Although the first Captain Marvel has been an honorary member of the Avengers since 1978, he's perhaps most famous for dying from cancer. At various points, the Kree warrior with a name suspiciously redolent of his publishing company's has been dead, alive again, cosmically aware (whatever that means), and shared his molecules with Rick Jones, because that's just the sort of thing that happens to a character who was invented to take advantage of a lapsed copyright and has to remain in print every now and then regardless of how good the actual story ideas are to avoid being poached by another company. Why he won't be in the Avengers movies: Mar-vell is a Kree and thanks to the TV show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., viewers know all about the Kree. So, there's no problem with bringing him to life on the big screen, right? Well, no. Here's the thing - he's enduringly popular (he's actually far more popular now than when he was introduced in his own Silver Age series in 1968), but he's very generic. And with the Carol Danvers version of Captain Marvel coming to the big screen, the most the old timer can expect is a brief mention. That's a shame, because the dying-of-cancer-despite-his-great-power storyline was really good, and cinema goers will never get to see it.