History of the Marvel Universe(The Bronze Age): 1970-1984
History of the Marvel Universe: The Bronze Age(1970-1984)
In 1971, the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare asked Marvel editor-in-chief to create a story about drug abuse. The result was a three part Spider-Man storyline covering Harry Osborn's drug addiction. The Comics Code Authority refused to approve it but it was ran by Lee and Goodman regardless. The United States Department of Health also backed the story. This directly undermined the authority of the CCA and would lead to its eventual downfall.
Goodman retired in 1972 and installed his son, Chip, as publisher, only for Stan Lee to succeed him and become Marvel's President. Lee began to appoint creators to important roles such as Roy Thomas. It was Thomas's idea to add the phrase "Stan Lee Presents" to the opening of each book. Under Lee, the company began to expand its content to include Horror(Tomb of Dracula), Kung Fu(Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu and Iron Fist), sword and sorcery(Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja), comedy(Howard the Duck) and science fiction ( the licensed 2001: A Space Odyssey, "Killraven" in Amazing Adventures, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and later the long-running Star Wars series). Marvel therefore gained a reputation for their licensed properties and how they were included in the Marvel Universe canon.
In 1974, Goodman established his own company upon leaving Marvel called Seaboard Periodicals and created a new line using the old Atlas name, but this didn't last very long. Marvel, following a decline in newsstand distribution, cut ties with distributors and focused on Comic Book shops, averting the cancellation of the cult hit Howard the Duck. Comic Book Shops began to eclipse Newsstands. Marvel also began to enter into radio series and Audio Books, many of which were narrated by Stan Lee and adapted classic stories.
Marvelcon, 1975
Marvel held its own Comic Convention, Marvelcon, in 1975. At the event, Stan Lee revealed that Jack Kirby was returning to Marvel for the first time since his 1970 departure to DC, the two having patched things up. Marvel also introduced superheroes specifically for the British market in the form of Captain Britain, who had British creators behind him. Marvel made a deal to produce comic strips of several of their characters, though the only one that continues to see publication is The Amazing Spider-Man, the others ending by 1982.
Giant Size X-Men
The Roy Thomas X-Men Run continued into the 1970's until the release of Giant Size X-Men, which introduced a new team assembled to rescue the original X-Men on a mission to the island of Krakoa, which was revealed to be a sentient mutant. This new X-Men team also included a new writing team under writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum. The success of Giant Size X-Men led to a second such issue released as Giant Size X-Men 2, which depicted the new X-Men team battling the Avengers villain Count Nefaria(Comprising issues of X-Men #94 and #95 OTL). In a twist, three of the new members "flunked" the test to become official members of the team: Thunderbird, Sunfire and Banshee. Wein was told to kill off either Wolverine or Thunderbird. He appeared to kill off Wolverine when the mutant disobeyed Cyclops's order and jumped onto a plane seconds before it exploded. Wolverine appeared to die, his body being recovered. Suddenly he woke up alive again, revealing for the first time that Wolverine had a healing factor. This was due to Wolverine suddenly being very popular. Thunderbird meanwhile left the team. For the 25th Anniversary of All-New, All-Different X-Men, Scott Lobdell and Aaron Lopresti did a two-issue Thunderbird mini-series that brought back the character, who went onto appear in Exiles. Another new character, Nightcrawler was originally intended to be Jewish but this was changed to Catholic, playing better with the idea that he looked like a Demon. His parents were eventually revealed to be Brotherhood members Mystique and Destiny. Mystique actually being his father due to shapeshifting into a man at the time of Nightcrawler's conception. Len Wein also introduced Zerox(OTL Multiple Man using their original pitched name as a pun on Xerox, something which Deadpool later mocks him for). Another character, while not created by Wein, was actually from FOOM magazine's "Create-a-Villain" contest in 1973. The winning entry was a character called Humus Sapiens who was incorporated as one of Nefaria's henchmen.
Pin during Captain America's Presidential Campaign
There was a search for ideas for Captain America(The OTL Secret Empire arc not happening due to no Nixon administration ITTL). Then the writers struck gold. Captain America ran for President. The storylines centered first on Captain America's 1976 Campaign for President in which he defeated Ronald Reagan and even got to knock George Wallace down a peg. Finally Cap emerged victorious and served as President in universe. He would choose not to run for reelection, being succeeded in 1980 by Tony Stark running as the Republican candidate. In the aftermath Captain America was assassinated by the Red Skull. His mantle as Captain America taken up by Sam Wilson, the then current Falcon, who faced accusations that he was a pimp(False ITTL though an ignored retcon OTL). These rascist rumors were discovered to be part of a plan by Hydra to turn the people against the new Captain America. A Captain America TV Movie was in production. To tie into the Comics, DeMatteis wrote an oversized treasury edition one-shot.
