10 Worst Parents In Marvel History

Parents in comic books are infrequently around – after all, the vast majority of backstories generally include their tragic and dramatic deaths. While this trend was basically created by DC - via Superman's backstory - rivals Marvel have balanced it out over the years by having an equally tragic kind of parent, namely awful ones.

One of the most interesting things about the terrible parents in Marvel's comics is that even heroes can become them. While we expect this from on-and-off anti-heroes like Mystique or Wolverine, even total do-gooders like Cyclops can succumb to being pretty awful to their kids given the right context.

There's no one type of person that equals a bad parent - in the same way all bad Marvel parents do different things to deserve the title. The one thing that does change is how this affects the kids, as terrible parenting either inspires kids to do better and be good, or makes them worse than they would have been anyway.

Between throwing children in wells, bringing them on deadly missions, and just being plain awful to them, here are 10 sure signs that the Marvel universe has a lot of well-paid child psychiatrists.

It’s weird to consider Professor X a bad parent, given he tends to do a generally decent job at parenting every other superhero within a five-mile radius.

However, in the case of his own kid – Legion – he’s basically the opposite, largely because he wasn't aware he even had a child until a mission left him reading Legion's mind, and realising the somewhat awkward truth.

As it is, the two have a relationship that is generally frosty at best, with Xavier caught between caring for his son and recognising the threat he poses, and Legion being against the whole 'training kids to fight and possibly die' thing his dad has going on.

While Xavier clearly wants to help his son, he's only ever tried to get him help once, which doesn't balance out all the times he's made his son's condition even worse by having him use his powers.