Singular superheroes have been regular fixtures on TV since Superman first leapt tall buildings in a single bound back in 1951. But it’s when they team up that things get really fun.

Misfits, the latest British import to make its way to Showcase (Mondays at 10pm ET/PT), is about a group of juvenile delinquents on community service when a freak storm unwittingly imbues them all with superpowers that reflects their inner insecurities. Kelly can hear people’s thoughts, Simon can turn invisible, Curtis can turn back time and Alisha can, uh, turn guys on (though after watching this bottle video I’m not sure this is a superpower, per se).

Anyway, the Misfits aren’t the first group of superheroes to team-up – they're not even the first ones dubbed misfits. So let’s borrow Curtis’ power and take a stroll down memory lane. 

Justice League Unlimited
First there was the Super Friends, a barely animated 70s-era cartoon that was nonetheless beloved by its now grown-up fanbase for introducing the Wonder Twins and their wonder monkey Gleek. But over the years, comic books started skewing older and so eventually did their cartoon counterparts. Created by Bruce Timm, already a legend for his critically acclaimed 90s toon Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited seemingly used almost the entire DC universe of characters as it spun out ambitious season-long story arcs – i.e. the government deems the Justice League to be a terrorist organization – and treated superhero storytelling with surprising respect.

Heroes
Now but a pale shadow of its former self, the NBC series about ordinary folks who gain extraordinary powers once upon a time seemed to be the future of super-team TV. Though creator Tim Kring knew very little about comic book culture – apparently thinking that his X-Men rip-off was wildly original – he did have the sense to hire Batman scribe Jeph Loeb (Hush, The Long Halloween). Still, after a buzz-building first season – thanks largely to iconic supervillain Sylar and comic-relief superhero Hiro – they quaffed the climax with a disappointing season finale and have continued to disappoint ever since. 

The 4400
Though preceding Heroes by a couple seasons, the latter’s pop-culture rise helped push this cable series off the air. Pity that, as The 4400 was one of the great sci-fi allegories of our time. Although also indebted to X-Men in terms of regular people learning to deal with the sudden onset of superpowers, The 4400 had plenty of its own narrative force. The titular number was the amount of people who had gone missing over the decades only to reappear one night in a desert and sporting new powers – turns out they were pawns in a future war and being used to change the timeline. But the stories grew ever more clever and complex with each season – including the discovery of a drug that could either give you powers or kill you – and the series ended tragically early with America on the verge of a second civil war. 

Misfits of Science
All I really remember about this show was that I freaking loved it as a kid, even though it was cancelled before its first season was out. The Misfits, who fought crime for the Humanidyne Institute, included a tall black dude who could shrink super small, a rock guitarist who could shoot electric bolts from his hands, and Courteney Cox as a telekinetic teen. But the show’s legacy will likely be as a trivia question because it was Cox’s first TV series and also offered an early writing gig to Tim Kring, who would go on to helm Heroes.