In the world of Marvel, whose family reunion is stacked with the most powerful characters
of all? From Asgardian gods to Thanos' skeevy bro, here are the most powerful siblings in
the Marvel Universe ranked.
Individually, the Guthries might not have the raw power of some of the other families
on this list, but they sure as heck have 'em outnumbered.
Sam Guthrie, aka Cannonball, made his debut in the first New Mutants story back in 1982
as a simple teenage coal miner from Cameron County, Kentucky, who discovered he had the
mutant power to blast off. Sam's Southern working class roots also brought with them
a massive family. All told, he was one of ten siblings, and over the years, five of
them have developed mutant powers, with most of them winding up with the X-Men.
In addition to Sam's nigh-invulnerable blastin' and possible immortality, there's Paige (also
known as Husk), who can tear her skin off to reveal a layer of whatever she chooses
beneath. Josh, aka Icarus, has angelic wings and a healing factor. Melody, aka Aero, can
fly, no wings necessary. And then there's Jeb, who can shoot electricity out of his
face. As for the others, it might be more accurate to say that they don't have mutant
powers yet. If the comics have taught us anything, it's that there's always another Guthrie to
call up to the big leagues if you need one.
The Von Strucker twins, Andrea and Andreas, were pretty much doomed to become supervillains
before they were even born. After all, their father, Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, was one
of Hitler's best pals, and he's spent the past 80 years fighting Captain America and
infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D. There are only so many ways your life can go from there, and
"racist Aryan supervillains" is definitely the most likely. It's not just nurture that's
the problem, though.
Here's how they became the Marvel Universe's most uncomfortable characters on every level.
While their still-unnamed mother was pregnant, Wolfgang got "Bio-Fanatic" Nazi cyborg Arnim
Zola to meddle with his unborn kids, turning them into genetically engineered mutants.
The twins had the ability to fly and blast energy out of their hands, but only while
they were making physical contact with each other, leading to a whole lot of comics where
they fought the X-Men while holding hands and implying a few other things.
When it comes to bad dads, Daimon and Satana Hellstrom might have the worst, what with
the fact that he's Satan and all.
Despite their devilish heritage, Satana and Daimon, who occasionally goes by the somewhat
on-the-nose superhero name "Son of Satan", aren't quite as powerful as you might expect.
But it's worth noting that even after 40 years of comics, they're still pretty young by demon
standards. For the most part, they have the same sort of vague magical powers possessed
by most of the mystical characters in the Marvel Universe, but Daimon also has the ability
to shoot fire out of a pitchfork made of Netheranium, a metal mined exclusively in Hell, that burns
your soul instead of your body.
Satana, on the other hand, was raised in Hell, and when she came to Earth, it was as a fully
powered succubus with the ability to devour souls. If that wasn't enough, she also spent
most of her life with her soul bonded to an extremely powerful demon called Basilisk,
which she could release to do stuff like blow up cars. Together, the siblings are pretty
formidable, but far from the most powerful supernatural forces you're likely to encounter
in the Marvel Universe.
The Summers family has been at the center of the X-Men saga since there's been an X-Men
saga to be at the center of. Scott, better known as Cyclops, appeared in the first issue,
and his brother Alex, who took the codename Havok, showed up not too long after.
"This is my brother Scott."
"Hey, Scott. I'm Hank McCoy, I'm one of the teachers here."
For a long time, the hints that they had a third brother formed the basis of one of the
most intriguing mysteries of the series. Eventually, readers found out that their long-lost brother
was Gabriel Summers, alias Vulcan, and there was actually a good reason Cyclops and Havok
didn't know about him. See, he'd been born on another planet after his parents were kidnapped
by aliens and their dad became a space pirate with a sexy skunk lady girlfriend. Plus, while
Professor X found Gabriel when he came back to Earth, he never bothered to tell his favorite
student because he didn't want to.
Individually, the three Summers brothers are formidable. Cyclops has optic blasts that
are capable of smashing through robots, buildings, and all manner of supervillains. Havok is
capable of disintegrating virtually anything with his powers at their peak intensity, and
he once survived being thrown into a sun. As for Gabriel, he was referred to as "terrifyingly
powerful" by Adam Warlock, whose status as a space messiah makes him an expert on overpowered
cosmic characters. All together, they'd be nearly unstoppable, but alas, their family
squabbles usually keep them from teaming up for too long.
Usually, mutants who are related to each other have some similarities in their powers. The
Summers family, for instance, all have some kind of energy projection. The Braddocks,
on the other hand, are all over the map in terms of powers. Specifically, the map of
Great Britain.
Betsy is well-known as the on-again, off-again X-Man called Psylocke, whose psychic powers
manifest themselves in some pretty unique ways. Not only can she do the standard mind-reading
and telekinesis, she can also concentrate her abilities into a weapon representing "the
focused totality of her mutant powers," which can take the form of a psychic knife, a katana,
or even a bow and arrow. Despite being Betsy's twin, Brian Braddock isn't a mutant. Instead,
he got powers through mystical means when he took up the Amulet of Right and became
Captain Britain, with all the powers of the British Isles. He can lift 90 tons, fly faster
than the speed of sound, keep a stiff upper lip, take tea at four, and keep calm and carry
on.
And then there's Jamie. The eldest of the Braddock siblings, Jamie is the family's resident
supervillain, and since villains need to provide a pretty intense challenge, he is, in theory,
at least, way more powerful than his siblings. He sees the world as being held together by
strings, and by playing puppet master with them, he can alter reality to suit his whims.
Needless to say, this doesn't have a great impact on his mental health.
As the team that kicked off Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's reinvention of superhero comics as
we know them, the Fantastic Four have always been Marvel's First Family. And the key word
there has always been "family." Because really, if you're Reed Richards, a super genius trying
to beat the commies into space, why wouldn't you take your girlfriend, her kid brother,
and a buddy from college?
