Super-powered Insects

Hey guys!!!

My obsession with the world of entomology has expanded by leaps and bounds ( fear of many hymenopterans and locusts non-withstanding) and I can't help but notice the way my eyes perk every time I see the words "flutter" or "buzz" or "crawl" on a page... not to mention all the insect names which happen to pop out too from time to time. Anyhow, coupling this love for invertebrates with my garden-variety interest in comic books characters, I decided to do some research to see just how many insect/invertebrate based super-powered individuals there actually were.

1. Spiderman

Raised as an orphan by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, Peter Parker was transformed into the amazing spiderman when he was bitten by a radioactive spider.

Powers and abilities: Spiderman has the ability to cling to walls like a spider. Possessing a 'sixth sense' or spider sense, Spiderman can react with superhuman speed and agility with perfect equilibrium. A genius, Peter Parker also managed to construct mechanical web-shooters that allows him to fire webs from his wrists to various effect.

2. Spiderwoman

Jessica Drew, the original spiderwoman was lethally poisoned by radiation in her early life. In an attempt to save his daugther, Jonathon Drew injected her with a serum made from the blood of irradiated spiders. Placed in a genetic accelerator, Jessica aged slower than normal being only seventeen when she was finally released. She served, one time as a HYDRA agent.

Powers and Abilities: Spiderwoman, much like spiderman possessed many traits of arachnids some of which being superhuman strength, reflex, agility and endurance. By excreting an unknown substance from her palms, she is able to cling to most surfaces. An added power of hers is her ability to fire bio-electric venom-blasts from her palms, immunity to all poisons and radiation as well as the production of pheremones which can elicit feelings of extreme pleasure in most humans, or fear.

3. Wasp

Once a shallow, flighty and self-centered Heiress, Janet Van Dyne found herself turned into a superheroine when her father was killed during an experiment which inadvertently released an alien monster from another dimension. using the substance known as "pym particles" created by Dr. Hank Pym, she was transformed into the Wasp.

Powers and Abilities: Was has the ability to alter her physical size enabling her to rapidly loose or gain bodily mass. At miniature size, Wasp's strength increased with her compacted bodily mass and she was also able to grow a pair of insect wings from her back granting her the power of flight at speeds of up to 64km/h. Furthermore Wasp can harness her body's natural bio-electric energy and release it from her hands in powerful electrical force bursts known as "wasp stings". She also has a set of antenna which allows her to telepathically commune and control insects.

4. Ant Man

Dr. Henry (Hank) Pym, husband of Janet Van Dyne (The Wasp), scientific genius, and the original Ant Man developed his abilities when he discovered a set of subatomic particles he later labels as "Pym particles". Though once possessing hi powers via the ingestion of capsules and particle-filled gas, Pym can now use his powers at will.

Powers and Abilities: Ant Man's primary power is his ability to change his size from anywhere between the size of a common ant, to a towering giant. As an ant, Ant Man's strength remains at normal levels but in giant form his stamina and strength greatly increases due to his increased bodily mass. Pym can also generated "Pym particles" at will to change the size of inanimate objects and even, other living beings. After a near fatal encounter with a bunch of ants when he first shrank down to insect-size, Pym used his genius level intellect to design a cybernetic helmet which gives him the ability to communicate with ants and other insects.

5. Maggott

Hailing from South Africa, Japeth was diagnosed with a terminal stomach cancer when he was a boy due to severe pains he felt in his stomach. Little did he know that he was actually a mutant and that he possessed what is perhaps the strangest mutation of them all.

Powers and Abilities: Maggott's mutation manifested in his digestive system which - in place of the customary stomach and entrails - bore two sentient worm like creatures instead (which he nicknamed Eany and Meany). Boring out of his stomach like the creature from Ridley Scott's movie Aliens, the slugs chew and digest any solid object in their path with powerful enzymes before returning into his belly - transmitting the energy of whatever they have consumed back to their host. The process it seems is extremely painful but Japeth is able to draw from this energy granting him superhuman strength, stamina and sturdiness while it lasts. Maggott also possesses psychometric power, enabling him to draw psychic imprints from his environment.

6. Mantis

Born in Hue, Vietnam, Mantis is the half German daughter of Gustav Brandt (Libra) and was left, during her childhood, at the Temple of the alien Priests of Pama - a sect of the Kree who believed she might become the Celestial Madonna if she had mated with the eldest Cotati on Earth.

