Appearance Spotlight: Negasonic Teenage Warhead

This is going to be a quick one.

Negasonic Teenage Warhead is a Genoshan mutant who first appeared in New X-Men #115 (June 2001). She was a telepath who also had some precognition powers:

Surprisingly, she appeared in Deadpool (2016), although with a different look, backstory, and power set. Her role in the film was originally meant for Cannonball, but they couldn't use him, so they picked Negasonic based solely on her name. Frankly, her name makes more sense for someone with explosive powers like she has in the film:

She has since started appearing in Deadpool and the Mercs for Money (July 2016, et al.) with a look clearly inspired by the movie. Her association with Deadpool at all derives from the movie, in fact.

Appearance Spotlight: Vixen (post-Rebirth)

DC's Rebirth initiative has two goals, which at first seem at odds with each other, but seem to be working so far. The first is to shake up the majority of their line, taking their books in new directions that feel fresh. The other is to make it feel more like the pre-New 52 DC Universe by bringing back fan favorite characters, iconic outfits, and popular backstories. I guess there's also a third category that falls in between these two, which is adjusting their books to better match popular adaptations. This falls under that third category.

Vixen has been featured on this site before for her wardrobe changes. You can read about that here. That post will bring you up to the New 52, but shortly after that, Vixen got an animated series on CW Seed (August 2015). So while in the comics she looked like this:

On the show she looked like this:

The series turned out to be fairly popular, to the point that the character made a live action appearance on Arrow, played by her voice actor. Another Vixen, the first Vixen's grandmother, appeared this season on Legends of Tomorrow as a member of the Justice Society. With all that exposure, it makes sense to update her costume again (especially to get rid of that plunging neckline), so in DC Rebirth #1 (May 2016), we got this:

Which was modified a little into this in Justice League of America: Vixen #1 (January 2017):

The Origins of the Maximoff Twins

This is a bit of a controversial one, folks, so strap in.

The Maximoff twins, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, are the children of Magneto. They didn't know this when they joined his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in Uncanny X-Men #4 (January 1964), but it eventually came out, and it's been the source of many storylines since then, including House of M (2005).

At least...that used to be the case.

See, back when Marvel was selling off the movie rights for all of its characters to whoever would take them, things got a little muddled. There were certain instances where it wasn't clear which rights package characters should belong to. Take Kingpin, for instance; he debuted as a Spider-Man villain and appeared as the primary antagonist in his animated series, but he's also a major Daredevil villain. Where does he go? (Daredevil, it turns out.)

The twins are in a similar situation. They're mutants who debuted in X-Men and Magneto is their father, but they've spent most of their time as Avengers characters. But unlike the Kingpin situation, Marvel and Fox decided to just share them. Which is odd, frankly. So in the same year, we had Quicksilver show up in X-Men: Days of Future Past, where he hinted Magneto was his father (this would be confirmed in X-Men: Apocalypse):

And Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch debuted in Captain America: Winter Soldier, where they're not mutants and Magneto doesn't exist (they would make a larger appearance in Avengers: Age of Ultron):

The problem was solved even further by killing Quicksilver in Age of Ultron (2015), so now Fox has Quicksilver and Marvel has Scarlet Witch.

But what happens if people who are only familiar with the movies stumble upon the comics? won't they be confused? Well, Marvel fixed that too. In Avengers and X-Men: Axis #7 (December 2014), Scarlet Witch puts a curse of sorts on Magneto's family...but she and Quicksilver aren't affected! Later, Uncanny Avengers #4 (May 2015), we get the whole story:

Basically, the twins' parents are the people who raised them, and instead of mutants, they're experiments of the High Evolutionary. People blew a gasket over this, but here's the thing: it makes sense.

For one thing, this isn't the first time their parents have been retconned. Magneto himself was a retcon! I won't get into the nitty-gritty - you can read more in-depth analyses here and here - but the gist is that this is actually the simplest origin story they've had. The Maximoffs and the High Evolutionary have been part of their story from day one, this just cuts out the middle men, whether those middle men are The Whizzer and Miss America or Magneto and Magda.

I also doubt this will be the last time their history changes, but at this point, that's just par for the course.

Appearance Spotlight: Tempest (post-Rebirth)

DC's Rebirth initiative has two goals, which at first seem at odds with each other, but seem to be working so far. The first is to shake up the majority of their line, taking their books in new directions that feel fresh. The other is to make it feel more like the pre-New 52 DC Universe by bringing back fan favorite characters, iconic outfits, and popular backstories. I guess there's also a third category that falls in between these two, which is adjusting their books to better match popular adaptations. This falls under that third category.

When Aquaman's sidekick, Aqualad, first appeared in the 60s, he looked like this:

As the Teen Titans grew up, they took on new superhero identities and changed their appearances. Aqualad became Tempest in a miniseries of the same name (1996), and he adopted a costume that was similar to a blue one Aquaman had started wearing, but keeping the red color scheme that was associated with him.

In 2003, the Teen Titans got their own animated series. Although Aqualad was not a member of the team, he did appear in the first season and made several appearances after that. However, his look was much different from anything seen in the comics at that time.

Tempest did not appear in the New 52 for several years, not until Aquaman #42 (July 2015). This version wears a blue version of his classic Tempest outfit, which makes sense as it contrasts Aquaman's warmly colored outfit, just like Tempest's red contrasted Aquaman's blue.

But then Rebirth happened. Tempest is still wearing blue, but as you can see, his new outfit his clearly inspired by his animated one. It debuted in Titans: Rebirth #1 (June 2016).

Character Spotlight: Katya Belyakov

This one isn't as cut-and-dried as I'd like it to be, but I think there's enough circumstantial evidence for it to count.

In 2013, Marvel debuted Agents of SHIELD, a show that followed a small team of SHIELD agents led by Agent Coulson. Like Agent Coulson, the rest of the team were original to the MCU. They consisted of Melinda May, Grant Ward, Liam Fitz, Jemma Simmons, and Skye. Skye turned out to be a pre-existing character later on, and the rest made their way into the comics eventually. You can read more about all of that and some other canon immigrants from the show here.

Over the course of the first season, we learn that May is nicknamed The Cavalry, but stories differ on where the name comes from. We know it happened in Bahrain, and we get hints here and there about what went down, but we don't learn the full story until the season 2 episode "Melinda" (April 2015), where we discover she had to kill a child Inhuman named Katya Belyakov to save the people Katya was mind controlling.

2015 was SHIELD's 50th anniversary, and Marvel commemorated that by releasing a series of SHIELD one-shots as well as a new SHIELD ongoing series. To be honest, this was all pretty much an excuse to introduce MCU elements into the comics. The series uses the tv characters, and the one-shots are based on SHIELD members that are prominent in the MCU, as you can see below. But we're here to talk about May.

In The Cavalry: SHIELD 50th Anniversary Special #1 (September 2015), we see May training some new cadets. We also get flashes of her backstory, particularly this one:

Now here's the thing. The issue never says this is Katya Belyakov. It never says she's an Inhuman. It never says it happens in Bahrain. But I think "Cavalry + little girl + similar positioning" is enough to say that's what they were going for. There are other shout-outs to the show as well (an aircraft is named the Tancharoen Hawk after the showrunners, and a character sings a song from Mulan, who was voiced by Ming-Na Wen, who plays May), so I don't think they're trying to shy away from the inspiration for this issue.