Esme Cuckoo

Few Modern Age debuts carry the eerie elegance of Esme Cuckoo, who first stepped onto the page in Grant Morrison and Ethan Van Sciver's New X-Men #118 in 2001 — part of one of Marvel's most celebrated and unsettling reinventions of the X-Men mythos. One of a set of identical sisters, Esme is inseparable from the uncanny dynamic of the Cuckoos as a whole, sharing her world with powerhouses like Emma Frost and Wolverine while her sisters Phoebe, Celeste, and Sophie orbit her story just as closely. With five key-issue appearances to her name and a presence that has persisted across 24 years into titles like Marauders, she's far more than a supporting player — she's a figure collectors return to, a Modern Age original whose introduction helped define an era of bold, cerebral X-Men storytelling worth every back-issue hunt.