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The 10 Most Screwed-Over Children of Superheroes in Comics


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?Being the child of a superhero seems like it would be a great deal on paper. Your parents can’t give you a lot of shit for being hard to get a hold of because they’re always out doing God-knows-what, you might get super powers of your own (or at least some cool gear if your folks don’t have powers) and they’ve got to have some pretty rad stories to tell when they’ve had a few too many cocktails at the next family get together. But, what happens instead? Usually the kids get brutally killed. Or blinked out of existence. Or ditched because mom or dad can’t give up the thrill of the chase. Or it turns out your children never existed because your husband’s a robot. Or your parents never knew you existed in the first place. Here’s a rundown of the top kids of superheroes who’ve had it the hardest over the years.


10) Helena Kyle, Catwoman’s Daughter

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?You might expect Damian Wayne, Batman’s son who didn’t meet his father until he was a teenager and was trained to be a deadly assassin from the time of his birth by his mother Talia al Ghul, to make the list, but we feel way more sorry for Catwoman’s daughter Helena Kyle. Selena started off trying to be a good mom, giving up the Catwoman gig and passing it on to someone else, but she didn’t leave Gotham (no place to raise a kid) and her decision to run around the rooftops when she wasn’t in top shape lead to Angle Man and Film Freak discovering her secret identity, thus putting her kid in danger. Catwoman would eventually give the kid up for adoption after faking their deaths instead of, you know, being an adult and taking care of her flesh and blood.


9) Equinox, Power Girl’s Son

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?During the mid-’90s Power Girl spent her time fighting alongside the members of Justice League Europe which lead to some pretty serious injuries which greatly reduced her powers. But it got worse in ’94 when Zero Hour messed with time and also inexplicably resulted in PG being pregnant thanks to the Atlantean wizard Arion implanting her earlier (or something). The kid was born, grew up really fast, got transported to another dimension and returned to kill Scarabus a weird demon thing, never to be seen again.


8) Daken, Wolverin’e Son

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?Yet another child of a superhero whose dad had no idea he even existed, Daken grew up in Japan never really fitting in. Oh, by the way, this is after he was slashed from his dying mother Itsu’s stomach. He inherited poppa Wolverine’s healing ability and claws, which he put to use killing his adopted mother and baby brother. He’d later go on to train under Wolverine’s enemy Cyber, get into all kinds of tussels with his dad, join Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers with curious motives and get a part of the blade that can kill Wolverine implanted into his claws. That’s some youth in rebellion (even though he’s in his 60s). Why isn’t he higher on the list? Living with Wolverine probably wouldn’t have been much better.


7) Cable, Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor’ Son

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?There’s nothing quite like the combination of dystopian future and time travel to leave even the staunchest comic fan scratching their heads. So Cable was born Nathanial Summers to Scott Summers and Jean Grey clone Madelyne Pryor (a continuity nightmare in her own right). Before being taken to the future, baby Nathan was stolen from his parents which contributed to Pryor’s eventual turn to villainy. He was taken to the future to help cure a techno-organic virus that plagued him for years. Evnetually, a much older and grissled man going by Cable would come to the present stocked with big guns and lots of patches and one less eye in an effort to help make the world a better place for mutantkind.


6) Skaar, Son of Hulk

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?How’s this for a family. Your dad gets sent away from his home planet by a bunch of well-meaning geniuses who can’t even get him to the right planet. He becomes the champion of a race opprsed by an evil king, falls in love and is excited about the prospect of having a child with her. Then the ship blows up destroying a huge chunk of the planet, including his mother, which sends pops back home to Earth in a murderous rage. Instead of dying with his mother, Skaar was wrapped in some kind of protection, dropped in a lake of fire, grew at a rapid rate and discovered he could turn either into stone or a giant Hulk-like creature. He made his way to Earth and got stuck with a de-Hulked Bruce Banner who felt the need to teach him lessons and train him to kill the Hulk. Now, those are some strange signals being sent by his kind of father. Now he’s kicking around with the other Hulks smashing each other and what not.

