In a way it’s only fitting that my Top 2 Avengers kind of came to prominence around the same time. Perhaps that because writer Steve Englehart was writing the Avengers in the 70’s, and he was one of the first to pay attention to female characters. Not that they were perfect, in fact my top 2 Avengers are pretty flawed characters both dealing with some major ups and downs over the years. One has been pretty consistently in the limelight took dealt with a rather lengthy absence, before returning in another book with another team. And now, both have made it onto the big screen in the MCU!
#2 – Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff)
Joined Avengers #16 (May 1965)
Creators: Stan Lee; Jack Kirby
The Scarlet Witch has been around a long time, debuting as a villain in the X-Men comic book in March, 1964. Like all the women in Marvel superhero comics back then, she was fairly passive and demure, but Wanda did have a temper and some mighty cool, if poorly defined powers to back it up. Just over a year later she was an Avenger, and a lengthy tumultuous year as mostly a heroine, with some tragic and disastrous forays back into villainy lay ahead. Had i been making this list in the 80’s, Wanda would have been in my Top 5, possibly as high as her appearance today, but a couple of decades of misuse saw my interest in the character plummet, and I suspect she wouldn’t have even made the Top 10 until as recently as five or so years ago. After a lengthy period of misuse, Wanda’s star has definitely risen again, and while she still struggles with a bit of a taint from those dark years, writers such as Alan Heinberg and James Robinson have gone a long way to return her to her proper status as an interesting, enjoyable character.
As many who have been around as long as Wanda has, her origin story has been retconned multiple times. When Wanda and her twin brother Pietro were first introduced, they were children of the Romani Django and Marya Maximoff, fleeing from their village because they displayed abilities beyond humankind. Pietro could move at superhuman speeds, and Wanda possessed a mysterious “hex” power that caused unexplained phenomena to manifest where she pointed. They were rescued from a rampaging mob by Magneto, at the time a mutant terrorist, and leader of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Wanda and Pietro were grateful for his aid and pledged to help him for a time. This brought the pair into conflict with the X-Men. After a handful of forays into villainy, Wanda and Pietro grew tired of life under Magneto’s law and fled. When they heard the Avengers were looking for new members, they applied and were accepted along with another former villain, Hawkeye. The three of them were lead by Captain America, and dubbed Cap’s kooky quartet. They were a far cry both in power and temperament from the original team of heavy hitters that included Thor, Iron Man, Giant Man and the Wasp. Though the team faced a rocky start, Captain America was able to forge them into an effective and loyal team, bringing out the best of them, particularly Wanda and Clint (Hawkeye).
Wanda served with the team for quite a while, until a stray bullet wounded her during a confrontation, and Pietro took his sister from the team to allow her to recover. When Wanda was later kidnapped by an interdimensional ruler named Arkon, Pietro sought the Avengers’ aid. Upon her rescue, Wanda returned to active duty with the Avengers. During her absence, the android, The Vision has joined the team. Almost from the very start, Wanda and the Vision were drawn to each other, as an artificial construct, no one expected a romance to ultimately blossom between the two. That is precisely what happened, as The Vision explored his humanity, he found strong emotions building toward his teammate, and those feelings were returned. The Vision’s feelings first fully manifested themselves during the first Kree-Skrull War and the two started officially dating shortly thereafter. This led to some encounters with hatred and bigotry form those who thought love shared between a mutant and an android was wrong. Unfortunately, that bigotry and resistance was shared by Wanda’s twin brother, Pietro. This caused a fissure between the siblings. Another Avenger who had difficulty coming to terms with their romance was Hawkeye, who harbored his own feelings toward the Scarlet Witch. Another brief threat to their relationship came form the romantic interest of their Avengers ally, Mantis, who briefly pursued the Vision when her own partner, The Swordsman, let her down. Despite these challenges, the two remained true to each other and married.
During this time, Wanda also began to take an interest in studying witchcraft, which she did so under the tutelage of Agatha Harkness. This education gave her greater control over her mutant hex powers as well as limited control over the natural world around her. Wanda and Pietro also met Robert Frank, a World War II hero known as the Whizzer, who believes them to be his children. This was later disproved when Wanda and Pietro were abducted by the man who they believed to be their true father, Django Maximoff, and taken to Wundagore Mountain, home of the High Evolutionary, where the infants were found and raised by Bova, one of the Evolutionary’s Ani-Men, a cow evolved into a human hubrid. Wanda was temporarily possessed by the demon Chthon, and after defeating it with the help of the Avengers, was advised by Bova that neither Frank nor Maximoff was their biological father, and that all she could tell them was their mother was a woman named Magda, who came to Bova from out of a blizzard, about to give birth, fleeing from their father, who she would not name. She fled soon after she gave birth, and Bova gave the infants to Django Maximoff to raise as his own. Soon after, while trying to track down Magda one last time, Magneto learned that he was the father of the twins. He immediately informed them of their relationship, shortly after the birth of Pietro’s and his wife Crystal’s daughter, Luna. The Scarlet Witch and the Vision decided to take a leave of absence from the Avengers to focus on their family, setting up a suburban home in 
New Jersey. During a conflict involving a great deal of mystical foe, Wanda seizes control of the magical energy and using it, conceived twin boys eventually named Thomas and William. Using magic was the only way Wanda and the Vision could bear children, and for a time, the pair are happy parents. Their idyllic suburban life didn’t last too long before called back to service, this time with the West Coast Avengers.
Before I go into the next segment of The Scarlet Witch’s background, let me just say that Wand and Vision were two of my favorite characters in comics. I loved their development and their ongoing appearances, and especially their relationship. It makes the next phase in both of their lives particularly painful, and sadly, for me disappointing as it has become largely the defining moments for their characters even to today. When John Byrne took over the writing duties for the West Coast Avengers I believe he didn’t really like Wanda and Vision’s relationship, or thought it was boring, and I read interviews where he clearly state that he didn’t like the idea of Wanda having kids via magic. As writer, he decided to do something about it.
Byrne started by having the Vision dismantled, his memory wiped, and the brain patterns of Simon Williams (Wonder Man), which originally allowed him to develop emotions, removed from his system. Not only did this pretty much irrevocably destroy the Vision that we all knew and loved, it was tantamount to murdering Wanda’s husband, only worse, because his body was still walking around, it also tarnished Mockingbird’s character, as it was through her that the government organization gained access to the Vision, and Simon’s as well, because he refused to allow his brain patterns to be loaded back into the Vision to restore his emotional capability. To complicate matters (and make me start to dislike Simon, who, up this this point, I quite enjoyed) it was revealed that Simon had feelings for Wanda, so rather than restore his “brother,” he selfishly stood in the way of his restoration. As one might expect, this put Wanda in a fragile state.
Byrne’s next blow was to go after Wanda’s children. Agatha Harkness noticed that whenever Wanda was preoccupied, her children seemed to vanish. Turns out that in order to create her twins, Simon and William, Wanda in inadvertently used missing shards of the the demon Master Pandemonium’s soul. The twins were destroyed when they were absorbed back into Master Pandemonium. Agatha Harkness temporarily erased Wanda’s memories of her children from her mind in the process of disrupting Master Pandemonium’s physical form, and to keep the terrible burden of what had happened form sending Wanda over the edge.. It was ultimately revealed that Immortus masterminded both of those events, as he sought to tap into the temporal nexus energy the Wanda was revealed to possessed. The Avengers ultimately rescued Wanda, who regained her memories of her children in the process. Wanda seemingly recovered from these twin devastating losses, that of her husband, and her children, and after trying to reach the Vision and be continually rebuffed, began a relationship with Wonder Man. She also threw herself into her work, and when Avengers West Coast disbanded, she formed and led a new team called Forces Works. This team didn’t last too long, and during its first adventure, Simon is presumably killed, another loss for Wanda. Wanda and Hawkeye decided at that point to return to the main Avengers team.
After rejoining the Avengers, the Scarlet Witch was kidnapped by the sorceress Morgan le Fay, with the intention of using Wanda’s powers to warp reality into Morgan’s image. Wanda temporarily resurrected Wonder Man in the form of an ionic cloud of energy, and the Vision was damaged in the final battle with Le Fay. Agatha Harkness informed her that she was now able to channel chaos magic, which made her more powerful. Wanda was able to fully resurrect Wonder Man, and the two briefly became lovers. The Vision was eventually repaired and—after Wonder Man broke-up with Wanda—they resumed their relationship. Enter Brian Michael Bendis, the writer who picked up the threads started by John Byrne and completely destroyed the Scarlet Witch (and the Avengers for a lengthy period of time).
