While based on the existing the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we consider the Marvel Champions universe (MCu) to be an alternative universe (AU) to Marvel's cinematic one. Our version of the cinematic universe is a subtle but significant branching from that of the cinematic universe, we are essentially, a "What If...?" of the MCU, and it' a what if... that we've no intention of stating what the What if...? is.
     At this time, we are planning follow the MCU closely upto the first 30 minutes or so of the Captain America: The Winter Soldier, from there we will start our obvious deviation into our alternate timeline (AT), also know as a "variant". The main differences can be summed up by our choices to dissassociate from our site timeline the following ABC tv offerings Agent Carter, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Inhumans. They can be drawn on for characters and inspiration, but not actual events.

A BRIEF HISTORY of   TIME

In OUR MCu

THE SETUP:   Way back in World War II, a frail young man named Steve Rogers volunteered for a risky military science program, Project Rebirth, he was transformed (Captain America: The First Avenger, 2011). Endowed with superhuman strength, agility and endurance, Rogers — now known as Captain America — and his compatriots in the Allied Forces, including his childhood best friend, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, combated the forces of a powerful Nazi offshoot organization known as Hydra.$
     Rogers stymied Hydra's plans to use the power of an ancient artifact known as the Tesseract to cause untold destruction, and sent the German scientist and military commander the Red Skull, Johann Schmidt plunging into a dangerous portal created by the Tesseract. But by the end of the war, Barnes, Rogers and Schmidt had gone missing in combat and were presumed dead.
     Captain America was the only "superhero" the world had ever known — until the late 2000s, when the genius, billionaire, philanthropist and playboy Tony Stark was abducted by the terrorist group known as the Ten Rings, which held him for ransom and attempted to force him to build weapons for them in exchange for his freedom (Iron Man, 2008). Following his escape, Stark found himself rocked to the core in the wake of realization of the extent to which the weapons manufacturing arms of his business were inflaming global conflict, and his culpability. Stark built more advanced suits of armor and began waging a one-man war on terrorism. His crusade culminated in the death of his business associate the Iron Monger, Obdiah Stane, who had been collaborating with the Ten Rings all along.
     At a press conference later that week, under questioning from reporters, Stark admitted that the mysterious armored figure — dubbed the Iron Man — who had seemingly been acting in his interests was, in fact, himself.
     With Stark‚s proclamation, "I am Iron Man", the modern age of superheroes had begun.

NICK FURY'S BIG DAY:   It never rains but it pours, and it was as if Stark‚s presence had torn open a thundercloud. In a single week, four major events occurred that would shape the Marvel Cinematic Universe forever.
     In the Arctic, the shadowy government program known as S.H.I.E.L.D. uncovered the final resting place of Steve Rogers, who was alive, but had been locked in an ice-induced hibernation for 70 years (Captain America: The First Avenger, 2011). Rogers was revived into a world he barely recognized.
     In the royal halls of Asgard — a sister dimension to Earth‚s, home to the Asgardians, whose technology inspired Norse legends — there was a crisis of succession (Thor, 2011). Odin, king of Asgard, stripped his son Thor of his powers and banished him to Earth for his destructive arrogance. Then Odin fell into the interminable Odinsleep, leaving his foster son Loki on the throne.
     In a scheme for Odin$apos;s approval, Loki attempted to kill Thor and destroy the realm of Jotunheim, and the battle between the two brothers caused significant damage to the small New Mexico town in which Thor and his hammer Mjölnir had appeared. Eventually, Thor took the fight back to Asgard, where Loki seemingly committed suicide by jumping into the dimensional void.
     At roughly the same time, General Thunderbolt Ross and his men caught up with Dr. Bruce Banner, who had been hiding while he attempted to find a cure for the condition that causes him to transform into an giant, unstoppable green monster when under stress (The Incredible Hulk, 2008). An experiment using some of Banner$apos;s blood on one of Ross$apos; men created an equally terrible creature who rampaged through Harlem before Banner, in his monstrous form as the Hulk, put a stop to him and, again, fled custody.
     Elsewhere, Tony Stark struggled with several problems (Iron Man 2, 2010). An irreplaceable metal in the magnetic energy source that kept shrapnel from impaling his heart — an injury sustained in his abduction by the Ten Rings — was also poisoning him. His attempts to keep his armor technology out of the hands of the U.S. government failed when his best friend, Air Force Lt. Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes, stole one of his prototypes, becoming the hero known as War Machine.
     Col. Nicholas Fury of SHIELD approached Stark, giving him information about his father$apos;s work that enabled him to find a replacement substance for his arc reactor, saving his life. In exchange, Fury said that he might call upon Stark as a consultant in the future.

THE AVENGERS:   That future was not long off, and it arrived when the Asgardian Loki appeared in a high-security SHIELD facility and absconded with the Tesseract, recovered from the same Arctic location as Steve Rogers (Avengers). With the power of the Tesseract — and an army of alien Chitauri — Loki hoped to conquer Earth and deliver it to his new master, a being known as the Other, and the Other$apos;s master, a being known as Thanos.
     Nick Fury activated his Avengers Initiative, calling together several of the world$apos;s known metahumans and geniuses. Steve Rogers, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner formed the core of the group, and were aided by SHIELD agents Natasha Romanoff — the Black Widow — and Clint Barton — Hawkeye — as well as the Asgardian prince, Thor, who came to Earth looking for his foster brother.
     Together, the six heroes defeated a massive Chitauri army in the heart of midtown Manhattan and captured Loki. Thor returned to Asgard with Loki and the Tesseract, but a bond was formed.
     Earth had her Avengers.

