Curated playlist

Fictional characters who can change size

Scott Lang (Marvel Cinematic Universe)A rat set Scott Lang free from the Quantum Realm in 2023. He had been trapped there after the Blip erased his allies.
GokuSon Goku, the hero of Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball, made his debut on the 3rd of December 1984. The first chapter, titled Bulma and Son Goku, ran in Japan's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. On the page stood an eccentric boy with a monkey's…
BowserBowser, the fire-breathing king of the Koopas and the great enemy of Nintendo's Mario, once became the subject of a strangely candid admission. In a 2012 interview, his own creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, said: "Our current story is that the…
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…
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…
Doctor ManhattanDoctor Manhattan, the blue-skinned superhuman of the graphic novel Watchmen, wears a mark that nobody assigned to him. Military planners prepared a hat for his public unveiling, decorated with crossed ellipses meant to suggest an atom. Jon…
Polaris (Marvel Comics)Lorna Dane, the Marvel Comics mutant known as Polaris, first appeared in The X-Men #49 in October 1968. Readers then waited decades to learn who her father was. She controls magnetism, much as the X-Men's early enemy Magneto does, and fans…
GalactusGalactus first appeared in Fantastic Four #48, cover dated March 1966, as a god-like figure who fed on the energy of living planets. His creators, writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, wanted to escape the standard villain. Lee…
Spectre (DC Comics character)The Spectre first appeared in More Fun Comics #52, dated February 1940, and his debut opens with a murder. A New York detective named Jim Corrigan is on his way to his own engagement party when thugs stuff him into a barrel, fill it with…
ClayfaceDetective Comics #40, cover-dated June 1940, introduced a murderer called Clayface, and the man under the costume was a B-list actor named Basil Karlo. Nobody could have guessed what the name would grow into. Over the following decades it…
Kamala KhanKamala Khan first appeared in print as a face in the background of Captain Marvel #14, published in August 2013. Writer Kelly Sue DeConnick placed her there on purpose. In that scene, Kamala watches Carol Danvers protect civilians from an…
She-HulkShe-Hulk first appeared in November 1979, in the first issue of The Savage She-Hulk from Marvel Comics. Her name is Jennifer Susan Walters, and she is a lawyer. When she changes, her skin turns green and her body grows enormous. Even so,…
Sandman (Marvel Comics)The Sandman, a Marvel Comics character who can turn his whole body into sand, lost one of his early fights to a household vacuum cleaner. His opponent was Spider-Man, the hero who would shadow his life for decades. The man inside the sand…
Mephisto (Marvel Comics)Mephisto first appeared in Silver Surfer #3, cover dated December 1968. Writer Stan Lee and penciler John Buscema created him for Marvel Comics. They modeled him on Mephistopheles, the demon of the Faust legend, who is sometimes called…
PikachuPikachu, the yellow mouse at the center of the Pokémon franchise, finished second in Time magazine's 1999 person of the year ranking. Only the singer Ricky Martin placed higher, and the author J.K. Rowling came in behind it. Time called…
MarioShigeru Miyamoto once reflected on a name he had considered for Mario and concluded that the character likely would have "disappeared off the face of the Earth." Mario is the mustached Italian plumber who stars in the Mario franchise and…
Lucifer (DC Comics)Lucifer Morningstar ruled Hell for more than ten billion years, and the sentence that put him there lasted far longer than his crime. According to the comics, he rebelled against Creation for just three seconds. This version of the Devil…