10 Controversial Marvel Comics Covers That Went Too Far

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Covers are the ultimate way of selling a book to readers, and many of them have landed a spot in history as truly iconic or valuable works. Some even find their way into pop culture beyond the niche medium of comics.

Others? Not so much. For every beloved, iconic cover, there’s one that sparked major controversy or has been deemed as “going too far”. Whether it’s cost a character an show, only made waves within small comic circles, or even made the mainstream news, Marvel Comics has an abundance of covers that have caused some issues.

10

She-Hulk’s Jump Rope Cover Has Lived On In Infamy

It’s hard to describe John Byrne’s famous Sensational She-Hulk run in one word, but “controversial” would be appropriate. Between its comedy, revolutionary fourth-wall breaking that predates Deadpool, and complete reinvention of the She-Hulk character, Byrne’s run is certainly beloved. However, there’s an aspect worth mentioning: the sexuality of She-Hulk, a feature of the run that garnered it a lot of attention and decent sales.

Author and artist John Byrne most famously poked fun at the sexual nature of comics in Sensational She-Hulk #40. Mocking the comics industry’s habit of putting women in sexualized situations on covers just to sell a book, the cover features She-Hulk covering herself up with a Comics Code Authority stamp and a whole lot of nothing else. The inside of the issue is even more shocking, with Jennifer jumping rope completely nude for four splash pages, the speed lines of the rope covering her more sensitive areas—until it’s revealed that she’s wearing a bikini under it, as the editor of the comic, Renée Witterstaetter, came to step in. Regardless of whether the Green Giantess was clothed or not, it didn’t matter, as such an overtly risqué cover was out of place for Marvel and definitely attracted a lot of attention.

9

Daredevil’s Use Of A Firearm Cost Him A Show

The eighties and nineties were a period of growth for comics. Writers wanted to take darker, more mature turns with the medium and a series that kicked off that turn was the ever-iconic Daredevil run by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson. It took the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen to new depths, introducing several compelling, mature elements to the character that weren’t really present up until this point. But it wasn’t just revolutionary for the character, but the comic industry as a whole.

At the same time Miller was telling very noirish stories about the nature of violence, Marvel was trying to pitch an animated Daredevil TV show. The project had gone through several iterations, one of which included a super-dog named Lightning that doubled as Matt Murdock’s seeing-eye dog and Daredevil’s trusty sidekick. But plans for this project were halted with the release of Daredevil #184, a cover that had Daredevil aiming a gun at the reader with the subtitle “No More Mister Nice Guy.” This gave the TV execs looking at a Daredevil show cold feet as they felt the cover indicated the character would be too violent for children. So, while it’s not at all a controversial piece of art, it did go too far in the eyes of executives.

8

The Ironheart Pin-Up Cover Was Quite Gross

Riri Williams has to be one of the most successful Marvel legacy characters introduced in the mid-2010s, having stuck around through various team-ups and solo titles. She’s carved out such a niche for herself in the public eye among fans that she recently got adapted to the MCU in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and is due to get her own show Ironheart on Disney+ in 2025.

Despite how new the character is, having debuted in 2016, she hasn’t been exempt from controversy. The very first issue of her volume of The Invincible Iron Man was set to release with a variant cover from artist J. Scott Campbell as an exclusive for the popular comic store chain Midtown Comics. However, the cover stirred up a controversy when it was revealed, as many criticized the pinup artist for depicting a fifteen-year-old in a pose and outfit that read as sexualized, especially when compared to how the teen was illustrated in the comic. Even Riri’s creator, Brian Michael Bendis, criticized the cover, and eventually, it was pulled with Campbell drawing over it so that Riri was in her armor.

7

J. Scott Campbell’s MJ Cover Became Quickly Infamous

Some artists are well known for drawing things in a particularly striking style, for better or worse. Infamous comic artist J. Scott Campbell isn’t an exception to this, with the way he draws women standing out to many— often leaning into pin-up territory, which has gotten him into some discourse like with the aforementioned Invincible Iron Man #1 cover. Another time he went a little too far was with his cover for The Amazing Spider-Man #601.

Mary Jane Watson is a character that, admittedly, has always been portrayed as rather good-looking. She’s hardly a stranger to cheesecake covers and pages, often used for them even if she’s not an active character within the comic advertised. However, the proportions seen on Campbell’s infamous cover were nothing less than egregious. Her legs and waist were thin as a rail, with her twig arms being positioned just the right way to emphasize her overt and rather large cleavage. The cover was heavily criticized for years after it was released, being redrawn dozens of times over by fans, with Campbell eventually returning to poke fun at his own cover years later in Marvel Comics #1000.

6

Spider-Woman’s Anatomy Felt Inhuman

Comic covers featuring female characters that go into a cheesecake or pinup territory are a dime a dozen. It’s not at all uncommon to see and is something that’s led to lots of discourse about the objectification of women in the comic business. Sometimes these covers feel playful and tasteful in their sensuality and sometimes they just feel plain sleazy—take a look at something like the widely loathed comic Marville’s covers, pieces that are glossy and uncanny in how provactive they are—and sometimes, they feel plain strange.

Such was the case with a variant cover for a relaunch issue of Spider-Woman. The cover was given to Milo Manara, a creative who is best known for his work in European erotica comics. He did several limited variant covers for Marvel in the early 2010s, ranging across several titles, and Spider-Woman became one in a long chain of those covers. But when it hit comic solicits, it stirred up heaps of controversy due to how the character of Jessica Drew was posed. Many of Manara’s previous Marvel covers felt tasteful, but this cover had Spider-Woman contorted on all fours with her oddly rendered rear in the air. The piece felt more unsettling than appealing. Marvel didn’t wish to pull the cover and so compromised—the artwork would be published, but the top part of it would be censored by the book’s cover. The debacle led to Marvel canceling further Manara covers.

