Written by With the recent San Diego Comic-Con event leading to Marvel Comics and Kadokawa announcing a new publishing partnership, the scope of MCU superheroes coming to the world of manga feels closer than ever before. Designs have already surfaced on the internet, focusing on characters like Spider-Man, Daredevil, Spider-Gwen, and others (via X):
New ‘MARVEL’ Manga partnership with KADOKAWA Officially Announced!Here’s a look at Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Spider-Gwen pic.twitter.com/CtZfunISfY— Anime Updates (@animeupdates) July 26, 2026
With the foundation laid out, we thought of taking our own creative liberties with the new possibility, listing a set of teenage superheroes from Marvel Comics. Here are some of the younger MCU superheroes we feel like would produce a killer manga series if featured.
1. Kamala Khan Unlocks Cosmic Powers as Jersey City’s Own Ms. Marvel
Kamala Khan as Ms Marvel | Credits: Marvel Comics
Kamala Khan is a Pakistani-American teenager from Jersey City who spends her free time writing Avengers fan fiction and sneaking out to parties she’s not supposed to attend. Her latent Inhuman genes activate during a Terrigen Mist event, giving her the ability to stretch, grow, shrink, and heal at will.
She grows up idolizing the original Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, and eventually takes the Ms. Marvel name as her own once she starts fighting crime around her neighborhood. From there she joins the Avengers while still juggling homework, curfews, and her family’s expectations, and that mix of cosmic power and everyday teenage awkwardness is exactly what manga thrives on.
2. X-23 Turns Wolverine’s Bloody Legacy Into a Teenage Girl’s Fight
Laura as X-23 | Credits: Marvel Comics
Laura Kinney (X-23) was engineered from Wolverine’s own genetic material inside a covert weapons program that saw her as a product rather than a person. That same program raised her from early childhood to be a trained assassin, coating her claws in adamantium and conditioning her to kill on command before she ever had the chance to be a kid.
She eventually escapes as a teenager, claws and healing factor intact, and slowly finds her way toward a real life among the X-Men, forging a bond with Wolverine along the way. Her story is soaked in trauma and quiet resilience, the exact tone that makes for gripping, darker seinen-style manga.
3. Sam Alexander Inherits a Cosmic Helmet and Becomes Earth’s Nova
Sam as Nova | Credits: Marvel Comics
Sam Alexander is an ordinary skateboarding teenager from Arizona whose life changes overnight when he stumbles onto his missing father’s old helmet in the garage. Putting it on suddenly gives him flight, energy blasts, and a spot as the last active member of the intergalactic peacekeeping force known as the Nova Corps.
He’s clumsy and overconfident at first, crash-landing on the Moon and accidentally rocketing past Earth’s atmosphere while learning the ropes of his new cosmic gifts. Eventually he grows into a founding member of the teen hero team the Champions, and that fumbling rise from awkward kid to space hero practically writes itself as a shonen space adventure.
4. Two Runaways Become New York’s Light And Dark As Cloak And Dagger
Cloak and Dagger | Credits: Marvel Comics
Tyrone Johnson and Tandy Bowen are runaway teens from opposite backgrounds, one fleeing poverty and grief, the other fleeing a neglectful, jet-setting family, who cross paths in New York City. They get caught up in a criminal drug experiment meant to test a new synthetic narcotic, and both emerge transformed, gaining twin powers of darkness and light, eventually becoming Cloak & Dagger.
Tyrone can vanish into shadow and teleport through it, while Tandy throws daggers made of pure light, and neither one can fully control their gift without the other nearby to balance it out. Their tangled, codependent bond gives artists a built-in emotional core to draw from, panel after panel.
5. Jubilee’s Fireworks Powers Turn a Homeless Mall Rat Into an X-Man
Jubilee from X-Men | Credits: Marvel Comics
Jubilee starts out as an orphaned teenager living off shoplifted snacks and small-time street performances in a Los Angeles shopping mall after her parents are killed. Her mutant “fireworks,” plasma bursts she can shape, color, and detonate at will, eventually get her noticed by a group of visiting X-Men fighting off mutant hunters nearby.
