Pivotal Captain America; Civil War Characters

Okay, fine, so this isn't so much a character as it is a thing. Still, we couldn't resist making note of the fact that the Raft, the island-esque prison where Cap's team end up being held after their capture, wasn't just a creation of the film. In the comics, however, it's located not too far from Ryker's Island, and it's home to some of the most despicable and powerful supervillains in the entire Marvel Universe. Now that its existence has been added into the cinematic proceedings, perhaps we'll see it used for some real villains the next time it turns up.

Like T'Chaka, it seems relatively certain that we'll end up getting to know government official Everett K. Ross, who turns up in Civil War as part of the Joint Counter-Terrorism Center and spends most of his time keeping moviegoers guessing about whether he's on Captain America's or Iron Man's side. In the comics, Ross works for the U.S. State Department and made his bones as a character when he was assigned to escort T'Challa while he was on U.S. soil.

Vasily Karpov may not have had a huge part to play in Captain America: Civil War, but in the comics, he won't soon be forgotten: he was the man responsible for taking Bucky Barnes and reprogramming him to serve as the Winter Soldier. Before that, however, he had also been involved in an operation during World War II where he fought alongside Captain America and his WWI superteam, the Invaders, against the Red Skull and a Nazi super villain known as Master Man.

Howard Stark has gotten a fair amount of screen time over the course of the various Marvel films and live-action series, but it took until Captain America: Civil War for viewers to actually see his wife Maria make it to the screen, portrayed by Hope Davis. Despite spending so much time as little more than a headline or offhanded reference in the MCU, in the comics, Maria's name has been uttered at some point by just about every hero who's ever held membership in the Avengers. For years, the stock line whenever there was any collateral crimefighting damage was, "Just send the bill to the Maria Stark Foundation." Maria's fictional biography is a little convoluted in the comics, with some significant differences between the original version of the character and the Ultimate Marvel version, but suffice it to say that her importance to the Iron Man mythos is far more significant than her fleeting appearance in Civil War—and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, for that matter—would have you believe.

In Civil War, King T'Chaka of Wakanda exists as little more than a means to an end: when he's slain as a result of the explosion set off by Zemo and blamed on Bucky, T'Chaka's son, T'Challa, suits up as Black Panther and sets forth to avenge his father's death.

In Captain America: Civil War, the central "bad guy," as it were, is a gentleman named Zemo, a fellow whose response to the devastation he feels after his family is accidentally killed during the course of the events in Avengers: Age of Ultron is to completely devastate the Avengers right back. In the comics, however, the name "Zemo" holds far more weight, as it's attached to Baron Zemo