Mad-Dog Rassitano

Few characters capture the gritty, street-level texture of early-'90s Marvel quite like Mad-Dog Rassitano, who crashed onto the scene in 1992's Marvel Comics Presents #112, brought to life by Chris Cooper and John Stanisci. This Copper/Modern Age tough guy has rubbed shoulders with some colorful company — Captain Universe, Lt. Marcus Stone, and the wonderfully named Fireworks Fielstein among them — suggesting a world of hard-boiled action and ensemble chaos. His appearances across Thunderstrike and Captain America place him squarely in Marvel's rougher urban corners, and the fact that he earned an entry in the All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z means the House of Ideas considered him worth canonizing for the faithful. With a name like Mad-Dog Rassitano, he's exactly the kind of vivid supporting tough that makes Marvel's back-catalog such a rewarding place to dig.