Xandu

Xandu is a Marvel sorcerer and recurring villain who first clashed with Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, wielding powerful magic — including the mystic Wand of Watoomb — in pursuit of his obsessive goals.

Born in the fertile creative soil of 1965, Xandu made his debut in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2 — a Silver Age gem conjured by the legendary team of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. This Marvel villain has proven remarkably durable for a character with a relatively select number of appearances, threading through nearly six decades of comics history from 1965 all the way to 2022. He's the kind of figure who gravitates toward the mystical and the spectacular, sharing pages with none other than Stephen Strange and Spider-Man himself, which tells you something about the rarefied, reality-bending corners of the Marvel Universe he inhabits. If you're a fan of classic Silver Age villainy with a distinctly arcane flavor, Xandu is exactly the sort of deep-cut discovery that makes Marvel's back catalogue such a rewarding place to explore.