Commencing Wild Speculation

In Deadpool #2, his stand-ins evicted a bunch of tenants from an apartment building so its landlord could sell it to be torn down and replaced with condos. In Ms. Marvel #1, someone is buying up sections of Kamala's neighborhood, tearing down anything with any history or connection to the area, and replacing them with stupid, bland condos. Said condos are also patrolled by floating security-droids that attack people for 'suspicious loitering', which I believe is also known as 'lowering the tone'.

Clearly there's a new super-villain at work in the Marvel Universe, and they're using the heroes in various ways to help with that. The Deadpools as muscle, Ms. Marvel as an unaware spokesperson. It's sort of like what the Kingpin would do, except Fisk seemed to prefer to wreck a place first through selling drugs and guns (which also netted him a profit), and exerting his influence with garbage worker strikes, or suspicious building condemnations. Once property values were low, he'd swoop in, buy everything, throw up some tacky but impressive looking stuff, and sell it to rich schmucks at high prices. Whoever this is, they aren't even bothering to drive the condition of the places down. They're going for neighborhoods that are apparently in demand.

My theory? It's the Kree. They design their own buildings to have rockets on them (so they can be launched at enemy armadas, see Annihilation), so they do the same here, and get rich schmucks to pay for the privilege of being unwitting weapons to use against the Avengers. Or they're going to use it as a way to abduct a bunch of people, and decided on the flashiest, most improbable way possible.

OK, that's stupid. New idea. It's Hate-Monger, and he's taking this approach because he can wreck the images of the heroes. The people being evicted are pissed, and blame the most visible person. And then, various threats are manipulated to attack those neighborhoods, and the new tenants get mad about being sold a bill of goods, and blame the most visible target. Everyone ends up pissed at the heroes.

But that's the default state of the Marvel Universe, hardly requires the effort. Alright, let's think. There could, of course, be no greater super-villain plan. It could just be good business sense to use the heroes, and then leave the heroes to deal with that. Deadpool - or someone pretending to be him - is leveraging the hell out of his popularity, but will he be annoyed at someone else doing the same to their own benefit? Kamala's friends are turning against her (even if they don't realize it), and she's dealing with the downside to being a public figure. It's one thing when people find you inspirational and rally around you to help others, another when they're using you for something you object to.

But that doesn't give the heroes anything to punch, so where's the fun in that? Ooh, it's the Secret Empire! They're trying to convince more people to move to the outskirts of the city, weakening the tax base and limiting essential services, increasing struggles of the city. Then, at some moment when the heroes are all distracted with some other big problem, the Secret Empire's forces emerge from the shadows, and conquer New York City (and any other city they're doing this in), declaring it their own empire.

There's a new Power Man and Iron Fist series coming. If they too must confront the threat of gentrification, then we'll know there's something to this. Get Daredevil involved. I'd suggest Spider-Man, but Peter's busy being Tony Stark. I guess there's Miles, though. So yeah, sure, a Spider-Man, too.