10 years ago, Marvel turned a bizarre joke into its best new superhero of the decade

There was kind of a lot going on in 2016, so you could be forgiven for forgetting that it brought with it the introduction of the first Gwenpool ongoing. Who’s Gwenpool? Well. Hailing from Earth-TRN565 (that’s a “temporary reality number” until Marvel officially assigns it one), unemployed teen Gwen Poole is an avid comic book fan in her world. Now, she's in the main superhero reality, Earth-616. How did she get there? Not totally sure. Don't worry about it. Despite having no superpowers herself, Gwenpool has extensive knowledge of all other superheroes via reading their comic book adventures. This gives the character a sort of “sixth sense” advantage, allowing her to plan several steps ahead of every other hero and villain. She is also Marvel’s first openly aromantic and asexual character, imbuing her with extra importance for many fans. It began with a variant cover. After Marvel struck gold with the introduction of Spider-Gwen to the multiverse in 2014, the publisher ran a month of variant covers featuring Gwen Stacy as various established characters. As such, the character to be known as Gwenpool first popped up on the cover of Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars #2 by artist Chris B