BANSHEE

Banshee is remembered as the X-Men’s Irish gentleman — but in X-Men #28 (January 1967), he debuted as a bad guy. The mutant syndicate Factor Three wanted the ex-Interpol agent’s sonic powers; when Sean Cassidy refused their invitation, they and their hired muscle, the Ogre, captured him and fitted him with an explosive headband: disobey an order, or try to take it off, and it would detonate.

So the “villain” who came screaming down on New York to kidnap Professor X was a hostage doing hostage things. The X-Men fought him without knowing it — and it was Xavier who saved him, striking the headband with a psionic mental bolt that disarmed it without setting it off. Freed mid-battle, Cassidy turned on his blackmailers on the spot.

The eight-year coda makes it stranger: after a handful of guest spots, the reluctant one-issue villain didn’t actually join the team he’d been sent to attack until Giant-Size X-Men #1 in 1975 — as part of the all-new, all-different lineup that relaunched the X-Men into their greatest era. He may be the only hero whose résumé starts with “attempted kidnapping, under duress, bomb provided by employer.”