The First Issue of Marvel's What If?
The Marvel What-If series was introduced in 1977. It contained stories in which one event went differently and followed the divergence from there. Some even became continuing series such as What If Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four? Which he had tried to do but was rejected. The end result is most of Spider-Man's enemies are more easily dealt with by the new FF team while others such as Mysterio and the Chameleon choose not to antagonize Spider-Man at all due to his new allies. This includes Jameson changing his tune towards the wall crawler, fortunately for him, the story's divergence point occurs in Spidey's first issue, meaning Jameson only recently began targeting the Webhead for slander. Spidey's spider-sense also helps the team at certain points, however, Sue Storm sees herself as unnecessary on the team due to Spider-Man taking her place and leaves Richards for the Sub-Mariner. This being early in the Fantastic Four's career, Sue Storm is only dating Richards and has no longer attachment to him.
Other stories include What-if Captain America was never frozen? in which Cap leads the still formed Invaders against Communist threats and both Namor and the Human Torch do not suffer the fates that led to their disappearances in main Marvel Continuity, though this means the Android Vision does not exist in this reality as the original Torch's parts were used in his construction. Cap is then chosen as the first Director of Shield over Nick Fury by President John F.Kennedy and begins to combat Hydra in the Cold War era. He eventually passes on the position of Director to James "Bucky" Barnes, who also survived. Cap also saved Magneto from Auschwitz and after a conversation, prevented Magneto's rise, leading Magneto to become a much more Malcolm X type figure, without resorting to terrorism. What-if Gwen Stacy was bitten by the spider instead of Peter Parker? is another notable one, the first divergence appears to actually be Gwen meeting Peter in High School rather than College. Interestingly, there were actually a series of short stories showing different people getting the Spider Bite, many of which such as Flash Thompson and John Jameson perishing in battle due to lacking the knowledge for creating the Web Shooters Peter had. Peter designs the Web Shooters for Gwen, preventing a similar fate. This story eventually evolved into the series Spider-Gwen. What-if the Punisher became the Ghost Rider? leads to an even more violent vigilante and many dead Supervillains. This Ghost Rider also avoids fights with Spider-Man and Daredevil due to seeing that they are free of sin and not evil. What-if Wakanda opened up to the rest of the world in World War II? has an attack by the Red Skull and Wakandan deaths lead to Wakanda entering the War, quickly setting up an allied occupational government in all of the former Axis Occupied African countries. the impact on history is then shown. What If The Fantastic Four had been defeated by the Dark Raider? was made into a 22 page story by Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier, continuing the X-Men as vampires universe in What If? Vol 2 #24 and What If? Vol 2 #37-39, which depicted characters fro mseveral What ifs joining together in the time quake event. Timequake, the story running through What If? Vol 2 #35-39, ended by revealing the Time-Keepers were using time as an energy battery, and explaining their involvement with the Time Variance Authority.
Speaking of Jean-Marc Lofficier, the man made a name for himself for working in horror. His Book of the Vishanti backup stories in The Tomb of Dracula provided additional details to horror/mystic characters in the Marvel Universe, such as revealing that Yellow Claw and Fu Manchu were brothers affiliated with the Immortal Nine, a group exposed to Dracula's Pool of Blood, including Cagliostro and Aged Genghis. He also wrote an issue of Shamrock & Peregrine which explained and tied up the family tree for the Frankenstein family and how it factored into the Marvel Universe.
In 1978, Jim Shooter became Marvel's editor-in-chief. Although controversial, Shooter would solve many issues plaguing the company and his tenure was marked by several famous runs by creators such as Chris Claremont and John Byrne's on Uncanny X-Men and Frank Miller's Daredevil, both major commercial successes. To counter DC, Shooter founded the Epic imprint for creator-owned stories, introduced creator royalties and helped bring Marvel into the direct market. Shooter also introduced company wide crossover events such as Contest of Champions and Secret Wars. Frank Miller made his debut on Daredevil with a story tackling drugs(not published due to Comic Code Authority interference OTL) and continued with the critically acclaimed Daredevil: Born Again.
The X-Men were a run away success at this time, leading to a series crossing over Iceman and Doctor Strange of all people, yet even that seeing success. There was a series released called The Furies, which had Storm as the leader of a team of female superheroes. The group's other members included Tigra, Namorita, Clea, Dragonfly of the Ani-Men (referencing a scene in X-Men #104 involving Dragonfly's escape from Muir Island), and a new alien heroine named Moon Fang. Dave Cockrum launched the series. A New member of the X-Men, Dazzler was introduced, modeled after Grace Jones, but Filmworks representatives wanted Bo Derek to play the role in a live-action adaptation, so she was redesigned to be a blonde white woman. The Resulting film is an odd spectacle to say the least.
