The House of Ideas. Talking Time's 50 Favorite Marvel Characters!

[Adrenaline]

I think he's definitely a character who benefits from the existence of the Marvel Universe, and the place he has in it. He's less relatable than other heroes and he is something of an authority figure, so when he shows up you know important things are happening.

 

[Vaeran]

Tony has probably the richest and best-realized arc in the MCU to date, going from a hedonistic self-obsessed playboy to someone who's willing to sacrifice himself for the good of others. Even so, he remains deeply flawed in interesting ways, but RDJ's brilliant performance manages to keep him charismatic and likeable (gross rape joke in Age of Ultron notwithstanding. Thanks for that, Whedon. ) I was always excited to see him, partly because of the above character work and partly because he'd usually show up with a new suit and fun new gadgets, and it was always interesting to see what he'd come up with since the last time we saw him. His final suits being able to shape themselves into whatever he needed through nanotechnology felt a little like magic, but it was also a logical endpoint to his tech's developmental path, and provided the means to resolve things in Endgame.

To the extent that the Infinify Saga had a "main character" it was Tony, and if Marvel intends to reproduce that for Phase Four and beyond, nobody's really emerged as the frontrunner yet.

 

[Adrenaline]

#10: Spider-Man

AKA: Miles Morales, Captain Universe
Powers: Shoots webs, clings to walls, spider-sense, camouflage, venom strike
First Appearance: Ultimate Fallout #4, 2011
Created By: Brian Michael Bendis, Sara Pichelli
7 votes, 171 points (Top voter: Issun)

The second-most famous Spider-Man does not originate from the same universe as most of these characters. He comes from the Ultimate universe. If you're not familiar, in 2000 Marvel started a secondary line of comics taking place in a separate continuity so they could tell simpler stories using fan-favorite characters. While the idea of simpler stories fell by the wayside as the line quickly turned into a convoluted mess, the preeminent book was always Ultimate Spider-Man. After about ten years of comics, the Peter Parker of the ultimate universe died. Miles Morales, who had recently through a series of events been bitten by a radioactive spider that gave him powers, decided to step into the hero's shoes. While there have been plenty of Spider-based characters in Marvel history, Miles was the first one with black and Latino heritage, and he symbolized a shift in the comic industry towards a more diverse and inclusive lineup of characters.

While at first some questioned Miles' attempt to fill Peter's shoes, he received the approval of the mainstream Spider-Man in a crossover story, and when the Ultimate Peter returned to life, he retired, knowing the role was in good hands. Things changed drastically in the Secret Wars event, when all of the universes in the multiverse, including Miles', were destroyed. Miles managed to hitch a ride on an escape craft, and after helping the powerful Molecule Man with a pocket hamburger, was thanked by having himself and his close family and friends appear in the mainstream universe when it was recreated. There are now two Spider-Men patrolling the skies above New York, and they have developed a solid friendship. Miles joined the Avengers, and after a split during Civil War II, he joined the new Champions team, a more idealistic group made up entirely of younger heroes.

I think there are two adaptations of the character worth talking about, both of which first appeared in 2018. Miles is the protagonist of the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and a supporting character in the video game Spider-Man. In Spider-Verse, he is played by Shameik Moore, and in Spider-Man by Nadji Jeter, who also played him in an animated series. Both versions of the character play characters who are unsure of their newly found powers, but given confidence by a mentoring Peter Parker, and blossom into strong heroes in their own right. Moore's Miles becomes the triumphant victor and savior of the multiverse, and Jeter's starred in his own game, where his expanded power-set made him even more fun to play as than Peter. Hopefully Miles will appear in live action soon, but they're doing a lot of good with the character in other media.

 

[Violentvixen]

The issues with Iron Man and alcohol are also significant ones, I should give Demon in a Bottle a re-read. It's pretty neat that he attends AA meetings in the comics. There was a decent amount of protest to Robert Downey Jr. getting the Iron Man role because of all his drug convictions and some questions about the legal process around them (I never heard anything more than speculation so don't want to get specific) and I remember people counter-arguing that it would make him even better for the role because he knows addiction. Dunno about that, but I really wish the MCU had given this issue some screen time.

 

[Issun]

I liked Tony Stark a lot when I watched the first few MCU flicks but the shine has worn off a bit I think.

Miles in Into the Spiderverse is the beat version of Spidey, at least on celluloid.

