8. The Cherubim
Marvel ComicsOne of the best. most underrated Marvel series of recent years was the Runaways, a comic about a group of teens (and tweens) who discover they have superpowers, that their parents are supervillains, and who use both pieces of information to scraper and try to use their new knowledge to fit the forces of evil. And hormones. It's awesome. It's also not a million miles away from the origin story for this obscure group that started out in the Marvel UK Captain Marvel stories by Alans Moore and Davis in the eighties. Made up of Quill (covered in barbs, razor sharp claws.), Fern (Swamp Thing-esque plant stuff), AC-DC (dirty deeds done dirt cheap), Giggles (reality warper), Lump (who could bring people's nightmares to life) and the Cherub Whirlwind (a trio of terrifying flying babies), The Cherubim were babies born mutated because of the reality-altering "Jaspers Warp", who later escaped their lives as government agents sent against Captain Britain and his cohorts to be proper superheroes on their own. This slightly grotesque bunch crossed path with the British superheroes a few times after that, eventually being retired at the end of Moore's run during a storyline where they - and all other so-called "Warpies" - had their mutations removed, and returned to being regular kids. As such, they never appeared in a comic again, and never actually appeared in a US-published Marvel title. Which is a shame, because they were rather weird and wonderful.