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Curated playlist

Fictional characters with electric or magnetic abilities

  • 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…
  • Thor (Marvel Comics)Donald Blake, the surgeon who became Marvel's Thor, was never a real person. Odin invented him to teach Thor humility.
  • Wonder WomanWonder Woman's creator invented a device crucial to the lie detector.
  • Akuma (Street Fighter)Akuma, a Street Fighter villain, was designed in just one hour. His face was modeled on a Buddha statue.
  • PalpatinePalpatine's first name stayed off screen for decades. Fans learned it was Sheev only in the 2014 novel Tarkin.
  • Laura MatsudaCapcom's Brazil office objected to Laura Matsuda's first design in Street Fighter V.
  • Doctor DoomDoctor Doom is a comic book villain who answers to no court outside his own country. He rules the fictional eastern European nation of Latveria, and his status as head of state has historically shielded him from prosecution for crimes…
  • Ryu (Street Fighter)A 2019 study found Street Fighter's Ryu would need to move nearly 70 miles per hour to land his spinning kick.
  • Supreme Leader SnokeAndy Serkis first played Snoke without knowing what Snoke looked like. He stood on a 25-foot podium for his first day.
  • 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…
  • 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,…
  • Shazam (DC Comics)Shazam, the comic book hero also called Captain Marvel, headlined an issue, Whiz Comics #2, that sold over 500,000 copies. The hero at its center is a boy who becomes a towering adult by speaking a single word. Yet this same character…
  • Necro (Street Fighter)Street Fighter's Necro is a living bioweapon who just wanted to go home with his girlfriend.

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