Cardinal

Debuting in Thunderbolts #25 in 1999 under the superb creative team of Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, Cardinal is a Marvel character who arrived at a moment when that title was redefining what morally complex superhero storytelling could look like. Though their catalog footprint is compact — just three recorded appearances, including one collector-recognized key issue — the company Cardinal keeps is anything but small, sharing pages with heavy-hitters like Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Woman, and Songbird. Their presence in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries signals that Marvel considered them worth cataloguing for the long haul, making Cardinal a rewarding deep-cut discovery for any fan spelunking through the rich, layered world of late-'90s and early-2000s Marvel.