-
(#1) Jean Grey
It's not hard to argue that The Dark Phoenix Saga is Jean Grey's most memorable moment in X-Men history.
It started in X-Men #129, when Mastermind started seducing Jean into becoming the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. After Mastermind's hold on Jean fails, she succumbs to the full power of the Phoenix and becomes Dark Phoenix. While on her rampage, she flies into space and kills an entire planet full of sentient life. While Jean's human side is temporary in control, she opts to disintegrate herself instead of continuing her madness.
Don't worry. She got better. -
(#2) Archangel
While Angel was with X-Factor, his wings were crippled by the Marauder Harpoon during the Mutant Massacre. After the wings developed gangrene, Warren's business-enemy signed the documents to have them amputated. Grief stricken, decides to travel in his private jet. However, before the Jet explodes, Warren is whisked away by Apocalypse.
Apocalypse offers Angel the chance to get his wings back if he will serve as his Horseman of Death (noticing a trend yet?). Warren agrees and is outfitted with metal wings that can shoot razor sharp feathers and undergoes mental conditioning to make him all the more evil. -
(#3) Robin
Jason Todd was always a cranky kid. Being the second Robin, he had to live in the shadow of Dick Grayson and also had a crummy home life before becoming Bruce Wayne's ward. Fans were sick of his attitude and voted to have him killed in Death in the Family.
When Superboy punched reality (we know, bear with us - it's comics), Jason was brought back to life. Ticked off at Batman for not avenging his death, he donned the Red Hood persona and started cleaning up Gotham with a pair of Glocks. Now less murderous, Red Hood is more of an anti-hero and works with Batman in current continuity. -
(#4) Superman
"What if Superman, instead of being a nice guy, was the world's biggest dick?" is a popular question to ask when doing alternate versions of Big Blue. It's been done before, like in Superman: Red Son, Earth 2, or the end of the first season of Justice League.
But one of the most popular versions of "Superman is a Super Jerk" is in Injustice: Gods Among Us. The Joker nukes Metropolis and then tricks Superman into killing Lois Lane. After running his hand through the Joker's chest, Supes sets himself up as world leader and kind of runs everything like you would expect an insane, super powered, dictator would.
-
(#5) Scarlet Witch
After Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, had a complete nervous breakdown from the death of her sons, she used chaos magic to cause several random attacks that appeared to come from other enemies which destroyed the Avengers and killed Ant-Man, Vision, and Hawkeye. After the dust settled, she was whisked away by her father, Magneto.
Afterwards, she went into an unstable, catatonic state. Under her brother's persuasion, Wanda created the House of M alternate reality. -
(#6) Spider-Man
During Marvel's Secret Wars story line, Peter Parker got himself a stylish new black costume. It turns out that the costume was actually a living symbiote that, while looking super cool, made Peter a total jerk. With the help of Mr. Fantastic, Parker forcibly removes the costume and is rid of it's negative affect on him.
However, the symbiote later escapes and attaches to Eddie Brock who would become Venom. One could argue that is an even bigger negative effect on Spider-Man's life. -
(#7) Green Lantern
Back in 1994, there wasn't a ton of interest in Hal Jordan's Green Lantern. So, DC Comics did what anyone would do and destroyed Hal's hometown Coast City, had him kill everyone in the Green Lantern Corps and become the mad super villain Parallax. Although he did some good, like reignited the Earth's sun, he also did a lot of terrorizing. Talk about a midlife crisis!
It was later retconned by Geoff Johns, in Green Lantern: Rebirth, that Jordan was infected by a parasitic being that embodied all fear. Hal returned to being a Green Lantern and is all better now. -
(#8) Hulk
In an alternate timeline, the world is destroyed by a nuclear explosion that kills most of the world's heroes. The Hulk survives and using his Bruce Banner intellect and his every growing Hulk powers, takes control of the world and leads with an iron fist. He opted to go the the name Maestro and ruled over his kingdom called Dystopia. -
(#9) Professor X
Onslaught is the psionic persona created from the consciousness of Professor X and Magneto. With the building tensions surround the X-Men and anti-mutant sentiment reaching a fever pitch, the hatred, anger and generally suppressed negative feelings manifested as Onslaught.
The Avengers, sacrificing themselves to stop Onslaught, are sent to a pocket universe. It is here that Onslaught unleashes his more terrible torment on humanity- Heroes Reborn. -
(#10) Cyclops
Cyclops has had a life full of getting pushed around. The guy was bullied as a child, then his wife died, then his second wife became a demon (or something), then Wolverine tried to sleep with his wife, then his wife dies again. Plus, you just know Emma Frost talks to him in a really condescending tone.