 

[Adrenaline]

#9: Nightcrawler

AKA: Kurt Wagner, Kurt Szardos
Powers: Teleportation, prehensile tail
First Appearance: Giant-Size X-Men #1, 1975
Created By: Len Wein, Dave Cockrum
Portrayed By: Alan Cumming, Kodi Smit-McPhee
8 votes, 180 points (Top voter: Patrick)

We are now in the top tier of the list, as every character from this point forward got a vote from the majority of the ballots. Nightcrawler is a mutant who had a mysterious history, but it was eventually revealed that he is the son of Mystique and a previously-unseen mutant named Azazel, from whom he inherited his power and demonic appearance. He was abandoned by his parents and rescued by the members of a traveling circus, who named him Kurt and taught him acrobatics. He left the circus and was rescued from a mob of angry villagers by Professor X, who recruited him into the X-Men. Something I didn't know until today is that Dave Cockrum originally came up with the character design for a different project for DC, but it was rejected, and he later repurposed it for Marvel when they were reviving the X-Men. DC's loss was Marvel's gain.

Despite being persecuted for his appearance, Kurt retained a friendly and fun-loving nature, and become something of the heart of the team. After the Fall of the Mutants storyline, when many of his allies were apparently killed, Kurt went to the UK with Kitty and Rachel Grey, and the team Excalibur was formed. He later returned to the X-Men, and among other things, was targeted by a religious group that tried to use his appearance to convince people that the Rapture had happened. Weird story. He died during the Second Coming storyline, but later returned while preventing an attack on Heaven by his father. Despite his devilish look, Kurt was a devout Catholic. When the nation of Krakoa was formed and they developed the Resurrection program, his views started to shift and he set out to try to create a religion for mutants.

Nightcrawler made his live-action debut in the stunning opening scene of the second X-Men movie, when in a brainwashed state he attacked the White House and made full use of his powers to deliver a warning to the President. Despite being a breakthrough character, he did not appear again until Apocalypse, when a younger version was played by the suspiciously tall Kodi Smit-McPhee. Unlike many of the mutants on this list he was not a major character in the 90s animated series, but he was a regular on X-Men: Evolution. I haven't mentioned Evolution even though I've actually seen more of it than the 90s series. It's not bad, but having the characters attend regular high school and changing their ages around so that, for example, Cyclops and Kitty are students but Beast and Storm are teachers, just made it feel like not the real X-Men to me.

 

[YangusKhan]

Unlike many of the mutants on this list he was not a major character in the 90s animated series, but he was a regular on X-Men: Evolution

Don't forget the Konami beat-em-up too! That's the only reason I knew him before X-Men 2 came out.

 

[Violentvixen]

The Genesis game was my main introduction to Nightcrawler, and then I started reading about him more and really liked him.

 

[Peklo]

It's impossible to talk about Claremont's writing without considering it through a sexual lens. It's beyond parody or punchlines, as all the BDSM, body and mental autonomy emphasis/denial of the same plotting and characters betray a writing voice that was as prolific as it was perpetually sexually charged for all that time. Some of it granted the characters an uncommonly unfiltered way to project their development and bouts of angst on the page, and some of it alienated for how prevalent it really was and how it intruded on seemingly every step a character's journey might undertake and the foes they faced. One of the most inconsistent aspects is consent and whether as a concept it's even observed at all; certainly other comics do not set up a desirably emulatable baseline. Claremont's often good intentions were regularly outstepped by the execution of those themes on the page, when some heroic character or another pushed too far beyond the limits, excused by their moral framing in the story or how affable the writer thinks their projected demeanor generally is--it's the folly of the Gambits of our time and beyond.

Kurt is exceptional in the Claremont canon, comics and media in general because his archetype is standard; he styles himself very explicitly after an Errol Flynn-modeled pastiche of swashbuckling romantic rogue set of tics and behavioural patterns. Unlike Flynn, whose projected screen image idealized the rapist that he was in reality, Kurt regularly observes the thin line that separates his manner between charming and harassing. It's the foundation of the character execution successfully cashing the check of the character premise, which so often with these kinds of sex pest figures is the breaking point that Kurt rarely has to grapple with because he is shown to be aware of the performance of sexuality and flirtation that he engages in and actively managing the limits of such play so as to not overstep their bounds. When we see alternate versions of the character, or somehow morally corrupted ones, they nearly always default to warping that performed sexuality into calculated, inhumane assault, because it's the dynamic the character--and those who write him--always have to contend with if they want him to live up to his cultivated reputation as a charming flirt, and not a betrayal of that trust for both the readers and the characters he interacts with.