That's how the Storm siblings, Susan and Johnny, were exposed to the cosmic rays that turned
them into the Invisible Woman and the Human Torch, respectively, forever changing their
family dynamic.
As the Human Torch, Johnny has the flashiest powers. When he flames on, his body is transformed
into a plasma form that, at rest, is burning at about 780 degrees Fahrenheit, which, for
comparison, is about the temperature of molten lava.
"Now picture that, but everywhere!"
With that as the starting point, he can eventually get up to one million degrees Fahrenheit.
But even with Johnny capable of incinerating a small moon, Sue is always referred to as
the most powerful member of the team. Her invisible force-fields are tough enough to
withstand the gravity of a black hole, the most crushingly powerful force in the known
universe. Also, they're pretty tough to see.
It says something about the Maximoffs that their estranged half-sister Lorna, better
known as the superheroine Polaris, is generally considered to be on the same world-beating
level of sheer strength as her father, Magneto, and she still isn't Quicksilver's most powerful
sibling. Not by a long shot.
Don't get it wrong. Both Polaris and Quicksilver are incredibly powerful in their own right.
Lorna is strong enough to wreck a spaceship with her magnetic powers and has such fine
control over her abilities that she can manipulate the iron in someone's body to reverse their
blood flow. Pietro, better known as Quicksilver, isn't the fastest runner in the world of superhero
comics, but he can still get to Mach 4 on foot and punch you a thousand times before
you can blink. Wanda, on the other hand, is on a whole other level, partly because her
magically augmented mutant powers are so vaguely defined that they're basically limitless.
For a long time, the Scarlet Witch was shown to have control over probability, but she
also remade the entire Marvel Universe and stripped the powers away from millions of
mutants just by saying the words "no more mutants."
Of course, take this ranking with a grain of salt, not because these three characters
aren't powerful but because they might not be siblings. As of this video, Lorna is Magneto's
child, while Pietro and Wanda aren't, but who knows what the next person who writes
Avengers is going to reveal.
T'Challa and Shuri of Wakanda, who've both held the identity of Black Panther, are both
extremely powerful people for many different reasons, and each sibling has their own unique
gifts.
Politically, Wakanda is one of the Marvel Universe's most powerful nations, thanks to
being one of two places on Earth with a supply of vibranium, the super metal that powers
both their economy and Black Panther's arsenal of high-tech weaponry. On a personal level,
both Shuri and T'Challa have gained superhuman abilities from the semi-mystical, heart-shaped
herb, granting them strength, speed, and reflexes far beyond ordinary people. Honestly, though?
That's the least of their powers.
They're both brilliant, but Shuri's facility with technology and inventing puts her on
par with the other super scientists of the Marvel Universe. And T'Challa? Well, he's
the king of the dead, a title that he got from the goddess Bast. The full extent of
what that means has yet to be revealed, but it did give him the ability to command a couple
hundred thousand zombies and lead them as a revolutionary army when Doctor Doom took
over the multiverse.
Thanos has been well-established as one of
the biggest, baddest villains of the Marvel Universe, on both the big screen and the comics
page. He's the guy who kills countless billions without a second thought and who literally
worships Death, which he thinks of as a lady he wants to take out for a nice dinner after
a long night of galactic genocide. But Thanos isn't even the creepiest member of his family.
That honor, such as it is, goes to his brother, Eros, the occasional Avenger also known as
Starfox. Eros has the ability to project what he calls "overwhelming waves of pleasure,"
and yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. For years, the implications were just implications,
but in a She-Hulk story, he was sued by women that he'd seduced with his powers. And as
it turns out that his pleasure-inducing creep factor is so powerful that he can never turn
it off.
While they're often on opposite sides, Thor and Loki represent the pinnacle of Asgardian
power. Thor's got that overwhelming hammer-swinging strength and the ability to conjure up storms
so intense that they threaten to swallow the sun. Meanwhile, Loki has a razor-sharp cunning,
immortality, and a powerful command of sorcery.
"Hey, let's do get help."
"What?"
"Get help."
"No."
"Come on, you love it."
"I hate it."
They're opposed to each other more often than not, but as a duo, they're nearly unstoppable.
And they have a sister.
Angela's path to the Marvel Universe is a complicated one. She was originally created
in Spawn at Image Comics, then became the subject of a lawsuit over ownership that lasted
over a decade and ended with her being sold to Marvel back in 2013. To explain her long-lost
status, she was revealed to be a resident of a secret tenth realm. She's still Odin's
daughter, though, and has all the usual powers you'd expect, with the added bonus of being
so deadly that she's considered "Asgard's assassin." She's been shown to be Thor's equal
in combat, giving Valhalla's annual family reunion more sheer power than any other family
gathering in the multiverse.
The most powerful character in the entire Marvel multiverse isn't Thanos, Galactus,
or any other cosmic force. In fact, he's not even an adult. Franklin Richards, the young
son of the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards and Sue Storm, inherited his parents' considerable
cosmic powers on top of being the single most powerful mutant ever born. What exactly can
he do? Well...anything.
Franklin's powers are generally portrayed in the telepathy/telekinesis category, with
the small bonus of being able to control reality to the point of literally creating universes.
In fact, when the Marvel Multiverse was destroyed by Dr. Doom, the way the Fantastic Four fixed
it was just having Franklin come up with a bunch of alternate universe ideas and then
use his powers to make them real.
Since Franklin's powers are pretty much infinite, any group of siblings in which he's included
would by definition rank at the top of this list. But his sister, Valeria, isn't exactly
a slouch herself. We don't know what they are yet, but she definitely has powers, and
what's more, she's a super genius, even by the standards of the Fantastic Four.
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