Wanda overheard the Wasp mock her ambitions for motherhood, only to find herself once again missing her memories of ever having had children. Scarlet Witch sought the help of Doctor Doom to see if he could restore her children to life. To do so, they summoned a mysterious cosmic entity which instead, merged with her and influenced her to launch a campaign of terror against the Avengers. The Vision is destroyed, Agatha Harkness and Hawkeye are killed, and Ant-Man (Scott Lang) was also apparently killed (it was later revealed that he was actually saved by Wanda’s future self, who teleported him to the future in a manner that made it appear he’d been killed). Wanda was finally defeated by the Avengers and Dr. Strange, and Magneto, took her to Professor Xavier to see if he could restore her sanity. Realizing that the Avengers and the X-Men were seriously contemplating killing his sister due to her unstable powers, Quicksilver convinced Wanda to take desperate action to keep this from happening: By using her powers, Wanda warped reality into the House of M, a world where mutants were the majority, humans the minority, and Magneto the ruler With the help of a young mutant, Layla Miller, Wolverine and a resurrected Hawkeye, Earth’s heroes were gathered together and their memories restored. It was also revealed that it was Quicksilver who convinced Wanda to warp reality. Upon learning of this, Magneto murdered Quicksilver in a rage. Wanda resurrected him and in retaliation, uttered the words, “No more mutants,” thus changing the world back to its original form but also causing the mass de-powering of 90% of the entire mutant population including Magneto and Quicksilver, thus being responsible for many deaths.
After the fallout, the resurrected Hawkeye tracked Wanda to a small village near Wundagore Mountain. Wanda was living in a small apartment with her only relative, her “Aunt Agatha” (who was never seen, but could possibly have been a manifestation of Wanda’s now-dead mentor Agatha Harkness.) She appeared to be powerless and believed that she had lived her entire life in the village. She did not recognize Hawkeye, nor did she remember her life with the Avengers or other events. The mutant Beast later found Wanda at the same village and sought her help to deal with the aftermath of M-Day. She had no memory of him either, and claimed that she did not believe in magic.
Wiccan and Speed two members of the Young Avengers, thought themselves to be reincarnations of the lost children of Scarlet Witch, and also tried to locate her. Magneto, Quicksilver (whose powers had been restored) and the Avengers searched for her as well. She was ultimately found in Latveria, amnesic and engaged to Doctor Doom. TheYoung Avenger Iron Lad rescued the team and Wanda by teleporting them into the past, where Wanda regained her memory. When the group returned to the present, Scarlet Witch was suicidal, realizing all the horror she had caused. Wiccan then told her that her father and brother were alive, as were many of the people she had thought she’d killed, and that he was her reincarnated son. Realizing that her sons were alive Wanda met with X-Factor and re-powered Rictor, planning to restore powers of all de-powered mutants who wanted it, but she needed more power. She returned to Dr. Doom, seeking his help to undo the spell that erased mutant powers, but Doom managed to steal her reality-warping power for himself. During the ensuing struggle, Wanda and Wiccan were able steal his newfound powers. Subsequently, the X-Men agreed to leave her be, Magneto and Quicksilver both wished to spend time with her as a family and Captain America offered her a spot in the Avengers but Wanda declined them all saying she needed solitude.
Some time later, after defeating both M.O.D.O.K. and A.I.M. with the help of Ms. Marvel and Spider-Woman, she was invited to Avengers Mansion. Despite both heroines pleading her case, the Vision angrily snapped at Wanda, blaming her again for having manipulated and killed him, and telling her to leave. Respecting the Vision’s wishes, she left again but began to have visions of the Phoenix Force and a future in which the Phoenix killed the original Avengers. Believing the Mutant Messiah, Hope Summers, to be the key to defeating the Phoenix Five, the Avengers launched an operation to extract Hope from Utopia. They are nearly defeated by a Phoenix force-empowered Cylops, but Scarlet Witch arrived and saves them. Wanda convinced Hope to go with the Avengers, as Cyclops vowed that he would no longer tolerate the Avengers. Hope revealed that Wanda was the only Avenger the X-Men feared and respected. Ultimately, Cyclops was transformed into Dark Phoenix. The Dark Phoenix began to burn the world so Wanda and Hope decided to join forces in order to stop him. Together, they managed to take him down. The Phoenix escaped Cyclops’s body and entered Hope’s. Hope used its power to reverse the damage and destruction caused by Dark Phoenix and restored the mutant population. Then, as Wanda had once used her powers to wish away mutants by uttering the words, “No more mutants,” Wanda and Hope joined their powers and wished, “No more Phoenix.” It is unknown if Phoenix was destroyed or merely banished from the Earth by the spell.
Following the war, Captain America selected the Scarlet Witch to join the Avengers Unity Squad, a new team of Avengers composed of both Avengers and X-Men. After that, she asked her close friends Janet Van Dyne and Wonder Man to join and sponsor the new team. In a conflict with Rogue, who still blamed her for the death of hundreds of mutants, she met her apparent death at the hands of her teammate, who had absorbed Wolverine’s powers. This death is eventually undone when the surviving Unity Squad were projected back in time, having learned that Rogue was manipulated by the Apocalypse Twins into killing Wanda, allowing the Avengers to band together and defeat an approaching Celestial. During a later struggle with the Red Skull Wanda worked with Doctor Strange to cast a spell of moral inversion to draw out the part of Xavier in the Red Skull and put him in control of the body, but this spell backfires when Doctor Doom is forced to take Strange’s place, resulting in the moral inversion of all heroes and villains in the vicinity. When Quicksilver and Magneto try to talk the inverted Wanda down, Wanda attacked them with a curse designed to punish her blood, but only Quicksilver reacts and Wanda discovered that Magneto was not their father. The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are later transported to Counter-Earth. After being tracked down and defeated by Luminous (a woman who was created by the genetic material of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver), Wanda and Pietro were brought to the High Evolutionary. He revealed to them that Django and Marya Maximoff were their true parents—implying that the twins are actually the lost Ana and Mateo Maximoff—and that they were not mutants but had been experimented on by the High Evolutionary.
Seeking to find her place after all the revelations of her true past, Wanda finds herself working with the ghost of Agatha Harkness to investigate recent disruptions in magic, and briefly meets the spirit of her biological mother, Natalya Maximoff (Django Maximoff’s sister), who was apparently the Scarlet Witch before Wanda. Wanda’s search for answers led her to Serbia where a priest revealed that Natalya, seeking to spare her children of her difficult life as a witch, gave baby Wanda and Pietro to her relatives, Marya and Django Maximoff. When the town came under attack by the High Evolutionary the priest told him the location of the twins, whom he proceeded to experiment on. Upon discovering this, Natalya pursued the High Evolutionary to Transia and died fighting to rescue her children. Touched by her sacrifice, the High Evolutionary returned Wanda and Pietro to Django and Marya to raise after he had concluded his experiments. Wanda learned that Marya was still alive, and was finally able to thank her aunt for looking after her and her brother when they were younger though she questioned why she and Django never told them the truth about Natalya being their real mother. Marya also reveals that, like her mother, Wanda’s grandfather was the Scarlet Warlock. Wanda finally discovers that a manifestation of Chaos is responsible for destroying witchcraft and, joining forces with the spirits of Natalya and Agatha, were able to weaken it enough for Quicksilver (whom Natalya summoned at the last moment) to destroy it. The toll on Natalya’s was too great, however, but before vanished, she revealed 
that it was not the High Evolutionary who killed her, but Wanda and Pietro’s father. After this, Wanda re-dedicated herself to being an Avenger, declaring that while she has fixed witchcraft, she still must work on herself but that she is ready to do so alongside her teammates.
This was a great recent step for the character, but unfortunately recent events saw her backslide a bit as a result, again, from past stories. Wanda traveled to Genosha where the hundreds of mutants who died as a result of her depowering spell, were buried. Against the advice of Dr. Strange, she sought atonement by resurrecting the fallen mutants. This backfired horribly as the mutants did regain life, but as the undead. Dr. Strange was able to counteract the spell, giving the dead mutants rest, but it’s just another example of how Wanda is now defined by this horrible piece of her history written by Brian Michael Bendis, and even when writers try to advance her past this black mark (such as Alan Heinberg in The Children’s Crusade, or James Robinson, in The Scarlet Witch’s first ever solo series) lazy writers will just fall back on the story that unfortunately continues to define her.
