9) Coulson And His Team (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)
From the off, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was intended to be a show about the heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe who didn’t have superpowers or fancy costumes. As such, most of its main characters don’t hail from the comics and are instead original to the screen.
Obviously, Phil Coulson is the first one that comes to mind. A brand-new character created for Iron Man, Clark Gregg’s chirpy everyman secret agent was so popular that he just kept coming back in the films – until he was killed off in The Avengers. Still, even that didn’t stop him and he jumped ship to TV land shortly after.
Some of his S.H.I.E.L.D. co-stars – like Daisy “Quake” Johnson (known as Skye for the first two seasons) and Bobby “Mockingbird” Morse – might be pulled from the comics, but the majority certainly aren’t. For instance, Melinda May, Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz and Grant Ward are all terrific characters but are not based on any pre-existing person on the page.
These guys are now the faces of S.H.I.E.L.D. though, turning the mostly anonymous organization of the movies (excepting Nick Fury, of course) into a group of legitimate heroes.