The character Mockingbird was originally going to be an entirely separate character from Bobbi Morse, who was going by the name "Huntress" at the time. She would have had the same design she eventually sported, but would have been African-American. Also, she would have first appeared as an enemy of Spider-Woman. When the Huntress name became unavailable thanks to DC publishing their own heroine by that name(bringing Helena Wayne into continuity as the daughter of the married Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle). Marvel made the decision to merge Huntress and Mockingbird into a single character.
Claremont and Byrne introduced a group of young mutants to return the X-Men to the school aspect, the most famous of which became Kitty Pryde but there was also a young Reality Warper named Willie Evans (who had previously appeared in Fantastic Four) and a monstrous hillbilly teen named Caliban (no relation to the Morlock who would later be introduced with that name who does not exist ITTL, or at least under a different name), who had the power to project his life force into inanimate objects. In Uncanny X-Men #133 (May, 1980), Wolverine attacked and killed several Hellfire Club mercenaries: Wade Cole, Angelo Macon, and Murray Reese(All three remain dead, OTL, editor in chief Jim Shooter OTL used his superiority to request Wolverine not kill anyone and so they later turned up alive when they were intended to be disposable mooks).
Jean Grey was killed off in the Dark Phoenix saga. Something which Writer Christ Claremont was against but was Shooter's order, though Claremont later thought the story was better for it. Wolverine was not "sissified" as Jim Shooter put it(which is subjective as he was actually the most saddened by Jean's Death OTL). Chris Claremont wrote up a Phoenix Miniseries focusing on Jean Grey and exploring the origin of the Phoenix Force. The series also explored the future relationship between Rachel Summers and Franklin Richards previously seen in Days of Future Past in greater detail(Days of Future Present doesn't exist ITTL as a result of this series being made).
Ad for Contest of Champions.
The 1980 Olympics were not boycotted and so Marvel's Contest of Champions kept its original idea as an Olympic Games tie in but with Marvel characters allowed to participate. Without Carol Danvers or Mar-Vell existing, Rogue's powers are now depicted differently. She is now able to take more from those she touches and is a normal human otherwise, though to fly, Storm would often allow her to borrow their flight and strength respectively after a small touch.
The new X-Men villain Mister Sinister was revealed to be a psychic projection of a Mutant who grew up with Scott Summers. He was able to project himself as a more intimidating foe(hence his ridiculous name. This also made him a dark satire of Fawcett Comic's Captain Marvel, which Marvel was angry at not getting the rights to). Mister Sinister also created clones of Sabertooth upon capturing him(explaining some of the villain's more ridiculous appearances before he became a serious threat). The same child also created Gambit as a projection to infiltrate the team(even seducing Storm as she was leader at the time) though he would fall in love with Rogue and betray his creator(the original plan OTL, as it was intended as a Take that to Terra from Teen Titans). Sabertooth was revealed to be Wolverine's father by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Claremont wrote a story in which Wolverine and Mariko married, at their wedding they as they said "I do", Sabertooth jumped out and seemingly killed Mariko on the altar. Mariko was alive but braindead. Wolverine didn't believe that she was gone, until Jean linked their minds, and he saw that there was nobody there and he pulled the plug on her. Wolverine went searching for revenge against Sabretooth. Wolverine finally killed Sabretooth in the aftermath by trapping him in between two of his claws, telling Sabertooth not to ask for the third, which was in the middle and would pierce Sabertooth's brain. Sabertooth fought back and Wolverine popped the third claw, killing Sabertooth in 1981(much earlier than Wolverine and Sabertooth first meeting in OTL's Mutant Massacre).
The event known as Magneto War involved Magneto tilting the Earth on its axis, sending the world into an ice age. Magneto trapped the X-Men in an illusion of a mutant concentration camp as a warning of what was to come if mutantkind didn't stand up and fight back against humanity. The X-Men were divided over the issue, with some of the heroes siding with Magneto against their former teammates. Perhaps most shockingly, Storm was killed after a Heroic Sacrifice to fix the planet after Magneto had tilted it on its axis. Magneto was so horrified he surrendered himself to custody afterwards.
The seminal X-Men story God Loves, Man Kills was released, written by Chris Clarement and illustrated by Neal Adams. It's success led to it becoming canon as it depicted Magneto imprisoned and working with the X-Men, paving the way for his reformation. To fill the void a new Brotherhood was introduced. John Byrne was writing at the time and revealed that Brotherhood member Pyro was gay(intended OTL). Consequently Claremont did not reveal him to be Australian to try and undo this. Byrne also created a lengthy plotline where Wolverine was turned into the brainwashed minion of "The Hand", leading to Forge and Banshee having to rescue him(Similar to OTL Wolverine: Enemy of the State, but very different due to occurring much earlier).
