You don’t get through decades and decades of publishing beloved stories without having
a few weird ones pop up over the years.
As one of the comic industry’s biggest publishers, Marvel has had it’s fair share of strange
narratives and odd occurrences in it’s panels throughout it’s history.
And these are stories that go beyond the wackiest of the silver age, that’s for sure.
So today, we’re taking a look at some of their most strange character concoctions;
the individuals, superhero and super villain, who have left us a little baffled with their
motives, their appearance, or their behavior in general.
This is our list of the top 10 weirdest characters from marvel comics.
10 Howard the Duck Starting off our list is one of the strangest
creations to come out of Marvel that also has a beloved following; Howard the Duck.
Howard is an ill tempered cynical character trapped on a human dominated Earth, who in
some of his iterations looks a whole lot like Disney’s Donald Duck.
Disney actually threatened to sue Marvel over it, so the comics giant redesigned the character
and gave him a whole story line where he was the target of anti-nudity protests, and was
forced to work with a failed cartoonist named Wally Sidney.
What makes Howard so adored is the kinds of stories and themes that his narratives venture
into.
For an anthropomorphic creature that looks a whole lot like Donald Duck, his stories
tend to be quite existentialist, and parodies genre fiction.
As creator Steve Gerber defined it, “life’s most serious moments and most incredibly dumb
moments are often distinguishable only by a momentary point of view.”
The live action film is perhaps a major factor as to why Howard is often perceived as one
of Marvel’s strangest creations; rather than depicting a metafictional awareness,
the screenwriter for the film, Gloria Katz, had this to say about the direction Howard’s
story took up on the big screen.
“It’s a film about a duck from outer space.
It’s not supposed to be an existential experience.”
Way to taint the character.
9 The Asbestos Lady Asbestos is by no means considered a safe
material to use, but back in the golden and silver age of comics, several villains who
fought against heroes with fire based powers often made us of the substance, to the point
where their whole villain identity was based around it.
Introducing the Asbestos Lady, who fought both Captain America and the original human
torch in the 40s.
Her whole schtick was that she used a fire proof suit made of asbestos, which was known
at the time to be great at fireproofing things, from firefighter suits to insultation in buildings
and homes.
The character would be sent to prison, but years later it was revealed that she died
due to mesothelioma at the age of 45, which was likely due to a long term exposure to
asbestos.
Mesothelioma is a rare and highly aggressive form of cancer that asbestos is often linked
to, along with other respiratory diseases.
All in all, at the time it may have seemed like a brilliant gimmick to fight a foe like
the Human Torch, but hindsight is 20/20, and these days it’s easy to see why the Asbestos
Lady has fallen into obscurity.
8 Mojo Mojo is one of the more ridiculous characters
in the Marvel universe that makes perfect sense.
Typically an X-Men villain who debuted back in 1985, Mojo is pretty much a satirical creation;
he lives on a planet he’s named Mojoworld, in a dimension known as the Mojoverse, and
he creates gladiator fighting programs that the people on that world are obsessed with.
He’s essentially a corrupt gluttonous television network executive who is quite literally spineless
and is constantly tuned into what’s going on in his shows.
Plus, because of that whole spineless thing, he needs to use mechanic legs to get around.
Mojo’s MO is often kidnapping heroes from the Marvel Universe and placing them in one
of his gladiator fighting shows against their will.
Did we mention he’s also a slaver?
Makes sense.
He also wears a contraption on his head that was inspired by the apparatus Malcolm McDowell
wore in A Clockwork Orange that keeps one’s eyelids open constantly.
7 Doctor Bong Doctor Bong is a Howard the Duck villain,
and no, he doesn’t smoke a sh*t ton of weed.
He’s actually even more ridiculous than that he’s a character whose a genius scientist,
yet has the moronic idea to wear a helmet shaped like a bell.
His bell helmet, when struck, creates a number of effects that don’t really do a whole
lot.
Doctor Bong, whose real name is Lester, was bullied a lot as a kid, and in college, his
yellow journalism got his professor fired.
Then, after that, while performing with the punk band he was in, his hand was severed
by a miniature guillotine.
This is the hand he uses to strike the bell on his head.
Why he chose a bell in the first place is NEVER ACTUALLY EXPLAINED.
To make matters worse, at one point, the character gets a bunch of clones.
Sort of.
He had a crush on a art class model named Beverly Switzler, kidnaps her and Howard the
Duck, demands that she marries him or he’ll kill Howard, and throws her into a castle
as a prisoner while he goes out and fights an escaped Howard.
Beverly decides to make the most of her time and clones Doctor Bong, creating five infant
clones that she names the Bong Quintuplets, and threatens to reveal him as a negligent
father if he doesn’t release her and Howard.
He adopts the four kids and lets Beverly and Howard go.
6 Mandrill When you think of a mandrill, one of two things
likely comes to mind.
Either the primate, who has managed to get an aggressive reputation in pop culture portrayals
of its species, OR, you think of a man with a drill.
Creative.
Well, Marvel’s Mandrill plucks inspiration from parts of both of those things.
He’s a villain who is half man, half monkey, first introduced back in 1973 in Shanna the
She Devil issue 4.
How did this villain come to be?
Initially, he was a man named Jerome Beechman, the son of a physicist in New Mexico.
Prior to the child’s conception, his physicist father’s facility had an accident, an explosion
in it’s nuclear reactor, which affected both daddy dearest and a cleaning woman with
radiation.
Later, when Jerome was born, he came out of the womb with black skin and tufts of body
hair.
Both parents were Caucasian.
So what does Jerome’s father do?
Aside from blatantly hating the child, he takes Jerome out when he’s ten years old,
and abandons him in the New Mexico desert.
