List of storylines adapted in the Marvel animated universe

The following is an overview of episodes from the Marvel animated universe that originated from storylines from the pages of Marvel Comics.

Age of Apocalypse

An Age of Apocalypse-like timeline is shown in the episode "One Man's Worth" from X-Men: The Animated Series. The death of Xavier at the hands of Fitzroy during his college years cause a destructive war between humans and mutants, with Magneto leading the Resistance against the mutant-hunting Avengers. Some of the mutants are shown in their Age of Apocalypse costumes from the comics.

Armor Wars

The Armor Wars were adapted as a two-parter in the Iron Man animated series, with Hawkeye appearing in Captain America's place at the Vault. In this two-parter, the Ghost was the one who stole the armor designs from Stark Enterprises and gave them to Justin Hammer. After Crimson Dynamo allowed the heat-seeking missile to follow him into a missile silo resulting in an explosion that spread a radioactive cloud for miles, Nick Fury gave Tony Stark the remains of Crimson Dynamo's armor. Upon the analyzation of the armor remains, Tony Stark suspects that other armored characters might by using his Stark Armor designs. Instead of Scott Lang finding out which armored warriors had the Stark armor designs, it was HOMER (who had tested his Negator Packs at the time of the discovery) who discovers this and printed out a list of every known armored warrior. The armors of Controller, Beetle, Stilt-Man, Blacklash, Blizzard, the Guardsmen, and Stingray (whose armor wasn't based on Stark technology and only fell victim due to Stark's paranoia) were targeted by Iron Man as well as War Machine's armor. Justin Hammer created Firepower (an automaton rather than a man in armor) to take out Iron Man. After Firepower was destroyed, Iron Man then deleted the files of the Stark Armor designs from Hammer Industries' mainframe.

Clone Saga

In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, the Clone Saga appears in two forms. First in the show, Spider-Man is reunited with Mary Jane after she disappeared into a vortex in his last fight with the original Green Goblin. It was soon revealed that this Mary Jane was a clone as was the resurrected Hydro-Man all of which were the product of the experiments of Miles Warren. Spider-Man tears his costume in a fight with the Hydro-Man clone. The Mary Jane clone saves him with water powers she has by virtue of her body structure being derived from Hydro-Man. Warren runs off from an upcoming flood Hydro-Man's clone would create and finds a piece of Spider-Man's costume, hinting at the possible cloning of Peter Parker. Due to their unstable cell structures, the Mary Jane and Hydro-Man clones evaporate in front of Spider-Man. The death of the Mary Jane clone devastates him, and he is next taken to another dimension by Madame Web to fight in the animated version of the Secret Wars. Warren managed to get a sample of Spider-Man's DNA from a torn piece of his costume.

After that was the two-part Spider Wars series finale, where Spider-Man is presented in an alternate reality version of the Clone Saga. In this version of events, though, the revelation that Peter is the clone, and Ben Reilly is the original leads Peter to become incredibly depressed and vulnerable. The Carnage symbiote takes advantage of this and merges with Peter Parker, becoming the composite being known as Spider-Carnage, who then attempts to destroy all of existence; which includes all universes; from his native universe. Later, after his plan to destroy all of reality is stopped by the original Spider-Man and other Spider-Men from different realities; including the Scarlet Spider; Carnage attempts to destroy every reality, one at a time, starting with the universe that was home to a wealthy, armored version of Spider-Man. However, the "prime" Spider-Man follows Spider-Carnage into that reality. Realizing that his armored counterpart is so arrogant because he has never failed, the "prime" Spider-Man contacts that reality's version of Uncle Ben, the only person who might be able to get through to Spider-Carnage. The gamble works, and Spider-Carnage stops the chain of destruction he had been AbOUT to initiate. He sacrifices himself by jumping in one of his unstable portals from the Time Dilation Accelerator in his reality which disintegrates him. The "prime" Spider-Man at one point remarks: "This is starting to sound like a bad comic book plot!" and part of the arc was called "I Really, Really Hate Clones".

The Spider-Carnage character first appeared in comics, and was the result of a forced merger between the Carnage entity and Ben Reilly, who had taken on the role of Spider-Man at that time. The Peter Parker with whom the symbiote merges with was wearing the original version of the costume; however, when the symbiote merges with him, his costume takes on the appearance of Ben Reilly's Spider-Man costume, which was itself subtly changed by the creature merging with him.

Dark Phoenix Saga

The entire saga of the Phoenix is retold and adapted in the third season of the X-Men animated series, subdivided into the five-part "Phoenix Saga," in which Jean acquires the power of the Phoenix and the battle for the M'Kraan Crystal occurs, and the "Dark Phoenix Saga," showcasing the battle with the Hellfire Club, the Phoenix Force's transformation into Dark Phoenix, and the battle to decide her fate.

