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Fictional avatars

  • Colossus (character)Colossus, whose full name is Piotr Nikolayevich Rasputin, began life as a homework assignment. In May 1975, editor Roy Thomas was in charge of reviving the X-Men for Giant-Size X-Men #1. He sent the creative team home with one instruction:…
  • Jean GreyJean Grey is a Marvel Comics character who has died and returned many times. Her tie to the cosmic force that defines her keeps being rewritten. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created her, and she first appeared in The X-Men #1 in September 1963.…
  • Hal JordanHal Jordan, the Green Lantern of Earth, took his look from a movie star. In 1959, artist Gil Kane drew the hero with Hollywood actor Paul Newman as his visual inspiration. On paper, Hal is about as clean-cut as a comic book hero gets. He…
  • Emma FrostEmma Frost made her first appearance in The Uncanny X-Men #129, published in January 1980, as an enemy of the X-Men. Decades of Marvel Comics stories later, she is one of that team's most central members and leaders. She is a mutant, one…
  • MagikMagik, born Illyana Nikolaievna Rasputina, appeared for the first time in the pages of Giant-Size X-Men #1 in May 1975. Writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum created her. For the next eight years, almost nobody noticed. She turned up now…
  • DarkseidDarkseid, the stone-skinned tyrant of the planet Apokolips in DC Comics, has a name that fans have never fully agreed how to say. Mark Evanier spent several years as assistant to the character's creator, Jack Kirby. Evanier says the name…
  • Eren YeagerEren Yeager is the hero of Hajime Isayama's manga Attack on Titan, and his own creator once called him "a slave to the story". Isayama has also said that, in the past, he struggled to make Eren feel "alive" on the page. That is a strange…
  • Rachel SummersRachel Summers is a Marvel Comics character whose surname was kept secret when she first appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #141, published in January 1981. Writer Chris Claremont and artist and co-plotter John Byrne created her. Readers only…
  • AangAang is twelve years old by the count of his body and 112 by the count of the calendar. That gap is the first strange fact about the hero of Nickelodeon's animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Two young people named Katara and Sokka…
  • Madelyne PryorMadelyne Pryor first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #168, cover-dated April 1983, and nobody planned for her to become a villain. Writer Chris Claremont once summed up her opening storyline with a single exchange. Scott Summers, the X-Men's…
  • Doctor FateDoctor Fate, the helmeted sorcerer of DC Comics, was nearly called Doctor Droon. Writer Gardner Fox came up with that name, and an editor changed it before the character reached print. Fox remembered the episode in a 1987 interview, and he…
  • Juggernaut (character)Juggernaut, the Marvel Comics villain whose real name is Cain Marko, made his debut in X-Men #12, dated July 1965, without ever showing his face. For most of that issue he was an unseen force tearing through the X-Men's headquarters.…

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