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5) Franklin Richards, Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman’s Son

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?Here’s a brief run down of Franklin Richards’ life. He was born a mutant with huge power potential, so powerful that Annihilus wanted to use him for his own purposes and unleashing the child’s full power levels. To stop this his father put him in a coma. He would eventually come out of that and join the Power Pack, age and then de-age himself as Avatar, then get kidnapped by his grandfather who travelled through time, turned him into Psi-Lord and helped create the lame 90s super team Fantastic Force. Soon after that he turned back into a kid and saw his parents, family and all their friends slaughtered by Onslaught, but he was able to use his powers to keep them safe in an alternate dimension drawn by Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. Recently he was visited by a future version of himself, which makes his history even more confusing. Oh, plus, his younger sister Valeria has been born twice, controlled by Doctor Doom and done her fair share of confusing time travel stunts as well.


4) Robert, Donna Troy’s Son

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?Donna Troy might as well be an X-Man character considering how complicated her past is. One thing we know for sure is that, for a time, she was married to the Jheri-curled Terry Long and the had a son named Robert. But the birth almost didn’t happen when a group from the future calling themselves the Team Titans came back in time to kill Donna because, in their future, Robert turned into a mega villain named Lord Chaos. They didn’t succeed, of course (a Superman robot would do that a few years later) and Donna had the baby, renouncing her powers in the process. Eventually, Terry and Donna got a divorce and they both died in a car accidnet, only to get brought back as zombies during Black Lantern to torment Donna. So, instead of having all kinds of awesome powers and being able to decided for himself if he would be a good guy or a villain, Robert got nothing and ended up dead and then undead.


3) Thomas and William, Scarlet Witch and Vision’s Sons

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?You know the kids are going to have it rough when mom’s an imbalanced witch weilding hex magic and dad’s a robot, but that’s how it was for Thomas and William, twin sons of Scarlet Witch and Vision. As it would turn out, they weren’t really kids (big shocker there), but aspects of Mephisto’s soul come to life. Scarlet Witch’s mentor Agatha Harkness erases the memories from her mind, but they eventually eke their way back in which leads her to destroy the Avengers along with Brian Michael Bendis in Avengers Dissassembled. The souls were kind of brought back in the form of Young Avengers members Wiccan and Speed. So they went from existing, to being part of the devil, to being part of one of the most often delayed comics ever. Bummer. Luckily for them, it was also a pretty damn good comic.


2) Lian Harper, Arsenal/Speedy/Red Arrow’s Daughter

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?The product of a torrid affair between Roy Harper (Speedy/Arsenal/Red Arrow) and the super assasin Cheshire, Lian seemingly had it rough from the beginning. But, as it would turn out, Roy was a pretty damn good dad, taking care of his little girl and enlisting meta humans to watch over her while he went out to do the super hero thing (and hook up with superheroines). That would all come to an end in Justice League: Cry for Justice when Prometheus decided to put the screws to the heroes, setting off devastating earthquakes throughout different cities. One of which was Star, where Lian was supposed to be watched by the current Speedy. Instead she died, which DC used as a spring board into crazy town for Roy who has since been seen doing drugs and beating people with dead cats.


1) May Parker, Peter and Mary Jane’s Daughter

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?Poor May Parker could have made the list just for being born in the midst of the much maligned Clone Saga, but it gets worse. Mary Jane’s pregnancy lead to Peter turning the Spider-Man mantle over to Ben Reilly, but the night the kid was born–seemingly stillborn–Reilly was killed and Peter became Spidey again. May was stolen away never to be seen again, a castoff thanks to Marvel’s obsession with making Peter Parker, a 40 year old character, young and hip. So, not only did little May essentially kick off the Clone Saga only to get tossed in the garbage heap of continuity, but thanks to One More Day, she was erased along with one of the greatest couples in comics history. An alternate verison of the character would go on to star in Spider-Girl, the most cancelled series in the history of comics. It’s not easy being May Parker.