So when the Phoenix Force returns to Earth, Scott Summers sees it as a chance to jump-start the mutant population. The Avengers see it as another opportunity for the Phoenix to destroy everything on Earth so Tony Start invents a weapon that, instead of blowing up the Phoenix Force, actually scatters it into the body of five of the X-Men. Cyclops, being one of them, eventually defeats the other four and accidentally kills Professor X.
The combined forces of the X-Men and Avengers bring him down and now he is (sorta) all better.
-
(#11) Sinestro
Sinestro was originally a good guy and worked with the Green Lantern Corps. He was even the one that trained Hal Jordan! However, it was Jordan that realized Sinestro's totalitarian control over his home planet. For his punishment he was sent to the Antimatter universe.
It is here that he gets his yellow power ring and he has been an enemy of Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corp ever since. -
(#12) Wolverine
Wolverine has had it harder than most heroes and for much longer. In the mid 1990s, Magneto does what we were all thinking and painfully strips the adamantium out of Wolverine's body. This, and a series of events to try and put it back in, caused Wolverine to regress into a more animalistic, feral, state. Also, they stopped drawing him with a nose- which is just insult to injury at that point.
Apocalypse eventually captures and rebonds the metal his Logan's bones but at the cost of him becoming his Horseman of Death. He eventually broke the spell Apocalypse had over him and returned, metal claws and nose, to the X-Men.
-
(#13) Batman
If you were a fan of Batman in the '90s, the you remember the classic Knightfall storyline where Bane breaks Bruce Wayne's back over his knee. While Bruce was in recovery, he asked Jean Paul Valley, then the hero Azrael, to take over the cape and cowl.
Well, it being the '90s and all, Valley wanted to take Batman TO THE X-TREME! He decides that Bruce's way of doing things is outdated, builds a suit of armor and kicks Robin to the curb. Apparently, going X-TREME also means letting enemies die and being really brutal. Bruce, sick of these shenanigans, returns and wins the mantle of Batman back.
-
(#14) Superboy
Superboy Prime is an alternate reality version of Superboy who is actually from an Earth that had no super heroes (much like our own) where other heroes existed as comic book characters. After his reality was wiped out of existance during Crisis on Infinite Earths, Prime, he was trapped in a paradise dimension where he went insane.
He breaks out of this dimension, and believing himself to be the best version of Superman, wrecks havok on Earth during Infinite Crisis. Eventually he is stopped and imprisoned inside the central battery on Oa. Of course he got out and was stopped and again and again and .... oops! Here comes The New 52! No more Superboy Prime. -
(#15) Iron Man
After Marvel's AXIS event inverted the hero's personalities, Stark was able to to protect himself after everyone reverted back to normal. He goes on to, essentially, become evil Steve Jobs and created an app that offered beauty, health and immortality. Then he started charging $100 a day to use it. We know Tony Stark can be a ruthless business man, but he has just crossed into super villain territory. -
(#16) Beast
Another Age of Apocalypse alternative, The Dark Beast worked for Mr. Sinister in his breeding pens. Before this timeline was ended, Dark Beast transported himself to the regular Marvel Universe where he hid in the sewers and created the Morlocks. He even posed as regular, much nicer, Beast before the Onslaught story line.
The Dark Beast caused general mischief and mayhem throughout the X-Men's history and eventually blew himself up in attempt to stop them.
-
(#17) Thor
In Thor: The Reigning, Thor has taken over as leader of Asgard and has it merged New York City, in the process killing tens of thousands of humans and Asgardians. Although it seems like a utopia, there are factions working against him. This version of Thor was eventually revealed to be in an alternate timeline. -
(#18) Wonder Woman
In DC Comics's Final Crisis, Earth becomes part of the doomsday singularity. In Short, Darkseid is winning and the whole world goes to hell. Part of the end of the world is Wonder Woman becoming the leader of Darkseid's Female Furies. She even gets her own ugly dog face!
Eventually she breaks free from Darkseid's hold over her and helps bring the tyrant down using her lasso to break his spell over Earth. -
(#19) Captain America
When John Walker steps into the role of Captain America after Steve Rodgers departs and proves to not be able to live up to the standard set by Rodgers. Walker is emotionally unstable and brutal; at one point he even beats a villain to death. When Rodgers returns to being Captain America, Walker takes on the identity of U.S. Agent.
Throughout the years, U.S. Agent has been seen as an extreme version of Captain America that goes too far and follows orders, however misled, at any cost. He has commonly found himself on the side of both good and evil but is always a soldier. -
(#20) Magik
Illyana Rasputin has constantly been the target of dark magics. So when Belasco decides he wants her for his own, he pulls her back into his hell dimension and corrupts her into the semi-demonic Darkchilde. While in this persona she steals a portion of Pixie's soul.
