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Curated playlist

Fictional military captains

  • 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…
  • Darth VaderThe actor inside Darth Vader's suit never knew his voice would be replaced. James Earl Jones voiced him instead.
  • 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…
  • FaramirFaramir is offered the One Ring and turns it down completely. He knows what its power would cost.
  • Poe DameronPoe Dameron was originally written to die early in The Force Awakens.
  • Chris RedfieldChris Redfield, the hero of Capcom's Resident Evil series, stands inside an active volcano and punches a giant boulder until it drops into the lava. That moment from Resident Evil 5 in 2009 turned into one of the most repeated jokes in…
  • GlorfindelGlorfindel dies killing a Balrog in one Tolkien story, then appears alive in The Lord of the Rings.
  • Han SoloHan Solo was first written as a green-skinned alien with gills. George Lucas's earliest draft gave him no nose.
  • Guts (Berserk)Guts, the hero of the manga Berserk, was born from his hanged mother's corpse. His adoptive father later sold him.
  • PunisherIn 2011, an editor at Marvel Comics revealed that the Punisher had killed 48,502 people on the page since the mid-1970s. That body count belongs to a character whom writer Gerry Conway meant as a second-tier figure. Conway has said the…
  • John Carter of MarsHiding from Apaches in an Arizona cave, John Carter was carried to Mars. Burroughs calls it astral projection.
  • Buck RogersBuck Rogers tells the first part of his own story from inside a collapsing mine near Pittsburgh. The opening three frames of his newspaper strip are narrated in his voice. "I was 20 years old when they stopped the world war and mustered me…

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