Powers and Abilities: Trained by the Priets of Pama, Mantis has become a grandmistress in martial arts - coupled with her ability to instinctively sense weak points in an apponent - make adept enough to defeat opponents, even those as skilled as Captain America or as powerful as the thunder god, Thor. Through her communion with the plant-like Cotati, she also possesses the ability to communicate and manipulate a variety of plant-life to the extent where she is able to astrally project her consciousness to different planets and cause the plants there to grow into a simulacrum of her body on earth.

7. Angel (Salvadore)

Afro-Latin American Angel Salvadore first discovered her extraordinary powers when her mutation manifested itself at the age of fourteen. Kicked out of the house by her abusive step-father, Angel is surrounded by a cocoon which - when she emerges - transforms her into a winged mutant with insect physiology.

Powers and Abilities: Because of her insect morphology, Angel Salvadore demonstrates several traits and powers associated with the common house-fly. Besides being able to use her wings adeptly for flight, Angel can vibrate them at such high frequencies as to produce a deafening ultrasonic sound. She was also able to regurgitate a highly acidic substance from her digestive tract that could be hurled like projectile vomit against her enemies. Her reproductive system was also that of an insect involving a complex egg-laying system with a complete gestation period of five days only from conception to birth.

8. Gypsy Moth

Raised by gypsies as a child, Sybil Dvorak was a mutant whose powers manifested early on in childhood. Spending a long time nurturing and focusing her mental abilities, Sybil eventually met a handsome middle-aged American actor in her teens who seduced her to accompany him to Hollywood. However she soon began to suspect that Reed was having an affair with other Hollywood starlets and thus, one night used her powers to weave herself wings and began scouring the haunts of the rich in search of her errant lover with the guise of the Gypsy Moth.

Powers and Abilities: Gypsy Moth possesses the mutant ability of telekinesis. However because all matter has a powerful and specific "texture" to her mind, she prefers to manipulate only soft materials like fibers and fabrics and thus confines her manipulation to fibers both organic and synthetic and the living tissue of both plants and animals. As Skein, she can also control living tissue to the extent of causing muscles to cramp and blood vessels to burst.

9. Swarm

One of Hitler's top scientists, Fritz von Meyer was born in Leipzig, Germany. Escaping capture after the second world war, he became a bee-keeper in South America where he attempted to enslave the queen of a highly intelligent and resilient colony of mutated bees. After failing to do so and being devoured by the insects, his consciousness was eventually absorbed by the hive-mind allowing Meyer to manipulate the swarm at will.

Powers and Abilities: As a composite creature, made out of thousands of living bees, Swarm possesses a certain degree of intangibility as his main body is but an impressive collection of multiple individual forms. As such, he can fly through the air and assume a variety of shapes and sizes. Swarm can also influence the actions of other bees - the full range of which can extend over hundreds of yards in radius.

10. Pixie

Though not technically an "insect", Megan Gwyn was a Welsh teenager whose mutant powers activated after a road accident involving her bicycle. After receiving a scholarship to attend the Xavier Institute of Higher Learning Pixie was soon assigned  to the Paragons training squad where she came to adopt the code-name Pixie, in allusion to her rainbow-coloured butterfly wings.

Powers and Abilities: Pixie possesses a pair of rainbow-coloured wings (often drawn rounded and butterfly like in her early appearances but now more tapered and dragonfly like) which she can use to fly. She also generates a sparkling pink powder she calls "pixie-dust" that can cause hallucinations and illusions to those who inhale it. Finally, because of her trip to Limbo, Pixie can now summon part of her soul as a soul-dagger and recite a magical spell to teleport large ammounts of individuals at any given time.

but of course where would this post be without one of my OWN creations...

11. The Lepidopterran

Often seen as a weirdo during his teenage years Sy grew up away from the taunting, and jeering of his high-school peers by delving into the wonderful world of plants and insects. Eventually following a path down the road of eco-terrorism, his mutant powers finally manifested themselves during an unfortunate incident where he was beaten up and then buried alive by a bunch of thugs from a gene-engineering corporation whose labs he had earlier. Under the ground a change began to overcome him and when he finally emerged, he was reincarnated as the eco-extremist mutant, The Lepidopterran

Powers and Abilities: The Lepidopterran possesses a pair of butterfly wings on his back which enable him to fly and can release clouds of scales which leach poison on contact to various effect. Possessing a strong affinity with the natural world, The Lepidopterran has the innate ability to communicate and to varying degrees manipulate plant and insect life. Like many insects, sprite can also cling onto walls and may secret a silky substance with which to incapacitate his foes.