Marvel launched the Secret Wars event in 1984 at the tail end of the Bronze Age as by 1986, both Marvel and DC would be celebrating their anniversaries with major world changing events. The Premise concerned several Marvel Heroes and Villains being transported to an alien planet to do battle by the mysterious Beyonder.
The heroes include the Avengers(Captain America, Giant Man, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, the Wasp, and the Hulk), the Fantastic Four (Human Torch, Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman and the Thing), solo heroes (Spider-Man and Doctor Strange) and the X-Men (Colossus, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Professor X, Rogue, a resurrected Storm, Wolverine, and Iceman).
The villains include Red Skull, Ultron, The Mandarin, Thanos, Loki, Kang the Conqueror, the Leader, Doctor Doom, Galactus, Sub-Mariner, Annihilus, Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Dormammu, Kingpin, Magneto, Juggernaut, Mystique, Sabertooth, Emma Frost, Bullseye, Abomination, and Baron Zemo.
The event had Doctor Doom steal the Beyonder's power and seemingly kill the heroes only for them to return and defeat Doom, restoring the Beyonder. Everyone was sent back to Earth. Spider-Man however had gained a new black alien costume while on the planet that would have major repercussions down the line.
At the time, DC was in a bind that ironically, Marvel would find itself in. DC as an intellectual property was seeing massive success in film, and television. The Comics on the other hand, were not doing nearly as well. They were a Comic company excelling in everything but Comics. So a crazy idea was proposed. Marvel would take their crack as writing DC characters and vice versa. The two had crossovers before and worked well together despite, like professional wrestlers, pretending to hate each other on the page. Marvel was doing excellent thanks in part to their excellent Licensed Comics, such as Transformers, R.O.M. Space Knight, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Godzilla. Their success meant Warner Bros called up Marvel to propose the companies switch characters. It would be treated like the licensed comics. Someone at DC slipped up and commented they would be rebooting the universe soon, which gave Marvel the incentive to commit to the deal as they would effectively be given permission to create their own version of the DC Characters in the Marvel Universe that were wholly their own. These issues were often labeled Marvel Presents...or Stan Lee presents...Superman or Batman. As was the common practice with licensed Comics, the DC characters were native to the canon Marvel Universe.
The books would launch with Seven titles:
Superman
Batman
Wonder Woman
Green Lantern
Teen Titans
Justice League
Legion of Superheroes.
Here's how Marvel's term with the DC Characters went.
Superman
"John Byrne really wanted to do Superman. He burst into my office with a Cover done. Not a sketch for a cover. A Cover. He had this whole story and everything."
-Jim Shooter in interview.
John Byrne's pitch was known as Man of Steel.It kept most of Superman's origin story and characters. Krypton was destroyed by Galactus in this continuity. Lex Luthor made his debut as a businessman and a genius, combining two versions of him. Superman goes to work at the Daily Bugle instead of the Daily Planet.
Batman
Bruce Wayne travelled the world. His training included journeying to Nanda Parbat, where he briefly met Doctor Doom and in Wakanda. Upon returning to the city he became a vigilante. He notably encounters Spider-Man early in his career. He also recruits Dick Grayson, being active in New York instead of Gotham. He's also a business rival of Tony Stark.
Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman was introduced as a nemesis of Hercules, due to his backstory involving him enslaving the Amazons. In this new continuity, she met Captain America when he crashed onto the Island and broke the rule of the island by leaving and donning a costume of her own. She had a romantic interest in Captain America before his disappearance, after which she disappeared for some time.
Green Lantern
The preexisting Nova Corps was reworked in an amusing way to become the Green Lantern Corps. Two ancient entities emerge in the universe. The Nova Corps is completely devastated and the Green Entity grants the Nova Corps green Power rings. The yellow entity grants powers to a being known as Sinestro. One power ring travels to Earth and recruits Hal Jordan and several others to fight the yellow entity.
Teen Titans
Followed the Marv Wolfman and George Perez team, with the two writers even returning to create the Marvel versions of the characters. Most of the character backstories were kept intact, though Beast Boy was a mutant. The team began led by Robin, who recently left his role as Batman's sidekick.
Justice League
Justice League brought the characters together along with the Flash, who recently was granted his powers. Aquaman is not present. Namor taking his place on the team. Martian Manhunter also appears.
Legion of Superheroes.
The Legion of Superheroes are a group of metahuman teenagers who oppose Kang the Conqueror's regime.
The DC characters would be at Marvel for about a year before DC requested them back for the planned Crisis on Infinite Earths, after that the DC characters, while still existing in the Marvel Universe, received less focus, being reduced largely to cameos. It was a flash in the pan, but would not be the last time the two companies would come together.
