Attempting to change the status quo is a tricky business when it comes to comic books. If you never change anything, the characters will stagnate and the readers will get bored. But making even a small change to any given character is liable to spark a frenzied backlash from angry fans. Usually, such reactions prove to be overblown and unwarranted. But every once in a while, an event comes along that is so tacky, so horrible or so downright ludicrous that it warrants every ounce of ire the fans hurl at it. These are more than minor blunders. These are moments that had the entire fandom up in arms, either against the comic or against each other.

In other words, if you're looking for things that are guaranteed to start a nerd fight if you dare to even think of mentioning them, this is definitely the article for you! Use your new knowledge wisely, true believers. To keep this list at a manageable length, we are going to focus exclusively on Marvel-related controversies. With almost 80 years worth of stories to pick through, it was difficult deciding which fifteen most deserved a public shaming. We trust these entries are sufficiently cringe-worthy.

15 CAP GETS HYDRA-TED

Secret Empire was released in 2017, making it the most recent event mentioned on this list. The event as a whole was polarizing enough, but the part that really blew up the internet was the reveal that Captain America, Sentinel of Liberty, hater of fascists everywhere, was himself a loyal Hydra agent. Given how vocally and violently Cap has opposed Hydra and Nazis in general, the reveal of where Cap's loyalties "truly" lay was more than many readers could stand.

For a while, Marvel persisted in insisting that Hydra Cap wasn't any sort of trick. But they ended up revealing fairly quickly that Hydra Cap was an impostor all along, just as fans had been hoping. When the real Captain America returned, he was, um, not amused.

14 IRON TEEN

In "The Crossing", the villain Immortus manipulates Iron Man into killing several people, including one of his Avengers teammates. In a bid to end Iron Man's rampage, the Avengers drag in an uncompromised, teenage Tony Stark from another universe. The elder Stark wastes no time in attacking his young doppelganger.

Thankfully, Iron Man snaps out of his evil haze and sacrifices himself to save, well, himself. 

This left Teen Tony as Marvel's sole Iron Man--Iron Lad? -- for a while. He even inspired a short-lived cartoon series, Iron Man: Armored Adventures. Then along came the 2008 Iron Man movie. With Iron Man's popularity suddenly skyrocketing, the comics scrambled to more closely resemble the film. They restored Tony to his regular age, and no one discussed Teen Tony ever again.

13 HULK LEARNS ANGER MANAGEMENT

The Hulk has anger issues. Even people who know nothing else about the character could tell you that much. So having him overcome his anger and be able to live his life as a relatively rational person seems a little counter-intuitive. And yet, thanks to some frankly overdue psychiatric intervention, the Hulk, Gray Hulk and Bruce Banner merge into one kinder, gentler entity.

This new Hulk is much better at controlling himself than his predecessor. He speaks articulately in complete sentences, throws out gratuitous movie references, and only resorts to violence when talking it out doesn't work. Basically, he was more like an average superhero, except bigger and greener. Eventually, Marvel revealed that this was all the result of the villain Nightmare messing around with reality.

12 OH SNAP

The Falcon debuted in Captain America #117 and quickly became Captain America's best friend and ally. Time and time again, Falcon proved himself to be just as heroic and upstanding as his partner-in-crime fighting. Given that Falcon was one of the few black heroes Marvel had at the time, readers of color must have been relieved that he didn't fall into any stereotypes.

And then Captain America #186 went and ruined all that by revealing that Falcon was Red Skull's stooge all along.

Red Skull had plucked Sam "Snap" Wilson, a drug dealer, off the streets and brainwashed him into becoming a hero. Why? It was all part of a plan to demoralize Captain America. The plan didn't work and, frankly, neither did this ridiculous plot twist, which has since been retconned.