From a publishing standpoint, as has been mentioned, Kurt left the central X-Men team in a 1986 storyline due to outstanding injuries that rendered him comatose for a period. What the plot point did wasn't erase him from the books, but it shunted him off into another, less focal corner of the line in the debuting Excalibur, where he would spend the late '80s and most of the following decade--it meant that all those who benefited from the media frenzy spotlight during the Jim Lee relaunch and derived media like the cartoon, Kurt did not get to enjoy in the same way, rendering him a weirdly liminal figure on the pop culture stage despite being immensely popular for all the time that he's existed, showcasing how secondary comics themselves can often be to the perception of these characters in wider culture. It didn't matter that when the main X-Men publications were flailing, Excalibur was thriving in its own closed space under Alan Davis and effectively continuing the characterization of Kurt and co. possibly to better effect than anytime before--it only mattered that he wasn't under the X-Men umbrella after the '86 cutoff, and wouldn't be again until 1998, and that was a dark time to stage any kind of homecoming in comics. Kurt is widely beloved, but because of the great absence that was inflicted on him there's a fragmentary sense to how the character is read and understood, and especially later stories that twist his Catholic faith into a tortured ethical knot frame the character in a more simplistically conflicted way that is not necessary for someone whose entire existence has always orbited around upending expectations and making the most of those ironies.

It has been said that John Byrne was a Wolverine guy in who he wanted to emphasize in his time working on X-Men, and despite his claims that he plays no favourites, history has largely proven that Claremont was a "Storm guy." Dave Cockrum was most definitely a Nightcrawler guy, showcasing the intense likability of his outsider demon elf creation in both of the runs he worked on the book and the eventual solo mini-series he got to do with him. For leading men that own up to their self-assured flirtation with humility and wit, you can do a lot worse.

 

[Adrenaline]

#8: Squirrel Girl

AKA: Doreen Green
Powers: Tail, knuckle spikes, squirrel communication
First Appearance: Marvel Super-Heroes #8, 1991
Created By: Will Murray, Steve Ditko
8 votes, 185 points (Top voter: Vaeran (#1))

Doreen Green was born to normal parents in Canada, but she developed a squirrel-like tail and the ability to communicate with squirrels, which to her seems to be normal speech. For a long time she thought she was a mutant, but she later learned that was not the case. The source of her unique genetics remains undiscovered. Squirrel Girl originated as a joke character, who in her first ever adventure scuffles with Iron Man before teaming up with him to defeat Doctor Doom. She gained a reputation for being able to defeat powerful foes who should be well beyond her ability. She joined the Great Lakes Avengers team, during which time she lost her first sidekick Monkey Joe, but she left when she felt that she was doing all the work. She later became the nanny to Jessica Jones and Luke Cage's daughter, and assisted the New Avengers from time to time. She was also a member of Sunspot's various Avengers squads when he took over A.I.M.

Squirrel Girl's popularity increased significantly when she got her own series written by Ryan North called The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. In the series, Doreen becomes a computer science major at a college in New York and quickly grows a friend group around her including her new sidekick Tippy Toe, Nancy Whitehead, and multiple other animal-themed minor superheroes. It's a comedy series but it also has a strong emotional core. The series demonstrates that while she does have superpowers, Squirrel Girl's strongest asset is her mind, which is both brilliantly analytical and strongly empathetic. She is able to defeat villains not by pummeling them into submission, but understanding what actually motivates and drives them, and finding a healthier and more productive way for them to achieve their goals. She has used this skillset to stop threats including Kraven the Hunter, Galactus, the Asgardian squirrel god Ratatoskr, and her own evil clone.

Milana Vayntrub was originally going to play Squirrel Girl in a live action New Warriors series, but it never made it to air. She did get the chance to voice the character in a series of animated specials aimed at young women called Marvel Rising. Despite her origins as a comedic character, and without removing that essence of the character, Marvel has developed Squirrel Girl into a deservingly popular hero, one that is often a breath of fresh air in a medium where most conflicts continue be resolved in much more violent and boring ways.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Doreen is on my short list of favorite comic characters overall and definitely my favorite Canadian superhero. I’d always liked her, but the Ryan North series permanently cemented her in my highest level of esteem. Like her so much I wound up buying a Funkopop of her that resides in a place of honor on my TV stand shelf; owing mainly to the lack of other official merch for her, and also it’s a bobble head so it can’t stand up unaided.