In 1971, the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare asked Marvel editor-in-chief to create a story about drug abuse. The result was a three part Spider-Man storyline covering Harry Osborn's drug addiction. The Comics Code Authority refused to approve it but it was ran by Lee and Goodman regardless. The United States Department of Health also backed the story. This directly undermined the authority of the CCA and would lead to its eventual downfall.
Goodman retired in 1972 and installed his son, Chip, as publisher, only for Stan Lee to succeed him and become Marvel's President. Lee began to appoint creators to important roles such as Roy Thomas. It was Thomas's idea to add the phrase "Stan Lee Presents" to the opening of each book. Under Lee, the company began to expand its content to include Horror(Tomb of Dracula), Kung Fu(Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu and Iron Fist), sword and sorcery(Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja), comedy(Howard the Duck) and science fiction ( the licensed 2001: A Space Odyssey, "Killraven" in Amazing Adventures, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and later the long-running Star Wars series). Marvel therefore gained a reputation for their licensed properties and how they were included in the Marvel Universe canon.
In 1974, Goodman established his own company upon leaving Marvel called Seaboard Periodicals and created a new line using the old Atlas name, but this didn't last very long. Marvel, following a decline in newsstand distribution, cut ties with distributors and focused on Comic Book shops, averting the cancellation of the cult hit Howard the Duck. Comic Book Shops began to eclipse Newsstands. Marvel also began to enter into radio series and Audio Books, many of which were narrated by Stan Lee and adapted classic stories.
Marvelcon, 1975
Marvel held its own Comic Convention, Marvelcon, in 1975. At the event, Stan Lee revealed that Jack Kirby was returning to Marvel for the first time since his 1970 departure to DC, the two having patched things up. Marvel also introduced superheroes specifically for the British market in the form of Captain Britain, who had British creators behind him. Marvel made a deal to produce comic strips of several of their characters, though the only one that continues to see publication is The Amazing Spider-Man, the others ending by 1982.
Giant Size X-Men
The Roy Thomas X-Men Run continued into the 1970's until the release of Giant Size X-Men, which introduced a new team assembled to rescue the original X-Men on a mission to the island of Krakoa, which was revealed to be a sentient mutant. This new X-Men team also included a new writing team under writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum. The success of Giant Size X-Men led to a second such issue released as Giant Size X-Men 2, which depicted the new X-Men team battling the Avengers villain Count Nefaria(Comprising issues of X-Men #94 and #95 OTL). In a twist, three of the new members "flunked" the test to become official members of the team: Thunderbird, Sunfire and Banshee. Wein was told to kill off either Wolverine or Thunderbird. He appeared to kill off Wolverine when the mutant disobeyed Cyclops's order and jumped onto a plane seconds before it exploded. Wolverine appeared to die, his body being recovered. Suddenly he woke up alive again, revealing for the first time that Wolverine had a healing factor. This was due to Wolverine suddenly being very popular. Thunderbird meanwhile left the team. For the 25th Anniversary of All-New, All-Different X-Men, Scott Lobdell and Aaron Lopresti did a two-issue Thunderbird mini-series that brought back the character, who went onto appear in Exiles. Another new character, Nightcrawler was originally intended to be Jewish but this was changed to Catholic, playing better with the idea that he looked like a Demon. His parents were eventually revealed to be Brotherhood members Mystique and Destiny. Mystique actually being his father due to shapeshifting into a man at the time of Nightcrawler's conception. Len Wein also introduced Zerox(OTL Multiple Man using their original pitched name as a pun on Xerox, something which Deadpool later mocks him for). Another character, while not created by Wein, was actually from FOOM magazine's "Create-a-Villain" contest in 1973. The winning entry was a character called Humus Sapiens who was incorporated as one of Nefaria's henchmen.
Pin during Captain America's Presidential Campaign
There was a search for ideas for Captain America(The OTL Secret Empire arc not happening due to no Nixon administration ITTL). Then the writers struck gold. Captain America ran for President. The storylines centered first on Captain America's 1976 Campaign for President in which he defeated Ronald Reagan and even got to knock George Wallace down a peg. Finally Cap emerged victorious and served as President in universe. He would choose not to run for reelection, being succeeded in 1980 by Tony Stark running as the Republican candidate. In the aftermath Captain America was assassinated by the Red Skull. His mantle as Captain America taken up by Sam Wilson, the then current Falcon, who faced accusations that he was a pimp(False ITTL though an ignored retcon OTL). These rascist rumors were discovered to be part of a plan by Hydra to turn the people against the new Captain America. A Captain America TV Movie was in production. To tie into the Comics, DeMatteis wrote an oversized treasury edition one-shot.