When the Scarlet Witch was first created by Lee and Kirby, her powers were not well defined. She had “hex powers”, that could cause random and unlikely events to take place. Despite the character’s name, she possessed mutant power, and not because of actual witchcraft. Later writers gave her an increased control over her power, so that she could cause specific events and not just random ones. Steve Englehart also made the character explore witchcraft under the tutelage of Agatha Harkness, a trait that was kept by later writers. The effects of her powers are varied but almost always detrimental to opponents. Scarlet Witch also has the potential to wield magic and later learned that she was destined to serve the role of Nexus Being, a living focal point for the Earth dimension’s mystical energy. Writer Kurt Busiek redefined Scarlet 
Witch’s powers and maintained that it was, in fact, an ability to manipulate chaos magic, activated due to the demon Chthon changing her mutation at birth into an ability to wield and control magical energy. Her powers were retconned by Bendis in hist story, Avengers Disassembled, removing chaos magic and turning them into reality warping. In House of M, this new power was enough to change the whole universe. Her powers were returned back to their previous ones in The Children’s Crusade, and the previous events attributed to an outside force that had temporarily increased them. In the 2016 Scarlet Witch comic series by James Robinson, it is confirmed that Wanda was born with the ability to utilize witchcraft and that this has been seen in other women within her family; Wanda also believes that The High Evolutionary genetically altered her, making her more receptive to magical energy.
The Scarlet Witch was a big favorite of mine as a teenager, through the 70’s, and 80’s before it all came crashing down and her character went through a rough time. Comics being cyclical they way they are, I was sure Wanda would get rehabilitiated at some point, and sure enough, she did, just in the past 10 years. Sadly, she and the Vision seem to have parted ways permanently, but they remain friends. At least she’s shaken off Simon Williams as well, now embarking on a relationship with Brother Voodoo, which is kind of nice. Marvel doesn’t have a lot of mystic characters, so Wanda is pretty much assured a place in the universe. Plus, with the MCU version of the Scarlet Witch gaining popularity, and about to star in WandaVision, a Disney+ series, things could be looking up for our scarlet sorceress. I am a little concerned, because the TV series looks to pick up with Wanda’s mental illness and reality warping powers, two hallmarks of my least favorite tenure of the character. Still TV isn’t comics, and it could make for some really interesting drama.
#2 – Mantis (Given name unknown; surname Brandt)
Joined Giant-Size Avengers #4 (June 1975); Associate in Avengers #114 (August 1973)
Creators: Steve Englehart; Don Heck
Mantis is one of Marvel’s more curious characters, created in the 70’s by Steve Englehart, and central to the cosmic epic, The Celestial Madonna. Mantis was a bit of a pet character for Englehart, and for a time, he was the only writer who used her, taking her from title to title, even comic book company to comic book company in thinly veiled disguises, implying the character could travel between realities. Except for one poorly written appearance with the Avengers in the 90’s written by Bob Harras (The Crossing – widely agreed upon to be the worst Avengers storyline ever written) where Mantis returned as a villain, and retconned out of existence years later, Mantis remained pretty under the radar until her reappearance in the 2007 miniseries Annhilation: Conquest which led to a reappearance as a recurring character in Guardians of the Galaxy.
Mantis can trace her roots back to the family of Vietnamese crime lord Monsieur Khruul. She was the daughter of Khruul’s sister, Lua, who married the German mercenary Gustav Brandt. Khruul did not approve of the nuptials and pursued the couple before killing Lua, blinding Gustav, and burning down their house. However, Lua had born a daughter, and the now visually-impaired Gustav fled with her into the jungle. Gustav and his infant daughter found sanctuary in the temple of the Priests of Pama, renegade pacifist members of the alien Kree race who were caretakers of the Cotati, a telepathic race of sentient plants. The Priests granted Brandt psychic sight, but removed his daughter from his side, afraid she’d be influenced by his violent nature as she grew. Gustav ended up leaving the Temple and joining the crime cartel Zodiac as Libra. Believing Mantis might grow to be the Celestial Madonna and give birth to the genetically perfect union of human and Cotati, the Celestial Messiah, the Priests of Pama trained her in martial arts, which she mastered, and gave her the name “Mantis” in recognition of her skill in defeating male opponents. They also taught her telepathic communication with the Cotati which gave her empathic abilities. On her 18th birthday, the Priests removed Mantis’s memories, implanted false memories of an orphaned, impoverished life in Ho Chi Minh City, and sent her to experience life among normal humans.
The Shao-Lom monks of Saturn’s moon Titan, whose teachings also stemmed from the pacifist Kree’s beliefs, mentored another possible Celestial Madonna: Earth-born orphan Heather Douglas, later known as Moondragon. But her sheltered life denied her insight into human existence and made her a less-rounded candidate when the time came for the Cotati to choose.
Mantis became associated with the Avengers after helping the ex-villain called Swordsman (Jacques Duquesne) turn his life around. Duquesne had been a mercenary working for her uncle, Monsieur Khruul, who had unwittingly hired Mantis as a bar girl, not knowing she was his niece. Sensing a spark of nobility in the Swordsman and seeking a better life, Mantis romanced and rehabilitated Duquesne, convincing him to return to America and rejoin the Avengers. Both were accepted to the team and proved to be valuable members, though Mantis was mistrusted at first. This was because she pretended to side with their enemy the Lion God, single-handedly taking down both Thor Odinson and Captain America (Steve Rogers) as part of her successful plan to help the Avengers defeat him. Still, her abilities served the Avengers well; she aided the team during the Avengers-Defenders War masterminded by Loki and Dormammu, and against other foes such as the Collector, Klaw, Ultron and Zodiac. Her empathic abilities helped save the universe when she deduced how Captain Mar-Vell could defeat the Cosmic Cube-empowered Thanos, Death’s would-be paramour.
Once she was a part of the Avengers, Mantis developed feelings for the Vision, attracted by his analytical mind and nobility. This caused friction between Mantis and Scarlet Witch, who was involved with the Vision romantically. Mantis was abducted by Kang the Conqueror alongside the Scarlet Witch and Agatha Harkness, in his attempt to learn who would be the Celestial Madonna; Kang believed that he would sire the Celestial Messiah. She was revealed as the Celestial Madonna and witnessed the death of the Swordsman at the hands of Kang, only realizing the depth of her love for the Swordsman just as he dies, and regretting her romantic overtures toward the Vision. After burying the Swordsman, at the temple of the Priests of Pama in Vietnam and battling the Titanic Three, she would learn the origins of the Kree-Skrull War, the Cotati, and the Priests of Pama. Mantis then formally joins the Avengers and is revealed to be, indeed, the Celestial Madonna. She ended up marrying a Cotati who took the form of the dead Swordsman, and, after their wedding, she left Earth in the form of pure energy, the same day of Vision and Scarlet Witch’s wedding . Merged with the Cotati’s essence, Mantis gained Cotati physical and mental abilities in addition to her own, and began to evolve into “the essence of life,” a change that physically manifested as a greenish hue in her skin.
After she bears her child Sequoia, she takes the name “Mandy Celestine” and lives with him for a year in Willimantic, Connecticut before handing him to his father’s people and going into space. In a search for enlightenment, Mantis traveled the galaxy, but only found violence and madness, which was often caused by the Mad Titan Thanos. She joined up with the Silver Surfer and traveled with him as he fought the Elders of the Universe, bonding romantically with him. When the Gardener attacked her using the Soul Gem, she barely escaped and transferred her essence across space to Shalla-Bal, the Surfer’s former lover on his home world of Zenn-La. The Elders subsequently captured both women and tried to destroy them, but Mantis sacrificed herself, allowing the Surfer to rescue Shalla-Bal. The power of the Elders’ Infinity Gems proved too much for Mantis, who could not fully reconstruct herself, and fragments of her essence formed several “shadow” Mantises, each unaware of the others and believing themselves to be the true Mantis. Some faded out of existence while others helped save the world—like an amnesiac green-skinned Mantis who awoke on Earth and aided the Avengers against the Voice and the High Evolutionary.