After her defeat by the X-Men, she banishes them from the dimension and takes control of Limbo.
-
(#21) Black Widow
Yelena Belova served as Marvel's second Black Widow. Belova was activated as part of the Black Widow program that trained the original, Natasha Romanova. Natasha convinces her to give up this pursuit and live for herself.
After being attacked and disfigured by Sauron, Yelena accepts an offer from HYDRA to become the new Super-Adaptoid. After terrorizing the Avengers, she is recruited by Norman Osborn to be part of the Thunderbolts and is the current Minister of State for Bagalia. -
(#22) Havok
One of the most popular X-Men story lines of all time is Age of Apocalypse. In this alternate reality, Xavier dies before he can start the X-Men and that puts everyone on different sides of good and evil. Havok and Cyclops actually end up working for Mr. Sinister. Alex Summers is the more emotionally unpredictable of the two bothers and has violent outbursts while on duty as a Prelate.
When Cyclops falls in love with the rebel Jean Grey and starts releasing prisoners, Alex exposes his brother as a traitor. He eventually tracks the couple down and kills Jean.
But don't worry. Everything went back to normal eventually.
-
(#23) Betty Ross
When Betty Ross died, her dear old dad, Thunderbolt Ross, put her body into cryonic stasis and asked The Leader and MODOK if they could help out. They "helped" by submitting her to the same procedure that made him the Red Hulk. She was brainwashed and put into an aggressive state and then unleashed on the world.
She then proceeds to cause trouble for her father and Bruce Banner in her new Hulked out form.
-
(#24) Colossus
After his sister, Illyana, was the first victim of the Legacy Virus, Colossus took a leave of absence from the X-Men to join up with Magneto's Acolytes. Still enraged by Professor X for his role in his sister's death, Colossus fought against the X-Men on Avalon.
Eventually, Colossus left the Acolytes and reconnected with his first love, Kitty Pryde. -
(#25) Shazam
- Fictional Character
Nearly all interpretations of Captain Marvel have Billy Batson at the character's core trying to do the right thing. However, in Kingdom Come, Billy is under the control of Lex Luthor and the villain uses The Big Red Cheese as his right hand man.
When the final battle erupts between Superman's heroes, Batman's rebels and a whole mess of villains, Luthor sends Captain Marvel into battle to finally stop Superman. It's hard to forget Alex Ross's art as Captain Marvel stands, with that huge grin, over a burnt Superman.
Eventually, Captain Marvel sacrifices himself to detonate a bomb that would have annihilated everyone on the battlefield. -
(#26) Sunfire
Sunfire, former X-Men and Big Hero 6 member, was laying in a hospital missing his limbs and powers. This is when Apocalypse showed up and offered to return his limbs and powers if he would become the new Horseman of Famine). Shiro accepts and attacks the X-Men with the rest of the Horsemen.
During battle he is defeated by the X-Men and Emma Frost attempts to free his mind from Apocalypse's control. Sunfire breaks free but still retains his Famine form. -
(#27) Storm
In Uncanny X-Men Vol 1 #159, Storm is actually bitten and transformed by Dracula and goes on to attack the X-Men.
Yes. The Dracula.
Although she breaks his spell and does not continue her transformation, there is an alternate version of Storm in the Mutant X timeline where she does not break Dracula's spell. She takes the name Bloodstorm (get it?) and is an on again, off again, member of the X-Men and The Six. -
(#28) Captain Atom
This one is a little confusing but after Hank Hall (Hawk) used the Monarch armor, Nathaniel Adam puts on the armor. It all seems great until he goes insane and blows up half of Bludhaven.
Afterward, Monarch played a large role in the DC Comics Countdown series. At one point, he gathers different versions of popular heroes to fight to the death in Countdown: Arena. Afterwards he was... oh wait, here comes the New 52 to clean all this up! Thanks, DC Comics! -
(#29) Mary Marvel
After Mary Marvel gains Black Adam's powers, the corruption drives the character to be more violent and act questionably by working with Eclipso and running errands for Darkseid. During Final Crisis, she is actually possessed by the New God, Desaad, and works as one of Darkseid's Female Furies.
After teaming up with Black Adam and joining the evil Black Marvels, the wizard Shazam appears and strips Mary of all of her powers. -
(#30) Danielle Moonstar
Danielle Moonstar was one of the original New Mutants and appeared to have betrayed the team when she joined the Mutant Liberation Front. However, she was actually working as a member of S.H.E.L.D. During this period she was put into conflict with many heroes including former team mates.
New Random Displays Display All By Ranking
About This Tool
Our data comes from Ranker, If you want to participate in the ranking of items displayed on this page, please click here.