AFTER THE BATTLE OF NEW YORK:   Loki was not in prison long, as Thor freed him in order to gain his help in defeating the Dark Elf Malekith (Thor, 2013), but Loki seemingly died in the course of their quest. Nevertheless, the Asgardians were able to wrest the powerful artifact known as the Aether from Malekith$apos;s clutches before he destroyed the Nine Realms, and they delivered it into the hands of an alien being known as the Collector, because it was too dangerous to keep it near the Tesseract.
     Unbeknownst to anyone else, Loki had actually survived, and had usurped Odin$apos;s place on Asgard$apos;s throne.
     Meanwhile, on Earth, it was Tony Stark who felt the greatest fallout from the Battle of New York, as the experience — particularly of nearly dying in the cold depths of space — drove him to post-traumatic panic attacks (Iron Man 3, 2013). After nearly losing his close friend and confidant Happy Hogan, and after putting down a fake terrorist organization (led by a figure called the Mandarin) that was merely a cover for a secret takeover of the executive branch of the United States, Stark appeared to have left his life as Iron Man behind for good.
     But the bigger crisis for the government came when Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff discovered that the SHIELD agency had, since its very inception, been filled with sleeper agents for the fascistic Hydra organization (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 2014). Moreover, Rogers discovered that one of Hydra$apos;s most deadly agents was his fallen friend, Bucky Barnes, brainwashed and medically enhanced into a murderous super-assassin.
     Air Force pararescueman Sam Wilson, equipped with a cutting-edge mechanical wingsuit, joined Rogers as the hero known as the Falcon. Rogers, Wilson, Romanoff, Fury and SHIELD agent Maria Hill overthrew Hydra and defeated a plan to preemptively assassinate thousands of scientists, metahumans, and presumed-metahumans that Hydra perceived as a threat to its rule.
     In the end, Rogers even managed to free Barnes from his brainwashing, though his friend fled, disappearing without a trace. Remnants of Hydra$apos;s organization remained, however, and had stolen many of SHIELD$apos;s most powerful weapons.
     In particular, Hydra began to use an alien scepter — which Loki had used to bend mortal minds to his will — to awaken strange powers in twin siblings Pietro and Wanda Maximoff. Pietro developed the ability to move at superhuman speed, while Wanda learned to move objects to manipulate the minds of others using only her own thoughts.

THE AGE OF Ultron:   It was the Avengers$apos; recovery of that very scepter that sparked the next major phase in their evolution (Avengers: Age of Ultron, 2015). While raiding the Hydra base containing the scepter and the Maximoffs, Wanda — the Scarlet Witch — used her abilities to give Tony Stark a harrowing vision of a dark future in which the Avengers died and the Earth was left defenseless, all because he didn$apos;t "do more."
     After the mission, Tony enlisted Bruce Banner to help him use the scepter$apos;s seemingly highly advanced alien technology to craft an artificial intelligence capable of controlling a global army of Iron Man suits. Instead, Tony and Bruce accidentally created Ultron, a hostile machine intelligence that immediately sought to destroy the human race.
     Dogging Ultron$apos;s electronic steps, the Avengers stopped him from using the scepter$apos;s secret source of power — the yellow gem hidden inside it — to create his own synthetic body. Still wedded to his idea of peace through artificial intelligence, Tony secretly uploaded his personal AI, JARVIS, into the synthetic body, just as Thor returned from a quest of his own.
     The thunder god had been seeking confirmation of his own vision, and discovered that the scepter$apos;s yellow gem was one of the six fabled Infinity Stones, which confer their bearers with powers over the building blocks of reality. Fulfilling his prophetic dream, Thor used his hammer and the power of the Mind Stone to awaken the synthetic body and its artificial mind, creating the android hero the Vision .
     Together with the Maximoffs, who defected from Ultron$apos;s cause once they realized the enormity of it, the Avengers thwarted Ultron$apos;s attempts to cause a global extinction level event and destroyed his army of robotic physical forms. They saved the world, but were unable to safeguard the capital of the Eastern European country of Sokovia; many of its citizens were killed during the ensuing battle.
     Overwhelmed by the feeling that his barely controlled rampages would someday harm his friends, Bruce Banner used the Sokovia confusion to steal an Avengers quinjet and disappear. Thor, in the meantime, left Earth entirely to learn more about the Infinity Stones before they could do more harm, and the Maximoff twins (both Wanda and Pietor) now seeking attonement accepted the invitiation to join the Avengers.

CIVIL WAR:   The fallout from the events in Sokovia would have much farther-reaching consequences, when, following the massive destruction in that country, the governments of the world proposed an international agreement to place the autonomy of the Avengers under bureaucratic control (Captain America: Civil War, 2016).
     The Avengers themselves became bitterly divided on whether to accept or oppose the proposal, splitting into two camps: that of Steve Rogers — who feared being restricted or used — and Tony Stark, who feared that he would once again have no one standing between his optimistic ambitions and creating a horror like Ultron. Still, the group might have reached a peaceful agreement, had things not been muddied by the resurfacing of Rogers$apos; close friend, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, now infamously known as the assassin, the Winter Soldier, who if reports are to be believed, is currently planning to take aim on a presidentail hopeful...