Marvel believes intellect and super powers go hand in hand with responsibility and moral compass. Thus today we look at Marvel scientists as superheroes. And heroes as ambassadors of divinity.

Of the original five founding members of the Avengers, three were scientists: Tony Stark, Hank Pym and Bruce Banner. Dr. Donald Blake, Thor’s Earthly alter ego was a Physician and Janet Van Dyne was a technician.

Great minds, great powers, great need brought them together to keep Hulk (whose alter ego is also a scientist) under control.

The Fantastic Four’s fearless leader, Reed Richards, was a top notch astro-physicist and even the creator of the X-Men, Charles Xavier held multiple degrees and doctorates but preferred a role as professor.

Stephen Strange was an accomplished neuro-surgeon who after a crippling accident studied Eastern disciplines and archaic occult manuscripts to supplement science with ‘magic’ as Doctor Strange.

As a rule the preferred profession of scientist in the Marvel Universe seems to be superhero. Whether amateur (like Peter Parker/Spider-Man) or professional (Dr. Hank McCoy/the X-Men’s Beast). About a third of the superheroes also carry the title ‘Doctor’ whether because of their educational degree or because they practice medicine.

The hero without a degree is rare (Wolverine comes to mind. Or maybe Ben Grimm/the Thing) and more often than not these educationally-impaired heroes become “grey area heroes” (or are tricked into participating as bad guys by bad guy scientists).

There might be a Marvel moral here: stay in school, get a degree, save the world or dropout and get mind-gamed by bad guys smarter than you.

Marvel has always been an advocate for education. (Some people think this is ironic, being in the comic book business) with heroes being Doctors and Lawyers and such. Lord knows, this generation could certainly use heroes of noble pursuit!

Part of the reason for this is the noble class of writers and artists who brought these creations to life. At first glance comic books would appear to be at odds with intelligence, knowledge, education and especially religion. This is not necessarily so.

Back in 1939 (and continuing through the 1960’s) comics were written and drawn primarily by Jews who held absolute belief in American standards of education, hard work, opportunity and especially an Almighty God. The two Cleveland teens Siegel and Shuster who created Superman and single handedly ushered in the era of the superhero comic book in 1938 were Jews. (And the origin of Superman actually parallels their belief that God would send his savior son Messiah one day to Earth).

Simon and Kirby (two of Marvel’s best artists in the thirties) were Jews who created Captain America. In fact, this Jack Kirby and Stan Lieber (Lee) in 1961 revived the superhero industry with their creation of the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Ant-Man, Iron Man and a whole host of heroes that now dominates the world.

Stan and Jewish artist Steve Ditko created Spider-Man. As Jews they all held this belief: God created the world, holds dominion over it, and demands the moral imperative that His good will always triumph over evil. Superheroes are by extension, His arm of righteousness. In the early Marvel Comics all characters acknowledged God and His sovereignty.

Many stories involved scenes with praying characters and sometimes divine intervention. Even Thor and Asgard’s residents acknowledged they were gods (with a small “g”) and not the supreme being of the universe.

So why does it appear in this current generation that superheroes are sometimes anti-Christian or at the very least agnostics? God himself saw this happen over and over in early Israel among the Jews. Where, every third or fourth generation from a miraculously saved generation would fall away from Him and He would have to rescue them and the cycle would happen again. Same with our own nation. While our nation was conceived by devout Christians, we have fallen far from those ideals since.

That is what happened at Marvel, too. A generation of artists and writers with no religious background and dubious moral compass began to create ‘anti-heroes’ (bad guys who did good out of their own need) Wolverine comes immediately to mind.

Or bad guys turned heroes like Punisher, Magneto, Venom, Dr. Doom, Electra (even Thanos briefly became a savior shortly after his resurrection from his death at the hands of Warlock, Captain Marvel and the Avengers). Or real heroes began to experience radical turns of morality entering gray areas or even briefly doing evil (I won’t forgive Marvel for letting one of their writers turning Hank Pym into an abuser and murderer just to feed a storyline in the late seventies early eighties). These anti-heroes now reign over the universe.

While Stan’s X-Men where born in the early sixties with “God-given powers” a move was made later to define them as evolved humans to bring them into current and popular scientific theories of evolution.

Many Marvel heroes were caught praying in the early sixties and (depending on the writer still do). Daredevil comes to mind. He is devoutly Catholic (and Netflix has kept this as a part of the series).

Kitty Pride is a Jewish superhero. As America goes, so does its heroes. For God to get a grip on Marvel’s heroes again, he must first get a grip on our nation and the current agnostic generation.

Even education has fallen by the wayside in an effort to make superheroes more “down to earth” they are sometimes little schooled or uneducated, drop outs and even reformed delinquent criminals. They get addicted to drugs, suffer PTSD, tempted by the lusts of this world and in general fall way short of the ideals of traditional superheroes. Yeah, more like sports heroes and reality stars today. Sad state of the world we live in.