In the world of superheroes, it’s very rare that things will change on a permanent basis. Whether it’s the medium of TV, movies or comic books, the status quo is usually restored eventually.
Yet, on a few occasions, things have completely changed in a hero’s life forever .There’s few changes that are more permanent and lasting than a birth of a child.
With several superheroes, the existence of their children is well known. Everyone knows that Batman has kids (and he makes them fight crime). It’s even well established that Superman marries Lois Lane and they have a child together.
Thanks to Logan, people even know that Wolverine is a father. These kids have become fixtures of their respective superhero stories. In other cases, though, a hero becoming a parent is buried, if not out rightly ignored.
The reasons why these super kids have been pushed to the wayside varies. Usually, especially if the heroic parent is a female, the kid's creation is either supremely confusing or uncomfortably disgusting.
Other times their existence just causes way too many logical problems and just doesn’t fit with the popular image of the character.
This list isn’t about judging which super kids were a great idea and which were a mistake. Instead, it’s just about uncovering a big part of some famous superheroes that aren’t immediately out there.
Here are the 17 Superheroes You Had No Idea Were Parents!
17. Thanos
For most of his history, Thanos has been more a super villain than a superhero. However, there have been several occasions when The Mad Titan was a decent person, even borderline heroic. So, Thanos could technically be considered a hero (from a very certain point of view).
Anyhow, as every MCU fan knows, Thanos has a cabal of adopted children. The same fans probably aren’t aware that Thanos has a biological son named, Thane.
Thane is half Titan, like his father, and an Inhuman. The combination gave Thane an impressive and devastating slate of powers.
Trained to be even more monstrous than Thanos, Thane cut a destructive path through Marvel’s cosmic universe, even bonding at one point with the Phoenix Force. Thane was eventually defeated and stripped of all powers by Thanos but not without causing a lot of damage first.
16. Scarlet Witch
The curious case of Scarlet Witch’s twin boys is enough to give the most hardened comic book readers a nosebleed. This is a (very) abbreviated explanation.
When Scarlet Witch and fellow Avenger Vision first got married in the comics, they had twin boys named Tommy and Billy Maximoff.
It turned out these kids were magical constructs created by Scarlet Witch from slivers of Mephisto’s soul (the devil of the Marvel Universe). Eventually, the slivers were assumed back into Mephisto and the kids were erased from existence. Believe it or not, things get weirder.
Wanda (and Vision’s) sons were eventually reincarnated into the heroes, Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepard. The two were raised by two different families but are, in fact, twins and met each other on the Young Avengers team.
15. Captain America
What do get if you cross X-Men's Rogue with Captain America and Thor? It’s Steve Rogers’ daughter from an alternate universe-- Sarah Rogers, aka Crusader.
In Marvel’s Earth-9811, Captain America married Rogue and together they had Sarah. Sarah not only ended up “borrowing” her father’s shield but ended up wielding Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir too. For good measure, she also inherited the ability from her mother.
Sarah is clearly overpowered, which makes sense why she belongs to a rather obscure corner of the Marvel Universe. Yet she’s not the only child of Captain America.
In the mainline Marvel universe, Steve Rogers and on-again-and-off-again flame, Sharon Carter, adopted Ian Zola, the biological son of supervillain Armin Zola.
Steve rescued Ian as a baby from the mysterious Dimension Z and through comic book weirdness he grew up (quickly) and became the hero Nomad.
14. The Flash
The mantle of The Flash has been passed around to several characters in the DC Universe. Almost all of them have been fathers, in one way or another.
The most famous Flash, Barry Allen, fathered the Tornado Twins, Dawn and Don Allen, with his wife Iris West-Allen.
Barry’s successor, his nephew Wally, had twins of his own. Although Barry’s wife, Linda Park, initially miscarried through a time-traveling adventure, Barry and Linda welcomed super-powered twins, Jai and Iris West. Due to their powers, the twins went from newborns to pre-teens in little less than a year.
The only Flashes who haven’t had (biological) kids are Jay Garrick and Bart Allen. Although in current continuity, no Flash has any children, twins or otherwise. This could easily change in the future.
13. Hulk
MCU fans know Sakaar as the main setting of Thor: Ragnarok and the planet ruled by Jeff Goldblum (or more accurately The Grandmaster). However, in the comics, Sakaar is a little different.
The Hulk did end up on Sakaar for years, completely suppressing Bruce Banner but he also got married to the planet's Queen, Caiera.
Together Hulk and Caiera had two sons, Skaar and Hiro-Kala.
Of the two, Skaar is the more prominent. Mainly because he’s still alive while Hiro-Kala is dead. Skaar eventually landed on Earth and even joined Norman Osbourne’s The Dark Avengers. Skaar has all the rage of Hulk but few of the humanizing qualities of Bruce Banner.
