March 2024 tournament – Marvel Superheroes, round 1

It’s officially March, which means it’s time for my annual tournament! Believe it or not, this is the 10th annual (!) Disney in your Day March tournament.

We’ve covered lots of Disney topics and properties in the past to see who would come out victorious. We voted for our favorite attraction (Haunted Mansion), favorite food (Dole Whip), animated Disney movie (The Lion King), favorite song (Under the Sea), Disney villains (Hades), Pixar movie (Toy Story), Disney sidekick (the Genie), favorite Disney+ TV show (The Mandalorian), and favorite Star Wars character (Obi-Wan Kenobi).

So that’s my hall of fame as it stands so far… I figured it’s time to bring some Marvel characters into the mix! This year we’ll be voting to see who will be the ultimate champion in the category of Marvel superheroes.

And a little bit of info below before we get to the voting!

How did you pick these Marvel superheroes?

Whenever I choose items for a bracket, I have to narrow them down in one way or another. In the case of Marvel, I specifically chose to focus on Marvel superheroes – so that left out the villains or other prominent side characters who don’t have special powers or abilities.

One of the great things about the MCU, though, is how complex some of the characters are. So I had to do some debating. Is the Winter Soldier a superhero or an anti-hero? What about Deadpool? Loki? I may have made some choices you don’t agree with, but I ultimately chose heroes who are overall benevolent and superhuman in some way (someone like Hawkeye might not have super “powers”, but I think we can all agree he’s a superhero, for instance).

It wasn’t easy! Feel free to tell me in the comments if you disagree with me – I feel like “Is Loki a superhero or anti-hero” could now be an entire blog post on its own after the thinking I did on this one!

Am I supposed to vote for the most powerful superhero, or my personal favorite??

Honestly, that’s up to you! I usually just choose to vote for my favorite character. But you can think of it however you’d like – who would win in a fight, who you would want if you were in need of a superhero, or just who do you enjoy watching the most on screen.

Why did you arrange the bracket like this?

I tried to create groups of 8 characters that somewhat go together, rather than just throwing all 32 in together and seeding them. I find it more interesting this way – because we’ll get some lesser known characters in the final rounds that way and it won’t just end up as Iron Man vs. Captain America.

Who ARE some of these characters?

If you’re deep into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you probably recognize all of these characters. But if you don’t catch every small detail, or you haven’t watched the expanded universe of TV shows, there might be some names that are unfamiliar to you. Or like me, that you can’t quite place a face to a name.

Below I’m going to give a very brief description of each character. Maybe someone will catch your eye that you didn’t know about and you’ll be watching a new Marvel show or movie soon!

The Early Avengers

I’m thinking that this is the group of superheroes that everyone will know, but just in case:

• Iron Man – genius Tony Stark builds an armored suit to become Iron Man, one of the main Avengers
• Black Widow – a trained assassin and spy, also known as Natasha Romanov
• Thor – The Asgardian god of thunder
• Ant-Man – a criminal named Scott Lang turned superhero, he has the ability to shrink to the size of an ant
• Captain America – scrawny Steve Rogers becomes Captain America by taking the super soldier serum in the 1940s
• Hawkeye – also known as Clint Barton, he’s incredibly skilled with a bow and arrow
• The Hulk – a genius scientist who becomes the Hulk due to a failed experiment with gamma radiation
• Star Lord – the leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy, also known as Peter Quill

Marvel TV Heroes

While some of these may have also appeared in the films, many of them had their biggest moments in the TV shows. While I mostly stuck with the Disney+ shows, at least one from Netflix snuck in there.

• Winter Soldier – also known as Bucky Barnes, he’s Captain America’s best friend who was brainwashed but later fought on the side of good
• Echo – one of the latest Disney+ shows, Maya Lopez is a deaf superhero and Choctaw tribe who starts as a bit of an anti-hero but comes to embrace her power of being able to call on the skills and powers of her ancestors
• Ms. Marvel – teenager Kamala Khan is a bit of a superhero fangirl until she becomes one when she gains the ability to harness energy with a magical bangle
• Moon Knight – Marc Spector has dissociative identity disorder and is gifted a suit that grants him superhuman strength, speed, and healing powers, amongst other things
• Captain Carter – the Disney+ show “What If?” asks the question “What if Peggy Carter had taken the super soldier serum instead?” Captain Carter is the superhero we get from that episode.
• She-Hulk– Lawyer Jennifer Walters is transformed into a Gamma-powered Super Hero when she is accidentally infected with some of Bruce Banner’s blood
• Daredevil – a lawyer and vigilante who was left blind by radioactive substances as a child, but also had all his other senses heightened to superhero abilities
• Kate Bishop – a young archer who eventually becomes the new Hawkeye when Clint Barton decides to retire

The Later Avengers/Superheroes

This is where I put what I consider the other “major” supheroes who weren’t in the earlier films, but came along a few years later.

• Spider-Man – a teen named Peter Parker who gains his powers when bitten by a radioactive spider
• Sersi – the leader of the Eternals who uses her powers to help protect humanity
• Captain Marvel – known on Earth as Carol Danvers, she gains major powers thanks to an energy explosion
• Vision – originally the AI assistant to Tony Stark known as JARVIS, Vision receives his own body thanks to Ultron and is given life thanks to the Mind Stone.
• Black Panther – as T’Challa he rules Wakanda and receives superhuman strength and speed when he takes on the mantle of Black Panther (for the current Black Panther, I’ve put her in another category! so here we’re talking about T’Challa)
• Shang-Chi – a highly skilled martial artist and assassin who was trained by the Ten Rings organization
• Doctor Strange – a brilliant neurosurgeon who gains powers in the mystical arts when he sets out to find a way to fix his hands after a car accident
• Scarlet Witch – mostly known as Wanda Maximoff, she possesses intensely strong powers known as Chaos Magic that she sometimes struggles to control

“And the Rest”

(This category went through a few changes before I finally decided to group it as the ones who were left and didn’t strongly fit in any of the other categories, or there was no room for them there.)

• War Machine – “Rhodey” is good friends with Tony Stark who gets his own powerful suit to become War Machine
• Quicksilver – the brother of Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, Pietro Maximoff has the ability to move at superhuman speeds
• Shuri – the sister of T’Challa, she becomes the new Black Panther after his death
• America Chavez – appearing in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, America comes to us from the multiverse and has the ability to create portals to other universes
• Falcon – Sam Wilson becomes Falcon after befriending Steve Rogers, and ultimately takes on the role of Captain America
• IronHeart – We meet Riri Williams in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and she is a very gifted student at MIT who created her own superhero suit
• Monica Rambeau – best friend to Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel, she gains powers at the end of WandaVision when she is exposed to an energy surge which allows her to manipulate all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum
• The Wasp – We first meet Hope van Dyne in the movie Ant-Man, and she becomes the Wasp when she takes over the Wasp suit originally used by her mother

The voting begins!

Which characters are you rooting for to make it to the end?