Modern Marvels (Marvel History Part 3)

   This is the important stuff. We skipped merrily through the origins in the first post (HERE) and glazed over the developments in the following decades (HERE) but now we find out about how the modern stories started. If you want in, listen up! Also watch your feet when you stand up because I'm about to drop some knowledge.

The last roster of the original team.

   Let's start with Avengers Disassembled. The Scarlet Witch, Magneto's daughter is married to the android The Vision, and she's loosing control of her reality altering powers, going insane, imagining the pair of them have children. She unknowingly sets about the death of Jack of Hearts and Scott Lang's Ant Man. She then crashes a Quinjet into the Avengers Mansion and gets the She Hulk into such a rage that she tears The Vision in two. All of Earths heroes come together one last time, their only choice to put her down for good, when Magneto appears and whisks her away to heal her mind himself. The Avengers shocked by one of their own being capable of such a thing the Avengers call it quits and end the team. Thor returns to Asgard as Ragnarok, the norse version of the apocolypse, takes place and all of the Gods are wiped out. 

An alternate world created by the
Scarlet Witch!

   This is directly followed by House of M. After Charles Xavier and Magneto fail to help the Scarlet Witch and they gather the ex-Avengers together in Tony Stark's Tower to think of a solution. She's too powerful though, they decide that ending her life is the only way, much to many of their disgust. Before they reach her room however, she mutters a spell and the entire planet changes. The Mutants are everywhere now and the humans are the endangered species. The House of Magneto rules the land and life is good. The human heroes, start an underground resistance after Wolverine's healing power corrects his memories and he realises things are wrong here. They take the fight to the house of M and during the battle The Scarlet Witch mutters the spell "No more Mutants". The world changes back.

Millions of mutants
left powerless.

   This world is different however. The mutant population used to number in the millions and now there are only 198 of them left. The fall out of House of M is called Decimation. Mutant town no longer exists. Many mutants de-power to still find they are hated or feared. Flying mutants fall to their deaths, healing powers no longer work, hell on earth for those who had powers. The hatred and discrimination still exists. Wolverines memories of his long past are restored. The X-Factor team becomes a detective agency and tries to figure out the cause of this all.

Evolve or die, Spider-man!

   Spider-man goes through a life changing metamorphosis after seemingly dying at the hands of Morlun. He goes into a cocoon state and comes out with organic web shooters and new stingers that emerge from his hands a la Wolverine when he is in mortal danger. In a story called The Other. 

   Then Planet Hulk starts as the Illuminati get tired of the Hulk and his lack of control over his anger so they send him into space in exile, destined to land on an uninhabited planet and then the ship to blow up. He instead landed on the Gladiator like planet and rose through the ranks to become a warrior and later king of the planet. He got a queen and she was pregnant when the ship finally exploded killing her and his child. As you probably know the madder Hulk gets the stronger he gets. So killing his love and child will make him pretty darn strong. He sets off back to Earth with his warrior team intending to kill every last member of the Illuminati.

Gladiatorial combat against the Silver Surfer in the arena, in Planet Hulk!

INSIIIIDEEE OF ME!
Yes a Forgetting Sarah Marshal reference. 

(Update) I should probably also add Extremis an Ironman story where a terrorist is using nano robots to execute terrorist attacks. Ironman infects himself to get a cure and winds up merging with his ironman armour. He is now the suit. He doesn't put it on to go into battle, it GROWS OUT OF HIM! Also around the same time in Captain America The Winter Soldier is revealed to be Bucky Barnes, Cap's old wartime sidekick, who has been trained and brainwashed by the Russians. These two modern stories are being mined to give the plot bases for the Ironman 3 and Captain America 2 movies. It will be interesting to see the movie equivalents up to date with the comics incarnations. Plus it makes sense from a marketing point of view. No point having people like your films and try the comics only to find a completely different story going on. 

Cap Vs Bucky the Winter Soldier.

The lines are drawn for the Super-human registration act!

   The New Warriors team, while filming for their reality show get into a fight they cant handle and a villain blows himself up killing hundreds of children in a nearby school. The Government quickly passes a Superhuman registration act, that requires each powered individual to put their secret identities into public domain and be trained by the government so no tragedy like the Stamford massacre can happen again. Heroes are naturally split down the middle. A super powered Civil War. Some already are public with their identities and others like Spider-man, would put their families and friends at risk by coming clean. Captain America turns against his government while Tony Stark heads the new initiative. Spider-man comes public with his identity and puts Mary Jane and Aunt May into Stark Tower for protection. After the Civil War Captain America is seemingly assassinated and Bucky takes his place in the suit.

