Marvel Comicsand their heroes have been around since 1939, creating one of the coolest shared universes ever. The House of Ideas has soldiered on since the Golden Age without a major continuity reboot, which has been difficult since Marvel used a lot of real life events – like the Korean War and Vietnam and 09/11 – in their stories. In order to deal with this, they’ve created a sliding time scale, one which usually keeps moving the 15 or 20 years of modern heroes forward to match contemporary events. This is how Spider-Man for example, is in his late ’20s (even if he should be in his early ’30s), instead of being in his 70s.
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The sliding timescale has kept a lot of heroes out of the retirement home, but maybe it shouldn’t. There are numerous characters in the Marvel Universe who could use some retirement. That’s not to say that they should disappear completely, but they should give up their costumed identities and actually try to enjoy their lives. These five Marvel heroes need to retire, as their costumed lives have become too much for them in a variety of ways.
5) Havok
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Havok is the most underrated Summers brother, which has always been his problem. He’s constantly in his brother’s shadow and this has created a problem for him. The best time to be a Havok fan was the late ’80/early ’90s, when Cyclops was nowhere to be found and Alex was establishing who he was with the X-Men for the first time in years. It’s why I’ve become his strongest soldier – he was amazing back in those old X-stories when he was just being Havok the hero and not Havok, the younger brother of Cyclops.
Havok has been through the ringer in his superhero career. He’s had his mind controlled numerous times over the years, with Madelyne Pryor, a woman who he has loved deeply, doing the most damage to him. His former relationship with Polaris is shot and he’s not been able to find a consistent spot with the X-Men since the Utopia Era – his time as a Marauder was the best he’s had in years and he spent most of it psychologically damaged before ending up with Maddie, though she kept him as a mind-controlled zombie. Alex has been through way too much and it’s about time he just called it quits. He could still teach and train young mutants, but he doesn’t need to put himself through the trauma meatgrinder any more.
4) Daredevil
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Daredevil has been fighting one of the hardest fights in comics for years. Matt Murdock has worked hard to try to clean up Hell’s Kitchen, but has constantly found a massive roadblock in this way: the Kingpin. Over the years, the war between the two of them has torn their lives to shreds. Matt lost Elektra (though she did return), Karen Page, and his wife Milla to the war against crime. He’s had his life destroyed, his identity revealed, and was even killed and resurrected as the leader of the Hand, possessed by their demonic master.
Matt Murdock needs to give the Daredevil costume to Elektra – who wore it while he was prison (oh yeah, he’s been to prison. Twice)– and become a civilian. He can still be a lawyer, fighting for his clients against a corrupt system. He could still hang out with the heroes he used to work with and give them back-up when needed. There are lots of uses for the ultimate lie detector, after all. Other than that, he’s good. Matt’s mission has made his life a hell, and not every devil deserves that.
3) The Wasp
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Let’s be honest for a second – you probably already through Janet Van Dyne was retired and you wouldn’t be half wrong. The Wasp is one of Marvel’s premiere women, having helped found the Avengers, rising to the level of team leader more than once, and has been a major part of the Marvel Universe since the ’60s. However, she and her former boyfriend Hank Pym don’t have the stature or name recognition of the other founding Avengers. She hasn’t been a member of any main Avengers team in ages; the last time she was associated with the team is in the underrated Avengers Inc., where she made a superhero detective agency with the mysterious Vic Shade (written by Al Ewing, no less; I still don’t understand why people wouldn’t want to buy that book).
Janet is an awesome character, but Marvel just doesn’t want to do anything with her anymore. This means that modern fans have never really seen her at her best unless they are rather old. If Marvel isn’t going to do anything with her, she might as well get put out to pasture. She can hang around with the team, make them costumes, work on the public relations side of things, but she should hang up the wings.
2) Reed Richards
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Reed Richards was the first superhero team leader of the modern generation of heroes, leading the Fantastic Four after they gained their powers on a mission to the stars. Back in the Silver Age, Reed was old enough to have fought in World War II. The sliding timescale has taken him far from that and Marvel has actually gone out of its way to make Reed younger than he was originally conceived to be; he was in his late 30s/early 40s in the Silver Age and is probably played as closer to early to mid 30s now.
However, whether you want him to be a dude in his fifties, kept young by the cosmic radiation somehow (which would fix a lot of problems with him and the rest of the Fantastic Four, honestly) or a dude in his mid 30s, he should retire either way. Retirement for Reed wouldn’t be all that different from his normal life. He’s still work on his experiments, he would just leave the heroing to everyone else. He could still play the same role in the superhero community, he just doesn’t need to fight anymore.
1) Professor X
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Professor X has become much more complex than before. He’s played nowadays as a more pragmatic sort of person, which has led to him making a lot of mistakes, especially since his return to life in 2017. His morality has gotten way more complicated than before, but there’s been something about Xavier that has always been complicated – his age. Charles fought in the Korean War in the original X-Men comics and was at a similar age to Magneto, meaning that he was almost certainly late 30s/early 40s when he started the team.
He’s been de-aged and put in new bodies numerous times over the years; however, the reason why he needs to retire has nothing to do with his age. Xavier has lost himself completely. His dream never coming true has completely destroyed any morals he once had. He’s lost all faith in humanity. The only way for him to ever get better is to leave the fight. Go off with Lilandra, start an actual school and just teach, anything but being with the X-Men. He’s lost his way and retirement could help him find it again.
What Marvel heroes do you think should retire? Do you think I’m wrong about any of the ones I picked? Sound off in the comments below.
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