Curated playlist

Avengers (comics) characters

Iron ManIron Man, the armored Marvel Comics hero, first appeared in Tales of Suspense #39, released in December 1962 with a March 1963 cover date. His creator, Stan Lee, had set himself an awkward assignment during the Vietnam War. His readers…
Thor (Marvel Comics)Donald Blake, the surgeon who became Marvel's Thor, was never a real person. Odin invented him to teach Thor humility.
Wolverine (character)Wolverine, the Marvel Comics superhero, shares his everyday name with a mountain. Writer Chris Claremont took the name Logan from Canada's Mount Logan for an issue of X-Men in 1977. He liked the idea of the tallest mountain naming the…
Captain AmericaCaptain America Comics #1 reached newsstands on the 20th of December 1940, carrying a cover date of March 1941. Its cover showed the hero punching Adolf Hitler. That hero, Captain America, was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for Timely…
Spider-ManMarvel's publisher told Stan Lee that Spider-Man would never work. The comic was being canceled anyway.
Wonder ManWonder Man, whose real name is Simon Williams, died in the very comic book that introduced him. That issue was The Avengers #9, cover-dated October 1964 and published by Marvel Comics. Writer Stan Lee created him with artists Don Heck and…
Fantastic FourThe Fantastic Four heroes argued, held grudges and wore no masks. Marvel's 1961 team broke the polished hero mold.
Cable (character)Cable, the grim time-traveling soldier of Marvel Comics, first reached readers as a rumor. At the end of The New Mutants #86, dated February 1990, a teaser promised him for the next issue. He appeared nowhere in that issue's story. Even…
Sabretooth (character)Sabretooth, the Marvel Comics villain whose real name is believed to be Victor Creed, makes a point of finding Wolverine on his birthday. Writer Chris Claremont described the ritual in his own words. On every one of his birthdays, he said,…
HulkThe Hulk is a Marvel Comics superhero who lives as two people in one body, and the two typically resent each other. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created him, and he first appeared in the debut issue of The Incredible Hulk in May 1962. One half…
Daredevil (Marvel Comics character)Daredevil is a Marvel Comics hero who first appeared in an issue with an April 1964 cover date. He is a blind lawyer by day and a costumed fighter by night, dressed in a devil-like outfit. His series sold modestly for years, and it came…
Black Panther (character)Black Panther, the Marvel Comics hero known as T'Challa, made his debut in Fantastic Four #52, published in July 1966. He did not arrive as a sidekick or a soldier. T'Challa was a king, the ruler of Wakanda, a fictional African nation made…
Miles MoralesMiles Morales makes his first public appearance as Spider-Man by stopping an assault by a villain called Kangaroo. The bystanders are not impressed. They tell him his Spider-Man costume is in bad taste, and he considers changing it. That…
Storm (Marvel Comics)Storm, the Marvel Comics hero Ororo Munroe, appears on 97 of the 182 covers of Chris Claremont's run on the X-Men. No other character was pictured on covers as often during those years. She also fills 4,155 panels across that stretch,…
Jessica JonesJessica Jones is a Marvel Comics superhero who spends much of her story trying not to be one. She runs a detective agency called Alias Private Investigations, and she is usually its only employee. Yet Marvel eventually placed her in a high…
Mister FantasticMister Fantastic, the comic book hero whose real name is Dr. Reed Richards, owes his stretching power to a borrowed idea. Stan Lee, who created him with Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics, once explained the choice in an interview. His words…
Scarlet WitchJack Kirby considered at least five names before the Scarlet Witch became the Scarlet Witch. Jinx, Witch Woman, The Sorceress, Evil Eye and Miss Witch are all listed on the back of a splash page in The X-Men issue 4. Writer Stan Lee and…
Blade (character)Blade, the vampire hunter of Marvel Comics, made his debut in The Tomb of Dracula #10, with a cover date of July 1973. He was only a supporting character there, created by writer Marv Wolfman and penciller Gene Colan. Shortly afterward he…
Quicksilver (Marvel Comics)Quicksilver, the Marvel Comics speedster whose real name is Pietro Django Maximoff, first appeared in The X-Men #4, dated March 1964. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created him. He can move and think at extreme speeds, and that second half of the…
Rogue (Marvel Comics)Rogue, the Marvel Comics heroine best known as a member of the X-Men, cannot touch another person without taking something from them. One brush of skin lets her absorb a person's life force, abilities, memories and superpowers. The longer…
DeadpoolDeadpool, the masked mercenary of Marvel Comics, once ended a storyline by breaking out of his own book and into the real world. There he confronted the writers and artists who were making the comic, and he turned to the reader with a…
Doctor StrangeDoctor Strange, the sorcerer of Marvel Comics, began life with a lukewarm review from the man who edited him. In a 1963 letter to Jerry Bails, Stan Lee described a five-page filler for Strange Tales and admitted that "The first story is…
Bucky BarnesBucky Barnes is a Marvel Comics hero whose fans once turned his death into a rule of the genre. The saying went that in comics, "No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben." For many years, Bucky was the first name on that…
Sentry (Robert Reynolds)Robert Reynolds, a middle-aged man better known to Marvel Comics readers as the Sentry, carries the power of one million exploding suns, and almost nobody on Earth remembers him. Reynolds knows his enemy, the Void, is coming back. He also…
Beast (Marvel Comics)Beast, the Marvel Comics hero Dr. Henry Philip McCoy, has a greatest fear, and it is a ball of string. In one X-Men story, that fear became a rescue tool. A psychic assault stripped away his higher human consciousness and left only animal…
NamorNamor, also known as the Sub-Mariner, made his debut in a comic that almost nobody ever saw. It was called Motion Picture Funnies Weekly, a planned giveaway meant for theater owners. Only eight known copies survive from the batch made to…
Moon KnightMoon Knight is a Marvel Comics superhero who has died and come back more than once. His own stories have argued for decades about whether the god who revived him is real. He debuted in Werewolf by Night #32, published in August 1975. Since…