5

Princess Diana’s Feature On A Cover Caused An International Controversy

In 2003, the death of the widely beloved Diana, Princess of Wales was still fresh in the minds of the public, even if it was six years after the fact. It was still a rather touchy subject in the minds of the British public and as such, depictions of the much-loved icon that were anything but positive were seen as tasteless. X-Statix was a book from Marvel that spun out of a new lineup of the team X-Force.Created by Peter Milligan and Michael Allred, this new colorful cast of characters was rather experimental and had a heavy focus on gallows humor, all while satirizing the pitfalls of reality TV and celebrity culture.

As the series progressed, Milligan—who himself is British—wanted to include some aspects of his home country into an otherwise American comic while addressing the title’s themes of celebrity and mortality. This led to a storyline where Princess Diana would be brought back from the dead as a mutant with empathy powers and a member of the team, which Marvel initially approved. However, once the solicits were made public, all hell broke loose with the British public. It got to the point where the Royal Family decried the initial cover with Diana on the team and Marvel pressured Milligan and Allred to make changes to the story. Ultimately, Diana was replaced with a fictional pop star named Henrietta Hunter, and the story was published with minimal, surface-tier changes.

4

Marville Was Tacky And Hackish

There are many comics out there that live on in people’s hearts and minds out of pure malice. There isn’t a consensus on what the worst comics of all time are, per se, but many people may offer similar answers—one that has a high chance of overlap has to be the one and only Marville.

Marville was born out of a spite-driven bet instigated by Bill Jemas towards fellow creators like Peter David and found itself at the center of Marvel’s U-Decide promotional campaign, in which fans would choose on which title out of three—David’s Captain Marvel, Jemas’ Marville, and Ron Zimmerman’s Ultimate Adventures—would continue as an ongoing. Marville was a short-lived book that ran for seven issues, and the cover of each one was quite shameless and gross. The comic was a horrible attempt at satirization that was widely hated, with a large part of that disdain coming from its awful covers. Its attempts to be sexy fell flat on its face with its airbrushed female characters, each of them looking like dead-eyed creatures from the uncanny valley.

3

Zoe Thorogood Was Scammed By Marvel

Usually, the process of hiring an artist to do cover work for a comic is a smooth one. A creative is contracted by a company to do some artwork and is paid a certain amount of money—in the realm of several hundred dollars—to be compensated for the cover. It’s a fair sum of money for the work, especially as variant covers can improve the sales of a title. There was a recent incident when all did not go as planned. Fan-favorite artist and rising star Zoe Thorogood, known for works like her memoir It’s Lonely At The Center of the Earth, was contracted to sketch a character design for a new character in the Edge of Spider-Verse series, Spider-UK.

She was paid $100 for the concept art, a fair price, and assumed that would be the end of it—only to have it brought to her attention that Marvel printed the design as a 1:10 variant cover for the title, without telling her or paying her the proper rate for cover art. It was an especially shady act as Thorogood’s work was criticized by fans for looking too simple and unfinished for a cover, something she was never hired to illustrate in the first place. While the truth of the situation was brought to light by the artist and eventually laid to rest, it was a controversy that showcased some of Marvel’s less scrupulous business practices.

2

X-Men #700 Excluded The POC That Led Krakoa

The Krakoa era of X-Men has to be one of the most iconic for the franchise. Despite not lasting even five years, it left a mark that won’t fade away anytime soon on the characters as a necessary step forward for Marvel’s mutants. It recently ended with a bit of a whimper and has a bit of a lackluster legacy with the current From the Ashes initiative, but there was an attempt at honoring the legacy of the series in the main cover of X-Men #700.

Fans noticed immediately that the cover was designed to be an homage to the Krakoa era as a whole, as it had the saga’s most prominent characters front and center—but not all. There was a very notable lack of POC characters on the cover that many took issue with. The absence of Krakoa leads like Synch, Sunspot, Jubilee, Psylocke, Monet St. Croix, Sunfire, and more were widely felt. To add insult to injury, some characters weren’t really all too important to the era on the cover—while it was ultimately a mistake, as artist Pepe Larraz clarified in an online apology, the fact that Marvel didn’t pitch in with any suggestions is disappointing.

1

Captain America #1 Made All The Right People Angry

During World War II, American propaganda was plentiful, finding its way into comics. A young writer and artist who missed the draft, wanting to do his part because he couldn’t serve, decided to pitch into the expanding world of propaganda comics. This young man, of course, was Jack Kirby, paired up with co-writer and co-artist Joe Simon. Together, these two would create the only and only Steve Rogers, A.K.A. Captain America.

The debut of Captain America in Captain America Comics #1 was a shock in the comics world. Kids loved him, parents loved what he stood for, and Timely Comics—later renamed Marvel—was practically printing money with him. However, a few people took offense to the idea of a superhero fighting Nazis. The cover of Captain America Comics #1 famously featured Cap punching out Hitler, of all people, a choice that made one group so angry they allegedly came to Timely’s offices to complain. The story goes that a small crowd of Nazi sympathizers gathered in Timely’s offices to complain and try to fight Jack Kirby, only to run away like a bunch of cowards the second Kirby actually took them up on their offer and approached them.

“}]] While Marvel is usually known for more family-friendly fare, the publisher has released a few misguided and controversial covers over the years.  Read More