Curated playlist

Marvel Comics male superheroes

Cyclops (Marvel Comics)In Avengers vs. X-Men in 2012, Cyclops killed his mentor, Professor X. The Phoenix Force had concentrated in him alone.
Tony Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe)Marvel's Tony Stark was created in 1963 to be the quintessential capitalist. Stan Lee based him on Howard Hughes.
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…
Scott Lang (Marvel Cinematic Universe)A rat set Scott Lang free from the Quantum Realm in 2023. He had been trapped there after the Blip erased his allies.
Iron ManIron Man, the armored Marvel Comics hero, first appeared in Tales of Suspense #39, released in December 1962 with a March 1963 cover date. His creator, Stan Lee, had set himself an awkward assignment during the Vietnam War. His readers…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Daredevil (Marvel Comics character)Daredevil is a Marvel Comics hero who first appeared in an issue with an April 1964 cover date. He is a blind lawyer by day and a costumed fighter by night, dressed in a devil-like outfit. His series sold modestly for years, and it came…
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…
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…
Gambit (Marvel Comics)Remy LeBeau, known to readers as Gambit, is a Cajun thief from New Orleans who became one of Marvel Comics' X-Men. Writer Chris Claremont and artist Jim Lee created him. When he joined the team, few of his new colleagues trusted him, and…
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…
Quicksilver (Marvel Comics)Quicksilver, the Marvel Comics speedster whose real name is Pietro Django Maximoff, first appeared in The X-Men #4, dated March 1964. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created him. He can move and think at extreme speeds, and that second half of the…
DeadpoolDeadpool, the masked mercenary of Marvel Comics, once ended a storyline by breaking out of his own book and into the real world. There he confronted the writers and artists who were making the comic, and he turned to the reader with a…
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…
Doctor StrangeDoctor Strange, the sorcerer of Marvel Comics, began life with a lukewarm review from the man who edited him. In a 1963 letter to Jerry Bails, Stan Lee described a five-page filler for Strange Tales and admitted that "The first story is…
Bucky BarnesBucky Barnes is a Marvel Comics hero whose fans once turned his death into a rule of the genre. The saying went that in comics, "No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben." For many years, Bucky was the first name on that…
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…
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…