The most interesting TV superhero teams

As a not-so-smart but incredibly interesting man once said, “People love the cozy feeling that superhero ideas give, of the most golden of us flying from the sky to save the day for everyone.” This is why The stories about Batman, Superman and all their crime-fighting, vigilante and power-enhancing contemporaries were the most popular genre after the comic medium became established.

Both individuals like Spider-Man and teams like the X-Men. But sometimes the most entertaining versions of it are found off the page and on the small screen. Here are 5 of the most interesting superhero teams ever shown on television.

5 The X-Men: Evolution team

Charles Xavier's students

• Series: X-Men: Evolution
• Members: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Spyke, Wolverine, Storm, Beast, Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler

The X-Men are a team that serves as a symbol for those who feel different and marginalized and band together to fight for what they believe is right. This team of mutation-enhanced heroes had dozens of different versions of them in all forms of consumer media.

One of the team's best iterations is the 2000s animated version, the Evolution Squad. This team, like most other X-Men teams, lives in Charles Xavier's Academy and plans to carry out various missions to improve the lives of mutants.

What makes this team much more interesting than other versions is the youthful standpoint from which they operate. All of the main characters we follow in this series, like Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, Spyke, and Rogue, are in high school, while the adult characters like Wolverine, Storm, and Professor X fade into the background. This allows this version of the X-Men team to show just how turbulent a mutant's life is, especially during a phase of life that is already most turbulent for those with or without powers.

4 The Doom Patrol

The unluckiest team

• Series: Doom Patrol
• Members: Robotman, Elasti-Woman, Negative Man, Cray Jane, Cyborg

A team of misfits hidden in an academy-like environment whose lives are even darker than those of the X-Men. The X-Men's mutants might need each other to share the burden of humanity's discrimination, with hundreds of thousands of brothers and sisters found across the world with Cerebro. But the Doom Patrol only has each other, a small group of people who are considered freaks due to horrific accidents that give them superpowers.

A car accident left a man with nothing but a brain, which he had to stuff into an invulnerable and powerful suit, making him Robot Man. In a plane accident, a man merged with an otherworldly, corrupting spirit, turning him into a negative man. Falling into a lake also corrupts a woman's body, causing her to turn into a messy lump of flesh if the Elasti-Woman doesn't concentrate.

Combine these people with the recently traumatized Cyborg and Crazy Jane, a young woman with 64 warring personalities, and you get the Doom Patrol, a superhero team whose individual and collective stories are as depressing and fascinating as they come.

3 The Umbrella Academy

The Hargreeves family

• Series: The Umbrella Academy
• Members: Spaceboy, The Kraken, The Rumor, The Seance, The Boy, The Horror, The White Violin

Another team that could possibly be compared to the X-Men, as it is an academy of heroes in a large, dysfunctional family. On October 1, 1989, many women around the world became pregnant and gave birth even though they had not been pregnant at the beginning of the day. Eccentric billionaire and secret alien Reginald Hargreeves adopted seven of them and founded the Umbrella Academy, where each of these children was numbered.

Number One, Luther, has superpowers and a monkey body after a space accident. Number two, Diego, can bend the trajectory of objects in the air. Number three, Allison, can convince anyone with just one sentence. Number Four Klaus can communicate with the dead. Number Five can travel through space and time with these antics because he is in the body of a teenager. Number Six can remove bloody tentacles from his body. And Number Seven appears to have no powers, but it is later revealed that she is an incredibly powerful sound manipulator and energy consumer.

In the series, we see these damaged siblings constantly fighting to save the world from the apocalypse and arguing with each other along the way.

2 The Seven

The most powerful on earth

• Series: The Boys
• Members: Homelander, Black Noir, Queen Maeve, A-Train, The Deep, Starlight

The Justice League may be the premier superhero team. With the likes of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman they are the best there is. It's a shame their parody version can't live up to these heights. But what they lack in heroics, they make up for in depravity, making them arguably even more entertaining than most versions of the original team.

Instead of Batman, the seven have Black Noir, a brain-damaged murder enthusiast. Instead of Wonder Woman, they have Queen Maeve, a jaded alcoholic. Their version of the Flash is a self-centered drug enthusiast, their Aquaman is a deadly stupid predator, and their version of Superman, Homelander, is the worst of them all – a megalomaniacal but deeply insecure narcissist who, if it weren't for the love of the people and their concern for them given his reputation it would be okay to kill anyone and anything.

The Boys may be a series about everyday people who use violent and risky tactics to take down these superheroes, but many fans have found that the lives of the seven are the most interesting part of the series.

1 The outsiders

The best of central London

• Series: Misfits
• Members: Nathan Young, Kelly Bailey, Simon Bellamy, Alisha Daniels, Curtis Donovan

Quite possibly the most unique superhero team ever put on screen. Unlike the tight-knit band of American young adults we usually see, the Misfits are a group of English and Irish young delinquents whose series of super-powered antics during their community service have caused more deaths than lives saved.

Each of these aptly named misfits gains a power that suits their personality after a storm. Kelly is aggressive and confident and can read minds. Regretful former athlete Curtis can turn back time in certain situations. The sociable hermit Simon can become invisible. IT girl Aisha's power draws everyone she comes into contact with to her. And although the provocative and clever Nathan initially appears to have no powers, he discovers that he is immortal when he jumps from the roof and wakes up in a coffin.

Throughout the series, we see that the Misfits either aren't real superheroes or don't even bother to use their powers for personal gain or to solve the problems caused by their constant pathological need to cause trouble.