9. Adam Warlock
Marvel ComicsSeventies comics were full of weird, trippy new characters, as the acid casualties of the last decade gravitated towards the Big Two publishers because...we dunno, their insane ramblings made a sort of sense when you dealt with a giant purple dude called Galactus who ate planets on a monthly basis? Anyway, one of the strangest series to come out of this innovative hiring policy was Adam Warlock, who really came into his own when Jim Starlin started writing and drawing the book himself. Left to his own devices - and when he wasn't
using the character to protest Marvel's editorial policies - Starlin created one crazy superpowered space god. Created by some freaky alien people to be perfect human being, the pinnacle of future evolution, the original Warlock went a bit evil (and these things tend to) and it was upon his resurrection by the High Evolutionary that he stopped bothering the likes of Thor and became a fully fledged "godling". Warlock's early adventures were as a sort of cosmic janitor, cleaning up the messes caused by other space-bound beings across dimensions. He was aided in his journey by the magical Soul Gem, which allowed him to do...basically anything he fancied, to be honest. It was under Starlin's stewardship that things got really weird, though. Warlock was pursued for months by a mysterious enemy called Magus, who seemed like a shadowy double of Adam with crazy, universe-bending abilities. It turned out that Magus was, in fact, the evil future self of Warlock come back in time to mess with himself (ahem), which lead to a cosmos-shaking battle between the two. Good prevailed, as per, and Magus was swallowed up by the Soul Gem, thus negating the nefarious future Warlock would've had in store and allowing him to graduate to full godhood. All's well that ends well, eh.