Bill the Lobster

Bill the Lobster is a literal lobster who became an unlikely member of the Fallen Angels, a loose band of misfit runaways and young mutants that included characters like Sunspot and Warlock. His presence exemplifies the series' deliberately offbeat, lighthearted tone.

Few Marvel characters can claim to be quite as delightfully unexpected as Bill the Lobster, who scuttled into comics history in 1987's Fallen Angels #2, courtesy of Jo Duffy, Kerry Gammill, and Tom Palmer. A Copper Age curiosity born from one of Marvel's more offbeat limited series, Bill shares his pages with a wonderfully eclectic crowd — including Roberto Da Costa, Warlock, and the enigmatic Telford Porter — which tells you everything about the gleefully strange corner of the Marvel Universe he inhabits. With appearances stretching across nearly three and a half decades and collected in editions like the New Mutants Omnibus, this crustacean has proven surprisingly durable for such an unconventional figure. For collectors who love the weird, wonderful fringes of Marvel history, Bill the Lobster is exactly the kind of character that makes digging through back issues so rewarding.