NO REGRETS!

Milyana Viltraub also plays her on the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl podcast miniseries, which is a continuation of the comic and I can’t recommend highly enough

 

[Vaeran]

I was beginning to worry Doreen somehow didn't make the list, but I see she cracked the top ten like an acorn.

Ryan North's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is probably my favorite comics run of all time. What was once a one-note joke character becomes, in his hands, someone warm, kind, intelligent, resourceful and genuinely funny. She's a true hero, both in the sense that she fights tirelessly to protect others and also is an inspirational figure, someone who eschews physical violence except as a last resort and finds clever, merciful, thoughtful ways out of her problems. Intensely loyal to her friends and always happy to make a new one, Squirrel Girl is greatly relatable and seems like someone you'd actually want to hang out with.

I really can't recommend USG enough if you haven't read it. Every issue is an absolute treat, and the finale offers a beautiful, introspective look at the ever-fluid nature of the comic medium: always enduring but always changing as a title passes from author to author. Some of the best Marvel has to offer.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Tony Stark is a pretty dull character to me, whose stature was elevated from a B-Lister to an S-Lister on the back of DRJ's charisma alone. Which I'll never stop being in awe of, especially since Tony Stark is both the MCU's greatest hero, but also its greatest villain. He's the perfect embodiment of Disney's ethical relationship with the concept of superheroes.

Spider-Man is hands down my favorite Marvel character. I think it's a testament to the character's enduring popularity that it's the only super hero that was still getting comics actively published in newspaper funny's section when I was growing up.

Never really understood the appeal of Nightcrawler. The character's design is cool. Maybe I just need to read more comics.

I'm bummed the Squirrel Girl MCU project collapsed.

 

[estragon]

love nightcrawler

iconic dave cockrum design, and along with storm and wolverine he was one of the three characters consistently around for the full 15+ years of the claremont era, making him one of the most fleshed out characters in the x-line in terms of both his own personality and his relationships with the rest of the cast.

also, it's cool when he does this

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Squirrel Girl is one of the few heroes whom my experience and ranking is based largely on ancillary material. That and Dan Slott's GLA run where she's clearly the most competent team member.

Miles Morales is definitely one of the best recent Marvel characters and I'm stoked for Across the Spider-verse for sure.

 

[Falselogic]

Squirrel Girl was my #4 and yeah, the North comic was just fantastic.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I thought she was in my top five but apparently she’s Number 2 on my list.

Good for her!

 

[estragon]

this sent me down a rabbit hole of trying to find other claremont/orzechowski "yum!"s, and it unfortunately wasn't successful but there was this fun one, where rogue is so horny for colossus that she absentmindedly burns her hand on his sun-cooked metal body

anyway, i wish there was a compilation of every panel where someone says "yum!"

 

[Octopus Prime]

And I wish there was a compilation of every “criminy cripes“

 

[Peklo]

Chances are Illyana delivers many of the Claremontian yums, and the page above is from one of the best issues centered around her. A yum singularity.

 

[Adrenaline]

#7: Ms. Marvel

AKA: Kamala Khan
Powers: Size and shape changing
First Appearance: Captain Marvel #14, 2013
Created By: G. Willow Wilson, Sana Amanat, Stephen Wacker, Adrian Alphona, Jamie McKelvie
Portrayed By: Iman Vellani
8 votes, 196 points (Top voter: Kirin)

Kamala grew up as a normal Pakistani-American girl in Jersey City. She was a big fan of superheroes, especially Carol Danvers, and she wrote fanfiction. She was just trying to have a social life while living with overprotective parents. Then one night, things changed. Recently, Thanos had attacked Earth while many of the Avengers were dealing with a different conflict in outer space. During the battle, the Inhuman king Black Bolt detonated a Terrigen bomb in New York City, where the Inhuman city of Attalan had been residing. The bomb released a huge cloud of Terrigen Mist, which Inhumans use to undergo the transformation known as Terrigenesis which gives them their powers. It was soon revealed that any human with Inhuman ancestry could be transformed. This included Kamala, who was caught in the mist when it drifted over Jersey City while she had snuck out to go to a party. After being trapped in a cocoon, she emerged resembling her idol Carol Danvers in her old Ms. Marvel outfit. She soon learned her powers not only allowed her to change her appearance, but grow, shrink, stretch, or shift different parts of her body, sort of a combination of Mr. Fantastic and Ant-Man. The ability to change her appearance to match another's soon faded, but she used her powers to take up her hero's old identity and become the Ms. Marvel of Jersey City.

