Skip to content
Curated playlist

Merged fictional characters

  • 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.…
  • 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…
  • Carnage (character)Carnage, the Marvel Comics supervillain, has a favorite calling card: the words "Carnage Rules," written in blood for others to follow. The character is a symbiote, an amorphous alien parasite that bonds with a living host and grants…
  • 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…
  • Flash ThompsonEugene "Flash" Thompson first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15, published in August 1962 by Marvel Comics. Writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko introduced him in the very issue that launched Spider-Man. Flash starts out as the star of his…
  • Spectre (DC Comics character)The Spectre first appeared in More Fun Comics #52, dated February 1940, and his debut opens with a murder. A New York detective named Jim Corrigan is on his way to his own engagement party when thugs stuff him into a barrel, fill it with…
  • 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…
  • Phoenix ForceThe Phoenix Force, a cosmic entity from Marvel Comics, once wiped out five billion inhabitants of a single planet. Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum created it, and it first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #101 in October 1976. Yet the saga that…
  • 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."…
  • Swamp ThingSwamp Thing, the mound of living vegetation that guards nature in DC Comics, got his name because his creator never gave him one. Writer Len Wein later recalled: "I didn't have a title for it, so I kept referring to it as 'that swamp thing…
  • The Mask (comics)A bald green head, swollen far beyond human size, grins with a mouthful of enormous teeth. This is Big Head, the creature at the center of The Mask, an American comedy horror comic series published by Dark Horse Comics. The face belongs to…
  • Doctor FateDoctor Fate, the helmeted sorcerer of DC Comics, was nearly called Doctor Droon. Writer Gardner Fox came up with that name, and an editor changed it before the character reached print. Fox remembered the episode in a 1987 interview, and he…
  • 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…

Queue