Curated playlist
Fictional schoolteachers
- Cyclops (Marvel Comics)In Avengers vs. X-Men in 2012, Cyclops killed his mentor, Professor X. The Phoenix Force had concentrated in him alone.
- 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.…
- Wolverine (character)Wolverine, the Marvel Comics superhero, shares his everyday name with a mountain. Writer Chris Claremont took the name Logan from Canada's Mount Logan for an issue of X-Men in 1977. He liked the idea of the tallest mountain naming the…
- 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…
- Professor XProfessor X, whose full name is Charles Francis Xavier, first appeared in The X-Men #1, dated September 1963. Writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby created him for Marvel Comics, and Kirby is also credited as co-writer. Lee said the…
- Spider-ManMarvel's publisher told Stan Lee that Spider-Man would never work. The comic was being canceled anyway.
- Ben ReillyBen Reilly first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #149, published in October 1975, and he was seemingly killed in that very same issue. He had no name yet. He was a nameless clone of Peter Parker, the man behind Spider-Man, grown by a…
- Cable (character)Cable, the grim time-traveling soldier of Marvel Comics, first reached readers as a rumor. At the end of The New Mutants #86, dated February 1990, a teaser promised him for the next issue. He appeared nowhere in that issue's story. Even…
- Walter White (Breaking Bad)Walter Hartwell White is the protagonist of the American crime drama Breaking Bad, and his story begins with a diagnosis. The day after his 50th birthday, he learns he has Stage III lung cancer. Walter teaches high school chemistry in…
- Kitty PrydeKitty Pryde is a Marvel Comics mutant who can pass through solid walls, and she owes her name to a real person. In 1973, an art student at Canada's Alberta College of Art and Design met a classmate named Kitty Pryde. His name was John…
- Mister FantasticMister Fantastic, the comic book hero whose real name is Dr. Reed Richards, owes his stretching power to a borrowed idea. Stan Lee, who created him with Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics, once explained the choice in an interview. His words…
- Satoru GojoSatoru Gojo, often called The Honored One, is a fictional sorcerer from Gege Akutami's manga and anime series Jujutsu Kaisen. In August 2024, Shueisha held its fourth Jujutsu Kaisen character popularity poll, and Gojo came first with…
- Nightcrawler (character)Nightcrawler, the indigo-furred teleporting hero of Marvel Comics, began as a sleepless sailor's idea during a typhoon. Artist Dave Cockrum was serving in the United States Navy, stationed at Guam, when the storm kept him awake. He later…
- Beast (Marvel Comics)Beast, the Marvel Comics hero Dr. Henry Philip McCoy, has a greatest fear, and it is a ball of string. In one X-Men story, that fear became a rescue tool. A psychic assault stripped away his higher human consciousness and left only animal…