Being a superhero isn't easy, as Kamala learned while getting used to her powers and figuring out how to stop the minor bad guys who were committing crimes in her neck of the woods. She got help from her circle of friends, who all over time learned of her secret identity. She met her hero Captain Marvel and started getting involved in more significant events in her universe, including meeting the Inhuman royal family and an adventure with Wolverine. After the Secret Wars rewrote existence, she joined the Avengers, but shortly had a falling out with her idol and cofounded a team called the Champions. She has since patched things up with Carol, but stuck with her peers in the new group. Not long ago one of their missions went badly at her school, and she was injured. Her secret identity was protected, but politicians used her as a tool to pass legislation banning teenage superheroes. She regrouped with the Champions despite their new illegal status, and they exposed the bad intentions behind the law, leading to it getting rescinded.

Kamala was the protagonist of the recent Avengers video game. While that game had issues, her character was not one of them, as her story led an adventure that was pretty fun until repetitive live service stuff bogged it down. She just had her own MCU miniseries that concluded last week, with Iman Vellani playing the character. It's my pick for the best Disney+ Marvel show yet, and Vellani is a big part of that, creating a very genuine and likable personality for a character that really deserves it. This version of the character has light-based powers that allow her to create solid objects while retaining the ability to stretch and grow her limbs. Spoilers for the finale ahead. Kamala in the comics was used by Marvel to help sell the idea of Inhumans as a source of new characters. The whole thing was never as successful as they probably wanted, and I don't think the word "Inhuman" was even said in the show. However, the end of the series does use the word "mutation" to describe how Kamala is different from her family. A pretty funny reversal that I'm curious to see how it turns out. G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel series is one of my favorites of the last decade, and as I think the newest character on this list, she is deserving of the high ranking.

 

[Violentvixen]

I keep hearing about this character and haven't had a chance to check out anything yet. What would people recommend reading to get into the character?

I never get around to watching TV and don't have Disney+ so won't be checking out the show.

 

[Adrenaline]

Just start with volume 1 (No Normal) and continue from there.

 

[Peklo]

Wilson's run continued for five years, so it's a very long run by modern standards too. It's difficult to conceive of Kamala being written by others than her, even if conceptually the character's always strong.

 

[Adrenaline]

#6: Magneto

AKA: Magnus, Erik Lehnsherr, Max Eisenhardt
Powers: Master of magnetism
First Appearance: X-Men #1, 1963
Created By: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby
Portrayed By: Ian McKellen, Michael Fassbender
11 votes, 220 points (Top voter: Estragon)

Magneto has gone by many names, but he was born Max Eisenhardt in Germany. His family being Jewish, they were persecuted by the Nazis and fled to Poland, but were later captured and sent to Auschwitz. After losing his family during the war, he moved to Ukraine, where he lost his daughter after a mob burned down his house after witnessing his control over magnetism. Max' horrific early life left him convinced that normal people would never accept mutants, the same way that so many never accepted Jews, and took the name Erik Lehnsherr while swearing he would not allow the same atrocities to be committed. In the modern era he started committing acts of terrorism against the United States and other world powers, coming into conflict with Professor X, whom he had befriended earlier in life, and his new team of X-Men. Wanting a team of his own, he formed the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, though a different name might have been better if he believed his goals to be correct. Eventually he realized that his acts of violence were not creating the world he wanted, and he became less antagonistic towards the X-Men. He eventually became allied with them, though it was an alliance often fraught with mistrust.

There was an unusual incident during Grant Morrison's New X-Men run where a new masked mutant known as Xorn revealed himself to actually be Magneto in disguise, and he attacked the X-Men as well as unleashing devastation on New York City. Marvel's editors decided Magneto being a mass-murderer didn't match with what they wanted the character to be, and the story was retconned so that Xorn was actually a duplicate of Magneto, with the real one being innocent of his crimes. He was again blamed for a crime that was not his in the previously mentioned House of M story, where Wanda's manipulation of reality was revealed to be done at Pietro's urging and not his. Erik has never been full integrated into the X-Men. The other mutants will not just forget about his many past crimes. But he has been one of their strongest and smartest assets for years, and after helping to establish the new nation of Krakoa, he deservedly has a seat on its ruling council.

