Four things from the Avengers comics that WON’T be in the movie

So, we’ve all seen the new Avengers movie trailer by now, right? Well, if you haven’t, here it is:

I have already mentioned that I am really, really looking forward to this movie. The very ideas of a superhero team-up and a massive cross-franchise continuity have never been attempted in a major Hollywood movie before. I am so excited, I can hardly wait until May to see it!

Of course, the Avengers movie may be new, but the Avengers comics have been around since 1963. Decades and decades of publication with many, many different writers tends to bring with it a wide variety of stories – some good, some bad, and, well, some rather bizarre and controversial. It is kind of inevitable that there would be some things that, looking back, Marvel Studios won’t want to put into any of their movies.

While most of the internet buzz has been speculating about what will be in the movie, I’m going to go through some things that I can say with absolute certainty WON’T be in the movie.

Captain America becomes The Nomad

The whole point of Captain America is that he is the embodiment of everything America values and believes in. He is the perfect person: noble, brave, kind, self-sacrificing, stoic, always doing the right thing. He stands for what America’s flag stands for, which is why his uniform is so red-white-and-blue.

But what happens when that flag has been stained with scandal, corruption, and evil? What happens when Captain America’s country betrays his values? In the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, Marvel’s writers decided to explore this idea. They wrote a story where ol’ Cap got fed up, and changed his superhero name and costume. From now on, he was to be “The Nomad”!

Why we won’t see it: This costume.

AAAAAAHHH! Disco fashion! My eyes are burning!

That, and I don’t think audiences would like the idea of “Now even Captain America hates America? What is the world coming to!” Fans didn’t like it back then, either, and it wasn’t long before the writers had the Captain change his mind.

The Dark Reign Saga

This one is kind of a shame, because I really think it would make for an amazing movie. The story begins with an alien invasion of Earth, that our heroes can’t seem to beat. Then, suddenly, Spider-Man’s arch-nemesis, the supervillain known as the Green Goblin, appears…

…and defeats the alien queen, saving the day! As a reward for his efforts, the Goblin is given a full pardon and made the new head of S.H.I.E.L.D. Now as de facto leader of the good guys, the Goblin decides to fill the Avengers’ roster with other villains claiming to have had a change of heart. This goes about as well as you would expect.

As in, not well at all.

Why we won’t see it: Copyrights and contracts.

Back before Marvel had the idea of making its own movies in-house, it used to contract out the movie rights to Marvel characters. Today, Sony has the rights to Spider-Man and everyone from the Spider-Man franchise, including Green Goblin. As long as they keep making Spider-Man movies, they will keep those rights. And they are making a Spider-Man movie as we speak, also to be released this summer:

Ant-Man Betrays the Avengers

Ant-Man is not exactly the most well-known or popular superhero, what with his main ability being the ability to change his size.

Bad guys could probably just step on him.

I guess it is only natural, then, for him to have some emotional issues. When one of his outbursts threatens a mission, Captain America suspends him from the Avengers and orders him court-martialed. To prove himself, he builds a robot and plans to have it attack the Avengers. His hope is that if he saves the team from this robot, they will forgive him and let him back in. The trouble: his wife, the Wasp, discovers his plan and decides to stop him.

Why we won’t see it: That’s when this happens.

Yes, they are both superheroes, and she is just as strong as he is. But that is still his wife. Not cool. I don’t think audiences would take kindly to that.

But if you think that would spark some fires, there was one issue of the Avengers comics that has gone down as the worst, most tasteless, most offensive comic possibly ever published. The notorious…

Avengers #200

Okay, here’s where things get bizarre, creepy, and just plain wrong.

So in 1980, Marvel published the 200th issue of the Avengers comic. In it, Ms. Marvel, a superheroine and periodic pal of the Avengers, woke up one day to discover she was pregnant, with no memory of how she became so. The baby grew unnaturally quickly, and in three days, Ms. Marvel gave birth to a baby boy that in no time at all became a grown man. Helpfully, he explains what happened, and it is a doozy.

Apparently this guy is some kind of weird inter-dimensional being that wanted to see what life as a human would be like. He kidnapped Ms. Marvel, used his mind control powers to “seduce” her and impregnate her with… um, himself, apparently… and then wiped her memory and sent her back to Earth.

Now satisfied that he learned what being a human was like, he decides to return to the dimension from whence he came, and takes Ms. Marvel with him. What do the Avengers do about all of this? Mostly just stand around and go, “Boy, that was weird, huh?”

Why we won’t see it: Do I even need to say it?

This very famous letter to the editor called The Rape of Ms. Marvel decried this travesty, and even many of Marvel’s own writers openly criticized the sheer misogyny of this issue. I am pretty sure that today, Marvel would like to pretend that this comic never happened.

Information from Wikipedia and The Escapist