That's A Lot Of Child Support

Once, long, long ago, I brought up the fact that Magneto has quite a few kids. Four, to be exact, though one is deceased (for now).

His off-and-on, up-and-down relationship with those children occurred to me with the recent return of Captain Mar-vell. As pointed out by Ebony Bishop in the comments of this post, he's got one dead son, another live son running around as a criminal on Earth (pending resolution of Civil War), and a daughter that just survived a run-in with one of the baddest mofos in the Marvel Universe out in space, who may be (probably is) embracing an alternative lifestyle. And neither of these kids has had much of a relationship with him (that I'm aware of), so the one interesting thing to come out of The Return might be watching Mar-vell try and connect with his kids. Better than watching him mope in a Negative Zone prison.

But that's not really where I was going with this post, it's just something I thought of while typing. What I was really thinking about was: which comic character has fathered the most children? Mags had four, Mar-vell has three (until we find out Vulcan is actually his kid, 'cause he bedded Cyclops' mom on her prom night, after Corsair stood her up. Or he got in on with a Shi'ar/Badoon/Rigellian princess. Whichever. Or all of the above. Simultaneously. Go for it Mar-vell! I'm sorry.), the Red Skull had a bunch of daughters, but they weren't his genetically, right? Didn't he just take a bunch of orphans and age them? If they are his, I remember four or five. Hal Jordan, Tony Stark, Murdock, Nightwing? The mind boggles at the possibilities so far unexplored. But that's just looking at mortals.

Apocalypse has had several... dozen over his existence (I think. I needed to pay more attention to Apocalypse vs. Dracula). Loki's had at least three: Tess Black (the daughter Spider-Man helped Loki free from the Chaos Goddess Morwen), Hela, and the Midgard Serpent (what did his mother look like?). Hard telling how many more. So in terms of solely quantity, the long-lived fellows probably have the edge. But would that hold true if we looked at kids per year? I think the mortals, with the limited existence weighing more heavily upon them, might have the advantage in terms of rapidity of reproduction.

We could hold a similar discussion for mother of the most children, but it seems like that would go to that Great Mother character Morrison came up with for 52. Plus, I was running with a "deadbeat dad" theme, so moms were kind of off-topic (like that's ever stopped me). If you think there's someone who could top her, let us know.

Oh, and if you're looking to assign blame for this possibly disturbing post, aim complaints at Spider-Man: Reign. That comic has warped my fragile little mind, and I didn't even read it. What power!