Aside from mentions by Silver Surfer, Mantis does not reappear for several years until 1995’s controversial Avengers crossover story “The Crossing”. In “The Crossing”, Mantis returns as the villainous bride of Kang the Conqueror with the intention of bringing death to the Avengers; her father Libra; and the Cotati alien who had possessed the Swordsman’s body and married/impregnated her. Her anger at her father (whom she had vivisected) and the Cotati center around their “defilement” of her and that she hates the Avengers for believing their manipulative lies. The storyline was so poorly executed and controversial that Kurt Busiek, in Avengers Forever limited series, retconned the Mantis who appeared in the story as being a Space Phantom brainwashed into thinking he was Mantis.
Eventually the one true Mantis returned and began to recover as her scattered essence coalesced on Earth into five forms, each reflecting an aspect of her personality: mother, lover, freak, mystic, and Avenger. Fearing Mantis (the Celestial Madonna) and her son (the Celestial Messiah) were a threat to him, Thanos pursued her “fragments” and Sequoia across time and space. He succeeded in destroying several of Mantis’s fragments, unknowingly hastening the reformation of the true Mantis, who was reborn as “the goddess of life.” Thus reformed, she and a group of the Avengers go into space to stop Thanos from killing her son, Quoi, who by this time is a rebellious teenager desperate to leave the isolation of the Cotati home-world and travel the stars. During the adventure, Mantis flirts with Vision (with the implication that she has sex with him), but ultimately ends the flirting when she realizes that he has feelings for his estranged wife Scarlet Witch, who is jealous of Mantis and Vision’s friendship.
Mantis returned to Earth, where her powers enabled her to sense the impending threat of the Annihilation Wave. She voyaged into space and allowed herself to be captured by the Kree as part of her plan to join Peter Quill’s Guardians of the Galaxy following the defeat of the Phalanx’s transmode virus. Quill and his allies thought that Mantis was slightly unhinged, not believing her story about being the Celestial Madonna, but she did help them defeat Ultron and the Phalanx, after which she took up residence on the Knowhere station with the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy. She has assumed the role of counselor for the group, using her knowledge of the mind to maintain a balance with all the very eclectic personalities of the group. It was later discovered that Star-Lord had Mantis use her mental powers to manipulate the members of the Guardians of the Galaxy to join the team against their will. Overhearing Mantis and Star-Lord converse about their deception, Drax shared this knowledge with the rest of the team. This caused most of the members to leave. Mantis was promoted to field status by Rocket Raccoon.
Mantis was apparently killed by the Magus, who, upon anticipating that she would use her mental powers to incapacitate him, struck her and her fellow psionic Cosmo dead with a powerful blast of energy. However, it was revealed that she, along with fellow Guardians Phyla-Vell, Cosmo, Gamora and Major Victory were still alive, but being held prisoner in suspended animation by the Magus. She reunited with the other team of Guardians, telling Moondragon that Phyla-Vell was the first one killed by Thanos’ rampage.
Mantis settled into a serene civilian life on the planet Rigel-7 but later rescued Peter Quill from a group of pursuing Spartax soldiers when he sought her out to gain her counsel. Though she refused to join his new incarnation of the Guardians, she helped him track down the source of mysterious “time quakes” that had been plaguing him.
Most recently, Mantis returned to Earth upon being contacted by Black Panther about the Cotati invasion and planned to reason with her son, who under the influence of his father, became corrupted and intended to end all animal life in the galaxy. Mantis waged a mental battle with her son, but was unable to sway him from his path. She also helped the Thing and the Invisible Woman battle the She-Hulk when she was taken over by the Cotati.
Mantis was trained by the Priests of Pama to become a grandmistress of the martial arts She has only lost in hand to hand martial arts combat to Moondragon, and her father Libra. When it comes to her full range of powers, Mantis has complete control over her body. This gives her peak human agility, the ability to accelerate healing through force of will, and sense the emotions of others as psychic vibrations. She can also control her heart and respiratory rate as well as blood flow. She was able to perform an elaborate dance that hypnotized the Lion God, and is able to slip free of most bonds, and to slither and contort into impossibly tight spaces without breaking stride. Her mastery of the Priests’ martial arts, which focuses on the manipulation of nerve endings and pressure points, has enabled her to knock out beings as powerful as Thor. Her blows can shatter hardened steel without apparent effort. Mantis has engaged Captain America on equal footing, and was clearly superior to the version of Midnight (M’Nai) summoned to serve among the Legion of the Unliving. She could also reliably hit Quicksilver despite his speed. She has been shown sprinting at speeds that seem slightly superhuman – perhaps 50 km/h. Mantis has two slim antennae growing from her head that amplify her telepathic and empathic abilities. She is highly intelligent, with superior deductive abilities and an excellent intuition. Mantis is highly intelligent, with her deductive skills rivaling that of Vision’s; in Vision’s own words, she has a “remarkable mind”.
Mantis also possesses a limited knowledge of the occult, allowing her to sense magical presences around her, conduct simple rituals, know basic information about thaumaturgic manifestations and entities, etc. By meditating upon nearby magical energies, Mantis can gather basic information about it. Such as the caster’s identity and the spell’s general nature and purpose. Mantis also has a form of mystical awareness, warning her of cosmic occurrences and mounting malevolent mystical machinations. But these flashes of insight are rare and random. Mantis is able to make her body vibrate slightly out of synch with the universe, to exist as a ghost in a nearby dimension. In this form she can talk and perceive, but is immaterial.
Mantis gained additional abilities as a result of communion with the Prime Cotati. Her empathic ability enabled her to communicate with the plant-like Cotati and with other plant life. To travel in space, Mantis had the ability to separate her physical and astral forms, projecting her consciousness from her body, allowing her to travel interplanetary distances. She also had the ability to transfer her astral form to any place where plant life exists. She could form and inhabit a plant like simulacrum of her human body for herself out of the destination planet’s local vegetation. Her fighting skills remained intact, and her empathic abilities were heightened to a superhuman degree and extended to the planet’s flora and biosphere. She could control the vegetation within her vicinity.
During her confrontations with a powerful Thanos clone, she displayed superhuman strength, a talent to simultaneously inhabit multiple simulacra, and the ability to project strong blasts of energy, but has not been seen using these powers since. As of her appearance in Annihilation Conquest: Star-Lord, Mantis also appears to have gained telepathic and precognitive abilities, and now labors under a constant awareness of future events. The source of these new powers is as yet unclear. Other powers displayed or referred to during the series were pyrokinesis, mid-range mentat training, and invisibility to the Phalanx.
In her first appearances, Mantis represents the “Dragon Lady” archetype, that of a mysterious Eastern seductress whose sexuality causes tension among the male Avengers. It was frankly, a fairly racist interpretation of the character, but she just fascinated me. She is assertive and confident in her powers, and while she appeared somewhat arrogant at first (as illustrated by her breakup with Swordsman when she chose Vision over him), she renounced her pride after Swordsman’s tragic death. She almost always refers to herself in the third person as “this one”, “she”, and occasionally “Mantis”, which has to do with her upbringing at the Temple of the Priests of Pama. This speech mannerism is of importance for her, for when the Silver Surfer asked her to stop speaking in the third person, she refused to comply. After decades of intermittent appearances under the pen of Steve Englehart, I was very nervous about her transition to the Guardians of the Galaxy, under Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, fearing she would be used as a joke, and while she was a source of humor, Mantis flourished while with the Guardians. I particularly enjoyed her closeness with Groot, and the fact that her inherent mystery continued on beyond the Avengers. The Celestial Madonna story, and Mantis’ time with the team is one of the high points from my comic book past, and insures her a spot in my Avengers Top 10, but her subsequent development with the Guardians give her the added boost to #1! And I have to say, never in my wildest imagination did I think i would ever see Mantis on big screen! Too bad that character is quite a bit different than the one in comics.