Interestingly, Skaar and Hiro-Kala have a half-sister, Lyra. Lyra comes from the future and was created by splicing the DNA of Hulk and villain Thundra. Hulk gets around.
12. Wonder Woman
Currently Wonder Woman’s own parentage is a source of confusion. The DC Rebirth event initially wiped out most of the previous Wonder Woman run.
A run that saw her revealed to be the daughter of Zeus. DC has since reconfirmed Diana’s demigod status. However, that’s the least strangest part of Wonder Woman’s family tree.
DC Rebirth’s Justice League run written by Bryan Hitch, saw the League interact with their future children. One of which was the biological son of Wonder Woman and adopted son of Superman, Hunter Prince.
Wonder Woman gave birth to Hunter but when she realized he was a male and couldn’t become an Amazon, she abandoned him. At least that’s what Hunter claimed. The truth of Hunter is still fuzzy.
However, Wonder Woman has had other children. In several alternate universes, Superman and Wonder Woman have had biological sons. Before the reboot of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Diana even had a daughter with Steve Trevor.
11. Mister Miracle
Scott Free, aka Mister Miracle, and his wife Big Barda are far from the most mainstream couple in the DC Universe. Yet their relationship is easily one of the strongest and most compelling in comics.
It’s a coupling that has recently produced a son too as told in Tom King and Mitch Gerard’s tremendous Mister Miracle comic series.
Scott and Barda’s son, Jacob Free, is a newborn so there’s much to talk about him.
Yet his existence has added an interesting layer to the complex New Gods mythology of DC Comics.
Barda and Scott have been forced to balance being parents with waging a war on Apokolips. If that sounds messy that’s because it is, but Jacob is also an example of how kid can add surprising new dimensions to a superhero story.
Plus, being the son of two literal gods, Jacob will have quite a legacy.
10. Wonder Girl
Donna Troy has a very complicated history in DC Comics. Wonder Woman’s first “sidekick” has been through numerous reiterations and reimaginings, all of which have turned Donna’s life on her head.
Before her most recent reboot, which de-aged her and gave her an origin story of being created to kill Wonder Woman, Donna was a wife and a mother.
Donna married teacher Terry Long and together they had a son named Robert. Robert's life was tragically short as he died in a car accident with his father.
Yet shortly after Robert was born, Donna and her fellow Teen Titans encountered an alternate future version of her son calling himself Lord Chaos. Unsurprisingly, Chaos was super-duper evil.
The death of the infant Robert prevented Lord Chaos from being created. Yet it is impossible to wipe away that Donna Troy was once a mother.
9. Power Girl
There’s a fair bit of weirdness with Power Girl already as she’s the alternate Earth version of Supergirl, who has a history nearly as long as the original. However, perhaps the weirdest and most controversial aspect of Power Girl’s story is her son, Equinox.
Equinox is, aggravatingly, a product of the unfortunate trope of a mystical pregnancy.
Against her will, Power Girl was impregnated with a superpowered son.
Created by the mages of Atlantis, Equinox was meant to combine the magical powers of light and darkness. In reality just made fans upset, mostly due to his creation which turned his powerful mother into a complete victim.
Shortly after Equinox was created, he mysteriously disappeared and has been all but forgotten. It’s likely his entire existence has been erased but there’s always a chance he could, somehow, return.
8. Green Arrow
After being teased at the tail end of season 2, The CW's Arrow is now fully exploring Oliver Queen as a father as he raises his son, William.
William, though, is a purely Arrow creation. Oliver has had several kids in the comics and none of them have been named William Clayton.
Oliver’s most famous son, is the man who took over for him as Green Arrow when he “died,” Connor Hawke.
Connor Hawke is similar to William, in that he was fathered during Oliver’s playboy days with a young woman named Sandra Hawke. Oliver had nothing to do with raising Connor.
Yet Connor is just one kid. Before the New 52 reboot, the villain Shado assaulted Oliver and conceived a son named Robert. (In current continuity Shado had a daughter, Emiko, with Oliver’s father.) This isn’t even to mention Roy Harper, who used to be Oliver’s adopted son.
7. Spider-Man
Spider-Man’s daughter isn’t as complicated as Scarlet Witch’s sons but she’s very close.
May Parker was first introduced in a “What If” Marvel comic that imagined Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson’s daughter as Spider-Girl.
May was eventually brought into the mainline Marvel Universe when Mary Jane became pregnant and Peter retired from being Spider-Man as a result.
Yet this ended up being too much of a change for Marvel’s world. Eventually May was erased from existence (as was Mary Jane and Peter’s marriage) after the latter made a deal with Mephisto to save Aunt May’s life.
It was silly and needlessly controversial story decision that enraged fans.
The anger is part of the reason that yet another reality was created in the 2015 mini-series Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows which imagined a world where Peter and Mary Jane had another daughter, this time named Annie.
