Marvel’s Most Surprising Biological Relationships You Won’t Believe

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Family can be complicated, especially if you’re a Marvel character. With thousands of characters and stories under the comic publisher’s belt, it’s not surprising that the occasional coincidental relationship or jaw-dropping reveal is made known over time. However, some biological relationships are just too wild for anyone to believe is true.

Marvel’s wide cast of characters, while diverse, is significantly more interconnected than at first glance. Sometimes romances spark, secret experiments are launched, or alien parasites swap DNA, leading to many of Marvel’s best characters having equally heroic relatives. While not every member on this list treats their family like they are family, they can’t deny their genetic lineage. That said, oftentimes, these biological relationships can be incredibly shocking as the comics slowly drip-feed a hero or villain’s familial history over time. Regardless, these ten surprising biological relationships are too fantastical to believe.

10

The Hulk, Skaar, & Hiro-Kala

Marvel’s Strongest Family

While most are familiar with the Incredible Hulk’s equally incredible son, Skaar, the Green Behemoth actually has two children in the main timeline. When the Hulk was led to believe that the Illuminati and the heroes of Earth had assassinated his family on Sakaar, he unknowingly left behind two sons. The first, Skaar, was born from his father’s residual gamma radiation, borrowing a similar gamma-appearance and the same brutish strength as the Hulk. However, Hiro-Kala, the Hulk’s other son, was born with different powers.

Hiro-Kala was instead born with the ancient power that his mother held inside. After years spent as a Sakaaran slave, the young Hulk child suddenly developed his mother’s connection to the Old Power, granting Hiro-Kala god-like powers over the planet. In time, the boy waged a war throughout the stars to avenge his mother and the recently fallen Sakaar. However, after a family intervention with Hulk and Skaar, Hiro-Kala sacrificed himself to create a vibrant new star.

9

Emma Frost & The Stepford Cuckoos

Who Cares If They’re Clones? They’re Still Family

After a battle left Emma Frost in an unending coma, a Weapon X scientist named John Sublime harvested thousands of Emma’s eggs to create a new mutant weapon. The Weapon Plus program wished to use Emma’s magnificent psychic powers to create a collective armament of mass destruction that would obliterate all mutant life on Earth. While most of the children remained in stasis, five, known as the Stepford Cuckoos, were released and sent to Xavier’s School as moles.

Despite their age, the Stepford Cuckoos have the capacity to reach their genetic mother’s Omega Class powers in time. Together, the mutants create a psychic circuit that amplifies their powers exponentially. Fortunately, even though they are not traditional children, Emma Frost continues to look over her daughters as if they were her own. However, many of the Cuckoos have taken a radically villainous turn since the fall of Krakoa, breaking away from their mother’s modern heroic nature.

8

Kang the Conqueror & Reed Richards

Mortal Enemies With Similar Genetics

In the very far future of the 30th century, a descendant of Mr. Fantastic’s father, named Nathaniel Richards, would eventually grow up to become the time-traveling monstrosity known as Kang the Conqueror. Like his future self, a young Nathaniel embarked on a time-traveling adventure himself, as the hero Iron Lad. While Iron Lad did everything he could to prevent his future from coming to fruition, Kang the Conqueror remains a tactical mastermind who has foiled even his own conflicting machinations.

However, because of Kang the Conqueror’s time-traveling antics, he and his various alternate selves have sired countless children who unknowingly bear the Richards name. However, the creepiest Kang relationship has its own mystery to unfold. One of these time-displaced variants, called Immortus, once impregnated Captain Marvel with himself to be reborn as her lover, but that’s a story for a different day. Unfortunately, Reed Richards must always be aware of the countless lives Kang has destroyed and perverted in his infinite conquests throughout time.

7

The Vision Family

If You Don’t Have A Family, You Can Always Make One

While the MCU has leaned on the Scarlet Witch and Vision’s early relationship in the comics, that love story has long since been a thing of the past for the two Avengers. Following the emergence of “White Vision,” the synthezoid had lost every memory of its time with Wanda, eventually opening an unhealing rift between the two. Years after their tearful divorce, Vision wished to reclaim his sense of humanity by creating a family of his own.

Just as Vision possesses a mental copy of Ultron, the first Human Torch, and Wonder Man, Vision’s newly created wife, Virginia, was modeled using the Scarlet Witch’s psyche as her blueprint. Like biological parents, Vision combined his brainwaves with Virginia’s to create a new pattern for his new children, Vivian and Vin. Tragically, both Virginia and Vin have died, leaving Viv and their synthezoid dog Sparky Vision’s only living family.

6

Thanos & Thane

Marvel’s Most Toxic Father-Son Duo

Thanos, a space-faring pirate and universally known warlord, is easily Marvel’s ultimate lethal threat. There is nothing that pleases the Mad Titan more than the excruciating deaths of his victims as he erects monuments of their suffering simply to mock their desecrated bodies. Throughout his travels, Thanos has potentially sired countless children, but he has always made quick work of dispatching those who live long enough to challenge him. Unfortunately for Thanos, one of his children survived his onslaught.

