ITT characters with more important/prominence in adaptations than the source material

I remember thinking Bumblebee was cool and an important Titans member because of TT03 only to find out she barely appeared in any comics in general and that it took until like the '10s for her to start becoming a semi prominent C list filler character.

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Even in the 10s she wasn't a semi prominent filler character. Herald is a literally who, but he still has more appearances from the O.G. Teen Titans run than she's racked up in her entire existence.

I think one of the problems with Bumblebee in the comics is she’s constantly tied to Mal. Like all her motivations and agencies are tied to him to the point she has no real characterization unless it revolves around him. The two most successful takes on Karen, TT and DCSHG, don’t involve him at all and she’s better for it

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They're a package deal, like Big Barda and Mister Miracle. Nothing wrong with that. Didio's well discussed disgust for the classic Titans characters ruined any shot they had at being used in the modern era. Lucky they weren't killed off like Lilith and Duela.

As much as I disliked Didio, Bumblebee and Mal didn’t even become prominent until the Didio era.

Wolfman definitely never cared for them or used them outside of Titan reunion background filler.

Literally the only wholesome long lasting black superhero couple in all of comics.

Wolfman used Karen a bit post-crisis. She was working at STAR Labs with Sarah Chalmers helping fix Cyborg.

Jarvis

They were prominent in Wolfman's Secret Origins Annual story with the Antithesis and Gargoyle. Mal was, anyway. Or rather, the Gabriel's Horn lol

She created an Iron Man tier supersuit just to put her boyfriend over for the Titans. Then she disappeared into the background, hardly to be seen again.

They're a package deal, like Big Barda and Mister Miracle.

I wouldn't say just like Big Barda and Scott, which is kinda the problem as Mal isn't balancing out Karen.

Mal comes across as the 'project boyfriend' in their relationship.

He's the perfect boyfriend but it's like the gender reverse of when you have the girlfriend character wanting the superhero to retire and be normal.

Dunno if this counts, but I would imagine that Ant-Man getting three movies in the MCU would lead a viewer to think he has a long solo career in the comics. In reality most of his "substantial" roles are in team books, with the longest stretch of Ant-Man comics being the Tales to Astonish feature in the 60's.

Same thing with black widow and Deadpool before they started shilling him so much.

no she's not

Are there any other strange examples of characters normies would know that are nobodies in the comics?

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It's funny because Mal technically IS in TT but his relationship to Bumblebee is never brought up

I forgot about her

Phil Coulson?

The problem is that they've never leaned into a good Mal and Karen dynamic when writing them. Mal is a regular guy thrust into the superheroic world who keeps coming out of things alive by the skin of his teeth despite his relative lack of intrinsic powers and abilities. Karen is an overachieving mad scientist on the side of good.

Deadpool has something like 20 years worth of solo material published in the past 30 years, plus team book appearances.

The problem is Mal fucking sucks. He's boring and his stupid horn powers are lame. That's why almost every adaptation ditches him. The only thing outside of that he's really been in was Young Justice, where he was kinda just whiny and jealous of Karen. They also completely ignored the Herald/Vox monikers in lieu of Guardian which is interesting. For the grand majority of his appearances in the old TT he was just Mal, and the Guardian thing only lasted a little while.

They use Mal as Guardian a lot

Rebirth had him return in a pared down Guardian outfit after giving up his Herald powers

And the World's Finest Teen Titans mini by Waid last year had Karen give him the Guardian shield and costume (also she was a member of the team before meeting him)

It's kind of interesting how many characters in DC just casually build a super armor just to hang with their superhero friend/relative. STRIPE also just built an Iron Man armor in his garage out of nowhere on a middle income joe salary and knowhow.

Here's my pitch. Mal and Karen duo series, Karen is a mad scientist, Mal is the ordinary guy she married who both keeps her tethered to morality and field tester for whatever new device she's invented recently which is why he has half a dozen superhero identities.

That was George Perez, not Wolfman.

Despite trying to push him a lot around 2019, Blade is still a fucking nobody in Marvel.

Until 2010 or so Zod.

Huh, I actually never noticed. It opens with a Wolfman trope of Dick and Kory weird cuckoldry lol

That could be fun. But don't try to retcon their origins like DC keeps trying to do. Figure out a way to make it work. Mal really did win Gabriel's horn in a fist fight with the angel of death. It's not mechanical, it's god-given. Own it.

Now remember, if Karen asks, this horn came from some stupid wannabe supervillain and I certainly didn't ball stomp the angel of death.

Why would you lie about that? That was something right out of the Bible!

You know damn well if Karen finds out I got into a fight with an angel she's going to start building a skyscraper-sized robot bee to invade heaven and start shit with God!

What about their baby daughter?

Also good to see only a few people wanting Mal and Karen to break ip. They are literally the longest, as well as only, long lasting black couple in comics.

This thread is mostly comic fans. Go to the DCSHG thread and remind them that she was created as Mal's supporting character and that they've been married since the 80s and see what they say.
Hopefully the baby got retconned like the rest of the Rebirth era changes.

Mal, I'm worried she's not meeting developmental milestones; when I was her age I was doing theoretical physics calculations.

Because an exploding time machine accidentally swapped your mind with your 9 month old self.

I'm still concerned.

So he's just black Hank Pym?

No. Keep the daughter.
I want to some Close Enough antics with their family. Or maybe Karen assumes too much from her daughter’s smarts and Mal has to reel her in.

They would've also been in one of the early "Titans West" pitches as a spinoff, with Cyborg moving to the West coast to be part of their team along with Chris King, Thunder, and Lightning.

I think the only time it gets acknowledged was in the Go comic spin-off, where J. Torres also used the story to mock shippers for being obsessed and had Raven be his mouthpiece for that. There was some chuckling and raging over that on TitansGo back in the day.

Blade as a character owes everything to the movie. He's basically a complete non-entity in the comics, even with Blood Hunt last year.

Ironically Torres ends up dropping a few hints Beast Boy and Raven are attracted to each other in a way the show never does

It does count, the first Ant-Man movie was meant to be a self-contained reimagining of Scott Lang's origin story, which was one of the better Ant-Man stories from the comics and turning it into a heist movie with super powers, but because it was part of a larger franchise and found decent success, it snowballed to the point where the latest movie is about Ant-Man fighting the next universal threat. But that's also not bad, because thanks to the MCU Ant-Man got more solo material in the comics compared to how it was before and also gave Scott Lang his first solo run being that one of the few time any Ant-Man has been given a solo title.

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No wonder Derrick Wyatt didn't count the Go comics as valid to the show, kek.
He and some other artists would get peeved at fans lumping them in with the work they personally did, and would have to remind them that Torres and Nauck's stuff was separate.

Sounds like a perfect thread to ask this.
When was the last time Vicky Vale was even remotely relevant in the comics?

Same goes for Zod.