Gendo Ikari

Few characters carry the weight of a name like Gendo Ikari, and this Modern Age incarnation — debuting in Dark Horse's Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project #1 in 2009, brought to the page by Osamu Takahashi and Michael Gombos — places him at the center of an EVA universe populated by icons: Shinji, Rei Ayanami, Asuka Langley Soryu, Misato Katsuragi, and Yui Ikari all share his world. Across titles like Campus Apocalypse and the flagship Neon Genesis Evangelion series, his presence threads through some of Dark Horse's most beloved manga-format releases of the era. With 13 catalogued appearances spread across a run from 2009 to 2012, he's a figure whose gravitational pull on the stories around him is unmistakable — compact in page count but impossible to overlook.