11 THAT'S HOW THAT WORKS, RIGHT?

Nightcrawler is famously Catholic, and no storyline handled this more poorly than "Holy War." It only lasts two issues, but it manages to pack in a whole series' worth of ridiculousness, so buckle up: the Church of Humanity, a religious fringe group, decides to train Nightcrawler as a priest. Once that's done, Nightcrawler, his mutant appearance disguised by an image inducer, will be made pope. We see nothing but logic here.

The Church of Humanity will then expose Nightcrawler's true appearance, making everyone believe the pope is the Antichrist, and engineer a phony Rapture via communion wafers that explode in people's stomachs. This will cause the collapse of Western civilization when all of the ex-Catholics flock to the Church of Humanity for spiritual guidance. Brilliant! So brilliant, in fact, that no one's brought it up since.

10 THIS IS WHY YOU DON'T DO THEM

Magneto tends to swing between onenote supervillain and sympathetic antihero, depending on the writer. But during the "Planet X" storyline, his characterization went off the rails entirely. Magneto infiltrates Xavier Institute as a healer named Xorn, breaks Professor X's legs and keeps him naked in a tank for some reason, and tries to take over the world by herding humanity into concentration camps. And did we mention Magneto is now on something?

To enhance his strength and help him stay awake for the long hours necessary to establish a successful dictatorship, he begins taking a substance called Kick. 

This causes his behavior to become ever more erratic. The only understandable thing Magneto does in this arc is to deck somebody for saying carrots are a fruit. Needless to say, fans revolted, and this Magneto was revealed to be an impostor post-haste.

9 I'M WALKIN' HERE!

In Avengers #213, Hank Pym, then going by the codename Yellowjacket, yells at and goes too far with his wife, the Wasp. And that's about as much as anyone can agree on regarding this situation. Jim Shooter, the writer of this issue, has gone on record as saying that the moment was not intentional. According to him, Hank was supposed to just wave his arm around without paying enough attention to his surroundings, which resulted in Jan getting hit by accident.

Unfortunately, a miscommunication with the artist caused the final image to look like it was on purpose. Today, many readers continue to reject Shooter's explanation. As far as a good chunk of the fandom is concerned, Hank Pym is a horrible person who should have been jailed or worse years ago. Either way, Hank’s reputation has never fully recovered.

8 THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM?

Several men have taken up the Ant-Man mantle over the years. By far the least popular of these is the third Ant-Man, Eric O'Grady, whose brief tenure as the size-changing Avenger was just one facepalm-worthy event after another. He becomes Ant-Man in the first place by stealing the suit from a dead friend.

This friend, in turn, had stolen the suit from Hank Pym, who he and Eric were supposed to be protecting. Nice.

Eric then tries to get with his dead friend's girlfriend on that friend's grave, only to react petulantly when she storms off on him. Yeah, there's a reason that the book he starred in was called Irredeemable Ant-Man. Eric O'Grady died after six years on the job, and the Ant-Man title has since returned to the men who people actually liked in the role.

7 WANDA CALLS A DO-OVER

The Scarlet Witch (aka Wanda Maximoff) hasn't had an easy life, but she emerged from each tragedy stronger and just as heroic as before... for a while. After being reminded of how her children were erased from existence, she finally lost her grip on reality.  his resulted in "House of M", where the Scarlet Witch recreated the universe as she saw fit.

Wanda is eventually forced to change everything back, but in so doing, she gives one final parting gift to the world in general. By simply uttering the phrase "no more mutants," her hex powers restore reality and depower 90% of all mutants. This being comics, most of the depowered individuals have since regained their mutant abilities. But the fact that Wanda killed many people with this horrible, invasive act doesn't sit well with some fans.

6 POWER PLAY

The Power Pack is a small group of superheroes consisting mostly of the four Power siblings- - Alex, Julie, Jack and Kate -- who got their superpowers from a dying alien that landed in their backyard. After a while, the oldest sibling, Alex, begins to feel uncomfortable with the idea of little kids trying to be superheroes. His solution? He steals his siblings’ powers, renames himself Power Pax and starts hanging around with the New Warriors instead.

