5 Comic Book Characters Who Never Got to Have a Normal Childhood

There are numerous origin tropes in comics, but some are more prevalent than others. There’s the government experiment, the alien visitor who decides to become human, people who lost their spouse or entire family and decided to take revenge, being orphaned, and loads more. However, one thing that a lot of characters’ origins have in common is having a bad childhood. Sometimes, it’s because of abusive parents and sometimes it’s because there’s no parents at all, the characters growing up in the worst circumstances imaginable. The amount of comic characters who have had terrible childhoods is truly flabbergasting; it doesn’t matter if they are heroes or villains, bad childhood’s unite them all.

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Over the years, readers have been introduced to some of the worst childhoods you can imagine. Characters from Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and Image Comics‘ young lives were marred by numerous factors, their history full of terrible events that would ruin anyone’s younger years. Some of them were able to overcome these origins to become the best people ever and some never found their way to the light. These five comic book characters never got to have a normal childhood, their early years being some of the worst imaginable.

5) Hazel

Saga is the best sci-fi comic in the 21 century, even if delays have torpedoed a lot of its popularity. The book introduced us to Marko and Alana, soldiers from two sides of a war that meet in a prison camp and fall in love. Alana ended up getting pregnant and Hazel was born. However, their higher-ups didn’t want anyone to know that their sides can find common ground and sent out numerous killers to find the family and destroy them. Hazel was raised with both of her parents, which is better than some other people on this list, but they spent their lives on the run, constantly looking over their shoulder. Hazel never had a home to grow up in; the best she had was a spaceship that would end up getting destroyed. Her young life was defined by loss and while her parents did the best they could to give her normality, it was basically impossible.

4) Wolverine II

Wolverine is the best there is at what he does and the governments of the world wanted his services. However, he ended up escaping Weapon X, leading various secret organizations trying to recreate him. He left behind loads of DNA, so it was decided to clone him by the bosses of the Facility. Dr. Sarah Kinney melded her DNA with Logan’s, creating female clones of the ol’Canucklehead, with the most successful being X-23, Laura Kinney. While Sarah did what she could to give Laura something of approaching a normal childhood, she was meant to be a killer, trained to use her powers and skills to do the worst things imaginable. She would eventually escape, becoming a teen prostitute before meeting other mutants and the X-Men, getting a new life in the process. She was created in a lab, raised to be a killing machine, with only one person trying to allow her to just be a little girl sometimes. Her teen years were even worse, messing her up in the head for years. Laura finally has friends and family, but her childhood was the one of the worst you can imagine.

3) Nightwing

Nightwing is one of DC’s greatest heroes and for years, he had a pretty good childhood that was still nowhere near normal. Dick Grayson was raised with his acrobat parents, traveling from town to town and performing for the crowd. While he was surrounded by love, it was still something of a sad life. His only home was the circus caravan and he didn’t have all that many friends. He never went to school, not experiencing many of the things that people with more standard upbringings did. And then his parents were killed. Dick suffered the greatest loss any child could and was taken in by Bruce Wayne, where he began his training. He became Robin, risking his life every night to make sure that other children never went through what he did. While he found a new family in the persons of Bruce and Alfred, his life still wasn’t normal.

2) Spider-Man

Peter Parker was born to secret agents Richard and Mary Parker. While out on a mission, the two of them were killed, leaving their young son to be raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. May and Ben did everything they could for the young man, but he had no memories of his parents. His surrogate parents lied to him about how his real parents died, leaving a hole inside of him that he would never fill. He was ridiculed and made fun of for most of his life, his nerdiness making him a target of the other kids. He never really had a lot of friends and didn’t even get a girlfriend for years. When he was fifteen, he was bitten by a radioactive spider, changing his life forever, leading to the loss of Uncle Ben and him becoming the hero we all know and love today. Spidey’s childhood seemed normal from the outside, but he was a young kid raised by two elderly people, his parents dead and him not knowing why, mercilessly mocked by the children around him. None of that is normal and it helped mold him into who he is today.

1) Batman

Batman is one of DC’s most popular heroes and his origin played a huge role in molding him into the icon he is today. Bruce Wayne grew up with his mother and father at stately Wayne Manor, having a childhood full of light and happiness. However, all of that would end one night, when the family went to go see a Zorro movie and met Joe Chill on the way to their car afterwards. The two of them were killed in the robbery attempt, Bruce watching his parents bleed out on the cold pavement right before his eyes. Wayne family butler Alfred raised the boy with as much love as he could, but Bruce was traumatized to such an extent that he was changed forever. There are some out there who think that Bruce died in Crime Alley with his parents, with Batman being born at that moment. Bruce lost everything, putting him on the road to becoming the Caped Crusader.

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