#5 – Spectrum (Monica Rambeau)
Due to her keen, strategic intelligence, and her incredible powers, Captain Marvel was a great asset to the team. She quickly developed a small rogue’s gallery, including Moonstone, Blackout (whose powers were very effective against her), and Nebula, who trapped Captain Marvel in space, separated from the Avengers for an extended period of time. As a member of the team she helped to defeat such foes as the Beyonder, Kang the Conqueror, Attuma, Grandmaster, Nebula, and the Master of Evil. Monica later replaced the Wasp as leader of the Avengers, commanding them in battles against the X-Men, the Olympian Gods, and the Super-Adaptoid. Despite her relative inexperience, she proved to be a very effective leader. She spent a lot of time refereeing squabbles between Hercules and the Sub Mariner, and dealing with the duplicitous telepath Dr. Druid, who sought to supplant her as Avengers chairman and undermined her authority at every opportunity. When honorary Avengers member and wife of the Sub Mariner, Marrina, transformed into the gigantic sea monster Leviathan, Captain Marvel led the hunt for the creature. During the battle that followed, Rambeau transformed herself into a massive bolt of lightning to try and stop the beast. She made contact with the water and accidentally conducted herself across the surface of the ocean, dispersing her atoms so widely that she barely regained physical form. She reformed as a frail, withered husk of a woman devoid of super-powers.
Monica was known as Captain Marvel for most of her Avengers career; however, she agreed to change her alias to Photon, conceding the Captain Marvel title to Genis-Vell, the son of the original Captain Marvel, out of respect for her predecessor. After the return of the main Avengers from the pocket universe created by Franklin Richards, almost all the current and former Avengers members were trapped in a curse created by Morgan Le Fay where they served her as soldiers in a guard called Queen’s Vengeance. Due to her strong loyalty to the team Monica was one of the first Avengers to recover their will and rebel against the sorceress. For a time, Monica’s mother intercepted her Avengers calls out of fear for her daughter’s safety. After discovering this deception, Monica led an unofficial force of Avengers against the ‘Infinites’, who planned on relocating the galaxy. Photon continued to have sporadic appearances during major events, usually as part of a cosmic team of Avengers due to her effectiveness in outer space. She helped the team in their deep-space monitoring station with Quasar and Living Lightning, was called into action when Kang successfully conquered North America (supporting her friend Janet van Dyne and advising the new recruit Triathlon on his current issues as the newest member of the team), and when the Scarlet Witch suffered a nervous breakdown and attacked the Avengers. Monica was recruited by the Black Panther to fend off a vampire outbreak in post-Katrina New Orleans, as part of an all-black team-up. Monica was later angered upon learning that Genis-Vell had changed his name again, this time to Photon upon acquiring new powers. After a talk with him, she contemplated using the new alias of Pulsar.
Monica next appeared with a new, gruffer attitude (perhaps at having to concede her name to others so often) as leader for Nextwave, part of the Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort (H.A.T.E.), against Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction created by the Beyond Corporation© where she avoided using a code name altogether and changed her look. During the Superhero Civil War, Rambeau was a member of Captain America’s Secret Avengers, but also registered as a member of the Avengers Initiative. Monica spent time in New York City with her friends Black Cat, Hellcat, and Firestar to support Firestar during a bout with cancer. 
When the Greek goddess of the night Nyx and her children returned and massacred their fellow Olympians, Spectrum was one of several heroes assembled by Voyager to stop this new threat before she could reclaim her godhood and remake the universe in her image. One of Monica’s companions in this journey was the android Vision, whose body was malfunctioning, due to Nyx’s return causing the Sun to blackout. Monica used her powers to provide Vision a source of energy. The end of this adventure took the heroes to the entry point to the House of Ideas, a plane of existence and the core of all of reality. Monica burned out most of her power helping Vision reach inside the House of Ideas, becoming the only hero capable to follow Nyx inside and stop her. Due to this exertion, Monica returned to her previous power levels, becoming human again. She most recently served with the team Strikeforce to combat mystical threats alongside Angela, Blade, Daimon Hellstorm, Spider-Woman, Wiccan, and Winter Soldier. 
#4 – Jocasta
Jocasta continued to reside at Avengers Mansion for a time. Due to their similar backgrounds, she developed feelings for the Vision, who was happily married to the Scarlet Witch and did not return Jocasta’s feelings. Jocasta proved particularly helpful in the Avengers’ first confrontation with the villainous mercenary Taskmaster displaying surprising wit and strategy, stemming from her Wasp-based personality. Jocasta was then granted provisional status with the team. During this period, she aided them against threats such as the giant robot Red Ronin (where she proved to be a great comedic foil for The Beast), the Yellow Claw, the Berserker, Pyron, and the second incarnation of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Despite this, Jocasta did not believe she was accepted by most of the Avengers, and she was never officially inducted into the team. After she singlehandedly defeated a rogue sentient weather satellite, she left the Avengers following a membership reorganization. She was unaware that they had planned to grant her special substitute member status, which allowed her to remain with the team despite limits imposed on the team’s membership roster. 
Jocasta’s robotic head was later retrieved by the Avengers. They gave it to Machine Man who had been working on a way to resurrect her. During a conflict with the alien Terminus, the arms dealer Madame Menace became involved and appropriated Jocasta’s head, for her own purposes. Madame Menace manipulated events causing Tony Stark to unlock Jocasta’s programming so that she would become the basis for Madame Menace’s new weapons systems. Stark soon realized the android’s identity, helped Jocasta to awaken, and Jocasta managed to turn the tables on Madame Menace, seemingly sacrificing herself yet again. In reality, Jocasta managed to survive by downloading her intelligence into Iron Man’s computerized armor, where she reasserted herself. Jocasta’s intelligence was placed within Stark’s computerized mansion, and she helped Tony with daily operation of Avengers Mansion as well as to procure information as needed. Having been programmed with the latest in diagnostic, preventative medical and surgical techniques, Jocasta also spent time serving as Stark’s physician/psychologist, providing Tony with someone that could talk to about problems and who could examine the latest injuries without risking Iron Man’s secret identity being compromised.
Since the Iron Man armor was used to house the programming that made up Jocasta, it became infected with the pre-programmed subconscious suggestion to rebuild Ultron, but instead managed to develop its own artificial intelligence. After being deactivated during a confrontation with Stark, the armor was revived, by the Sons of Yinsen. Free of its artificial intelligence, the armor was contacted via remote by Ultron’s disembodied head after the android’s most recent encounter with the Avengers and in the company of the bio-synthetic robot Antigone. Ultron’s head attached itself onto the armor and took control of the Sons of Yinsen and the flying city that they inhabited. Stark confronted Ultron directly and managed to download Jocasta’s intelligence into the armor once more. The vestiges of the armor’s intelligence battled with the presence of Jocasta, the result of which caused Ultron’s head to come shooting off the armor. The head hit Antigone, and both fell off the floating city, which Ultron rigged to explode after the defeat. Stark failed to find a trace of Jocasta and assumed her to have died fighting the sentient armor. In reality, Jocasta did not die. She appeared in possession of Antigone’s body and left, taking Ultron’s head with her.
Jocasta would later appear with her classic silver robotic form rebuilt and reunited with Machine Man to battle an infestation of zombies. She then became a member of the New Mexico Fifty State Initiative superhero team known as the Mavericks after which she joined the Mighty Avengers along with the new Wasp (Henry Pym). During this time, Edwin Jarvis witnessed Jocasta kissing Pym. When Jarvis brought up the subject, stating it was akin to kissing her “grandfather”, Jocasta countered by saying that, since Pym was the creator of modern artificial intelligence, the act was more along the lines of “kissing God”. Pym created a special machine that allowed Jocasta to transfer her consciousness into multiple different robotic bodies. Unbeknownst to the Avengers, one of those bodies was later infected by Ultron, who managed to reconstruct himself using the majority of Jocasta’s duplicate bodies. Eventually the real Jocasta managed to broker a deal with Ultron: he could finally marry her in exchange for a cease to hostilities. After the two androids completed their cyber-marriage, Pym tricked Ultron into going to an uninhabited planet where he could not harm anyone. Though Jocasta’s main body went with Ultron, she projected her consciousness onto one of her duplicates and remained with the Avengers. Jocasta most recently served on staff at the Avengers Academy.