The First Issue of Marvel's What If?
The Marvel What-If series was introduced in 1977. It contained stories in which one event went differently and followed the divergence from there. Some even became continuing series such as What If Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four? Which he had tried to do but was rejected. The end result is most of Spider-Man's enemies are more easily dealt with by the new FF team while others such as Mysterio and the Chameleon choose not to antagonize Spider-Man at all due to his new allies. This includes Jameson changing his tune towards the wall crawler, fortunately for him, the story's divergence point occurs in Spidey's first issue, meaning Jameson only recently began targeting the Webhead for slander. Spidey's spider-sense also helps the team at certain points, however, Sue Storm sees herself as unnecessary on the team due to Spider-Man taking her place and leaves Richards for the Sub-Mariner. This being early in the Fantastic Four's career, Sue Storm is only dating Richards and has no longer attachment to him.
Other stories include What-if Captain America was never frozen? in which Cap leads the still formed Invaders against Communist threats and both Namor and the Human Torch do not suffer the fates that led to their disappearances in main Marvel Continuity, though this means the Android Vision does not exist in this reality as the original Torch's parts were used in his construction. Cap is then chosen as the first Director of Shield over Nick Fury by President John F.Kennedy and begins to combat Hydra in the Cold War era. He eventually passes on the position of Director to James "Bucky" Barnes, who also survived. Cap also saved Magneto from Auschwitz and after a conversation, prevented Magneto's rise, leading Magneto to become a much more Malcolm X type figure, without resorting to terrorism. What-if Gwen Stacy was bitten by the spider instead of Peter Parker? is another notable one, the first divergence appears to actually be Gwen meeting Peter in High School rather than College. Interestingly, there were actually a series of short stories showing different people getting the Spider Bite, many of which such as Flash Thompson and John Jameson perishing in battle due to lacking the knowledge for creating the Web Shooters Peter had. Peter designs the Web Shooters for Gwen, preventing a similar fate. This story eventually evolved into the series Spider-Gwen. What-if the Punisher became the Ghost Rider? leads to an even more violent vigilante and many dead Supervillains. This Ghost Rider also avoids fights with Spider-Man and Daredevil due to seeing that they are free of sin and not evil. What-if Wakanda opened up to the rest of the world in World War II? has an attack by the Red Skull and Wakandan deaths lead to Wakanda entering the War, quickly setting up an allied occupational government in all of the former Axis Occupied African countries. the impact on history is then shown. What If The Fantastic Four had been defeated by the Dark Raider? was made into a 22 page story by Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier, continuing the X-Men as vampires universe in What If? Vol 2 #24 and What If? Vol 2 #37-39, which depicted characters fro mseveral What ifs joining together in the time quake event. Timequake, the story running through What If? Vol 2 #35-39, ended by revealing the Time-Keepers were using time as an energy battery, and explaining their involvement with the Time Variance Authority.
Speaking of Jean-Marc Lofficier, the man made a name for himself for working in horror. His Book of the Vishanti backup stories in The Tomb of Dracula provided additional details to horror/mystic characters in the Marvel Universe, such as revealing that Yellow Claw and Fu Manchu were brothers affiliated with the Immortal Nine, a group exposed to Dracula's Pool of Blood, including Cagliostro and Aged Genghis. He also wrote an issue of Shamrock & Peregrine which explained and tied up the family tree for the Frankenstein family and how it factored into the Marvel Universe.
In 1978, Jim Shooter became Marvel's editor-in-chief. Although controversial, Shooter would solve many issues plaguing the company and his tenure was marked by several famous runs by creators such as Chris Claremont and John Byrne's on Uncanny X-Men and Frank Miller's Daredevil, both major commercial successes. To counter DC, Shooter founded the Epic imprint for creator-owned stories, introduced creator royalties and helped bring Marvel into the direct market. Shooter also introduced company wide crossover events such as Contest of Champions and Secret Wars. Frank Miller made his debut on Daredevil with a story tackling drugs(not published due to Comic Code Authority interference OTL) and continued with the critically acclaimed Daredevil: Born Again.
The X-Men were a run away success at this time, leading to a series crossing over Iceman and Doctor Strange of all people, yet even that seeing success. There was a series released called The Furies, which had Storm as the leader of a team of female superheroes. The group's other members included Tigra, Namorita, Clea, Dragonfly of the Ani-Men (referencing a scene in X-Men #104 involving Dragonfly's escape from Muir Island), and a new alien heroine named Moon Fang. Dave Cockrum launched the series. A New member of the X-Men, Dazzler was introduced, modeled after Grace Jones, but Filmworks representatives wanted Bo Derek to play the role in a live-action adaptation, so she was redesigned to be a blonde white woman. The Resulting film is an odd spectacle to say the least.
