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Curated playlist

Fictional characters who can manipulate light

  • Magneto (Marvel Comics)In 2014, IGN ranked Magneto first on its list of the top 100 comic book villains. Six years earlier, Stan Lee, the writer who co-created him, said in an interview that he never thought of Magneto as a villain at all. Magneto is a Marvel…
  • 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…
  • 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…
  • Annie JanuaryAnnie January, the superheroine known as Starlight in the comic series The Boys, was supposed to be a joke. Her creator Garth Ennis says so himself: "Annie started out as a joke." He made the series with Darick Robertson. In the story she…
  • 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…
  • Carol DanversCarol Danvers first appears in March 1968, in the pages of Marvel Super-Heroes #13, as an officer in the United States Air Force. She is the security chief of a restricted military base, and writer Roy Thomas and artist Gene Colan give her…
  • Soldier BoySoldier Boy is a superhero name worn by three different men in the comic series Herogasm and The Boys, created by Garth Ennis and John McCrea. On television, the name belongs to a single man who combines all three. One comic version is a…
  • 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…
  • Jubilee (character)"Actually, my name is Jubilee! 'Cause with me, every day's a celebration!" With that line, Jubilation Lee announced herself to readers in The Uncanny X-Men #244, dated May 1989. Marvel Comics writer Chris Claremont and artist Marc…
  • Guy Gardner (character)In 2025, Nathan Fillion played Guy Gardner in the film Superman, giving a famously abrasive Green Lantern a place on the biggest screen yet. That same year, DC Comics gave two comic book creators full credit and royalties for reinventing…
  • 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…
  • Cloak and Dagger (characters)Cloak and Dagger are a Marvel Comics superhero duo, and their creator says they arrived in his mind already finished. Writer Bill Mantlo had just visited Ellis Island. Afterward, he recalled, "They came in the night, when all was silent…

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