Marvel's Most Powerful Siblings Ranked
When you get right down to it, there are a lot of similarities between Marvel and the Fast & Furious movies. They both feature ridiculously strong characters who can shatter parking garages with a single stomp. They both involve people making mysterious returns from the dead, sometimes involving prolonged amnesia that can only be cured by the power of true love. And, perhaps most crucially, they're both worlds where one of the most important things is family.
Of course, in Marvel, that's usually because sharing genetic material with someone who has super powers usually means you've either inherited a few yourself or you've inherited an unfortunate tendency to wander into radioactive spiders or gamma-powered blood transfusions. The result is a universe that has plenty of powerful families, especially where siblings are concerned. But that makes us wonder ... whose family reunion is stacked with the most powerful characters of all? From Asgardian gods to Thanos' skeevy brother, here are the most powerful siblings in the Marvel Universe ranked.
The Guthries are some powerful hillbillies
Individually, the Guthries might not have the raw power of some of the other families on this list, but they sure as heck have 'em outnumbered.
Sam Guthrie made his debut in the first New Mutants story back in 1982 as a simple teenage coal miner from Cameron County, Kentucky, who discovered he had the mutant power to blast off like a cannonball. Given that superhero comics have never been too hesitant to use stereotypes for a little bit of convenient narrative shorthand, it shouldn't come as a surprise to learn Sam came from a family of Appalachian hillbillies that included his sister, his brother, his other sister, his other other sister, his other other other ... well, you get the idea. All told, he was one of ten siblings, and over the years, five of them have developed mutant powers, with most of them winding up with the X-Men.
In addition to Sam's nigh-invulnerable blastin' and possible immortality, there's Paige (also known as Husk), who can tear her skin off to reveal a layer of whatever she chooses beneath; Josh (Icarus), who has angelic wings and a healing factor; Melody (Aero), who can fly, no wings necessary; and Jeb, who can shoot electricity out of his face. As for the others, it might be more accurate to say that they don't have mutant powers yet. An alternate universe version of Elizabeth, #8 in the ten-kid lineup, could change size, and if the comics have taught us anything, it's that there's always another Guthrie to call up to the big leagues if you need one.
The Von Struckers are very scary siblings
The Von Strucker twins, Andrea and Andreas, were pretty much doomed to become supervillains before they were even born. After all, their father, Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, was one of Hitler's best pals, and he's spent the past 80 years fighting Captain America and infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D. There are only so many ways your life can go from there, and "racist Aryan supervillains" is definitely the most likely. It's not just nurture that's the problem, though, it's nature — or the meddling therewith.
Here's how they became the Marvel Universe's most uncomfortable characters on every level. While their still-unnamed mother was pregnant, Wolfgang got "Bio-Fanatic" Nazi cyborg Arnim Zola to meddle with his unborn kids, turning them into genetically engineered mutants with the power of incestuous subtext. The twins had the ability to fly and blast energy out of their hands but only while they were making physical contact with each other, leading to a whole lot of comics where they fought the X-Men while holding hands and implying a few other things.
The grossest implication, though, came after Andrea was killed, and thankfully, it's not in the same category as the other stuff. In theory, Andrea's death would leave her brother powerless, but to his credit, he figured out a pretty innovative way to get around that limitation. He just, you know, skinned his sister's corpse, turned her into leather, and then wrapped her around the hilt of a sword so he could shoot blasts through that instead. It all worked out, though. Andrea was resurrected in the form of a clone, and they eventually got back to normal. Well, depending on your definition of "normal."
The Hellstroms have a diabolical dad
When it comes to bad dads, Daimon and Satana Hellstrom might have the worst, what with the fact that he's Satan and all. Well, a Satan. There are quite a few of them hanging around Marvel's many Hells, plotting the ruination of man.
Despite their devilish heritage, Satana and Daimon — who occasionally goes by the somewhat on-the-nose superhero name "Son of Satan" — aren't quite as powerful as you might expect, but it's worth noting that even after 40 years of comics, they're still pretty young by demon standards. For the most part, they have the same sort of vague magical powers possessed by most of the mystical characters in the Marvel Universe, but Daimon also has the ability to shoot fire out of a pitchfork made of Netheranium, a metal mined exclusively in Hell, that burns your soul instead of your body.
Satana, on the other hand, was raised in Hell, and when she came to Earth, it was as a fully powered succubus with the ability to devour souls. If that wasn't enough, she also spent most of her life with her soul bonded to an extremely powerful demon called Basilisk, which she could release to do stuff like blow up cars. Together, the siblings are pretty formidable, but far from the most powerful supernatural forces you're likely to encounter in the Marvel Universe. They don't even have a motorcycle!
The Summers are X-tremely powerful siblings
The Summers family has been at the center of the X-Men saga since there's been an X-Men saga to be at the center of. Scott, better known as Cyclops, appeared in the first issue, and his brother Alex, who took the codename Havok, showed up not too long after. For a long time, the hints that they had a third brother formed the basis of one of the most intriguing mysteries of the series, with speculation that he could be anyone from Gambit to blood-electrifying katana enthusiast Adam X the X-Treme.
