Curated playlist

Marvel Comics characters with superhuman durability or invulnerability

Nebula (Marvel Cinematic Universe)Thanos made Nebula fight Gamora and replaced her body parts with machinery each time she lost.
Thor (Marvel Comics)Donald Blake, the surgeon who became Marvel's Thor, was never a real person. Odin invented him to teach Thor humility.
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…
Peter Parker (Marvel Cinematic Universe)Peter Benjamin Parker, better known as Spider-Man, was born on the 10th of August 2001 in Forest Hills, Queens. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tom Holland plays him across six films. After the death of his Uncle Ben, Peter is raised…
Spider-ManMarvel's publisher told Stan Lee that Spider-Man would never work. The comic was being canceled anyway.
Wonder ManWonder Man, whose real name is Simon Williams, died in the very comic book that introduced him. That issue was The Avengers #9, cover-dated October 1964 and published by Marvel Comics. Writer Stan Lee created him with artists Don Heck and…
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…
UltronUltron first showed up in Marvel Comics in The Avengers #54, dated July 1968, and nobody reading it could have known his name. He appeared only under a borrowed title, the Crimson Cowl, in a brief and unnamed cameo. Within a single issue…
Venom (character)Venom, the alien symbiote of Marvel Comics, began as a $220 purchase. In 1982, a Marvel reader from Norridge, Illinois, named Randy Schueller received a letter from Jim Shooter, the company's editor-in-chief. The letter said Marvel liked…
Sabretooth (character)Sabretooth, the Marvel Comics villain whose real name is believed to be Victor Creed, makes a point of finding Wolverine on his birthday. Writer Chris Claremont described the ritual in his own words. On every one of his birthdays, he said,…
Apocalypse (character)En Sabah Nur is the birth name of Apocalypse, a supervillain from Marvel Comics, and Marvel says the name means "The First One." That translation is considered grammatically incorrect. Broken into parts, the name joins words for "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…
ThanosThanos first appeared on a comic book cover dated February 1973, in The Invincible Iron Man #55, and Marvel's heroes have not been rid of him since. He is a warlord from Titan, a moon of Saturn, born into two branches of a superhuman…
Kraven the HunterKraven the Hunter, born Sergei Nikolaevich Kravinoff, greeted Spider-Man with a borrowed phrase. In The Amazing Spider-Man issue 15, published in August 1964, he called the hero "the most dangerous game." The line comes from a short story…
Black Panther (character)Black Panther, the Marvel Comics hero known as T'Challa, made his debut in Fantastic Four #52, published in July 1966. He did not arrive as a sidekick or a soldier. T'Challa was a king, the ruler of Wakanda, a fictional African nation made…
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…
X-23X-23 is the designation of Laura Kinney, a Marvel Comics superheroine who began life on a television screen rather than a comic page. Her creator, writer Craig Kyle, described her as "Pinocchio for Marvel Comics, she's a samurai sword…
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…
Jessica JonesJessica Jones is a Marvel Comics superhero who spends much of her story trying not to be one. She runs a detective agency called Alias Private Investigations, and she is usually its only employee. Yet Marvel eventually placed her in a high…
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…
Blade (character)Blade, the vampire hunter of Marvel Comics, made his debut in The Tomb of Dracula #10, with a cover date of July 1973. He was only a supporting character there, created by writer Marv Wolfman and penciller Gene Colan. Shortly afterward he…
Mystique (character)Mystique, the blue-skinned shapeshifter of Marvel Comics, has an earliest recorded appearance in her own stories that dates to the years around 1900. At that time she lived in a male guise as a consulting detective. She formed a romance…
Ghost RiderGhost Rider is a Marvel Comics character whose first supernatural form was a stunt motorcyclist named Johnny Blaze. Blaze makes a desperate trade. To save the life of his foster father, he agrees to give his soul to a being called "Satan."…
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…
Juggernaut (character)Juggernaut, the Marvel Comics villain whose real name is Cain Marko, made his debut in X-Men #12, dated July 1965, without ever showing his face. For most of that issue he was an unseen force tearing through the X-Men's headquarters.…
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…
Spider-Man NoirSpider-Man Noir is a version of Peter Parker who has never seen a color. In the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, his home universe is entirely black and white, so ordinary hues leave him baffled when he travels elsewhere. That…
Tombstone (character)Tombstone is a Marvel Comics crime boss whose face was built to resemble the grave marker he is named after. Writer Gerry Conway chose the name first. He then gave the character albinism and squared-off features so the finished drawing…
Silver SurferThe Silver Surfer is an alien with gleaming metal skin who crosses the cosmos on a board that looks borrowed from a beach. His first editor never saw him coming. Stan Lee, who wrote and edited the comic that introduced him, remembered the…
NamorNamor, also known as the Sub-Mariner, made his debut in a comic that almost nobody ever saw. It was called Motion Picture Funnies Weekly, a planned giveaway meant for theater owners. Only eight known copies survive from the batch made to…
Moon KnightMoon Knight is a Marvel Comics superhero who has died and come back more than once. His own stories have argued for decades about whether the god who revived him is real. He debuted in Werewolf by Night #32, published in August 1975. Since…