In these post-Endgame days people are pondering the question of where the Marvel Cinematic Universe can go from here – especially since they have an incredible track record of spinning gold out of dross.

After all, The Avengers specifically and the MCU generally was a legendary gamble where Marvel were forced to use a load of second and third tier characters few knew and fewer loved (Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Captain America etc) and one solitary character that had any recognition factor (The Hulk) because most of their big names like the X-Men, Spider-man and the Fantastic 4 had already been sold off to the likes of Fox and Sony.

So now as we prepare for Phase 4 and beyond, what are some of the worst options left from the Marvel character-vaults?

5. Howard The Duck

He’s already been in an MCU film – that’s him in one of The Collector’s cabinets in Guardians of the Galaxy – and his fourth-wall breaking schtick has already been done to great effect by Deadpool.

And while plenty of MCU characters have bad films in their past, the shadow cast by the legendary 1986 George Lucas-produced flop is a long one.

4. Cosmo The Space Dog

Another character in that same scene was Cosmo, a dog who was sent into space and developed superpowers and a genius-level intellect thanks to cosmic space magic.

In the comics he’s a fully paid up member of the Guardians, but presumably they figured the talking racoon had used up all their talking animal budget.

3. Dazzler

This one is just ripe for a reboot despite the utter hideousness of her origin story – a commercial deal between Marvel and Casablanca records, home of Kiss and the Village People, to create a multimedia pop star. That fizzled out along with Casablanca’s post-disco boom fortunes, but the character’s been kicking around in the nether regions of the X-Men on and off ever since.

Her powers are basically that music makes her emit light, so she can fire lasers our of her fingers and so on.

Bizarrely, Brie Larson released her one and only album on Casablanca in 2005 during the label’s less than stellar relaunch (the not-exactly-at-all-selling Finally Out Of P.E.). So you know, if it’s good enough for Captain Marvel…

2. Eye-Scream

It’s cheating slightly to name a character who was a villain in a single issue of a comic book but Eye-Scream is uniquely bonkers in that his ability is – and there’s no way to put this that makes it sound remotely sane, even in the hyper-stylised world of comics – turning into ice cream.

His fate was to be frozen while in his liquid state and, it is strongly implied, accidentally eaten by partying X-Men. Why is that not the plot of Dark Phoenix?

1. Big Bertha

This is definitely the most challenging possibility for the MCU to adopt, because not even the most skilful writer could make palatable the story of a supermodel whose super transformation is piling on protective layers of near-invulnerable fat, and who then returns to normal by vomiting. 

Yes, you read that correctly.

She made her first appearance in 1989, when bulimia and anorexia were absolutely widely known and accepted as real and pressing mental health issues and yet Marvel still went “hey, a comically fat woman who throws up in order to become a socially acceptable size? That all sounds like a perfect gimmick for this new character! Let’s do it!”

And, bafflingly, she is still in the continuity (as recently as 2016’s The Great Lakes Avengers series).

Her story has been somewhat retconned in the intervening years, but even with (arguably) wider acceptance of body types it’s still hard to imagine a big-budget outing for a hero that throws up all the time. That’s not going to make for marketable merch.