She follows them through a teleporting portal all the way to their secret Australian base and forms an unlikely, almost father-daughter bond with Wolverine. In time she becomes a full X-Men member, and her scrappy, homeless-to-hero arc reads like a classic manga protagonist finding their found family one chapter at a time.
6. America Chavez Punches Star-Shaped Holes Through the Multiverse
America Chavez | Credits: Marvel Comics
America Chavez can punch or stomp star-shaped portals into thin air and step through them to reach entirely different dimensions across the Marvel Multiverse. She uses this power to travel, to fight, and even to move through time when she concentrates hard enough to hold the portal steady.
Raised in the dreamlike Utopian Parallel before losing both her mothers to a dimensional collapse, she carries real grief underneath all that raw strength and near-invulnerable durability. She later becomes a member of the Young Avengers, and her multiverse-hopping power set is tailor-made for sprawling, high-concept manga arcs full of brand-new worlds to explore.
7. Doreen Green’s Squirrel Powers Make Her Unbeatable, Not Unlikable
Squirrel Girl | Credits: Marvel Comics.
Doreen Green develops a bushy tail and squirrel-like features as a teenager, an unusual mutation that comes with real, tangible advantages once she learns to use it. It makes her stronger and faster than she looks, and it lets her talk to actual squirrels who show up in surprising numbers whenever she needs backup in a fight.
Kids at school mock her for it, calling her “Rodent,” but she turns that mockery into a nickname and eventually a whole career as a hero. She goes on to join the Avengers and beat cosmic-level threats like Thanos through sheer stubborn optimism, hiding a genuinely clever hero underneath a goofy premise.
8. Eli Bradley Carries His Grandfather’s Serum Legacy as Patriot
Eli as Patriot | Credits: Marvel Comics
Eli Bradley grows up in the shadow of his grandfather Isaiah, one of the earliest Black super-soldiers experimented on by the U.S. Army during a secret wartime program. Desperate to live up to that legacy, he starts out faking his own powers using an illegal street drug called Mutant Growth Hormone, hoping no one will notice the difference.
His Young Avengers teammates eventually expose the lie, and he’s forced to lead the team through hard battles without any real powers at all. Later, an emergency blood transfusion from Isaiah finally grants him genuine super-soldier strength, making his fall and earned redemption rare among teen heroes in Marvel’s roster.
9. Angelica Jones Escapes a Cult to Become the Fiery Hero Firestar
Firestar | Credits: Marvel Comics
Angelica Jones starts generating microwave energy at just thirteen years old, not long after losing her beloved grandmother, the one steady presence in her lonely childhood. Grieving and confused, she’s quietly recruited into what she believes is a normal school for gifted young mutants, complete with a kind, attentive headmistress.
In reality, it’s run by the Hellfire Club’s White Queen, who manipulates and isolates her for years under the guise of mentorship, using subliminal tricks to keep her compliant. Angelica eventually uncovers the truth and burns the whole secret training complex down in retaliation, and that slow, painful realization gives her fiery, high-flying arc some real emotional teeth.
10. Wiccan and Hulkling Turn Teenage Love Into Cosmic-Level Power
Hulkling and Wiccan | Credits: Marvel Comics
Billy Kaplan and Teddy Altman meet as ordinary teenagers, bonding over a shared love of superheroes, before discovering they’re anything but ordinary themselves. Billy turns out to be a reincarnated son of the Scarlet Witch, wielding reality-warping magic he barely understands or controls at first.
Teddy, meanwhile, is secretly the heir to both the Kree and Skrull empires, able to shapeshift into nearly anything and take a beating like the Hulk. Together as Wiccan and Hulkling, they became one of the Young Avengers’ most powerful pairings, and quietly one of Marvel’s most enduring and openly romantic couples.
What are your thoughts on our list of teenage Marvel superheroes who have a kickass manga story? We’d love to know your top picks and opinions in the comments below.
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