Marvel Comics Timeline of 101 Character Debuts

When Marvel Comics started

Marvel began in 1939, when the pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman set up Timely Publications in New York. Its first comic, Marvel Comics #1, cover dated October 1939, introduced Carl Burgos’s android Human Torch and Bill Everett’s Namor the Sub-Mariner. It sold so well that the first printing and a second printing the following month came to nearly 900,000 copies [1]. The company was known as Atlas Comics by 1951, and the Marvel name became its main brand in 1961 [1].

The AAA State of Play timeline on this page puts 101 Marvel characters in order of their first comic book appearance, and it is a useful way to see how the company’s history comes in waves. The sections below follow those waves, with the dates checked against the publication record.

The Timely years, 1939 to 1950

Most of Marvel’s first characters came in a rush between 1939 and 1941. After the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, Timely added titles such as Daring Mystery Comics, Mystic Comics and Red Raven Comics in 1940 [2]. The biggest hit was Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Captain America Comics #1, cover dated March 1941. It went on sale in December 1940, a year before Pearl Harbor, with Captain America punching Hitler on the cover, and sold nearly one million copies [2]. Bucky Barnes, later the Winter Soldier, and the Red Skull arrived with him.

Many of the heroes from these years are now obscure: the AAA State of Play chart includes names like the Phantom Reporter, Mastermind Excello, the Blazing Skull and the Whizzer. Some names were reused decades later for completely different characters. The 1939 Human Torch is the android Jim Hammond, not Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four, and the first Black Widow, in 1940, was Claire Voyant, not Natasha Romanoff.

Superheroes fell out of fashion after the Second World War, and Timely moved into westerns, romance, horror and humour [1]. Two characters on the chart from this period are early versions of later stars. A version of Loki appeared in Venus #6 in August 1949 as one of the Olympian gods, and an earlier Thor appeared in Venus #11 in November 1950 [3][4]. The Thor and Loki most people know were created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby in Journey into Mystery #83 (1962) and #85 (October 1962) [3][4].

The Marvel Age, 1961 to 1970

The modern Marvel universe starts with The Fantastic Four #1, cover dated November 1961 [5]. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby wrote heroes who argued, held grudges and had money problems, aimed at older readers than most comics of the time. Marvel later called this the Marvel Age of Comics [1].

Almost every famous Marvel character dates from the next five years:

• 1962: the Hulk (The Incredible Hulk #1, May 1962), Spider-Man (Amazing Fantasy #15, August 1962) and Thor (Journey into Mystery #83) [6][7][4].
• 1963: Iron Man (Tales of Suspense #39, cover dated March 1963), the X-Men (The X-Men #1, September 1963) and the Avengers (The Avengers #1, September 1963) [8][9][10]. Doctor Strange and Nick Fury also arrived this year.
• 1964 to 1966: Daredevil, the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, the Green Goblin, Black Bolt, Galactus, the Silver Surfer and Black Panther, who first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 in July 1966 [11].

Carol Danvers, now Captain Marvel, first appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes #13 in March 1968 as an Air Force officer. She did not gain powers until Ms. Marvel #1 in 1977 [12].

The 1970s and 1980s

In the 1970s Marvel added darker and more cosmic characters. Thanos first appeared in The Invincible Iron Man #55 in February 1973, created by Jim Starlin [13]. The Punisher debuted as a Spider-Man villain in The Amazing Spider-Man #129 in February 1974 [14]. Wolverine appeared in the last panel of The Incredible Hulk #180 in October 1974, with his first full appearance in #181 the next month [15].

The X-Men had been cancelled for new stories in 1970 and survived on reprints. Giant-Size X-Men #1, cover dated May 1975, introduced a new international team including Storm and Nightcrawler, and the revived series, written by Chris Claremont, made Wolverine a breakout character [9][16]. By the early 1980s X-Men was Marvel’s top-selling comic [9]. The decade added Kitty Pryde and Emma Frost (both 1980) and the alien costume that became Venom. That symbiote first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #252 in May 1984, and Venom himself, with Eddie Brock as host, in #300 in May 1988 [17].

