An army of heroes and villains back from the dead.
An alien terrorist out for revenge.
And a copycat robot powered cosmic by forces.
Who are these villains the Avengers created?
The clearest example of the Avengers creating a villain in the comics came when Dr. Hank
Pym combined his expertise in robotics, biology, and chemistry, to build his greatest creation:
Ultron.
Using his own brain patterns, Pym had no clue that giving this robot a twisted version of
his own disturbed mind was asking for trouble.
Barely mobile in his first form, Ultron came to life immediately upon receiving human brain
patterns and immediately decided to rebel against his "father."
Indeed, Ultron reacted to Pym with a murderous Oedipus complex, wanting to kill and replace
him.
Ultron quickly evolved, later stealing the impervious metal adamantium for his new bodies.
No matter how many times he's seemingly been destroyed for good, he's always had contingency
plans in place.
His general hatred of humanity led him to genocidal schemes like killing the entire
population of Slorenia.
In the films, of course, it's Tony Stark who builds Ultron with the help of Bruce Banner.
The film Ultron gets his brain patterns with a little help from Stark and the Mind Stone,
and his actions ultimately lead to the destruction of Sokovia.
And we thought Tony was such a genius.
"Don't compare me with Stark!
It's a thing with me.
Stark is, he's a sickness!"
Kang was a 31st-century layabout named Nathaniel Richards who was bored with the tranquility
of his era and was fascinated by watching ancient recordings of heroes like the Fantastic
Four and the Avengers.
When he stumbled upon a time machine, he used it to travel to ancient Egypt, which he conquered
under the name Rama-Tut [ROM-uh TUT].
After then conquering the 40th century, Kang decided to visit the 20th century to face
the legendary Avengers.
There, he was defeated, and fighting the Avengers became an obsession, leading to an infinite
number of alternate timelines — some in which he beat the Avengers, some in which
he lost, and others where he fought against himself.
One of those possible versions of Kang was an older iteration named Immortus who, having
grown weary of conflict, dedicated himself to maintaining the timeline and protecting
it against the machinations of his younger self.
In this role, Immortus sometimes battled the Avengers, and sometimes assisted them.
How this will all play out in the MCU remains to be seen.
The Disney+ show "Loki" introduced a version of Immortus called He Who Remains, and he
in turn introduced fans to the coming conflict between an infinite number of Kangs battling
for the fate of the multiverse.
With Kang set to appear in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," it looks like the struggle
between Kang and the Avengers is likely to take center stage in the MCU for years to
come.
Early in the Avengers' career, Nazi scientist Baron Heinrich Zemo realized that he couldn't
defeat his arch-enemy, Captain America, on his own.
So he recruited the enemies of the other Avengers: Thor's enemy Radioactive Man, Giant-Man's
enemy the Black Knight, and Iron Man's enemy the Melter to beat them as the Masters of
Evil.
That group failed, and later disbanded after Baron Zemo's death.
But it was just the first of many iterations of the Master of Evil that have been formed
over the years, always by villains who hold a grudge against the Avengers.
Ultron, for instance, re-formed the team to destroy his
"father" Hank Pym, while another Pym villain - Egghead - later built a new version to disgrace
Pym and the Avengers.
And the original Baron Zemo's son, Helmut Zemo, also put together his own Master of
Evil to avenge his father's death.
This time, he nearly succeeded, destroying the Avengers' headquarters while capturing
and seriously injuring several members before the reserves rallied to save the day.
When the Avengers disappeared after fighting a menace called Onslaught, Zemo later responded
by forming a new Masters of Evil that disguised themselves as superheroes and dubbed them
the Thunderbolts.
Given what a fan favorite the MCU version of Helmut Zemo has become, it would be an
interesting twist to see him try to destroy the superhero team from within after working
so hard to unsuccessfully destroy them from without.
Simon Williams was a scientific genius whose company was a direct rival to Tony Stark.
After Stark bankrupted him, he stole money to stay afloat.
He was arrested, but the Masters of Evil offered him a chance at revenge.
He was given superpowers along with the name Wonder Man in a scheme to infiltrate the Avengers
and destroy them from within.
Instead, though, he sacrificed his own life to save the team.
Simon's brother Eric Williams then became the supervillain known as the Grim Reaper
in order to get revenge on the Avengers for Simon's death.
And he nearly succeeded: only the unexpected intervention of the Black Panther saved the
Avengers from certain death.
Even when Wonder Man returned from seeming death and began a second career as an actor,
the Grim Reaper regarded him as a fake version of his brother.
The Reaper also had a grudge against the Vision, seeing him as someone who stole Simon's identity.
The Reaper continued his crusade against the Avengers even after he died and his subsequent
resurrection, despite his “brothers” welcoming him.
So can we expect to see any of this in the MCU?
Well, Simon Williams was briefly seen in a deleted scene in Guardians of the Galaxy 2,
where, played by Nathan Fillion, he appeared on a number of fake movie posters.
And the character also appeared in concept art for WandaVision.
So fingers crossed we get to see Wonder Man and Grim Reaper sooner rather than later!
Remember the Grandmaster, who was played so memorably in the films by Jeff Goldblum?
"What's this?"
[gestures weirdly]
"Dial it down?"
Well, in the comics he's often gotten mixed up in games that use the Avengers as pawns,
including one where the Grandmaster faced off in a challenge against Kang.
When Kang picked the Avengers to be his champions, the Grandmaster created a new team to confront
them: the Squadron Sinister.
Hyperion came to Earth as a baby from a doomed Microverse planet.