That must have made for a few awkward Thanksgivings.

Eventually, Alex realizes that what he did to his siblings was really kind of cruddy, and the name Power Pax only serves as a constant reminder of his betrayal. But instead of actively trying to make amends, he just changes his name to Powerhouse and goes about his business.

5 CONGRATULATIONS, IT'S A SPIDER-MAN!

Thanks to the machinations of an insect lady called the Queen, Spider-Man starts to slowly mutate into an actual spider. Okay, so far so typical, as far as Peter Parker's famously terrible life is concerned. But then it turns out that, in mutating Spider-Man, the Queen also impregnated him, somehow. It's probably best we don't know the science behind that.

A few pages later, Spider-Man keels over, apparently dead. But from Spidey's corpse bursts a fully grown Peter Parker, now upgraded to include biological web shooters and the ability to talk to bugs. So, wait, is this still the original Spider-Man, or is this some kind of cloned son thing with the old Spider-Man's memories? Wait, never mind. We just decided we never want to know.

4 DIVINE PUNISHMENT

For those not acquainted with the character, the Punisher has no special powers or overly fancy equipment. He's just a dude with a lot of guns and a very particular kind of morality. That premise served him perfectly well for decades, but in the late '90s, Marvel decided to spice things up a little. In The Punisher: Purgatory, Frank Castle is tired of it all and ends his own existence.

But of course the Punisher can't find peace, even in death.

An angel named Gadriel snags Castle's soul and throws some superpowers and magic demon-killing weapons at him. The Punisher proceeds to spend the rest of the miniseries neck-deep in demon battles. Now that it's all over, Frank prefers not to talk about this embarrassing episode. It's probably wise to oblige him.

3 WEDDING BELL BLUES

In Black Panther #18, Black Panther, king of all the Wakandas, marries Storm, longtime member of the X-Men, because... because they're both African, we guess? Well okay, that's not entirely fair. Marvel did try to build up their relationship by revealing the pair had had a brief teenage romance. But for many readers, their relationship still seemed to come right out of nowhere.

It didn't help that Storm being crowned queen of Wakanda required her to abandon the X-Men, who she was supposed to be leading at the time. Fans didn't take well to the abruptness of the marriage, so it's not surprising that Black Panther and Storm didn't stay together long: after the X-Men's ally Namor destroys parts of Wakanda in Avengers vs. X-Men, Black Panther annuls their marriage.

2 BON APPETIT

The Ultimate Universe is a grittier, more "realistic" version of the main Marvel Universe. But many fans feel they took the dark-and-edgy concept too far in the five-part miniseries Ultimatum. To give you an idea of just how grim the series is, it starts with most of the X-Men dying off-panel in the first two issues.

Things get progressively less cheery from there.

The entire miniseries is one long gore-fest, with a depressing number of characters meeting needlessly grisly ends. Most infamous of all, the Blob eats the Wasp, and then gets his head bitten off by an angry Hank Pym in retaliation. But the fun doesn't end there: Pym blows himself up, Wolverine is ripped to pieces by Magneto -- twice, even! --and Cyclops incinerates Magneto's head off. And yet the most audacious thing about this comic is that it somehow got away with having a T+ rating.

1 ONE MORE DAWN, ONE MORE DAY...

"One More Day" is one of the most -- if not the most -- reviled Marvel comics to date. The trouble begins when an assassin shoots Aunt May. Since no one in the Marvel universe is capable of healing bullet wounds all of a sudden, Spidey takes the only reasonable course of action: he makes a deal with Mephisto, a literal demon, to save his aunt. But Mephisto is very generous about the whole thing. He'll heal Aunt May, and all he wants in exchange is Peter and Mary Jane's marriage.

Why does Mephisto want their marriage exactly? We don't know. Because it's there? Anyway, Peter and MJ take the deal, erasing their marriage and all memory of it from the universe's collective memory. But the fans haven't forgotten, and they are still quite bitter about it.