I love my mom. She’s sweet, kind, caring and I know she’d do anything for me. She’s got questionable tastes in reality TV, but she’s easy to make laugh, so my family has a jolly good time with the jokes when we’re all back home for the holidays. My mom is pretty darn cool. And though it doesn’t come up very often, I’m fairly certain that she approves of my love of comic books. So she’d also hopefully approve of today’s list of the 6 Coolest Moms in Comic Books!

Moms = superheroes

Sometimes they’re good guys, sometimes they’re bad guys, but either way you’ve got to be super tough to be a mom.

6. Talia al Ghul

Nope, sorry kid, you’ve got to pick which one dies

It takes a special sort of woman for Batman to fall in love with you, but then it takes an even more special kind of woman to drug Batman, steal his seed during sex and then secretly grow an evil love child! Well Talia al Ghul – daughter of the infamous R’as al Ghul – is one heck of a mother. Sure, she disapproves of the fact that her son Damian has abandoned her in order to become the new Robin, but she still cares, dammit! When Damian is physically injured, she just takes him back to her lab and grafts him a new spine or grows him some new organs. And when Damian truly chooses his father Batman over her, Talia forms a massive, world-spanning criminal empire in order to take Batman down! All for the love of her twisted, psychopathic son.

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5. Martha Kent

Even superheroes need clean underwear

Martha Kent may not be a superhero herself, but she has raised the greatest superhero the world has ever seen! Many stories have been told about how dangerous Superman would have become had he not crash-landed in the American heartland, to be adopted by the loving Kent family. And all those stories underline the fact that Martha Kent, and her husband Johnathan, were kind, loving parents who instilled in their adopted son the desire to help others, to be selfless in his actions and to use his incredible powers with responsibility. Plus I just find it adorable that whenever Superman wants to get away from it all, he just flies home to sleep in his old childhood bedroom while his mom makes flapjacks for breakfast. That’s how you raise a good boy.

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4. Arachne

‘Spider-Woman’ is definitely a better name

Being a single mother can be hard, especially when your day job involves fighting super-villains and trying to prove that you’re not just a derivative of Spider-Man. She’s totally not, you guys! Very different powers and origin. Julia Carpenter just happened to be friends with the kind of woman who would trick her into taking part in a science experiment that granted Julia super-powers! They just happened to be spider-related powers. Spider-Man doesn’t have a monopoly, you guys! Julia then balanced raising her daughter Rachel with joining various superhero teams, most often the Avengers. Once even Alpha Flight, for some reason. Now Julia has evolved into the new Madame Webb, able to see the future and give Spider-Man cryptic warnings about it on occasion. Rachel helps.

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3. Jessica Jones

A wealth of babysitters

One of the best new characters of the modern age, Jessica Jones is a woman who used to be a superhero, but has since retired into a life as a hard-nosed, super-powered private investigator. Then when she fell in love and married the Avenger Luke Cage, Jessica kind of became the den mother of Avengers Mansion. Then she became a real mom with the birth of her and Luke’s daughter Danielle. While the rest of her crew is off saving the world, the tough-as-nails Jessica Jones has also had to juggle raising a baby in such a dangerous climate. Most recently, Jessica has made the choice to quit the hero life and raise her daughter right instead of going off on a foolish adventure like Avengers vs. X-Men. Super-boys just want to go punch each other. Super-girls are above that nonsense and want to take care of those who are really important.

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2. Mystique

Yep, she just shot her own daughter

I didn’t say this list was about good moms, and Mystique is as bad a parent as they get. But she is also super cool! Mystique is mother to not one, but two different X-Men. Biological mother to Nightcrawler, and adopted mother to Rogue. And she’s pretty much tried to harm or kill both of them, and their friends, on multiple occasions. Mystique is a badass, shape-shifting, super-villain assassin who has been a thorn in the side of the X-Men for decades. She raised her adopted daughter Rogue to be a villain as well (it didn’t stick), and she tossed Nightcrawler into a river when he was born a monstrous-looking demon (though not by choice). But even though she’s a sworn enemy of the X-Men, part of her still wants what is best for her children in some sick way. Like when she posed as a student at the X-Men’s school in order to seduce Rogue’s boyfriend, just to prove that he was good enough for her daughter. That means she really cares, right?

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1. Invisible Woman

Matching outfits for everybody!

What do Doctor Doom, Annihilus, Super-Skrull, Diablo and the Mad Thinker have in common? They have all had their asses kicked by the toughest, most badass mother in all of comic books. Susan Richards, the Invisible Woman, is the matriarch of the Fantastic Four, the first family of comics. As the name implies, Sue can turn invisible, and she can create invisible shapes to use as weapons or shields. But she’s not alone. Her husband is a superhero, her brother is a superhero and her children, Franklin and Valeria, are budding superheroes. Sue is one of the only happily married superheroines in comics, and likewise is one of the only superheroes whose pregnancies and the births of her children have been part of her ongoing story. Raising Franklin and Val is now part of her superhero career. But since they too have powers – Franklin can warp reality and Val is a super genius – they are often in the thick of the adventures themselves. So since she lets her kids be superheroes too, Sue Richards is definitely the coolest super-mom in comics!

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Honorable Mention: Aunt May

She’s sharper than the Scorpion!

She may not technically be a ‘mother’, but Aunt May raised Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man, ever since he was a boy. So she definitely counts! It was Aunt May’s determination and inner strength that kept her small family from falling apart, and it was that same strength that has supported Peter after the death of the beloved Uncle Ben. If it wasn’t for Aunt May, Peter Parker probably would have lost himself ages ago. She kept him on the straight and narrow, helped pick him up when he was down; most of the time without even knowing he was Spider-Man. He was just her favorite nephew, a good kid with a great heart who always seemed to be down on his luck. Aunt May sticks by him. Even when she almost marries Doctor Octopus or works at a super-villain’s soup kitchen, Aunt May will always be there for nephew. I also hear she makes a pretty mean wheatcake.