Nighthawk was a millionaire whose powers grew stronger at night.
Dr. Spectrum had a crystal that allowed him to create energy constructs.
And the Whizzer could run really fast.
Sound familiar?
They should, because the team was intended to be a joke version of the Justice League
of America and its members Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and Flash.
The Squadron Sinister was defeated and broke up, with Nighthawk becoming a superhero and
the others turning to solo crime.
And to complicate things even more, an alternate universe version of the team called the Squadron
Supreme where they are all good guys later showed up.
Don't expect to ever see either Squadron in the MCU, though.
We have a feeling the lawyers at AT&T wouldn't appreciate Marvel using the Justice League
very much.
Created by evil scientist group Advanced Idea Mechanics, the Super Adaptoid's original function
was to destroy Captain America.
With a sliver of the Cosmic Cube, aka the Tesseract, this robot had the power to adapt
to any opponent by copying their powers.
Which is where the Avengers come in, because thanks to their might, a true monster was
created.
Super Adaptoid nearly killed Cap in their first battle after absorbing the powers and
skills of the Wasp, Hawkeye, and Goliath.
As if that wasn't bad enough, he ultimately attempted to replace the entire population
of Earth with adaptoids.
It would have worked if Captain America hadn't tricked him by challenging him to copy the
most basic fact of being alive: death.
The Super Adaptoid did, and promptly dropped dead.
If only Thanos had been that easy to trick!
"You should have gone for the head!"
In the Operation: Galactic Storm storyline, the Kree Supreme Intelligence deliberately
started a war knowing that his people would lose.
Why?
He believed his race was at an evolutionary dead end and wanted to find a way to kick-start
their development, so he used the war as a way to trick his people into detonating the
Nega-Bomb, which wiped out almost their entire species.
After failing to stop this scheme, a faction of the Avengers led by Iron Man passed judgment
on the Supreme Intelligence and executed him for his war crimes.
That, in turn, led some of the few surviving Kree to vow vengeance on Earth and the Avengers.
Led by Galen Kor, these Kree terrorists first tried to blow up the Earth, then tried to
genetically mutate the population into Kree to rebuild their own people.
But Galen Kor and his group were ultimately defeated, thanks in part to the reborn Supreme
Intelligence working against them.
He had his own agenda.
Thanks to having a lot of enemies with connections to either time travel or the afterlife, the
Avengers have had to face multiple iterations of the Legion of the Unliving.
These villain teams consisted of dead friends and foes that were either plucked from right
before they died or yanked away from their eternal rewards.
Kang commanded the first version, which included Wonder Man, Baron Heinrich Zemo, and the original
Human Torch.
Later, The Grandmaster cooked up a scheme that involved sending the Avengers to Death's
realm.
He nearly won, but Hawkeye cheated in a game of chance and Death was freed from the Grandmaster's
control, ending the contest.
So could we ever see a Legion of the Unliving in the MCU?
It seems unlikely, but given that things like the Marvel Zombies have begun appearing on
"What If?," anything is possible!
The Grim Reaper took a cue from Baron Zemo and formed his own team of villains with grudges
against the Avengers to help him out with his own, which he called the Lethal Legion.
After being defeated the first time around, the Grim Reaper returned years later with
an all new team.
This time they battled the West Coast Avengers, but while they had a power advantage, internal
bickering broke the team up.
Undeterred, the Grim Reaper put together a third team which also failed.
Hey, they are villains, their role is to lose in these stories.
There was also one other Lethal Legion of note, also created specifically to oppose
the Avengers.
Count Nefaria, who had a long standing grudge against the team, put together his own group.
But they were unwitting dupes: Nefaria ended up absorbing all of their powers to turn himself
into a literal superman.
The moral of the story: never trust someone named Nefaria!
You may know Dane Whitman and Sersi from the 2021 Marvel film "Eternals."
But you may not know that in the comics, their romance nearly destroyed the entire multiverse.
In the comics, Dane Whitman - also known as the Black Knight - and Sersi were teammates.
They got involved in a love triangle - she was into him, he was into someone else - which
became problematic when Sersi's powers began turning her unstable and dangerous.
Dane was eventually psychically bonded with her against his will to help control her powers.
But that's not how it happened in every world.
In another universe, Dane fell for Sersi but she eventually ended up dumping him.
So, in a supreme example of toxic masculinity, the incel Dane killed Sersi and the Avengers
and then began traveling to alternate universes, hunting down Sersi in every reality.
Changing his name to Proctor, he put together a team of alternate universe Avengers to help
him.
Called the Gatherers, most of these heroes were tricked into thinking they were saving
the world from these "unstable" versions of Sersi, unaware that it was Proctor himself
who was using his powers to destabilize Sersi in the first place.
Ultimately, Proctor was killed by Sersi in the main comic reality.
Here's hoping that the MCU versions of these characters have a much easier time of things!
Of course, the movie Avengers have made just as many messes as the comic Avengers.
Besides Ultron, there's also Baron Helmut Zemo, who vowed revenge on all superheroes
after the Avengers failed to save his family in the battle of Sokovia.
And then there's the Battle of New York.
Yes, the Avengers drove off the alien invasion, but they left a giant mess both literally
and figuratively - a mess that led to the Vulture selling alien tech to the highest
bidder after he was screwed out of his rightful salvage contracts.
Oh, and there's also Loki, who the Avengers unleashed on the entire multiverse when their
time-traveling trip to the battle's aftermath went completely haywire.
The Avengers: living proof that no good deed goes unpunished.
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