   The act is carried out and each state in America is given a superteam and new powered children and older individuals are trained across the land in The Initiative.

The large cast involved in teaching and running the 50 state Initiative,
and a few students to boot.

Hulk VS Sentry!

   In World War Hulk, it's exactly what it says on the tin. Hulk gets back from space, madder than he's ever been and smashes the f*ck out of everyone and everything. Thor and Asgard are back and Asgard is now hovering over a small western town in the USA rather than in it's own realm. He takes a crack at beating Hulk but he isn't strong enough. He is only finally put down by The Sentry. A recent addition to the Marvel U, who is supposed to have been around for decades but who wiped everyones minds of his existence. Anyway the, mentally unstable, Sentry puts the smack down on the Hulk. 

Mr. Sinister and his marauders hunt the first
new mutant child.

   An X-men cluster of stories is next up. In Endangered Species, the Beast tries to explain why only a few mutants kept their powers and where all that energy went. Then when the first new mutant since M day is born the X-men, Cable, Bishop, Mister Sinister and the Purifiers go after it in Messiah Complex. The X-men disband after the mansion is knocked down are there are almost no mutants left. Divided We Stand deals with several solo stories about what the members do next. This is followed by the teams eventual reformation in San Francisco rather than Westchester New York, in a story aptly named Manifest Destiny.

The X-men relocate to San Fran!

One Moment In Time.

   And back to Spidey again as the fallout of his secret identity reveal is made deadly serious. Aunt May is hit by a snipers bullet intended for Peter and as she is in hospital he dons a black (non-symbiote) suit and goes out to take down the killer who targeted his family, in the story Back in Black. Then in One More Day, after exhausting all possible scientific and magical ways to bring Aunt May back out of her coma his only remaining option presents itself. In the form of a deal with Mephisto. He can trade his love and marriage with Mary Jane for Aunt May to be restored to health, as the demon Mephisto feeds off unhappiness, and Peter and MJ's love is super special. They make the deal and the past is rewritten. Most if not all of the stories happened the same from his marriage to present day only Pete and MJ are just friends and not married and nobody knows his identity again. The details of this new timeline are told more clearly later in the story One Moment In Time. After this new world is brought about Pete's life gets even more bizarre with a whole new bunch of villains like Mr Negative, Overdrive and Menace. 

The shape changing Skrulls launch a full Earth invasion!

  After the Illuminati meddled with the Skrulls for the first time after the Kree/ Skrull war the Skrulls wanted revenge. They developed ways to not be detected while shape changing and planted sleeper agents posing as characters on each of the major teams in the Marvel U. This Secret Invasion, was a devastating war as they try to take over the planet. It resulted in the death of long time Avenger The Wasp and the war was only won by a long range sniper attack by none other than long time Spidey villain Norman Osborn the now current head of The Thunderbolts, a government rehabilitation unit for super villains. In the aftermath Ironman the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. was fired and blamed for the breach in security. S.H.I.E.L.D. was disbanded and the madman Norman Osborn was given the lead of the newly formed H.A.M.M.E.R. world security. During his Dark Reign he formed the Cabal a sort of anti-Illuminati made up of powerful ex and present villains of the Marvel U to decide it's new direction. He created the Dark Avengers using villains like Bullseye and Venom posing as Hawkeye and Spider-man. 

Osborn in his Iron Patriot armor
takes down cyclops in his Dark Avengers.

   Learning that Bishop is chasing after Cable to kill Hope Summers the only mutant born since M day, Cyclops and Beast make time machines to send Wolverines secret assassin squad X-Force, into the future to protect her from him, in a story called Messiah War. Then anti-mutant riots in San Francisco result in marshal law and Norman Osborn's formation of his own Dark X-men to control it, in Utopia. Followed up by Nation X where the mutants eventually settle on Magento's old asteroid base that after leaving orbit crashed not far from the bay and is now an island.

The Sentry brutally kills Ares during the Siege of Asgard.

   Norman Osborns leadership ends as he crazily lays Seige on the newly reformed Asgard and crashing it into the ground. The Sentry dies taking him out and his Dark Avengers and X-men come to an end. The Superhuman act is abolished and a new Heroic Age comes about where heroes can just be that. A return to classic no nonsense story telling. Luke Cage is put in charge of the New Thunderbolts.

Asgard crashes into the desert during Osborn's attack on the Gods.

Mutant savior
Hope Summers.

   Then the third part of major X-book stories starting with Messiah War and continuing through Messiah Complex ends with Second Coming. A conclusion to Cables efforts to raise Hope Summers in the future, and not have Bishop kill her, and return her back to the present to become the mutant kinds saviour. Cable sacrifices himself to save Hope and she is left in the care of Scott Summers.

