Ink

Ink is a young mutant-era Marvel character whose power comes not from genetics but from his tattoos — each one grants him a different ability, applied by a tattoo artist with genuine mutant power. This made his status as an X-Man genuinely complicated from the start.

Tattooed with mystery and moral ambiguity, Ink burst onto the Marvel scene in 2008's Young X-Men #6, a Modern Age creation from writer Marc Guggenheim and artist Ben Oliver that immediately signaled something different was stirring in the X-Men corner of the Marvel Universe. Over a publishing history stretching all the way to 2024, this intriguing figure has kept genuinely elite company — sharing pages with Wolverine, Cyclops, Spider-Man, and Captain America — and turns up in landmark storylines like Avengers / X-Men: Utopia, placing him right at the heart of some of Marvel's most consequential mutant-era conflicts. With a relatively compact but choice appearance count, Ink is precisely the kind of deep-cut character that rewards the curious collector — a distinctive Modern Age voice worth tracking down.