When Tony Stark refashioned his company into Stark Unlimited, he sought Jocasta’s help to establish an ethical protocol for robotic life forms, and she became the company’s chief robot ethicist. Jocasta wished to belong among the humans but struggled to fit in. Because of this, she helped Stark Unlimited develop a virtual universe called the eScape. This caused a rift between Jocasta and Machine Man, since he had become a militant of mecha-activism, and considered eScape an appropriation of robo-culture. The supervillain Controller facilitated Machine Man access into the eScape, but his sabotage attempt was stopped. Jocasta broke up with him and moved to Stark Unlimited afterwards. By the time eScape launched as a consumer product, Jocasta made heavy use of the virtual world to experience living life as a human. Fueled by this desire, Jocasta sought the help of Tony’s brother Arno to upgrade her body with more human-like artificial organs. Unbeknownst to Jocasta, her new yearning influenced Ultron through the bond they shared, giving shape to his new objective to turn humanity into machine hybrids in a similar way he had been physically merged with his creator Hank Pym. The villain kidnapped Jocasta in the middle of Arno’s procedure, and intended to use a molecular fusion process to merge her with Wasp. Iron Man intervened with the help of Machine Man, and Ultron was eventually defeated. In the process, Jocasta’s system started failing since her body had been abducted midway into Arno’s operation. To save her life, Jocasta’s former co-worker Andy Bhang uploaded her mind into the disused body that belonged to Friday. This body was severely damaged in battle against Ultron, and Jocasta was taken for repair by Arno after he seized control of Stark Unlimited, but he denied her allies access to her.
Jocasta’s body is composed of titanium steel with remarkable superhuman strength, speed, stamina, and reflexes, which can withstand most physical and energy attacks. Being a “non-living” construct, she requires no food, water, or oxygen to survive and thus is also immune to poisons and diseases and can easily survive in the vacuum of space and underwater. She is able to project beams of electromagnetic energy from her eyes, and erect a force field around herself to protect her from incoming attacks. She also possesses a heightened sense of sight, smell, and hearing. Jocasta can also perceive electromagnetic particles, and detect energy patterns and track them to their source. She is hyper-intelligent, with a capacity for unlimited self-motivated activity, creative intelligence, and human-like emotions. Jocasta can communicate through an incalculable number of media. She possesses superhuman cybernetic analytical capabilities and has the ability to make calculations with superhuman speed and accuracy. Recently, it has been revealed that Jocasta’s internal circuitry has a built-in holographic image inducer, allowing her to disguise herself as a human being. Jocasta, besides sharing the same brain patterns with van Dyne, also has her mental template’s voice.
#3 – Firebird (Bonita Juárez)
Eventually, she reappeared after a spiritual journey where she took on the identity of La Espirita and arrived in the nick of time to stop Hank Pym’s suicide attempt. With the help of La Espirita, Hank re-invented himself as the adventurer Doctor Pym, and he was able to move on (at least temporarily) from his past troubles. The rest of the West Coast Avengers, however, had been lost in time. Together, La Espirita and Pym found the time-lost Avengers’ message and helped rescue them and defeat the villainous alien computer, Dominus. Despite sharing a brief romance with Hank, La Espirita did not stay with the Avengers long, but parted with them in good company and accepted their membership offer, serving as a reserve Avenger after that. During one of their adventures, Bonita discovered that she was seemingly immortal, when all of the Avengers died except for her, due to being poisoned by the Collector, an Elder of the Universe. This furthered Bonita’s belief that she had been blessed by God. Bonita was later captured by al alien race from the planet Rus, who revealed to her that the flaming fireball that gave her powers was merely an alien child’s discarded experiment. Briefly engaging a crisis of faith, Bonita nonetheless decided that God was still responsible for her powers, however she returned to her original code-name, Firebird. After that she was called in on various Avengers events. She assisted Hellcat, Monica Rambeau, Moondragon, and Black Widow in subduing the Awesome Android, and encountered a small platoon of Atlanteans in Mexico getting help from a few Avengers. 
Firebird largely acted as a reserve member, preferring to spend her time as a social worker, although she was caught up in several significant Avengers conflicts. The first was after the team had been missing for a year in a pocket dimension created by Franklin Richards. Firebird was among the heroes struggle when Morgan La Fey rewrote reality. She was also present when the Avengers and the Thunderbolts teamed up to stop the alien Dominex, a remnant of the Dominus computer.
the war was over, but Firebird helped him to see that the bonds between him and the Avengers were so valuable precisely because they wouldn’t last forever, and he shouldn’t neglect them just because he would outlive them. In recognition of her advice, Thor toasted her when he arranged for Asgardian cooks to prepare a feast for the Avengers to celebrate Kang’s defeat, commenting that she had taught a god a lesson by treating him as the fool he was.
Bonita Juarez gained superhuman powers due to bombardment by radiation from a meteorite containing energy waste from an alien’s scientific equipment. As Firebird, she has the power of pyrokinesis, which enables her to mentally excite the atoms in an object until it spontaneously combusts. By using her powers to ignite the air around her, she can surround herself with an aura of flames that often takes the shape of a bird, and if she focuses her flames downwards in a tight stream, she can propel herself through the air like a rocket. She can channel her powers through her hands to seemingly project searing thermal blasts from her body (actually from her mind), capable of melting steel with enough thrust to topple a filled garbage truck at 100 feet. She can willfully lower the thermal energy’s temperature to a minimum of 120° F and can project the thrust energy alone. Firebird’s body is immune to the detrimental effects of wielding her power. She can fly by riding wind currents stirred up by the nimbus of fire with which she surrounds herself while flying. She has also displayed a limited power of precognition, allowing her to have glimpses of the future.
Firebird is a unique character among comic book heroes, being both LatinX and a devout Catholic. Her tremendous desire to do good, and to help others makes her a great hero to serve with the Avengers, and I’d love to see her interacts and develop relationships with the varying personalities who have served, such as Black Widow, or Wolverine, who have very different outlooks on life. Her interactions with Thor during the Kang Wars were certainly a fascinating way to bring her beliefs into the storylines. In addition, she has a dramatic look and a great power set that would be a tremendous asset to the team.
There are a handful of exceptions, though, starting with Susan Storm Richard, The Invisible Woman. Anyone reading this probably knows that Susan is my all-time favorite comic book character. Did you also know that she is an Avenger? (Once an Avengers, Always an Avenger). For four short months in 1989, Reed Ricchards (Mr. Fantastic) and Susan were members of the Avengers. It was an embarrassingly short run for Marvel editorial reasons, and despite my love for the character, it seems silly to include her on this list with a high ranking because I love the character, or a low ranking due to her brief status on the team. So I’ve ignored her membership in creating this list all together. Similarly, Storm, my 7th favorite X-Man (and 25th favorite super-heroine) would be a prime candidate to do well on my list of favorite Avengers, but for similar reasons, her tenure which began in 2011, lasted less than year as Avengers vs. X-Men tore her away from the team. I’ve decided not to count her as an Avengers for the purposes of this list as well.
Spider Woman had a brief but respectable run in the west coast branch of the team and their follow-up, Force Works. Stingray is an oceanographer who creates the coolest looking diving suit that also gives him some pretty awesome abilities. Carol Danvers joined the team in 1979 as Ms. Marvel, got a pretty shoddy send-off in one of Marvel’s many misguided attempts at storytelling came back under Kurt Busiek’s triumphant return as Warbird, where she was treated not all that much better, although was at least written well, and currently appears as Captain Marvel as one of the team’s mainstays. Scott Lang, an ex-con turned superhero with the help of Hank Pym’s original identity of Ant-Man, joined the team for a relatively brief tenure, just in time for Bendis to arrive and have the Scarlet Witch allegedly kill him off in the prelude to Avengers Disassembled. And finally, Living Lightning is a gay, LatinX member of the Avengers West Coast team who has a nifty power set and would love to see featured and explored in a title with a good writer someday.
Some time later, Sabra become entangled with the X-Men trying to stop an anti-mutant campaign, and began subscribing to the philosophies of Charles Xavier. She was a valuable asset to the X-Men, not only for her abilities, but for her Mossad connections and the access she had to deep governmental information. The X-Men frequently turned to her when seeking to gather knowledge that is deeply hidden. As part of Xavier’s mutant underground, she was repeatedly asked to join the British-based Excalibur, and did reach out to them for help when Legion was threatening Israel. She also came into conflict with the X-Men at one point when she was trying to apprehend Magneto and came into conflict with Joseph, who she thought was Magneto’s alter ego. At one point, she joined the Paris-based X-Corporation and helped the X-Men after Genosha was destroyed. 
Sabra possesses superhumanly enhanced physical abilities, including strength, speed, agility, reflexes, endurance and stamina. She is able to energize others by transferring to them a portion of her own life energy, and in the process, enhance their physical state of health (she has twice used this ability to save dying individuals). This transference also grants the recipients low-level super-powers, which are apparently at random and otherwise unrelated to Sabra’s own mutant powers. The recipient retains their new powers until Sabra herself decides to withdraw them by retrieving her life energy. 