These particular episodes are as close as the cartoon came to directly duplicating the comic book storylines — the "Dark Phoenix Saga" is so accurate to the original stories that the episodes have the additional credit, "Based on stories by Chris Claremont." Notably, however, as the Phoenix Force retcon had occurred before the creation of the series, the episodes were made with this change in mind — rather than having Jean develop her powers independently (as was the original intent of the comics), or be replaced by the cosmic Phoenix Force entity (as events were later retconned), the two concepts were merged, into Jean's actual body being possessed by the Phoenix Force, leading to a true struggle between two independent entities.

Jean is shown piloting a shuttle, and when her telekenetic shield fails Phoenix enters her body. Rather than destroying an inhabited system — which was the cause for the decision to kill off the character in the comics — the animated story had her destroy a deserted system and only disable the attacking Shi'Ar cruiser. These changes made it possible for aspects of the original ending of Uncanny X-Men #137, in which Jean survives, to be used. Jean does still commit [...] (taking control of the Shi'Ar's laser beam to fire on herself, rather than finding an ancient weapon), but with her death, the Phoenix Force is purified, and then uses its powers to resurrect Jean, drawing on the combined life-force of the assembled X-Men to bring her back to life. Jean retained her original basic powers, whereas in the aborted comic book ending, she would have been lobotomized by the Shi'Ar and lost them entirely. She was voiced by Catherine Disher.

Days of Future Past

The Days of Future Past storyline was adapted in the X-Men animated series. The storyline concepts were combined with another alternate future story - that of Bishop and the idea of a traitor within the ranks of the X-Men. In the original comic book version, the traitor was responsible for [...] the X-Men. Bishop believed Gambit was the traitor. This story was combined into the Days of Future Past plot, and the traitor was the one who killed Senator Kelly. The traitor turned out to be Mystique imitating Gambit's form.

The future that Kelly's death led to was similar to the comic's. Every mutant was put into concentration camps. Eventually the Sentinels decided they would have to take over in order to protect mankind. Under the machines' rule, the entire North American continent was turned into a wasteland with its human population living in fear of their robotic masters and its mutant population rendered almost extinct. Only a small group of mutant rebels remained free and unharmed, led by an aged Wolverine.

In the animated series, Bishop is not the mutant police agent that he is in his comic's future. Instead, he's a bounty hunter who captures Wolverine and his team. When the Sentinels betray Bishop, he sides with Wolverine and Forge, who has invented a time portal he uses to alter history and prevent their time from ever occurring. Bishop volunteers to travel back in time, but arrives with amnesia and being pursued by the future super-sentinel, Nimrod. After an encounter with the present-day X-Men, a battle with Nimrod and a mind-scan by Professor X, Bishop's memory returns and he implicates Gambit as the traitor he has been sent to stop. The X-Men travel to Washington to guard Kelly and fight the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Their leader, Mystique, uses her shape-shifting powers to disguise herself as Kelly's aide and lures him away. She then assumes Gambit's form and tries to kill Kelly in front of the real bound and gagged aide she impersonated. The real Gambit arrives in time to stop her, but when Bishop finds himself confronted with two Gambits, he threatens to shoot both of them for security's sake. Rogue stops him, tearing off the armband that keeps him anchored in time, hurling him back to his own future.

Arriving back in his future, it first seemed to Bishop that nothing had changed and that the world was still as he had left it, but he discovers something had changed - a deadly plague has raged around the world, engineered by the ancient mutant, Apocalypse. Traveling back in time once more to stop the virus, Bishop succeeds, but the X-Men perished in the effort. This in turn caused the erasure of the future reality of 3999, home-time to the mutant mercenary Cable, who traveled back to before Bishop's arrival in the past and altered events once more to ensure the destruction of the virus, the survival of the X-Men and the preservation of both his and Bishop's timelines.

When the time-portal-generating mutant Trevor Fitzroy was assigned the task of traveling back to the mid-20th Century and [...] a young Professor X, his actions created an alternate present (analogous to the comic book's Age of Apocalypse). Bishop and his sister, Shard traveled to this time and teamed up with the alternate versions of Wolverine and Storm, undoing Fitzroy's actions. As the siblings returned to their own time, Shard emerged through the portal, but Bishop was cast off-course. In 3999, Apocalypse has wrested the power of time-travel from Cable, and his transit through the timestream clashed with Bishop's, hurling them both into Limbo, the "axis of time." There, Bishop was pestered by the maniac "janitor of time," Bender (actually the disguised form of the Avengers foe, Immortus) while Apocalypse mastered the axis' ability to touch all times, forming a complex plot to rewrite time using the combined power of captured psychic mutants. Bishop was instrumental in stopping this scheme, liberating some of the psychics at a key juncture, who used their powers to banish Apocalypse from the timestream.

