Colonel Hendershoot

Colonel Hendershoot is a military officer who appears in the earliest days of the X-Men, crossing paths with Professor Xavier and his young mutant team in one of Marvel's first explorations of the human-mutant dynamic.

Few characters can claim they were present at the very birth of one of Marvel's most beloved franchises, but Colonel Hendershoot has that distinction — debuting in The X-Men #2 in 1963, right at the dawn of the Silver Age, conjured into existence by the legendary duo of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Though his footprint in the catalog is modest, he shares those early, electric pages with Charles Xavier, Cyclops, Iceman, and the young mutants who would go on to reshape the Marvel Universe. His appearances have been preserved across prestigious collected editions like Mighty Marvel Masterworks and Uncanny X-Men Masterworks, cementing his place in the historical record of comics' most storied team book. For collectors who love tracing the X-Men back to their earliest roots, Colonel Hendershoot is one of those quietly significant figures who reminds you just how richly populated those original issues truly were.