Marvel Rivals Players Are Creating Ships So Wild They’re Making Comic Books Fun Again

Many a team-based hero shooter has tried to dethrone Overwatch, but Marvel Rivals has quickly gone from being heir apparent to Overwatch 2 killer. Fans have dissected how its free-to-play model, regular updates, and flashy-yet-pricey skins have made the game feel like a derivative-yet-better iteration of Overwatch’s formula, without all the Blizzard baggage. However, one overlooked aspect of its success among players, which also contributed significantly to Overwatch’s staying power among its fandom, is Rivals’ scope for virtually endless shipping.

A not-insignificant corner of the internet is deeply invested in Venom’s unexpected tenure as the game’s resident “Girthmaster,” in a flood of not safe for work Source Filmmaker animations, fan art, and throwing his generous symbiote ass in a circle in the game proper. But the real wild card is how Marvel Rivals’ multiverse concept has unlocked a new frontier for unlikely romances.

We’ve already waxed poetic about the typical tradition of fans crafting stories around their favorite media, and how shipping characters based on their undeniable chemistry is just another delightful extension of that. But these pairings are a different beast: often called “crack ships,” a term stemming from the notion that someone must be “on crack” to dream up such a pairing, they’re typically characterized by wholly unexpected and bizarre romantic couplings. These romantic pairings involve characters who barely—if ever—interact with each other in their original stories. 

Despite Marvel comics already teeming with canon ships like Sue Storm and Mr. Fantastic, Marvel Rivals’ multiversal madness has produced crack ships that are strangely compelling because, somehow, no comic book reader or writer has galaxy-brained their way to these compelling match-ups before. What’s more, comic book fans are waiting to see what new pairings Rivals players, some of them having their first foray into the comic book universe through the game, come up with next. As Aftermath’s resident fandom whisperer and internet culture anthropologist, I couldn’t pass up the chance to spotlight some that are logical, out of pocket, and oddly compelling. 

Many of these ships are spurned by developer NetEase Games through unique voice line interactions in the game’s match waiting room. A few standout examples include Venom confessing their crush on Scarlet Witch or Groot delighting in being able to communicate with Emma Frost thanks to her telepathy, relishing in her not having to decipher the inflections of him saying his name. These interactions have spawned lukewarm ships, such as Human Torch and original game character Luna Show, due to their whole fire and ice theme; Loki and Mantis for their shared quirky outsider vibes; and Winter Soldier and Hawkeye for being old man yaoi. Spider-Man, Psylocke, and Magik are essentially a grab bag of pairings with just about anyone, with Parker being a laid-back guy who can gel with almost anyone, and the other two being the cool, calm, and collected kudere archetypes that heroes vie for attention from. One of the oddest pairings I’ve stumbled upon is between Guardians of the Galaxy’s Star-Lord and Moon Knight. I have no idea how this duo even came to be, but based on the fan art, they seem to be operating on a shared single brain cell—and honestly, it's made for a delightfully chaotic couple dynamic. Congratulations to them on whatever they have going on. 

By far one of the most popular ships that is also fresh on the market is the pairing of Bruce Banner with Emma Frost. With a ship name EmmaBruce and an infinitely funnier nickname “Twink Angst,” the Emma Frost and normal purple-shirted science man ship is weirdly one of the fandom’s most compelling pairings yet. As the game’s resident Bayonetta-meets-Nico Robin, Emma Frost has been characterized as a nurturing hero who mothers refugee mutants of Krakoa and will eviscerate anyone who harms Jeff the Land Shark. When you take that energy and mix it with a tired, worn-down Banner who just wants to snuggle up with her and rest, you’ve got a nuclear-grade ship on your hands. The ship, whose inception point appears to have spawned from Twitter artist Chosentragedy, has gotten so immensely popular over a month that Chosentragedy has gone about making a series of short comics where Bruce introduces Emma to his nerdy hobbies like playing Dungeons and Dragons. 

Marvel Rivals has become a vast playground of characters, with the promise of new additions every month, providing an ever-expanding canvas for players to mix and match together, fueling a surge of fan art that has far outpaced the Avengers-era frenzy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s pretty damn fantastic to see it revitalize the online comic book side of the internet.