In the mid-90s, the Bullpen Bulletins page in Marvel comics started running a 3-to-4-panel strip of kid versions of various Marvel characters. So they have their powers or whatever, but certain aspects are scaled down for a younger age. Spider-Man works as a delivery boy, and has to deal with the hassle of delivering papers to Norman Osborn's house, Silver Surfer trying to help Thanos impress that one girl by doing something besides destroying the universe. Eventually the strips would expand to a page or sometimes several, running as back-ups features in the titles designated "All-Ages," such as the various 2000s Power Pack mini-series or the Marvel Adventures' line.
It's interesting to follow trends at Marvel based on what designs or stories Chris Giarrusso (who is typically writer, artist, colorist and letterer all in one) references in the strips. "Cereal Quest", where Wolverine faces many challenges in his attempt to just have some damn cereal, uses character designs from the X-Men Evolution cartoon. When all the newspaper ink stains his costume, Spidey ends up with his black costume look and becomes really popular with girls (though the costume eventually ends up with rival paperboy Eddie Brock.) In his own attempts to get a date, Hawkeye changes his look, but goes with his terrible armored outfit from the Avengers: United They Stand cartoon, and takes an appropriate amount of grief for it.
Later on, Giarrusso would incorporate Civil War into a story about Spidey trying to babysit the Power kids, and a version of World War Hulk with haikus, pro-wrestling, and TV prank shows. Also, none of the other heroes were stupid enough to get between Hulk and the Illuminati. Except the Sentry, but nerts to that guy. In fact, the other heroes pointed out precisely how stupid it would be for them to get involved in a fight they had nothing to do with, making it at least 3 times better than the actual World War Hulk. His version of Thor's return post-Civil War involves Thor using Don Blake's knowledge of science and biology to take revenge on Iron Man, Reed Richards and Hank Pym for the "Clone Thor" debacle, though it also involves a lot of jokes about one character assuming another character doesn't know what a word means, and then explaining it, only for the first character to respond, "I know what (blank) means." Multiple jokes in that vein per page. Obviously like any attempt at humor, there's hits and misses.
There are few longer stories that are just their own thing, mostly involving Hawkeye. Hawkeye attempts to get super-powers to be even more awesome, and after an incident involving magic beans and Iron Man, Hawkeye briefly becomes Herald of Galactus. Or Hawkeye saves the other Avengers from an evil sorcerer - who appears thanks to the stupidity of Iron Man - while getting no credit or acknowledgement from anyone. The latter story was the result of Hawkeye winning a fan vote for which characters would get stories in an anthology. Really, these stories are worth it just for the constant dunking on Iron Man Giarrusso does.
