Top 5 Weirdest Superheroes

By Akela Talamasca on September 1st, 2009

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Before we get started with this, let me clarify “weirdest”. There are certainly superheroes out there that are funny, some that are disturbing, some that are disgusting, and many other shades of odd in between. Then there are those that make you just say “What the … ?” This list is dedicated to those. These might not be the most outright strange, but the fact that someone thought they were good enough to not only invent but actually keep around for a while makes them the weirdest.

5. Matter-Eater Lad

From the Legion of Super Heroes

Even for an organization as goofy as the Legion of Super Heroes, Matter-Eater Lad comes across as being particularly ridiculous. Not to get too geeky here (too late), but technically his ability to ingest any form of matter isn’t really a superpower at all — it’s a native attribute of the people of Bismoll, the planet he calls home. But when you’re a member of a group calling themselves Super Heroes, being extremely rich could be classified a superpower. The funniest thing about Matter-Eater Lad wasn’t that he existed, but that he wasn’t immediately killed in battle (the way the original Thunderbird was after only a couple of issues of being in the X-Men). He has to have been the brainchild of DC’s then-president, or maybe the president’s kid, because he still exists to this day.

4. The Aquarian

Previously known as Wundarr, this character belonged to that same strange time period of Marvel comics that spawned characters like Howard the Duck and Warlock — quasi-science fictiony individuals with offbeat storylines frequently involving either social consciousness or high-minded philosophy. No wonder, then, that despite earlier action-packed fisticuffs versus guys like the Submariner and the Thing, this character would eventually get a drastic power change and call himself The Aquarian, whose stated goal was the enlightenment of all mankind.

What’s weird about The Aquarian? His power is to nullify any form of energy — electrical, nuclear, gravitational, kinetic, etc. Technically, he’s untouchable. Nothing can penetrate his enclosing field. He shouldn’t be able to see, hear, or breathe either, but hey *cough cough* Cosmic powers *cough* and everything’s just fine. The ultimate in passivity, how do you make him interesting? Apparently, you don’t.

3. Madcap

Sort of a superhero/villain, Madcap is the comic book equivalent of a MacGuffin. If you need a reason to have your hero fight someone, bring in Madcap. With his abilities to 1) feel no pain, 2) instantly heal from any wound, no matter how fatal, and 3) induce insanity in anyone with whom he makes eye contact, the guy just exists as living filler material. You can’t take any superhero plotline seriously if it has Madcap in it; his outright craziness cancels any kind of meaningful drama a writer might try to work up. I once created a similar character when I used to be a game master for the tabletop superhero game Champions, who I’d trot out every time my players started thinking they were something special. After about an hour of mindless mayhem, they were ready to quit playing forever.

There’s just something about hacking a guy to bits only to have the head still making random chitchat like “I’m Madcap! Mad as in “mad” and cap as in “cap” to really make you think about your body of work as a writer, and where you might have gone wrong.

2. Mister Immortal

From the Great Lakes Avengers

On the other side of the coin is Mister Immortal, a “superhero” who simply cannot die. Which isn’t to say that he doesn’t get routinely killed; he just comes right back. But where writers might use Madcap’s power for humor, Mister Immortal is quite something else. His history is riddled with childhood trauma, the deaths of loved ones, encounters with primal universal forces, suicide attempts, depression, and a cosmic revelation that he is the ultimate human, destined to live until the end of time to receive some sort of final message that will explain everything.

With this level of strange metaphysics at hand, why is this character a superhero? This seems more like an idea for the Vertigo imprint, where all manner of ideas could be explored and the nature of life and death examined in-depth. Instead, well … just look at that picture.

1. Crazy Jane

From the Doom Patrol

And here we have someone who could only have sprung from the mind of Grant Morrison: a character with multiple personality disorder, each of whom has its own superpower. Apparently based on the true story of Truddi Chase, who had 92 separate and distinct personalities, Crazy Jane is quite a piece of work. Herself named after a character in a poem by Yeats, each of her personalities has its own pseudo-superheroey name and power. Among the more sensational: Black Annis, blue-skinned with red eyes and long clawed hands; Rain Brain, who possesses an immaterial form and speaks entirely in stream-of-consciousness ramblings; Sun Daddy, a giant with the head of a sun who can shoot fireballs; and Scarlet Harlot, who absorbs psychosexual energy and can create ectoplasmic constructs.

Completely unpredictable, she made Rebis look relatively normal. But the weirdest part of Jane was her Underground, where all her personalities lived. Set up like a train system, each personality had its own station, with a well below it all where personalities were destroyed. Again, how did this character not get her own series? She lives on Danny the Planet, is a former lover of Robotman, and looks like a living doll. Try to option that one, Hollywood!