The 1990s to today

Gambit first appeared in The Uncanny X-Men in 1990, and Deadpool as a villain in The New Mutants #98, cover dated February 1991 [28][18]. The comics market boomed and then collapsed in the mid 1990s, and Marvel’s parent company filed for bankruptcy in December 1996. Toy Biz bought it in 1997 [1]. The Walt Disney Company bought Marvel Entertainment for about $4 billion, a deal announced in August 2009 and completed at the end of that year [1].

New characters since 2000 are fewer but include some of the most popular: Kamala Khan, the Pakistani American Ms. Marvel, first seen in a cameo in Captain Marvel #14 in August 2013 [19], Miles Morales in 2011 [20] and Riri Williams, Ironheart [21].

Characters who are older than they look

Several of the dates on the AAA State of Play chart are the year a character was reintroduced or renamed, not the year they first appeared. Here are the corrections:

Character	Year on the chart	Actual first appearance
Groot	2007	Tales to Astonish #13, November 1960 [22]
Star-Lord (Peter Quill)	2004	Marvel Preview #4, January 1976 [23]
Carnage	2004	The Amazing Spider-Man #361, April 1992 (first full appearance) [24]
Monica Rambeau	2013	The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16, October 1982 [25]
Ironheart (Riri Williams)	2017	Invincible Iron Man #7, May 2016 [21]
Jessica Jones	1963	Alias #1, 2001, later written back into a 1963 Spider-Man story [26]

The chart also places Venom in 1984, which is the date of the symbiote costume rather than the Venom character, puts Rocket Raccoon in 1982 although he first appeared as “Rocky” in Marvel Preview #7 in 1976 [29], and labels Hellcat as Patty Walker; her name is Patsy Walker.

Questions about the Marvel comics timeline

When was the first Marvel comic?

Marvel Comics #1, published by Timely in 1939 with an October 1939 cover date. It introduced the android Human Torch and Namor the Sub-Mariner [1].

Who was the first Marvel character?

The Human Torch and Namor the Sub-Mariner both debuted in Marvel Comics #1 in 1939. Namor had already been drawn by Bill Everett for Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1, which was never circulated, which is why some lists put him first [30].

What order were the main Marvel characters created in?

Captain America came first among today’s big names, in 1941. Then the Fantastic Four (1961), the Hulk and Spider-Man (1962), Iron Man, the X-Men and the Avengers (1963), Black Panther (1966), Wolverine (1974) and Deadpool (1991) [2][5][6][7][8][9][15][18].

Is the Marvel comics timeline the same as the MCU timeline?

No. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a separate continuity that began with the film Iron Man in 2008 and tells its own stories [27]. Characters often appear in a different order on screen, and some, like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, came to the films much later than in the comics.

Sources

1. Wikipedia, Marvel Comics.
2. Wikipedia, Timely Comics.
3. Wikipedia, Loki (Marvel Comics).
4. Wikipedia, Thor (Marvel Comics).
5. Wikipedia, Fantastic Four.
6. Wikipedia, Hulk.
7. Wikipedia, Spider-Man.
8. Wikipedia, Iron Man.
9. Wikipedia, X-Men.
10. Wikipedia, Avengers (comics).
11. Wikipedia, Black Panther (character).
12. Wikipedia, Carol Danvers.
13. Wikipedia, Thanos.
14. Wikipedia, Punisher.
15. Wikipedia, Wolverine (character).
16. Wikipedia, Giant-Size X-Men.
17. Wikipedia, Venom (character).
18. Wikipedia, Deadpool.
19. Wikipedia, Kamala Khan.
20. Wikipedia, Miles Morales.
21. Wikipedia, Ironheart (character).
22. Wikipedia, Groot.
23. Wikipedia, Star-Lord.
24. Wikipedia, Carnage (character).
25. Wikipedia, Monica Rambeau.
26. Wikipedia, Jessica Jones.
27. Wikipedia, Marvel Cinematic Universe.
28. AAA State of Play, A Timeline of 101 Marvel Character Comic Book Debuts, the original post for this infographic, which credits marvel.fandom.com and marvel.com.
29. Wikipedia, Gambit (Marvel Comics).
30. Wikipedia, Rocket Raccoon.
31. Wikipedia, Namor.

Last reviewed 5 November 2026