Magneto regularly appears as an antagonist of the X-Men in adaptations of them to other media. Most notably, he was played by Ian McKellen in the X-Men film series, creating a portrait of a complicated, charismatic man with admirable goals but questionable methods. McKellen's performance and the depiction of the character is one of the movie series' biggest successes. Michael Fassbender is the best actor in the prequel movies, and he continued the string of success with handling such a multifaceted villain/antihero, though Apocalypse mostly let him down. Magneto is a tricky character, because his origins being deeply rooted in the horrific real-world events of the 1940s make it increasingly unbelievable that his character is not only alive but in fighting shape as time goes on. If they haven't already come up with a justification for his powers keeping his body young, I'm sure they will. Because he is a great character, and Talking Time's favorite mutant, and Marvel sure doesn't want to give him up.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Kamala is definitely one of the strongest new characters and the first run was a perfect mix of the secret sauce that made Spider-Man work so well of that work/life balance (often imitated but only a few series get it right in a way where you are enthusiastic about it equally) while feeling not only like her own character but having some out there adventures with a giant cockatoo who is also the evil clone of Thomas Edison in between more grounded teen drama.

 

[Issun]

If I'd gotten around to watching the series then Kamala probably would have been on my list. She's seemed like she'd be a fave ever since I was made aware of her on Kirin's comics list.

 

[estragon]

Erik has never been full integrated into the X-Men. The other mutants will not just forget about his many past crimes.

I agree that this is his current status quo, but I would dispute the "never" part of this.

He's extremely integrated into the X-Men during the Claremont run, which was enabled by having 15 years to develop the characters. Magneto's sympathetic holocaust survivor backstory is introduced in #150 (maybe earlier, but definitely by then), he's portrayed as an anti-hero in the God Loves Man Kills graphic novel, around this same time the sympathetic Nazi hunting backstory is introduced, and by #200 he takes over for Xavier and it feels justified—there have been 50 issues to get to this point, after all. He's a grey character, but he's one of many grey characters in this era. There was honestly just as much if not more tension with Rogue joining the team than with Magneto, and Wolverine, Psylocke, and Rachel Summers are more often in an anti-hero hardline "do whatever it takes" type role. He has a tense relationship with the New Mutants, but that's more of a "adults just don't understand" thing because he's extremely protective.

That being said, this definitely describes the current situation, though, because the post-Claremont treatment of Magneto in the bad 90s is hard to reconcile with the period when he was leading X-Men and the New Mutants. Technically this shift happens in late-Claremont (initially in a Simonson New Mutants issue that comes across as extremely abrupt and editorially mandated, try as she might to make it work he might as well have turned to the camera and said, "I'm evil again now, I guess"), but while Claremont is around there's at least an attempt to thread the needle of how the character has grown and the demand by editorial and later an extremely popular Jim Lee to regress him to being a villain again. In particular, in X-Men vol. 2 #1-3 I think Claremont manages write a reasonable ending for both the character and his run in those issues before being pushed away (although it definitely has the quality common in the proto-Image creator X-Men era of the words and art feeling out of synch).

But then there's an immediate shift to build up to the extreme 90s cover Fatal Attractions crossover, and that really starts a path for the character there's really no going back from. Like most X-Men characters, the developments of brief proto-Image era and its messy aftermath left Magneto in shambles and more or less undid his longest period of sustained character growth.

Grant Morrison tried to fix this in a way by writing a version of the last Magneto story, seeing the character as basically unsalvageable and portraying him as a pathetic figure who was stuck in the past. I think that was an interesting alternate ending for the character given his regression during the 90s, even if the realities of serialized comics were never going to allow that to stick. Like many other characters who were done bad by the 90s (see: Betsy Braddock), the current era feels closest to finally remembering what happened during the Claremont years, thanks to Hickman's additive retcons in HoXPoX. But also the 90s legacy means there's no going back to that Claremont characterization fully. For better or for worse, Betsy did have a decades long body swap story and Magneto did do a bunch of over the top villain stuff, and the starts and stops nature of modern comics make it very hard to move anyone forward anymore, outside of a few lucky exceptions like Wilson's long run with Kamala.

 

[Daikaiju]

I should mention the two Squirrel Girl prose novels are very much worth your time. I devoured both and gave them to my niece who did likewise.

 

[Adrenaline]

I agree that this is his current status quo, but I would dispute the "never" part of this.

Fair enough. In the 20ish years of X-Men comics I've read, he's always seemed like an outsider.