These days without Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow the MCU is reaching the bottom of the barrel of obscure Marvel characters to introduce into their movies. Recently, “Captain America 4: Brave New World” introduced a compatriot of Sam Wilson, Dennis Dunphy, who was one of the supporting characters during his time using the donning the shield. He is a character that dates back to the 80’s, helping Captain America take out the Power Broker, and who would later go on to be an Avenger.

However, I was surprised when, the first time I recognized him as Dennis Dunphy, aka Demolition Man, as it was displayed on his name tag, the movie decided to pointlessly kill him off in his third scene.

To be fair this is a character from the comics who has been dragged through the mud hard. When Dennis officially joined the Avengers he “died” by crashing the Quinjet all in the same issue. He would go on to be the butt of the joke for the Avengers for years, despite obviously having mental health issues due to crashing the Quinn Jet and being left in isolation or the Power Brokers treatment. A lot of the material is slightly offensive by today’s standards, as acclaimed writers like Kurt Bussiek and Brian Micheal Bendis give cameos to this pathetic excuse for an Avenger for comic relief, when he is clearly someone who clearly needs help.

However, when we more recently saw him return as a supporting character during Sam Wilson’s first time as Captain America (in the comics), we got to see him in a more serious light. He is now an openly gay superhero trying to regain his life. D-Man coming out was a pretty big deal. While he never had a female romantic interest, in his first experience upon meeting Steve Rogers, he used it as an excuse to hop into the shower with him.  Still, I found it to be pretty inspiring, because it is so rare to get a character struggling with mental health who isn’t evil or part “gimmicky power set”, but also able to overcome it. While more recently in comics, he has had his fair share of setbacks including dying and coming back to life and losing his powers, I just find it inspiring how he always manages to pull through.

I feel a great story could be told with him, the same reason some of my favorite heroes are people like Tim Drake Robin or Antman Scott Lang. It is because they are underdogs, they show how no matter how far we fall we can always make a big difference. Just look at what Brave New World did to Joaquin Torres Falcon, a Mexican-American who helped bring water and food to migrants crossing the border.  This would lead to Joaquin getting kidnapped by the serpent society, and experimented into being a human-falcon hybrid. In the movie, we get a version of Joaquin who is a Miami University graduate who is just there to fill a vacancy, there is nothing remarkable about him aside from the fact he is from Miami, which constantly gets shoved in our face. This is because much like the movie adaptation of Blue Beetle, mainstream audiences can’t handle a Mexican American from the southwest. Joaquin doesn’t feel like an underdog like the comics, we barely get an introduction for him, and it felt like he was just there so Sam Wilson could have someone to work with.

I don’t even think it is fair to call D-Man obscure, as we recently saw him in a pretty enjoyable Lego Marvel Special starring Dennis called “LEGO Marvel Avengers: Mission Demolition”. The Lego Special got the character introduction perfectly, a demolition employee who saves the Avengers by being good at demolishing things. They even managed to keep the part of his origin story, where he reuses parts of other Avengers members.

The Marvel Universe is no stranger to killing off important characters from the comics, Maria Hill was killed off in Secret Invasion before she could do anything besides being Nick Fury’s secretary. However, killing off a major comic book character before they could even get a hint of their superhero alter identity just feels wrong, especially an LGBT character in this day and age. D Man may be more obscure, but he still has his fans including myself, and it feels disgusting that Kevin Feige would even allow this to happen to such a great character.

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