The character Mockingbird was originally going to be an entirely separate character from Bobbi Morse, who was going by the name "Huntress" at the time. She would have had the same design she eventually sported, but would have been African-American. Also, she would have first appeared as an enemy of Spider-Woman. When the Huntress name became unavailable thanks to DC publishing their own heroine by that name(bringing Helena Wayne into continuity as the daughter of the married Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle). Marvel made the decision to merge Huntress and Mockingbird into a single character.
Claremont and Byrne introduced a group of young mutants to return the X-Men to the school aspect, the most famous of which became Kitty Pryde but there was also a young Reality Warper named Willie Evans (who had previously appeared in Fantastic Four) and a monstrous hillbilly teen named Caliban (no relation to the Morlock who would later be introduced with that name who does not exist ITTL, or at least under a different name), who had the power to project his life force into inanimate objects. In Uncanny X-Men #133 (May, 1980), Wolverine attacked and killed several Hellfire Club mercenaries: Wade Cole, Angelo Macon, and Murray Reese(All three remain dead, OTL, editor in chief Jim Shooter OTL used his superiority to request Wolverine not kill anyone and so they later turned up alive when they were intended to be disposable mooks).
Jean Grey was killed off in the Dark Phoenix saga. Something which Writer Christ Claremont was against but was Shooter's order, though Claremont later thought the story was better for it. Wolverine was not "sissified" as Jim Shooter put it(which is subjective as he was actually the most saddened by Jean's Death OTL). Chris Claremont wrote up a Phoenix Miniseries focusing on Jean Grey and exploring the origin of the Phoenix Force. The series also explored the future relationship between Rachel Summers and Franklin Richards previously seen in Days of Future Past in greater detail(Days of Future Present doesn't exist ITTL as a result of this series being made).
Ad for Contest of Champions.
The 1980 Olympics were not boycotted and so Marvel's Contest of Champions kept its original idea as an Olympic Games tie in but with Marvel characters allowed to participate. Without Carol Danvers or Mar-Vell existing, Rogue's powers are now depicted differently. She is now able to take more from those she touches and is a normal human otherwise, though to fly, Storm would often allow her to borrow their flight and strength respectively after a small touch.
The new X-Men villain Mister Sinister was revealed to be a psychic projection of a Mutant who grew up with Scott Summers. He was able to project himself as a more intimidating foe(hence his ridiculous name. This also made him a dark satire of Fawcett Comic's Captain Marvel, which Marvel was angry at not getting the rights to). Mister Sinister also created clones of Sabertooth upon capturing him(explaining some of the villain's more ridiculous appearances before he became a serious threat). The same child also created Gambit as a projection to infiltrate the team(even seducing Storm as she was leader at the time) though he would fall in love with Rogue and betray his creator(the original plan OTL, as it was intended as a Take that to Terra from Teen Titans). Sabertooth was revealed to be Wolverine's father by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Claremont wrote a story in which Wolverine and Mariko married, at their wedding they as they said "I do", Sabertooth jumped out and seemingly killed Mariko on the altar. Mariko was alive but braindead. Wolverine didn't believe that she was gone, until Jean linked their minds, and he saw that there was nobody there and he pulled the plug on her. Wolverine went searching for revenge against Sabretooth. Wolverine finally killed Sabretooth in the aftermath by trapping him in between two of his claws, telling Sabertooth not to ask for the third, which was in the middle and would pierce Sabertooth's brain. Sabertooth fought back and Wolverine popped the third claw, killing Sabertooth in 1981(much earlier than Wolverine and Sabertooth first meeting in OTL's Mutant Massacre).
The event known as Magneto War involved Magneto tilting the Earth on its axis, sending the world into an ice age. Magneto trapped the X-Men in an illusion of a mutant concentration camp as a warning of what was to come if mutantkind didn't stand up and fight back against humanity. The X-Men were divided over the issue, with some of the heroes siding with Magneto against their former teammates. Perhaps most shockingly, Storm was killed after a Heroic Sacrifice to fix the planet after Magneto had tilted it on its axis. Magneto was so horrified he surrendered himself to custody afterwards.
The seminal X-Men story God Loves, Man Kills was released, written by Chris Clarement and illustrated by Neal Adams. It's success led to it becoming canon as it depicted Magneto imprisoned and working with the X-Men, paving the way for his reformation. To fill the void a new Brotherhood was introduced. John Byrne was writing at the time and revealed that Brotherhood member Pyro was gay(intended OTL). Consequently Claremont did not reveal him to be Australian to try and undo this. Byrne also created a lengthy plotline where Wolverine was turned into the brainwashed minion of "The Hand", leading to Forge and Banshee having to rescue him(Similar to OTL Wolverine: Enemy of the State, but very different due to occurring much earlier).