As of the end of the series, the storyline remains unresolved, with nothing having been shown to alter Bishop's future from the dystopia seen in "Days of Future Past."

The Galactus Trilogy

The story is adapted into episodes of the 1994 Fantastic Four TV series. The story is also loosely adapted into the first three-part episode of the TV series Silver Surfer.

Invasion of the Spider-Slayers

This storyline inspired LJN's 1993 video game, Spider-Man 3: Invasion of the Spider-Slayers for Nintendo's Game Boy as well as the episodes "The Spider Slayer" and "Return of the Spider Slayers" of the Spider-Man animated series also the SNES and Sega Genesis games based on the animated series featured the Spider-Slayers.

The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man

The story loosely inspired a two-part story (Sins of the Fathers Chapter 2: Make a Wish and Sins of the Fathers Chapter 3: Attack of the Octobot) in the third season of Spider-Man: The Animated Series. The major difference however, is that the Kid in question is a girl rather than a boy.

Legacy Virus

In X-Men, a variation of the Legacy Virus was used in a brief storyline where it was the creation of Apocalypse, who had created the virus with the aid of Graydon Creed and the Friends of Humanity, infecting innocent people and claiming that mutants were the ones who had caused the plague. In an attempt to stop the plague, Bishop came back from the future to destroy Apocalypse's work before the virus could move on to mutants, but as a result vital antibodies that would allow the mutant race to survive future plagues were never created. Travelling back from even further in the future, Cable was able to come up with a compromise that allowed both Bishop and his missions' to succeed; although the plague never made the jump to mutants on a large-scale basis. Cable nevertheless ensured that Wolverine would be infected, thus creating the necessary antibodies while not [...] any mutants thanks to Wolverine's healing factor.

The Night Gwen Stacy Died

Due to rules imposed by Fox Kids' Standards & Practices department, no characters could be killed on Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Writers excluded Gwen from the series as they felt they could not use a character who was destined to die. In the episode "Turning Point", Mary Jane fulfilled Gwen's role, but she and the Goblin fell into a portal to the Negative Zone. Due to the series' cancellation, they never returned (aside for a brief mention by Madame Web at the end of the series' finale episode) although the creators had intended to bring her back in the never-made sixth season. Like Gwen Stacy in the comics, a clone of Mary Jane appears in the fifth season. In spite of the rule against death that kept Gwen out of the show in the first place and caused Mary Jane to fall into a portal instead of falling to her death, Mary Jane's clone actually dies. In the comics, the clone of Gwen Stacy lived although the original died.

The Phalanx Covenant

The Phalanx Covenant was adapted into a two-part fifth-season premiere of the X-Men animated series, and was The Primary inspiration for the 1995 Sega Genesis video game, X-Men 2: Clone Wars.

Secret Wars

An abbreviated form of the Secret Wars was depicted in the 1990s Spider-Man TV series.

The Six Arms Saga

In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, the "Six Arms Saga" was reinvented as the "Neogenic Nightmare", where the transformation was not caused by Peter's attempts to remove his powers, but as a result of his body mutating further from the original spider-bite. After his attempts to ask Professor X and the X-Men for help developing a cure meet with failure, Spider-Man turned to Doctor Crawford for aid, only for his initial attempt at a cure to first make him grow the four new arms and subsequently to mutate into the Man-Spider after fighting Punisher, a recently mutated Michael Morbius, and the NYPD. Thanks to the collaboration of Kraven the Hunter and the Punisher, Spider-Man was cured of the mutation and returned to normal. When the Vulture attempted to drain Spider-Man's youth and power in a later encounter, Doctor Connors reprogrammed the device to absorb the defective genome that had caused the mutation originally, resulting in the Vulture mutating into a Man-Spider and forever curing Spider-Man of the mutation.

The Wedding!

In the first episode of Spider-Man Season 5, "The Wedding", Peter and Mary Jane (or rather, her clone) attend their wedding only to have it interrupted by the Green Goblin II, who attempts to get Mary Jane to marry him.

The list of attendees at the wedding were Peter, Mary Jane, Liz Allan, Flash Thompson, Debra Whitman, Felicia Hardy, Wilson Fisk, Robbie Robertson, J Jonah Jameson, Anna Watson, May Parker, Harry Osborn, Curt Connors, Mrs. Connors, the Scorpion and others who were not named. Unlike the comics version, their honeymoon was in Niagara Falls and not Paris. On an interesting note, in the series finale of the show, an alternate universe is seen, in which Spider-Man is engaged to Gwen Stacy.