Strange Marvel Superheroes You May Not Know Exist

The vast Marvel Comics universe has been populated with hundreds of characters over the decades by a wide array of talented writers and artists. There are so many great characters in the publisher's stable that Marvel Studios should have no problem putting out new movies every year from now until the end of time. Some of Marvel's cinematic blockbusters have featured comics characters—such as Groot or Doctor Strange—that are just a little bit outside the norm. But a talking tree and a wizard have nothing on these very obscure, very weird, and very real Marvel Comics creations.

There are so many superheroes in the Marvel Universe that most of the good powers have already been taken; to be original, comic book writers have to go super-niche to try and think up unique abilities that haven't already been claimed. Such is the case with Doorman, a member of the Great Lakes Adventures who can open up the "Darkforce Dimension," allowing him to create doorways through objects or even himself. In other words, he can teleport other people very short distances.

This just might be the most grossly insensitive comic book character of all time. People who suffer eating disorders are not likely to find the entertainment value in Big Bertha, another Great Lakes Avenger. She's a lithe model by day, but she has the mutant ability to instantly make herself morbidly obese. Returning back to her model form is a little more complicated: when crimefighting time is over, she vomits herself back to her regular size.

This mutant villain in the X-Men world possessed a certain skill that's ultimately completely useless as far as villain pursuits like world domination or killing the good guys is concerned: Eye-Scream could...turn himself into ice cream. Not only that, but any flavor of ice cream. Like ice cream, he only lasted a short while—a single issue in 1983.

This blue-skinned X-Men character gets all the credit for his superhero deeds, but it's really his associates who are doing all the dirty work—and we do mean dirty. Living inside the body of Maggott are two enormous and disgusting maggot-like things named Eany and Meany. They eat their way in and out of their host's body, which starts the process that activates Maggott's superhuman abilities. Sadly, he was eventually killed—and his "sentient digestive system" gifted to a couple of kids—but he's since been brought back to life by an alien virus. Life in the Marvel Universe can get pretty complicated.

The 1970s trucker craze was one of the most inexplicable fads in American history. Countless people installed C.B. radios in their cars to emulate truck drivers, the trucker song "Convoy" hit No. 1 on the pop charts, and Burt Reynolds' Smokey and the Bandit was the third-highest-grossing movie of 1977. Marvel tried to cash in, too, with the kind of awesome—if not also bonkers—Razorback. Trucker Buford Hollis differentiates between his regular and crimefighting self by adorning the head of a razorback pig (he's from Arkansas, home of the razorback) when he goes into hero mode. Among his other powers: He has the uncanny ability to drive any vehicle in existence. Even stick!

Marvel must have really wanted to make a truck driver superhero a thing, because Ulysses Archer is at least the second long-haul hero in its archives. Hitting newsstands in 1983 (long after the trucker fad came and went), U.S. 1 was comic about a truck driver named Ulysses Solomon (or U.S.) Archer who fights evil out on the highways. It was also a way for him to follow around his nemesis the Highwayman—who was also, by the way, his brother. The duo eventually sorted out their differences by competing in a space race that ended with the Highwayman crashing into the moon.

Somehow, this member of the X-Statix whose name merges a play on words of a David Bowie song title ("The Jean Genie") with a reference to the definitive alcoholic spirit of England is not British. No, Gin Genie is American, but her superpower involves an activity almost all cultures can relate to: getting drunk. The drunker she gets, the more her powers increase, because she can create seismic waves that correlate to her blood alcohol level. As you might imagine, her career didn't last long; her first appearance, in X-Force #116, is also billed as her last.

While their efforts have often been regrettably clumsy, comics publishers have a long history of trying to promote diversity within the superhero ranks. There are characters with a variety of cultural and national backgrounds in the pages of Marvel titles...for better for for worse. In 1982, the publisher created an Irish character named Shamrock, who comprised an almost laughable collection of Irish stereotypes. (Such as having the name "Shamrock," for example.") Shamrock's real name is Molly Fitzgerald, she's got red hair, and one of her "powers" is having exceptionally good luck.

There's an old adage instructing creative types to "write what you know." For Marvel, that evidently means writing about money—at least for the creative team behind the 1992 debut of this bizarre hero. The Almighty Dollar's origin goes like this: one day, a mild-mannered accountant named J. Pennington Pennypacker goes to a retreat at Camp Runamuk to help him build his self esteem, but it's a trap—a mad scientist runs the camp, and uses Pennypacker as his test subject for a weird invention. Pennypacker winds up with money-themed superpowers, such as the ability to shoot pennies out of his wrists.

This Uncanny X-Men supporting character, first spotted in 2012, certainly can't count "thinking up clever names" as one of his mutant abilities. Goldballs has but one power, and that is to form and then shoot gold balls out of his skin. In other words, Goldballs makes gold balls. As one might guess, this ability isn't always the handiest when it comes to fighting superpowered villains, but to his credit, the character has acquired a certain level of cult appreciation during his short time in the Marvel Universe; in 2016, he struck up a friendship with Miles Morales, a.k.a. the "other" Spider-Man.