The Young Avengers hunt the
Scarlet Witch!

   Shortly after the Avengers Disassembled a Young Avengers was formed with Scott Lang's Daughter, the grandson of the original black guy who the Captain America super serum was tested on, a shape shifting skrull and what was later discovered to be the magical and speedster powered possible children of the Scarlet With. The ones they thought she imagined/ created with her powers somehow existed. They set off on a Children's Crusade to find and save the Scarlet Witch.

Daredevil takes New York!

   A prison temple of the Hand, a ninja assassin bad guy guild, is erected on the ruins of the Hell's Kitchen building Bullseye destroyed in the Dark Reign event and Matt Murdock comes back from visiting Japan, as a changed and now mind controlled individual. He seeks to utilise the Hand for good but he isn't the man he used to be and starts taking over the streets in Shadowland. Of course Marvels street heroes stop him and put and end to his nonsense. 

God of Chaos wants his Universe
back as the nothing it started out as!

   In Chaos War, the nothingness from before the big bang comes back in the form of the Chaos King with an army of demons and Gods to turn the universe back to nothingness. He pauses all mortals taking them out of the fight but as he breaks down the barriers of existence all the dead Avengers and X-men team up and take the fight to him, with Hercules leading the charge. 

   In Three Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four sacrifices himself and is seemingly killed by trapping himself inside the Negative Zone as Annihilus and his Annihilation Wave try to break through. He saves Ben Grimm and the kids by doing so. In his honour, the fantastic four is no more and it is replaced by the Future Foundation. Where Spider-man is given his spot on the team in Johnny's will, and lots of child genius characters are taught by Reed Richards. 

The Future Foundation and the class of child geniuses.

Spidey splashes his cash on a stealth mode
suit during a team up with Black Cat.

   After his Brand New Day, Peter Parker hits the Big Time and gets a perfect job at Horizon Labs where he can come and go as he pleases and gets a private secure lab. Spending time making products for Horizon while updating his Spider-man gadgets. Plus the whopping great pay check. He starts dating forensic scientist Carlie Cooper (Yay!) but they break up after she finds out he is Spidey. 

   Shortly after Odins brother the Serpent God of Fear, is released from his underwater prison by Sin, the Red Skulls daughter and they spread fear and doubt throughout the world, in Fear Itself. They release 7 hammers to give out to "worthy" characters as weapons. Good guys like the Thing are targeted and after touching the hammers, they transform into creatures of fear and destroy all in their path. They are only eventually stopped by Tony Stark making an offering to Odin to appear and getting him to make them their own weapons to fight against them. The after affects of the event are called Shattered Heroes as the heroes pick up the pieces.

The Marvel good guys use their God forged weapons to fight back during Fear Itself.

Cyclops VS Wolverine!

   In Schism Wolverine and Cyclops' differing opinions clash. Wolverine wants to teach the kids and keep them out of harms way. With so few mutants left he doesn't want them training as soldiers. Cyclops however wants them to prepare for the worst. The X teams split in two with the two defined leaders. In Regenesis Wolverine opens the school in Weschester again, now called the Jean Grey Institute instead of the Xavier Institute and Cyclops keep things going on Utopia off of San Fran. 

   Which all leads up to the current big Summer event going on at the minute. 

   

The last decade of story telling has led to a fight
for the survival of the mutant race, or is it a fight
for the safety of planet Earth?
AVX!

   Avengers Vs X-men. The Phoenix Force, the God of rebirth that once possessed Jean Grey and ultimately left her dead, is coming back to Earth. The Avengers want to stop it, as it has the power to wipe Earth out. The Cyclops led X-men want to capture it inside Hope Summers. With Wolverine an Avengers member and all of his X-teams and the school left in the crossfire to take sides. So far there has been a failed attempt to capture it in space and Hope rejected the Phoenix when it finally got to Earth so it has split into 5 pieces and possessed Cyclops, his current flame Emma Frost, Colossus and his sister Illyana/ Magik and Namor the Submariner. They used there power to change the world for good, planting crops for starving people ect. changing landscapes and whatnot. Only problem is they are treating Avengers like war criminals and keeping them locked up. However this story ends there must be major consequences and I'd be willing to bet that even if one side wins they will both ultimately have losses. At the end of this series lots of writers and artists are switching series and new series like Uncanny Avengers suggest a team up of Mutants and Avengers. This next initiative is called Marvel Now! and if all of this insane backstory has titillated your brains story box then i'd recommend jumping on then. Marvel now starts in september so hop on with the new issue 1's of countless series. 

Marvel Now, coming soon!