The Avengers are Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. They are the team that everyone relies on to keep the world safe from every threat imaginable, be it a D-Tier villain or a worldwide alien invasion. The Avengers are a team that stands up against everything, and thus have garnered the trust of the people to protect them. While the roster is continuously rotating, the mainstays are some of the most heroic and selfless icons in Marvel. From Captain America to Thor, the Avengers represent the best of the best of the Marvel Universe. They are heroes through and through, but that hasn’t always been the case.
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Superheroes are meant to represent the best parts of ourselves, but that’s exactly what drives the desire to turn them into villains or evil versions of themselves. The more heroic someone is, the more writers want to turn them into a dark mirror image of themself. Today, we’re looking at just those examples, where five Avengers spent time committing crimes instead of fighting them. These aren’t villains who turned heroic to join the team, either, but five heroes who turned tail and broke bad. Without further ado, let’s talk about these Avengers.
5) Iron Man
Tony Stark has never been an archetypal superhero. He’s arrogant beyond belief and often a major jerk. He has everyone’s best intentions at heart, but he’s more than likely to use those as justification to cross lines that he definitely shouldn’t. Of course, at the end of the day, he’s guided by a strong desire to help others. That was all inverted when Tony was exposed to a morality-reversing wave, turning him into a truly monstrous villain. He called himself the Superior Iron Man and started acting like a god, destroying lives and spreading addiction to his products to drain people of their money.
The reason that Superior Iron Man worked is that he tapped into an innate fear everyone has of Tony. His being such a kindhearted hero goes against every expectation you have of him when you first hear about him, or even when you see him in action. An evil, selfish Tony Stark shows just how much damage he could inflict if he chose, and how terrifying he could be. Tony rides a line that already makes enough people nervous, but him actually stepping past that line shows us exactly why everyone is so scared of him.
4) Ant-Man
Hank Pym has never had a stellar reputation. He’s a founding Avenger and served on the team for years as a valued, trusted member, but all of that changed when he truly fell deeply into his mental problems. Hank’s standing was totally destroyed when he had a full breakdown and accidentally struck his wife, Janet. Ever since that infamous panel, which was a miscommunication between artist and writer, Hank has been the hero that everyone loves to scream about being evil at heart. He had clear stints of psychosis, but his biggest tenure as a villain came when he fused with his greatest creation and regret, Ultron.
Hank has always struggled with his mental health, often losing himself to bouts of manic frenzy that had him attack the people closest to him, and those worst traits were put at the forefront when he fused with his evil robot. Ultron embodied all of the worst parts of Hank, and he was free to be the villain that fans had thought of him as for decades. This experience forced Hank to grapple with his best and worst traits, and watching him be fully unleashed with zero morality was both truly terrifying and felt like the culmination of an arc that was long-coming.
3) Sentry
The Sentry is one of Marvel’s most complex characters. Bob started as a drug addict looking for another fix, but once he injected the Golden Sentry Serum, he became a superhero to rival anyone else. He dedicated himself to using his power to help the world, but constantly had to battle the dark Void, his evil self given form, who wanted nothing more than to take a life for every one the Sentry saved. His villainous persona is a constant force for the Sentry to overcome, but that’s not what made the Sentry a villain. Instead, that came when Norman Osborn took over the Avengers and convinced Sentry to work for him, unaware that Osborn was poisoning Sentry’s mind.
The Sentry has always struggled with trusting his own mind. He’s always on the cusp of losing himself to his base instincts, and often looks to others around him to anchor him. Osborn was the perfect manipulator, taking advantage of all of Bob’s insecurities. Seeing Bob fail to understand what was happening to him, and what he was doing to others, was endlessly entertaining. The Sentry is one of Marvel’s most powerful heroes, but as a villain, he’s dangerous enough to nearly bring the world to ruin. Bob is at his best when dealing with mental problems, and his tenure as a Dark Avenger was a special way to tackle his unique perspective.
2) Hulk
The Hulk has been a villain just as much as he’s been a hero. When he was first created, he wanted nothing more than to tear the world apart and for everyone in it to suffer, but was held back by Bruce Banner’s innate goodness. Over time, he evolved into much more than a beast dedicated to evil. He came to represent all the complicated, savage anger in Banner’s heart, wanting to do good but also to be left alone. The Hulk is a genuinely complex character, and he works best as a hero with a complicated history and understanding of himself, but some of his most entertaining stories are when he’s a downright villain.
One of my favorite stints of Hulk’s villainy came when his Joe Fixit persona first took his name. Joe was a gangster and monster through and through, doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, and trying to rule the Vegas underworld with a gamma-charged fist. The Hulk is a being made of pure anger, and when he goes evil, it’s up to Bruce Banner to be an even stronger force for good. The Hulk’s campaigns for his own goals tend to be some of the most tense, dramatic versions of Hulk’s stories, and every time he decides to fight his fellow heroes, he reminds us all that he’s the Strongest One There Is.
1) Captain America
There’s no greater hero in Marvel than Captain America. Steve Rogers embodies everything great and noble about heroism, standing as a bastion of truth, justice, and hope. He’s an inspiration to practically every hero operating today, even from before he was unfrozen. There’s nobody in the hero community, sans perhaps Spider-Man, who is trusted more and better respected. Steve stands for everything right in the world, which is why it was so shocking when his history was rewritten to being a servant of HYDRA. Evil Steve was a monster unlike any that the superhero community had faced before, and could be one of their greatest villains.
Evil Steve tore the superhero world apart, using all the trust and faith people had in Captain America to totally destroy everything that he stood for. This twist was shocking, terrifying, and so darn interesting. Obviously, Steve should never go over the deep end, but this short tenure as a villain made him one of Marvel’s most terrifying villains. The greatest hero has the potential to become the most dangerous villain of all time, and that will always be interesting, and at least a little cool to see in action.
Which superhero would you love to see take a short stroll on the villainous side of things?
5 Marvel Heroes Strong Enough to Humble the Avengers But Everyone Forgot About Them
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