Eventually, readers found out that their long-lost brother was Gabriel Summers, alias Vulcan, and there was actually a good reason Cyclops and Havok didn't know about him. See, he'd been born on another planet after his parents were kidnapped by aliens and their dad became a space pirate with a sexy skunk lady girlfriend, and while Professor X found Gabriel when he came back to Earth, he never bothered to tell his favorite student because he didn't want to. Believe it or not, this is actually pretty straightforward by X-Men standards.
Individually, the three Summers brothers are formidable. Cyclops has optic blasts that are capable of smashing through robots, buildings, and even Dormammu, the godlike ruler of the demonic Dark Dimension. Havok is capable of disintegrating virtually anything with his powers at their peak intensity, and he once survived being thrown into a sun. As for Gabriel, he was referred to as "terrifyingly powerful" by Adam Warlock, whose status as a space messiah makes him an expert on overpowered cosmic characters. All together, they'd be nearly unstoppable, but alas, their family squabbles usually keep them from teaming up for too long.
The Braddocks are very badass and very British
Usually, mutants who are related to each other have some similarities in their powers. The Summers family, for instance, all have some kind of energy projection. The Braddocks, on the other hand, are all over the map in terms of powers. Specifically, the map of Great Britain.
Betsy is well-known as the on-again, off-again X-Man called Psylocke, whose psychic powers manifest themselves in some pretty unique ways. Not only can she do the standard mind-reading and telekinesis, she can also concentrate her abilities into a weapon representing — say it with us, X-Fans — "the focused totality of her mutant powers," which can take the form of a psychic knife, a katana, or even a bow and arrow. Despite being Betsy's twin, Brian Braddock isn't a mutant. Instead, he got powers through mystical means when he took up the Amulet of Right and became Captain Britain, with all the powers of the British Isles. He can lift 90 tons, fly faster than the speed of sound, keep a stiff upper lip, take tea at four, and keep calm and carry on.
And then there's Jamie. The eldest of the Braddock siblings, Jamie is the family's resident supervillain, and since villains need to provide a pretty intense challenge, he is — in theory, at least — way more powerful than his siblings. He sees the world as being held together by strings, and by playing puppetmaster with them, he can alter reality to suit his whims. Needless to say, this doesn't have a great impact on his mental health.
The Storms are part of Marvel's First Family
As the team that kicked off Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's reinvention of superhero comics as we know them, the Fantastic Four have always been Marvel's First Family. And the key word there has always been "family." Because really, if you're Reed Richards, a super genius trying to beat the commies into space, why wouldn't you take your girlfriend, her kid brother, and a buddy from college?
That's how the Storm siblings, Susan and Johnny, were exposed to the cosmic rays that turned them into the Invisible Woman and the Human Torch, respectively, and instantly found themselves in the position of fighting off planet-eating cosmic forces and a grumpy Eastern European monarch who keeps a time machine and a few nuclear missiles in his basement.
As the Human Torch, Johnny has the flashiest powers. When he "flames on," as he's fond of catchphrasing, his body is transformed into a plasma form that, at rest, is burning at about 780 degrees Fahrenheit — which, for comparison, is about the temperature of molten lava. With that as the starting point, he can eventually get up to 1,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But even with Johnny capable of incinerating a small moon, Sue is always referred to as the most powerful member of the team. Her invisible force-fields are tough enough to withstand the gravity of a black hole, the most crushingly powerful force in the known universe. Also, they're pretty tough to see.
The Maximoffs are incredibly powerful mutants
It says something about the Maximoffs that their estranged half-sister Lorna, better known as the superheroine Polaris, is generally considered to be on the same world-beating level of sheer strength as her father, Magneto, and still isn't Quicksilver's most powerful sibling. Not by a long shot.
Don't get it wrong. Both Polaris and Quicksilver are incredibly powerful in their own right. Lorna is strong enough to wreck a spaceship with her magnetic powers and has such fine control over her abilities that she can manipulate the iron in someone's body to reverse their blood flow. Pietro, better known as Quicksilver, isn't the fastest runner in the world of superhero comics, but he can still get to Mach 4 on foot and punch you a thousand times before you can blink. Wanda, on the other hand, is on a whole other level, partly because her magically augmented mutant powers are so vaguely defined as to be limitless. For a long time, the Scarlet Witch was shown to have control over probability, but she also remade the entire Marvel Universe and stripped the powers away from millions of mutants just by speaking three words ("no more mutants").
Of course, take this ranking with a grain of salt — not because these three characters aren't powerful but because they might not be siblings. Lorna was revealed to be Magneto's daughter, then wasn't, then was again, and the same has happened with the Maximoff twins through various retcons. As of this writing, Lorna is Magneto's child, while Pietro and Wanda aren't, but who knows what the next person who writes Avengers is going to reveal.