One of the earliest (if not the very first) image from Marvel comics for is is the 
Despite Iceman’s crush on Lorna, she eventually fell in love with Havok when the two were living at Xavier’s school and helping the X-Men. When the original and new X-Men came together to battle Krakoa the living island, the true potential of Lorna’s powers are revealed as she manipulates the planet’s magnetic lines of and sends Krakoa hurtling into space. After this, Lorna and Havok leave the X-Men to pursue their studies. While pursuing her degree in Geophysics in the Diablo Mountains of CalIfornia, she and Havok are captured by the Shi’ar and brainwashed through mind-control. She takes on the name of Polaris, and with Havok attack the X-Men. Eventually Xavier frees them from this control, and while they do not return to active membership, they relocated to Muir Island with Dr. Moira McTaggart, and assist the X-Men when needed. During one of these periods, Lorna is taken over by the psionic being known as Malice, and attacked the X-Men as the leader of Mr. Sinister’s Marauders. After Mr. Sinister’s apparent death, Malice’s control over Lorna was temporarily weakened and she is able to call the X-Men for help. Before they can arrive, she is taken captive by a half-sister she was not aware of called Zaladene, High-Priestess of the Sun People living in the Savage Land, a prehistoric ecosystem in Antarctica. The X-Men eventually find Lorna, but using machinery built by the cosmic being the High Evolutionary, Zaladene robs Lorna of her powers and takes them for her own. Ironically, this process also frees Loran from Malice. During the ensuing struggle, Lorna’s secondary mutation is triggered: she grew in height, became invulnerable, and displayed superhuman strength. After the conflict was resolved, Lorna returned to Muir Isle where she and Dr. McTaggart discovered that another ability she inherited in her secondary mutation was the unconscious ability to amplify negative emotions around her such as anger and hate. Again, Lorna is taken over, this time by The Shadow King, to amplify negative emotions across the globe. The dual occurrences of Zaladene’s death, and Lorna being victim to Psylocke’s psychic knife enable her to break free from The Shadow King’s control, and also to regain her original powers and shed her secondary mutation.
Polaris then embarks on the next phase, and for me, the best phase, of her comic book career when Valerie Cooper, from the Office of National Emergency (O*N*E) invites her join X-Factor (now being written by that master of character, Peter David). She accepts, and she and her long-time love, Havok are reunited as co-leaders of the team, and while their relationship is restored, it’s a bumpy road, with several break-ups and reconciliations over the ensuing years. Through counseling sessions with Dr. Leonard Samson, Lorna is able to come to terms with all of her experiences being mind controlled, and she develops into a powerful and confident leader. After a period of time, Havok was kidnapped by agents of the Dark Beast, who forged a note explaining that Havok needed to get away from Polaris. This devastated her, causing her to feel abandoned and betrayed. Polaris started to lose confidence in the government, X-Factor and her role with the team when the villains Mystique and Sabretooth are added to the roster. When a mind-controlled Havok and some of Dark Beasts agent attack X-Factor and are defeated, Polaris tried to reach out to him only to be attacked and injured. Not long after that, Sabretooth betrayed and attacked the team, and Polaris was severely injured again. After recovering from her injuries, and learning that Havok’s “terrorist” activities had been a front for his true undercover work, Polaris forgave him, although they did not rekindle their romance. She also agreed to join his new X-Factor team, but during their first team meeting, she could only watch as Havok was seemingly killed in the explosion of a faulty time machine constructed by a mutant from the future. Although Havok had left Polaris in charge of his team while trying to stop Greystone, she did not feel like she could keep the team together, and they disbanded shortly thereafter.
Months later Nightcrawler found Lorna in a church, convinced that she was being followed and that Havok was alive. This embroiled her in another encounter with Magneto, who discovered that he use Lorna’s ability tap into the Earth’s magnetic field to bolster his own fading powers. Polaris agrees to return to Genosha with Magneto to supply him with power and to help him keep order. She believed she was doing it for the greater good, but also enjoyed the education in her powers that she received. Magneto launched a full-scale assault on Carrion Cove in order to gain access to technology that would restore his full abilities. Polaris attempted to stop him, but she was defeated and left the country. She later returned with Quicksilver to help oppose Magneto’s tyrannical rule. Although Quicksilver was discovered and forced to leave Genosha, Polaris maintained a low profile in order to covertly transport refugees from the war to other nations, as well as monitor Magneto’s actions. After Magneto’s spine was severed by Wolverine, Polaris was able to steal a blood sample from his medical tests, which she used to confirm that Magneto was indeed her biological father. When Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels destroyed Genosha and massacred millions, Polaris was one of the few survivors. She was left emotionally scarred after witnessing the massacre and being unable to save them. When the X-Men found her there, she was deranged from the electro-magnetic imprints and last memories of all those who had died during the attack. This severely traumatic experience had left her with a darker, more ruthless personality. Havok broke up her after they were about to be married, leaving her at the altar for nurse Annie Ghazikhanian with whom he had a telepathic affair while he was in a coma. Polaris now driven to instability yet again went berserk and commenced to go on a rampage that nearly resulted in her killing Havok, Annie and her young son. She remained in this unstable state until undergoing psychic therapy with Professor Xavier. Polaris promised to do no more harm and she was accepted back to the X-Men.
The second lady of Marvel comics (followed by the Invisible Woman), Jean Grey was the sole female member of the X-Men under the name of Marvel Girl. She was Professor Xavier’s first recruit, when, as a child, her mutant telepathic powers emerged when her best friend was killed was hit by a car and killed. Jean was left comatose after she telepathically linked with her friend and nearly died with her. Her parents reached out to Professor X, who blocked her telepathy until she was old enough to handle them leaving her only with her telekinetic abilities. After years of training and several adventures with the X-Men, Xavier was able to lift those blocks and give Jean access to the full range of her abilities. During her time with the original X-Men, she and Cyclops developed a strong relationship which led to long-lasting love, although Jean also shared a secret attraction with a later member of the team, Wolverine.
After an adventure in space, Jean was the only person able to both pilot the space shuttle back to earth by telepathically absorbing the knowledge needed from the astronaut on board, while also telekinetically screening out the deadly radiation that would kill anyone else who tried. That was the idea, anyway. As the radiation threatened to overwhelm her, she cried out telepathically for help and was answered by the cosmic entity known as the Phoenix Force, the sum of all life in the universe. Moved by Jean’s bravery and love for her friends, the Phoenix Force created a duplicate body to house Jean’s psyche, but became overwhelmed and believed itself to be Jean Grey. It created a healing cocoon in which it placed the real Jean Grey whose body has been ravaged by radiation, and entered the duplicated body it had created and piloted the shuttle back to earth where it crashed into Jamaica Bay. There the force, as Jean Grey, emerged from the bay in a new green and gold costume, and proclaimed her new title as Phoenix, displaying incredible cosmic-level abilities. Meanwhile, the cocoon containing the real Jean Grey sank to the bottom of the bay unnoticed. Phoenix continued Jean’s life with the X-Men, going on many adventures with them, continuing her relationship with Cyclops and single-handedly saving the universe. Soon after, Mastermind subtly attacked “Jean” with incredibly realistic telepathic illusions that slowly and unknowingly overwhelmed the Phoenix force and corrupted it with darkness. The entity gradually morphed into “Dark Phoenix,” destroyed a star system, and nearly killed the X-Men. Captured by the Shi’ar she is put on trial but before they can be defeated, Jean’s psyche asserted itself and forced the Phoenix to commit suicide before it lost control again, destroying the duplicate form.
In a final confrontation with a traitor at the institute (the X-Men’s teammate Xorn, posing as Magneto) Jean assumed complete control of the powers of the Phoenix Force, but was killed in a last-ditch lethal attack by Xorn. Jean died, telling Scott “to live”. However, after her funeral, Scott rejected Emma and her offer to run the school together. This created a dystopian future where all life and natural evolution was under assault by the infectious, villainous, sentient bacteria called Sublime. Jean was resurrected in this future timeline and became the fully realized White Phoenix. She then used the abilities of the Phoenix Force to defeat Sublime and eliminate the dystopian future by reaching back in time and telling Cyclops to move on. This led him to accept Emma’s love and her offer to run the school together. Jean then reconciled with Cyclops and fully bonded with the Phoenix Force and ascended to a higher plane of existence called the “White Hot Room.”
