Curated playlist

Marvel Comics psychics

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.…
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…
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…
Doctor OctopusDoctor Octopus, the Marvel Comics villain known as Doc Ock, began as a name before he was anything else. Stan Lee, who created him with the artist Steve Ditko, later described how the idea arrived. "For some reason, I thought of an…
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…
Wanda Maximoff (Marvel Cinematic Universe)Wanda Maximoff, the character played by Elizabeth Olsen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, spent two days buried in the rubble of her family's apartment in Sokovia, a country in Eastern Europe. A missile had just killed her parents. Her…
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…
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,"…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
Scarlet WitchJack Kirby considered at least five names before the Scarlet Witch became the Scarlet Witch. Jinx, Witch Woman, The Sorceress, Evil Eye and Miss Witch are all listed on the back of a splash page in The X-Men issue 4. Writer Stan Lee and…
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…
Mephisto (Marvel Comics)Mephisto first appeared in Silver Surfer #3, cover dated December 1968. Writer Stan Lee and penciler John Buscema created him for Marvel Comics. They modeled him on Mephistopheles, the demon of the Faust legend, who is sometimes called…
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…
Black Cat (Marvel Comics)Black Cat, the thief whose real name is Felicia Hardy, first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #194 in July 1979, yet she was never meant for that comic. Her creators had a different hero's book in mind when they dreamed her up. She…
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…