Like his father, Thane is partially an Eternal. However, his Inhuman mother also passed along her traits, evolving Thane into both species’ most powerful member. When Thane underwent his Inhuman Terrigenesis transformation, his human-like physical form devolved into a younger mirror of Thanos’s own profane purple appearance. Additionally, much to Thanos’s tepid amusement, Thane’s left hand has the power to instantly kill anyone around him. When combined with cosmic powers, Thane only further evolved into an all-consuming Black Vortex before being forever left behind in the God Quarry.

5

Mystique, Destiny, & Nightcrawler

Born From Love, Forgotten To Time

While Marvel has retconned this issue more than a couple of times over the years, Mystique and Nightcrawler have always shared a family relationship. In modern canon, Raven took on the form of the demon-like mutant Azazel so that she and her wife, Destiny, could create a powerful child who would go on to save the world as Destiny foresaw it. As expected, Nightcrawler has done exactly that, despite his villainous parentage.

While Nightcrawler and Mystique rarely see eye-to-eye, and despite her unknowingly abandoning him, Kurt still very much sees Raven as his mother. He, more than any other X-Man, is one capable of forgiveness above all else. Following the collapse of Krakoa, Nightcrawler hasn’t been seen communicating with either of his parents, although it’s never outside the realm of possibility. Today, Mystique has returned to her villainous ways, Destiny has yet to be seen, and Nightcrawler is helping raise a new generation of X-Men.

4

Nick Fury Senior & Nick Fury Junior

It’s A Complicated Story

Marvel’s old Ultimate Universe reintroduced hundreds of Marvel’s most famous characters in new and altered forms from their original counterparts. In this new universe, Nick Fury was passionately modeled after the actor Samuel L. Jackson, who, ironically, later played the character in the MCU. Following 2015’s Secret Wars event, which saw all of Marvel’s infinite realities collapse in on each other, dozens of characters from the Ultimate Universe were thrown into Earth-616, officially merging both realities’ lore.

Now, in the modern amalgamated Earth-616, the original Nick Fury is referred to as “Nick Fury Sr.” while the Ultimate Universe’s version of the character is now considered the original’s son. Technically speaking, Nick Fury Jr. is actually named Marcus Johnson, but he later changed his name after discovering his father’s valiant past as a war hero. Now, Nick Fury Jr. has taken over in his father’s stead, officially declaring the Ultimate Universe’s Nick Fury the “official” version of the modern character.

3

Thor & Hercules

Friends, Rivals, Relatives

While these two godly figures belong to different mythologies, technically, both Marvel gods are distant relatives. Recently, it was revealed that Thor’s birth mother is actually the Elder God Gaea, making Thor one of Earth’s most powerful gods by right of succession. Like Thor, many of Marvel’s oldest Earthly gods are also Gaea’s children and grandchildren, directly linking Thor to other major religious pantheons, including the mythically famous Greek pantheon.

The previous leader of Marvel’s Greek pantheon, Zeus Panhellenios, is also one of Gaea’s direct descendants. While Zeus is quite a few millenia older than Thor, he is actually Thor’s great-nephew, making Thor’s longtime rival and friend, Hercules, his great-great-nephew. The two divine heroes have been one of Marvel’s oldest friendships, and there’s a little extra fun to be had knowing that these heroes are actually long-lost relatives, brought together to fight a single battle against evil.

2

Venom, Eddie Brock, & Dylan Brock

Who Needs One Dad When You Can Have Two?

When Venom first bonded with Eddie Brock, the two unknowingly swapped portions of their DNA with each other. Throughout their Lethal Protector days, Eddie tried to establish a decent relationship with his wife Anne Weying, but Venom proved to make that relationship impossible. However, Venom had also bonded with Anne, thus swapping a portion of their DNA with each other as well. Soon, Anne became mysteriously pregnant and, within days, gave birth to Dylan Brock.

Technically, Dylan is the son of Eddie, Anne, and Venom, making the young boy a symbiote hybrid. Thanks to his human/symbiote genetic history, Dylan can retain his humanity while still connecting to the greater Symbiote Hive that connects all the Klyntar across the Multiverse. However, to protect their son, Eddie and Venom placed a lock on Dylan’s power that would only release when Dylan bonds with a symbiote. Today, Venom has found a new host, while Eddie Brock has sold his soul to Carnage, and Dylan is left behind with neither father by his side.

1

Storm & Agamotto, the First Sorcerer Supreme

Storm Is One Mystical Mutant

Following the disastrous fall of Krakoa, Storm, instead of traveling to Mars with the Arakkii population, decided to stay on Earth and founded the Storm Sanctuary. Since then, it has been revealed that Ororo Monroe is actually a distant relative of Earth’s first Sorcerer Supreme, Agamotto. As mutantkind became humankind’s next major target, Storm traveled the world looking for help to restore some portion of Krakoa’s previous power and eventually sought out Doctor Voodoo for aid.

While she expected her longtime ally to come to her aid, Doctor Voodoo actually pushed back against Storm and shockingly revealed that Storm was the last person to ask for a sorcerer’s skill when she herself was imbued with so much power. Since learning this fact, Storm has drawn on her ancestral power to evolve into a well-rounded, mystically cosmic threat that by far surpasses anything the mutant thought she could do before.

Which Marvel familial connection surprised you the most?

“}]] These Marvel families are too shocking to believe.  Read More