ya know, giving him the power of Phoenix) to make him seem important did not go over well with fans, and he also had the stigma of being a human rather than a mutant. Being a Jerkass and bizarrely ending up with Emma Frost in a Bad Future also didn't help.
- In second place would be Icarus, for his Wangst, his bringing up his dead girlfriend (whom he'd only dated for a week) every other appearance, and the fact that he ends up trusting an Obviously Evil Sinister Minister and getting himself and many of his friends killed in the process. A panel of his dead body with a ridiculous expression on his face has become a meme in the fandom. His wangst is especially bad when you consider that the rest of his team actually have legitimate emotional problems. He even compared the feeling of losing the aforementioned girlfriend to losing everything, even though he has a supportive mother as well as brothers and sisters who are also mutants and attend Xavier's with him, and is generally not in any of the conflicts at Xavier's. What's worst is that he said this to Surge, whose father basically disowned her because of her powers, and whose mother is too afraid to stand up to him. Icarus already had two strikes against him, having been created by the fan-reviled Chuck Austen and introduced in what's generally considered one of the worst X-Men stories of all time. His Wangst didn't so much tip him over the edge as throw him bodily off of it.
- Very difficult to believe now, but Kitty Pryde started out like this. Her introductory story was fine, but some fans thought that Claremont had no idea what to do with her after John Byrne left (it did not help that Byrne's final three issues were crowning moments of awesome for Kitty). Her acceptance became general in the Brood arc (which also introduced Lockheed, her constant companion) and with the story "Professor Xavier Is A Jerk!" which was fittingly about Kitty Pryde justifying her membership of the X-Men.
- Scarlet Witch, thanks to her being responsible for depowering most of the mutant race and sending the entire franchise spiralling into what many consider an Audience-Alienating Era for most of the 2000s. What was interesting was that before House of M, she was a pretty popular character, particularly among romance fans for her marriage with Vision, those with mental illness, and female comic book readers. A big part of the hate comes from the fact that, in order to use her again, writers had to retcon that she was being manipulated by Doctor Doom at the time (we'll ignore how little sense that makes) to justify the Avengers forgiving her, and now anyone still angry at her tends to be painted as unreasonable (including The Vision, her ex-husband, whom she murdered, and is treated like an insensitive Jerkass for being angry about it), since she wasn't technically at fault. Never mind that in the same comic Cyclops was talked about like he's Hannibal Lecter despite the fact that his actions actually were the result of being controlled by another force, which the Avengers know because that's why they started that Conflict Ball to begin with. While Wanda was retconned into being possessed to excuse her actions, Scott was shown from the beginning that this was the case, and yet he still gets treated like shit. The Double Standard just pisses fans of the X-Men off, especially since the characters angry at her are almost exclusively X-Men. Her well-received solo run, however, succeeded in having her Rescued from the Scrappy Heap and her portrayal in the Marvel Cinematic Universe brought old and new fans in to check out her more well-received pre-House of M storylines. In addition, the Doom retcon has been all but ignored, with storylines focusing on Wanda's standing with mutant characters not even hinting at his involvement, instead having her be responsible for the deed, while also having her act as The Atoner to build further stories from what she did, rather than sweep it under the rug. This has, ironically, led to the fandom by and large forgiving Wanda, with most now recognizing that the whole sordid M-Day affair was the fault of Executive Meddling, not her as a character.
- Arcade became this after Dennis Hopeless's Avengers Arena and Avengers Undercover. Not only is he the impetus of both of those ill-received books, but he directly caused the deaths of Mettle, Red Raven, and Juston Seyfret/Sentinel — three beloved characters who fans were hoping would get focus for the first time in years — and got away with it, all in a particularly embarrassing failed attempt by Hopeless at making a guy who had long been regarded as a lovable loser at best into a serious threat. All it succeeded in doing was making Arcade into probably the most hated villain in the MU and actually making his Villain Decay even worse then when he was regarded as a joke character, as other writers refused to play along and depicted him as a pathetic laughingstock with a target on his back for going after teenagers, while fans just wanted Arcade dead and his victims restored to life. Tellingly, his next major appearance in Secret Wars (2015) was mostly just an excuse to brutally kill him in the most humiliating, batshit insane, and over-the-top manner possible.
- Sally "YouTube is more important than personal liberties" Floyd. Yes, she actually expressed that viewpoint, and what's more Word of God says the reader was supposed to agree with it. There is even a list for the Top Ten Reasons to hate Sally Floyd
◊. Paul Jenkins seems to have a flair for creating these, actually, as he's also coughed up the ridiculous and biology-defying Spider-Man villain The Queen and everyone's favorite Invincible Hero, The Sentry (though, to be fair, the Scrappification of this character only came into full when other writers began using him; Jenkins has nobody to blame but himself for the disastrous Fallen Sun, however). - In X-Men: The Krakoan Age, Moira X became this after Inferno, as many feel her descent to outright genocidal villainy (complete with skinning Banshee and killing Jean) was rushed and sloppily handled. While many found her powers interesting when the saga began under Jonathan Hickman, the overall consensus is that her character took an almost immediate downturn in writing quality once he announced he was leaving the books, and the X-writers positioned her into the role of a villain.
