Marvel Lied To You About The Avengers

The Avengers have launched countless comics and more than a decade of blockbuster movies. Over the years, Marvel heroes like Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, and Thor — and their MCU counterparts — have saved the world from destruction at the hands of alien invasions, fascist regimes, and all sorts of villainous shenanigans. Together, Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios have created an entertainment empire, but they've also lied to fans about their favorite characters through misleading trailers, comic book covers, and rewriting characters' backstories and motivations. Their most egregious lies often involve introducing elements of retroactive continuity, known as retconning, letting writers easily explain away plot holes or resurrected characters by rewriting past events or revealing villainous motivations that were hidden in previous storylines.

While some of these lies were relatively harmless, others completely changed decades of characters' narratives and backstories and inspired harsh fan backlash. Not all of these lies were bad — some of them ultimately made sense for writers and creators to achieve their artistic vision — but they were lies nonetheless. So let's take a look at all the times Marvel lied about the Avengers.

The Russo brothers tricked viewers again with the trailers leading up to Avengers: Endgame, but this time around, most people almost expected it.  

The subterfuge was necessary for the Russos to keep the gargantuan film event as spoiler-free as possible. This came as no surprise, as the Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Civil War, and Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame directors were notoriously anti-spoilers when it came to their movies throughout Phase Three. 

Most of the shots featured in the Endgame trailers utilize unused footage from Infinity War, or altered scenes from the film's first act. The Russos' misleading use of scenes not in the final cut made sense, since using unaltered footage from the film's latter two acts would have likely spoiled both the film's jump to five years forward after the events of Infinity War and its time heist premise. 

One of the most obvious misdirections from the Endgame trailer was Black Widow sporting her Infinity War-era bob, when in fact she'd gone back to her natural red color (with blonde tips, y'know, to show the passage of time). There's also a shot of Thor wielding Stormbreaker, and he looks a whole lot different than the beer-bellied Asgardian seen playing Fortnite in the film. 

One of the more egregious retcons to plague the Avengers, The Crossing's reveal that Tony Stark had been a traitorous sleeper agent for Kang the Conqueror for 30 years went against literally everything readers knew about Iron Man. While retconning heroes as villains for a short narrative arc is commonplace in the comics, this instance was especially unpopular among fans.

Unlike other alternate-universe-evil-twin plots that comic book fans had come to expect over the years, The Crossing saw the real Tony Stark readers knew and loved betraying his friends and straight-up murdering people after three decades of deception. The explanation that Kang the Conqueror had been manipulating Tony for decades seemed a little thin, not only because of the rich backstory created and investigated thoroughly throughout years of Iron Man comics, but also because it completely disregarded any sense readers had of Tony's character development or morality. 

Except not really? Marvel backpedaled on the idea that Tony Stark had been manipulated into being an evil double agent by Kang for the entire history of the Marvel Universe. Instead, the Avengers Forever miniseries further retconned this event and explained that Kang/Immortus' manipulation of Tony took place over several months, not years, further confusing and frustrating readers. 

In Black Widow's initial origin story, Natasha Romanoff danced as a ballerina for the Russian Bolshoi before her time as a KGB spy-turned-Avenger. In early Black Widow storylines, readers learned that she married a Soviet agent and was a prominent ballerina, but later pledged her loyalty to the KGB and trained as a spy after the death of her husband. Black Widow's dancer past was even alluded to in the MCU during scenes from Avengers: Age of Ultron, when Wanda (Scarlet Witch) makes each Avenger experience a haunting vision to drive the heroes apart. 

The truth behind Black Widow's backstory was much more sinister than either the original tragic origins or its MCU interpretation. In the comics, the reality of Black Widow's past is that Natasha was brainwashed, trained, and bio-technically altered to be a cold-blooded assassin from childhood by the Red Room. Fans had theorized that being a member of an internationally recognized dance company might make it difficult to moonlight as an assassin, but this was easily explained away by saying that all of Natasha's memories of the ballet had never happened: the false narrative Natasha initially believed about her past was planted by the Red Room to ensure her loyalty to the KGB. The lies Natasha was told about herself in this retcon will likely be crucial to the Black Widow solo film.

Starting in 2012, the Avengers Assemble comics endeavored to draw in new readers inspired by the first Avengers film, which came out that year. The cover from one of these issues, which features Thanos brandishing the Infinity Gauntlet with all the Infinity Gems, hits differently now for many Avengers fans than it did years ago. When Avengers Assemble was first published, Thanos hadn't even been properly introduced into the MCU, only seen in a brief cameo in an Avengers mid-credits scene.

MCU fans now recognize Thanos as the main villain of Infinity War and Endgame, the being who searches for the Infinity Gauntlet and gems to eliminate 50 percent of all beings across the universe — but comics fans are familiar with Thanos from the Infinity Saga on which those films are based.

However, in Avengers Assemble #7, Thanos doesn't possess the Infinity Gauntlet or the gems, contrary to the image on the cover. In fact, he's not even looking for them. He's actually looking for the Cosmic Cube, the all-powerful bauble referred to as the Tesseract in the MCU.

Remember in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, when Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is introduced as the last member of her species, the Zehoberei? Marvel is probably hoping you don't, because they took her origin story in a different direction later on. As anyone who watched Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame is aware, Gamora's adopted "father" Thanos was responsible for the destruction of her people — but instead of slaughtering all of them, as she claimed in Guardians, he's later shown in a flashback sequence, making the planet a stop on his long quest to bring "balance" to the universe by wiping out half of all life.

Either way, Gamora's story is tragic, and she had plenty of reasons to want Thanos stopped at all costs — but this seems like one of those times when Marvel hadn't really figured out the details of its sprawling cinematic universe, and made changes on the fly hoping most members of the audience would be too caught up in the action to notice.

Misleading comic book covers were perhaps the original clickbait, historically drawing readers in with bright images of characters and scenes that weren't always depicted in the issues themselves. Such is the case with Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy #15, which features Captain Marvel and announces her appearance in the tagline "And now ... Captain Marvel." 

This Guardians of the Galaxy run highlighted teammates familiar to fans of the MCU, like Star-Lord, Drax, Gamora, and Groot, but it also ended up featuring a roster that included more surprising characters, such as Captain Marvel and Venom (yes, that Venom). 

At the end of Guardians of the Galaxy #14, readers see Captain Marvel leaving to rescue Star-Lord. Readers logically expected her to arrive in the next issue, and the cover of issue #15 definitely seemed to hype up her involvement in the action. But her appearance in this comic is solely on the cover— she doesn't actually come to save the day until the next issue, Guardians of the Galaxy #16.