Brave New World Has a Surprising Fantastic Four Connection

Captain America: Brave New World did surprisingly well at the Box Office in its opening weekend, but let’s be honest. The jewel in Marvel’s 2025 crown is still The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The inaugural MCU outing of Marvel’s First Family has been generating buzz since Kevin Feige announced the project, buzz that only grew louder with the release of an official trailer.

First Steps doesn’t make its way to theaters until June of this year. But anyone desperate for any bit of Fantastic Four content can get a taste with Brave New World. Comic book readers may best know Dennis Dunphy, a soldier who helps Sam Wilson throughout Brave New World, as the hard-luck Avenger Demolition Man. Yet, D-Man’s origins lie not with Captain America, nor the Avengers, but with the Fantastic Four’s most beloved member, the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing.

Related

Captain America: Brave New World Broke A Longstanding MCU Tradition With The Leader

While the MCU’s perpetual merch spoilers aren’t a great part of the franchise’s traditions, this is one time fans might actually have preferred it.

Who is Demolition Man?

Demolition Man might be the most pathetic superhero in the Marvel universe. A life-long fan of superheroes, Dennis Dunphy gained his abilities not through cosmic rays or a radioactive spider-bite, but through a shady organization called Power Broker, Inc. Dunphy used those powers to participate in a super-powered wrestling ring, sporting a goofy red mohawk and a crimson leotard, taking the name Demolition Man.

When Captain America’s search for the secret behind the rabble-rouser called Superpatriot (aka Johnny Walker, the man who would briefly take the Captain America mantle before becoming USAgent) brought him to the world of augmented wrestling, Dunphy found a new calling. Designing one of the world’s ugliest superhero costumes, based upon the original brown and yellow Daredevil suit and topped by Wolverine’s cowl, D-Man rescued Cap and gained a friend for life. The ever-loyal Cap kept D-Man around, even bringing him into the Avengers, despite Dunphy’s constant record of getting beat up, sitting out of fights, and even seemingly dying.

Most of these events took place in Captain America comics from the 1980s, as part of writer Mark Gruenwald’s defining run on the series. Demolition Man keeps showing up every couple of years, but almost always a joke, with other characters commenting on his terrible smell or his predeliction for failing at opportune moments.

No matter how many insults get tossed at Dennis Dunphy, there are two guys he can always count on. One, of course, is Captain America. The other is his first super-partner, Benjamin Grimm.

How is Demolition Man Connected to the Fantastic Four?

Back in the 1970s and ’80s, the Thing was so popular that he not only starred in his own weird cartoon show but also carried a two-hander series, Marvel Two-in-One, and then his own solo series called The Thing. The Thing’s stories outside the Fantastic Four tended to play up his rough-and-tumble nature, separate from the high-science adventures that were led by Reed Richards.

Demolition Man showed up in 1985’s The Thing #28, written by Mike Carlin and penciled by Ron Wilson. The Thing ran across D-Man when he signed up to join Unlimited Class Wrestling, a promotion built upon super-people beating on one another. It’s not the highest stakes story line in the world, but that was the entire appeal of the Thing, keeping Ben close to his Yancy Street roots.

Ben gets scheduled to face off against Demolition Man, and he expects a clean fight. After all, in this reality, professional wrestling fights aren’t scripted and have more in common with traditional sports. However, he learns that Power Broker, Inc. gave Dennis Dunphy his D-Man powers with the understanding that he would throw his match against the Thing, ensuring a big gambling payout. When Demolition Man refuses their control, he wins Ben’s admiration and the two become fast friends.

Of course, Ben still wants to test his mettle against Dunphy, and the two get their chance at the end of the story line. And, of course, Dunphy being Dunphy, Demolition Man loses his clean bout against the Thing. That said, D-Man gets his revenge years later, when he bests the Thing (along with Marvel Boy and Valkyrie) in a pie-eating contest, portrayed in 2010’s I Am an Avenger #2.

Will Demolition Man Be in The Fantastic Four: First Steps?

Played by William McCullough, Dennis Dunphy of the U.S. military provides valuable support for Sam Wilson in Captain America: Brave New World. It’s Dunphy’s information that allows Sam and his partner Joaquin Torres to find the lab where Samuel Sterns aka the Leader launches his attacks.

However, as much as the competent military man Dunphy in Brave New World may differ from the Demolition Man of Marvel Comics, he is still Dennis Dunphy and still has the same hard luck. More of a mastermind than a brawler, the Leader only directly kills three people, one of which is Dunphy. The Leader takes out Dunphy before entering his own endgame, trying to get President Ross to Hulk out nearby Celestial Island in the Indian Ocean. So if Dennis Dunphy is dead, he can’t appear in First Steps, right? Well, not so fast.

First of all, First Steps seems to take place in a different world than the mainline Marvel Universe, dubbed Earth-616. Moreover, Avengers: Endgame and Loki established that alternate realities occur in the MCU when timelines branch, which means that characters from the modern Earth-616 can still appear in the 1960s-era of The Fantastic Four‘s world. It’s totally plausible that the Thing of First Steps, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, might check in on Dennis Dunphy and the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation.

Second, no death is permanent in the world of Marvel Superheroes. Even in the pages of Marvel Comics, Dennis Dunphy has survived a much more extreme end only to pop up elsewhere, albeit stinky and disheveled. Given how joke C-listers such as Groot, Red Guardian, and M’Baku have become fan-favorites, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that D-Man would get to join the Fantastic Four on screen.

As long as he still does something incredibly stupid, or fails at a key moment, then he’ll still be Demolition Man Marvel fans know and love. And he’ll be able to draw together the bond between Captain America, the Avengers, and Marvel’s first family, the Fantastic Four.

Captain America: Brave New World is now playing in theaters worldwide.

Captain America: Brave New World

Release Date

February 14, 2025

Director

Julius Onah

Writers

Dalan Musson, Malcolm Spellman

Prequel(s)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War

• 

  Anthony Mackie

  Sam Wilson / Captain America

• 

  Harrison Ford

  Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross / Red Hulk

• 
• 

  Giancarlo Esposito

  Sidewinder