This is when he meets the daughter of the cleaning woman who was also affected by the
radiation at his father’s facility.
She was born albino white, despite both her parents being black.
The two of them become partners in crime and ended up getting attacked by a lynch mob,
which triggered Mandrill’s powers.
Which make zero f*cking sense; he had the ability to control women with his pheromones.
He would later use this to raise armies of women under his control, but also take sexual
advantage of them as slaves.
In addition to this, he was a big time misogynist, and even forced some of his slaves to marry
him.
5 Doop Doop is a floating green spheroid creature
who speaks in a language of his own.
First appearing in X-Force vol 1 issue 116, Doop’s origins are unknown, but it’s rumoured
he’s the product of a military experiment, and was instrumental in the fall of the Soviet
Union.
So what exactly does Doop do?
He can fly, he can heal real good, he’s got superhuman strength and durability, he
is physically malleable, he can replicate physical objects and his body stores an extra
dimensional void that both objects and people can be stored in.
Needless to say, he’s an odd one, but has proven to be a great source of humour over
the years, in both the X-Force and X-Statix comics, the latter in which he served as a
camera man for the celebrity mutant team, in which he gets in trouble for being too
artistic of a cinematographer.
4 Hellcow Hellcow is another source of humour on this
list, and is likely the most well known for her team up with Deadpool back in 2011.
But Hellcow had existed long before then, my friends.
Initially appearing in Giant Size Man Thing issue 5 from 1975, Hellcow is traditionally
a foe of Howard the Duck’s.
So what’s her deal?
Back in 1675, Hellcow was just Bessie the cow, who lived on a Swiss Farm.
But that simple life would soon be over.
Bessie became the prey of Count Dracula, who decided to feast on her blood when he couldn’t
find any nearby humans.
Bessie becomes an undead monster, rising from her grave three nights after her burial in
search of Dracula.
Years later, now known as Hellcow, Bessie murders four farmers in Cleveland, Ohio; a
case that Howard the Duck then investigates, and ends with Howard seemingly killing Bessie
by driving a stake through her heart.
She’s later revived by Doctor Kilgore, who tries to use her milk to cure his tuberculosis
and attain immorality.
When that doesn’t work, Kilgore abducts Deadpool, which ultimately fails as well,
but brings Deadpool and Hellcow together after Deadpool saves her.
So essentially, Hellcow is an immortal vampire cow who can fly with a cape, disappear into
nothingness by taking up the form of gas, and has even learnt how to talk and walk upright
like a human.
What’s not to love?
3 M.O.D.O.K Modok is straight up a giant head with limbs.
His name is an acronym for Mobile Organism Designed Only for Killing.
Although initially, that K was a C and stood for computing.
So how did this giant noggin come to be?
Well, initially he was a fellow named George Tarleton who, thanks to a random selection
by the Scientist Supreme of AIM, became a test subject in an experiment to bio-engineer
a living computer.
Tarleton was experimented and mutated on, resulting in his head growing massive in size,
and gaining a few new abilities; superhuman intelligence and psionic powers, both of which
eventually drove him insane.
He turned on his superiors, killed the Scientist Supreme, and adopted the title for himself,
changing the last letter of his code name from Computing to Killing.
He tends to use mind control tactics from time to time, which has led to some pretty
uncomfortable moments, like the time he brainwashed Carol Danvers’ Ms Marvel into believing
he was incredibly attractive, and then stole a few smooches from her.
Yup, gross.
2 Ruby Thursday Ruby Thursday is perhaps one of the most absurd
villains to ever grace the pages of Marvel’s comics.
She’s a woman whose head has been replaced with a malleable mass of red plastic that
consists of organic circuitry.
Essentially, she’s got a red orb for a head and a banging bod.
Tits and a globe.
It’s very weird.
Ruby Thursday, whose real name is none other than Thursday Rubinstein, the pinnacle of
creativity, first appeared in the Defenders issue 32 back in 1976.
She’s named after the Rolling Stones song Ruby Tuesday.
And her origin?
She’s a scientist who DID THIS TO HERSELF after creating an organic computer and grafting
it to her head.
This organic matter can become anything she wills it to.
She can also remove her head from her body and still have control over both, and can
cause her head to explode and then reform, like nothing ever happened.
She can also shrink her head down in size; something that was initially believed to be
an artistic error in her earlier appearances, but has been chalked up to a tactic that she
uses to better evade attacks.
She’s also done a lot of other crazy crap over the years, too.
She once ran for the President of the United States as a candidate of the Global Head party,
and used the slogan new heads for old.
She robbed Omega the Unknown at a casino, and then when he started chasing her, she
cried wolf and told the police that he was assaulting her in her car, which resulting
in the police shooting him to death.
1 Maggott Maggott is notoriously one of the weirdest
characters to ever come out of Marvel.
A superhero who was once part of the X-Men team, upon his debut he was even advertised
by the company as being one of the strangest X-Men to have ever existed.
For starters, personality wise, he’s a flamboyant South African mutant who speaks in exaggerated
Afrikaans slang, which, to be fair, could potentially have made for a really interesting
character.
EXCEPT, here’s where it gets odd.
His mutation?
His digestive system is made up of two semi sentient slugs, or rather maggots, that can
leave his body and eat through pretty much any substance for food before returning to
him and passing that nourishment on to him.
Depending on the substance they’ve consumed, they can supercharge his physical size, strength
and stamina, but in order to do so they must return to the hollow cavity in his stomach.
The slugs have names, too.
Eany and Meany.
YUP.
There we have it friends!
Which of these characters did you find the weirdest?
And what other Marvel gems should we have mentioned on our list?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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