Marvel launched the Secret Wars event in 1984 at the tail end of the Bronze Age as by 1986, both Marvel and DC would be celebrating their anniversaries with major world changing events. The Premise concerned several Marvel Heroes and Villains being transported to an alien planet to do battle by the mysterious Beyonder.
The heroes include the Avengers(Captain America, Giant Man, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, the Wasp, and the Hulk), the Fantastic Four (Human Torch, Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman and the Thing), solo heroes (Spider-Man and Doctor Strange) and the X-Men (Colossus, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Professor X, Rogue, a resurrected Storm, Wolverine, and Iceman).
The villains include Red Skull, Ultron, The Mandarin, Thanos, Loki, Kang the Conqueror, the Leader, Doctor Doom, Galactus, Sub-Mariner, Annihilus, Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Dormammu, Kingpin, Magneto, Juggernaut, Mystique, Sabertooth, Emma Frost, Bullseye, Abomination, and Baron Zemo.
The event had Doctor Doom steal the Beyonder's power and seemingly kill the heroes only for them to return and defeat Doom, restoring the Beyonder. Everyone was sent back to Earth. Spider-Man however had gained a new black alien costume while on the planet that would have major repercussions down the line.
At the time, DC was in a bind that ironically, Marvel would find itself in. DC as an intellectual property was seeing massive success in film, and television. The Comics on the other hand, were not doing nearly as well. They were a Comic company excelling in everything but Comics. So a crazy idea was proposed. Marvel would take their crack as writing DC characters and vice versa. The two had crossovers before and worked well together despite, like professional wrestlers, pretending to hate each other on the page. Marvel was doing excellent thanks in part to their excellent Licensed Comics, such as Transformers, R.O.M. Space Knight, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Godzilla. Their success meant Warner Bros called up Marvel to propose the companies switch characters. It would be treated like the licensed comics. Someone at DC slipped up and commented they would be rebooting the universe soon, which gave Marvel the incentive to commit to the deal as they would effectively be given permission to create their own version of the DC Characters in the Marvel Universe that were wholly their own. These issues were often labeled Marvel Presents...or Stan Lee presents...Superman or Batman. As was the common practice with licensed Comics, the DC characters were native to the canon Marvel Universe.
The books would launch with Seven titles:
Superman
Batman
Wonder Woman
Green Lantern
Teen Titans
Justice League
Legion of Superheroes.
Here's how Marvel's term with the DC Characters went.
Superman
"John Byrne really wanted to do Superman. He burst into my office with a Cover done. Not a sketch for a cover. A Cover. He had this whole story and everything."
-Jim Shooter in interview.
John Byrne's pitch was known as Man of Steel.It kept most of Superman's origin story and characters. Krypton was destroyed by Galactus in this continuity. Lex Luthor made his debut as a businessman and a genius, combining two versions of him. Superman goes to work at the Daily Bugle instead of the Daily Planet.
Batman
Bruce Wayne travelled the world. His training included journeying to Nanda Parbat, where he briefly met Doctor Doom and in Wakanda. Upon returning to the city he became a vigilante. He notably encounters Spider-Man early in his career. He also recruits Dick Grayson, being active in New York instead of Gotham. He's also a business rival of Tony Stark.
Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman was introduced as a nemesis of Hercules, due to his backstory involving him enslaving the Amazons. In this new continuity, she met Captain America when he crashed onto the Island and broke the rule of the island by leaving and donning a costume of her own. She had a romantic interest in Captain America before his disappearance, after which she disappeared for some time.
Green Lantern
The preexisting Nova Corps was reworked in an amusing way to become the Green Lantern Corps. Two ancient entities emerge in the universe. The Nova Corps is completely devastated and the Green Entity grants the Nova Corps green Power rings. The yellow entity grants powers to a being known as Sinestro. One power ring travels to Earth and recruits Hal Jordan and several others to fight the yellow entity.
Teen Titans
Followed the Marv Wolfman and George Perez team, with the two writers even returning to create the Marvel versions of the characters. Most of the character backstories were kept intact, though Beast Boy was a mutant. The team began led by Robin, who recently left his role as Batman's sidekick.
Justice League
Justice League brought the characters together along with the Flash, who recently was granted his powers. Aquaman is not present. Namor taking his place on the team. Martian Manhunter also appears.
Legion of Superheroes.
The Legion of Superheroes are a group of metahuman teenagers who oppose Kang the Conqueror's regime.
The DC characters would be at Marvel for about a year before DC requested them back for the planned Crisis on Infinite Earths, after that the DC characters, while still existing in the Marvel Universe, received less focus, being reduced largely to cameos. It was a flash in the pan, but would not be the last time the two companies would come together.
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