T'Challa and Shuri rule Wakanda with power, grace, and super intelligence
Power comes in many forms. There's sheer physical strength. There's the willpower that gives someone an indomitable drive to refuse defeat. There's even political power, derived from the loyalty of citizens and the resources that a nation has at its disposal. T'Challa and Shuri of Wakanda, who've both held the identity of Black Panther, have all of those, and they have them in some pretty considerable amounts.
Politically, Wakanda is one of the Marvel Universe's most powerful nations, thanks to being one of two places on Earth with a supply of vibranium, the super metal that powers both their economy and Black Panther's arsenal of high-tech weaponry. On a personal level, both Shuri and T'Challa have gained superhuman abilities from the semi-mystical, heart-shaped herb, granting them strength, speed, and reflexes far beyond ordinary people. Honestly, though? That's the least of their powers.
They're both brilliant, but Shuri's facility with technology and inventing puts her on par with — or exceeds — the other super scientists of the Marvel Universe. And T'Challa? Well, he's the king of the dead, a title that he got from the goddess Bast when he met up with her for a chat in the necropolis below Wakanda's capital city. The full extent of what that means has yet to be revealed, but it did give him the ability to command a couple hundred thousand zombies and lead them as a revolutionary army when Doctor Doom took over the multiverse. Even for a guy who once punched Galactus, that's a pretty big deal.
Thanos and Eros are Marvel's most messed up siblings
Thanos has been well-established as one of the biggest, baddest villains of the Marvel Universe, on both the big screen and the comics page. He's the guy who kills countless billions without a second thought and who literally worships Death, which he thinks of as a lady he wants to take out for a nice dinner after a long night of galactic genocide. But Thanos isn't the creepiest member of his family.
That honor, such as it is, goes to his brother, Eros, the occasional Avenger also known as Starfox. Despite the name, he's not a groundbreaking shooter for the Super Nintendo. He's just a foxy dude from space with the power to project ... well, in Hulk #300, he calls them "overwhelming waves of pleasure." And yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. For years, the implications were just implications, but in a She-Hulk story, he was sued by women that he'd seduced with his powers, which caught him a beating from She-Hulk herself, despite the fact that she was acting as his defense attorney. And it turns out that his pleasure-inducing creep factor is so powerful that he can never turn it off.
So yeah, we all know Thanos is the unstoppable death monster we should all stay far away from, but Eros is the one to run from if you ever catch sight of him.
Thor's family tree is complicated
In the Marvel Universe, you've got your regular people (Aunt May), your superheroes (Captain America), and your full-on forces of nature (the Hulk). Then, somewhere past them, you've got the literal gods who hang around on Earth speaking old-timey Shakespeare talk and fighting dragons that encircle the world.
While they're often on opposite sides, Thor and Loki represent the pinnacle of Asgardian power. Thor's got that overwhelming hammer-swinging strength and the ability to conjure up storms so intense that they threaten to swallow the sun, and Loki has a razor-sharp cunning, immortality, and enough sorcerous power to pick his own head up off the floor and put it back on after Balder decapitates him for being a jerk. They're opposed to each other more often than not, but as a duo, they're nearly unstoppable. And they have a sister.
Angela's path to the Marvel Universe is a complicated one. She was originally created in Spawn at Image Comics, then became the subject of a lawsuit over ownership that lasted over a decade and ended with her being sold to Marvel back in 2013 and winding up alongside Thor in the Nine Realms. To explain her long-lost status, she was revealed to be a resident of a secret tenth realm. She's still Odin's daughter, though, and has all the usual powers you'd expect, with the added bonus of being so deadly that she's considered "Asgard's assassin." She's been shown to be Thor's equal in combat, giving Valhalla's annual family reunion more sheer power than any other family gathering in the multiverse.
The Richards are Marvel's most powerful siblings
If you're not up on your deep cut Marvel Comics lore, it might come as a surprise to find out that the most powerful character in the entire multiverse isn't Thanos, Galactus, or any other cosmic powers. In fact, he's not even an adult. Franklin Richards, the young son of the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards and Sue Storm, inherited his parents' considerable cosmic powers on top of being the single most powerful mutant ever born. What exactly can he do? Well ... anything.
Franklin's powers are generally portrayed in the telepathy/telekinesis category, with the small bonus of being able to control reality to the point of literally creating universes. In fact, when the Marvel Multiverse was destroyed by Dr. Doom, the way the Fantastic Four fixed it was just having Franklin come up with a bunch of What If...? plots and then using his powers to make them real.
Since Franklin's powers are pretty much infinite, any group of siblings in which he's included would by definition rank at the top of this list, but his sister, Valeria, isn't exactly a slouch herself. We don't know what they are, but she definitely has powers — and what's more, she's a super genius, even by the standards of the Fantastic Four. As a pre-teen, she claimed that she was smarter than her old man, and since he's the guy who built a chair that took him to literal heaven to meet God, that's saying something.