6. Dick Grayson
The first Robin has gone by many names; Nightwing, Batman, Agent 23 and more. So, it’s easier to just call him his name, Dick Grayson. Yet on Earth-2, he goes by a different name, Dad.
When DC Comics rebooted its universe in the New 52 event, it did more than reset the timeline of the main world. It also changed the multiverse. A new Earth-2 was created, where DC’s main trio of heroes (Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman) were killed off.
This resulted in an adult Dick Grayson, whose wife Barbara Gordon had recently been killed, taking on the mantle of Batman.
Following a stint where Thomas Wayne was the caped crusader, Dick took over the job and had to balance being a vigilante and single father to his son with Barbara, John Grayson (who eventually became Robin).
5. Catwoman
Earth-2 has been through a few different iterations but it’s been a been a part of the DC Universe for a very long time.
Before Earth-2 was rebooted and reimagined as a world without Batman, Wonder Woman or Superman, it was imagined as a world where Batman and Catwoman got married and had a daughter.
This daughter was named Helena Wayne and went on to become the Huntress (and even hopped between worlds).
Helena Wayne was the perfect combination of both her parents.
Calculating like her father and biting like her mother. She long outlasted both, existing in stories long after her parents had been killed off or abandoned by DC.
Helena even survived the New 52 reboot which erased a lot of DC’s stranger characters. Helena hopped from Earth-2 to Earth-1 and became that universe’s Huntress before being replaced with DC’s updated version of Helena Bertinelli.
4. Doctor Strange
The Sorcerer Supreme has one of the more interesting characters in the Marvel Universe. Stephen Strange is a superhero but his morality and the way he wields his powers is a tricky thing to quantify.
It’s for this reason that Stephen’s own daughter was hidden from him for years.
Sofia Strange is the daughter of the doctor and his estranged wife, Clea. Sofia has the powers of her magical father and her “extra-dimensional” mother.
The insane capabilities that Sofia contains is the reason that Clea hid her existence from Stephen and any dark force that would attempt to use her. Despite the potential of Sofia’s character, she’s rarely been used after her first appearance in 2004.
She's not the only Strange offspring. In Marvel’s Ultimate universe that Dr. Strange was Stephen Strange Jr., the son of “the original.”
3. Aquaman
The greatest threat to a superhero’s child is being wiped from existence, either in-universe or in the minds of fans and creators.
It’s rare though a super kid gets written out of a story by being killed off. This isn’t the case for the son of Aquaman and his wife Mera, Arthur Curry, Jr.
Little Arthur, known un-ironically as Aquababy, was around for over ten years.
Yet he barely got out of the toddler stage before he was murdered by Aquaman’s archenemy, Black Manta.
Black Manta pitted Aquaman against Aqualad, all the while suffocating Aquababy to death.The death of Aquababy estranged Mera and Arthur Sr. for years. Although much later, Arthur and Mera had another son, named A.J.
In current continuity, however, A.J. and Arthur Jr have both been erased from existence, never existing (at least not yet).
2. Captain Marvel
Captain Marvel is another sad example of a strong and capable female hero who was impregnated against her will.
Back before Carol Danvers took on the mantle of Captain Marvel and she was just Ms. Marvel. During her time as Ms. Marvel, Carol was trapped and mind controlled by the villain named Marcus Immortus.
Trapped in Limbo, Marcus lured Carol to his dimensional prison and impregnated her with his own essence.
This resulted in Carol eventually giving birth to Marcus outside Limbo. Once "born" Marcus continued to control Ms. Marvel, eventually marrying her all while she was stripped of her own free will. Eventually Carol was freed of Marcus’ influence and the villain was killed.
The whole storyline was exceedingly gross and while it hasn’t been wiped from canon, it’s been pretty much ignored at all costs.
1. Deadpool
Deadpool might be one of the most popular superheroes currently. This doesn’t mean he’s good father material. Sadly, being a good dad and being able to have kids aren’t mutually exclusive. Deadpool has one daughter, maybe two, considering what timelines you want to count.
Deadpool’s main (and first) daughter is Ellie Camacho. Ellie was conceived by Wade and her mother, Carmelita, after a one-night stand.
Carmelita and Ellie lived together for years but Carmelita was captured and killed by Deadpool’s enemies. This resulted in Deadpool sending Ellie to live with (and basically be raised by) his friend and S.H.I.E.L.D agent, Emily Preston.
In an alternate timeline set in 2099, Ellie is still around but there’s another daughter of Deadpool; Warda Wilson. Warda is daughter of Wade and his ex-wife, Shiklah. In 2099 Warda's Deadpool and she doesn’t have very fond feelings about her father, or her half-sister.
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Were you surprised to learn that these heroes had (or have) kids? Which superpowered parents did we miss? Sound off in the comments!