Jean Grey is an Omega-level mutant, who, at her greatest potential, fully merged with the Phoenix Force, was able to defeat Galactus. Jean is a powerful empath, as she can feel and manipulate emotions of other people, as shown when her power first emerged and she felt her friend Annie Richardson slowly dying. Jean can also connect people’s minds to the feelings of others and make them feel the pain they inflicted. As an Omega-level telepath, Jean can detect and read the thoughts of others, project her own thoughts into other’s minds, form psychic links with other beings, control others’ minds so as to manipulate their physical functions, mentally stun opponents with bolts of pure psionic force, cast near-flawless mental illusions, and project her mind and the minds of others onto the astral plane. At close range, she can manipulate almost any number of minds; however, she can only take full possession of another’s mind one at a time and can only do so if she is within that being’s physical presence. Jean possesses a high-level of telekinetic ability that enables her to psionically levitate and rapidly manipulate matter. She can use her telekinetic abilities on herself or others to simulate the power of flight or levitation, stimulate molecules to increase friction, create protective force fields out of psychokinetic energy, or project her telekinetic energy as purely concussive force. The outer limits of her telekinetic power have never been clearly established, though she was capable of lifting approximately fifty tons of rubble with some strain. 
While empowered by the Phoenix Force, Jean has total telekinetic control of matter at the molecular level, allowing her to manipulate atomic structures on a universal scale. She can generate any form of energy in seemingly unlimited amounts, as well as absorb energy from sources as great as a supernova or even convert her physical form to pure energy and back again. She can also exist in virtually any environment without harm and create space/time warps to travel through hyperspace or traverse the timestream, and her telepathic abilities are also vastly enhanced. When using its power, the Phoenix Force will manifest itself around Jean in the form of a bird of cosmic flame, the size of the bird varying with the amount of energy she is using. The Phoenix Force can also resurrect the dead under some conditions, and absorb the life force from other sentient beings to bolster its own.
And here she is, our dark horse winner. Who? You say? Yeah, even regular X-Men readers might pause and scratch their head with this reveal, but Karma’s been around a pretty long time. The first among New Mutants; a queer, Vietnamese woman; single parent to her younger siblings. She’s had it pretty rough (okay, who hasn’t in comics) but she’s still here and she’s got so much potential that she’s landed in my top spot for favorite X-Man.
While recovering with Storm and her colleagues in the Greek Isles, they were abducted by the Asgardian sorceress, The Enchantress. To escape, Magik used her teleportation disc, but it collided with the mystic shield around the Enchantress’ castle and dispersed them across space and time in the Asgardian realms. Karma ended up in a desert wasteland and, still despondent at her obesity, decided to lay down and die. However, the Norns intervened and placed a seemingly helpless, young child near her. Karma is compelled to survive in order to help the child out of the desert. The two lived in the desert for months, using Karma’s powers to stun the wildlife for food, and scavenging weapons and shelter from travelers who had perished in the wasteland. By the time she found her way to Asgard and reunited with her friends, she had shed her excess weight and her hair had grown to waist-length.
After her return, Xi’an was reunited with Leong and Nga, who had been under the care of Father Bowen. She resumed her responsibilities at the Academy, at the time being run by Magneto, and took a small apartment with her siblings in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. One day the children’s did not return from school, and after utilizing all the resources at her disposal, she left the New Mutants to return to General Coy’s service believing her uncle would have a better chance of finding them. 
Months later, Danielle Moonstar arrived at the University of Chicago while trying to recruit Prodigy to the renamed Xaiver Institute. Xi’an returned to Xavier’s with Dani, where she served as the librarian and French teacher. She was specifically chosen as a mentor by the younger student Anole, and later became mentor to all students less than fifteen years of age (thus too young to be assigned to squads.) With her responsibilities at the Institute Xi’an had little time for adventuring, but during one particular adventure the New Mutants must subdue the recently returned Legion. While attempting to save a young girl that had been absorbed into Legion’s mind, Xi’an was also absorbed by Legion, and battled to protect the young girl from his multiple personalities. Aided by Magik and her soulsword, Xi’an was able to escape Legion’s mind along with the young girl. Due to their success in reining in the dangerous Legion, Karma and the other former New Mutants on the mission were sanctioned as an X-Men squad by Cyclops.
Xi’an next joined an ad hoc team of X-Men who found themselves under attack by the Marauders, led by Susan Hatchi, a successful weapons developer who had wanted to test out new nanotechnology that her company had developed. After taking Xi’an captive, Hatchi revealed that she had personal reasons for targeting her. Born Da’o Coy Manh, she was the illegitimate half-sister of Xi’an’s. Da’o’s mother had sought out their father for protection and for Da’o to be recognized as his daughter. Instead, he shot and killed her mother and abandoned Da’o to work at a sweatshop. Da’o eventually manifested low-level telepathic powers, changed her name and began building her weapons development company. She later discovered that their father had used his influence to smuggle his legitimate family to the U.S., which made her resentment grow. This was further compounded when she lost her powers during M-Day.
Basically, Wolfsbane is your classic, repressed, Catholic schoolgirl who just happens to also be a werewolf. Born and raised in Scotland by an abusive pastor ( who she later discovers is her biological father; her mother was a prostitute) Rahne had religion beaten into her. When her mutant powers emerged in adolescence, the Pastor attempted to have her burned at the stake. Nice, Dad. Wolfsbane has the ability to transform into a wolf, and also a transitional human/wolf form, similar to a werewolf. 
Conceived in the late 1970’s, when disco was booming, Marvel wanted to create a comic book superhero who would capitalize on that genre’s popularity and cross over into the music industry. Dazzler (originally called Disco Dazzler) would be introduced into the X-Men as a disco-singing mutant, but Marvel would also release an album by “Dazzler” out here in the real world. It’s a shame disco came crashing down around the same time Dazzler made her debut in The X-Men.
Another Chris Claremont creation (you’ll see a lot of those) first showing up in, of all places, Spider-Woman. Claremont’s Spider-woman run was pretty fantastic, and the introduction of Siryn as a villain, working for Black Tom and Juggernaut was fun. Siryn was Sean Cassidy’s (Banshee, my #24 X-men) estranged daughter, and had the same abilities. Banshee’s wife, Maeve, gave birth while Banshee was deep undercover working for Interpol, and died soon after in an IRA bombing. Theresa fell under the care of Sean’s cousin Tom. Upon his return, he is so devastated by his wife’s death he blames Tom for not taking better care of this wife, and after injuring him in a fight, the two become estranged and Sean flies off before he learns about his daughter’s existence. 
Siryn’s possesses sonic powers, similar to her father’s. Through the use of high-decibel “sonic screams” Siryn can produce a variety of effects, from causing her opponents pain, to producing a devastating “sonic lance” that strikes with concussive force. Her manipulation of sonics allows her to fly, and by modulating her vocalizations, she can use her voice to manipulate people, similar to the Siren’s of myth.
Cecilia Reyes is a rather unusual X-Man, as she was introduced as, and more uniquely, remains to this day, a very reluctant hero who would rather be tending her patients that getting involved in superheroics. Puerto Rican born, and raised in the Bronx, there hasn’t been a lot of exploration, to my knowledge, of Cecilia’s early days, or even her origin. All that is known is that as a child, her father was gunned down before her, and her inability to help him spurred her on to become a doctor, which she did, specializing in trauma surgery. When her mutant powers appeared, she did reach out to Professor Xavier who made an offer for her to join the X-Men at his School for Gifted Youngsters. She turned him down and ask that he keep her existence a secret.
Cecilia’s powers are largely defensive. She constantly emits an invisible”bioplasmic field,” extending six inches away from any part of her body, which increases her durability. The field take on a glass-like translucency when subconsciously activated by a threat. The bio-field is an extension of Cecilia’s body, and so she feels the attack as its effect is dispersed over the field. It protects her from harm whether she wants it to or not, or is aware of the incoming threat or not. Eventually Cecilia learned how to manifest the field at will, as a weapon. Surrounding her fists with psioplasmic force can increase the bludgeoning power behind her punches. She can also form spikes or expel the field outward like a hurled hammer.