When you hear superhero odds are you automatically think "good", "strong", and hopefully "sane". However, a good portion of today's superheroes are quite f*cked up in the head. Therefore, we (and by we I mean me) at Nerdism has taken it upon ourselves to point out the heroes who are just as dangerous to themselves as they are to the Joker or the Juggernaut. Now every super hero has their bouts of depression (See Superman Returns) but these are hardcore nutcases featured below, whose tragic insanity plays a constant role in their entire series, just like:

10) Spider-man

If you've seen Spider-man 3, then you know what a whiny little bitch Peter Parker is. Just about everything Spider-man does is because he's a timid, unsociable, depressed boy who's parents and uncle were killed and he feels it is his responsibility to protect his elderly aunt. Did I mention he has a supermodel wife? Yeah, he does, which totally justifies exactly why he should be the happiest guy on Earth. Having superpowers doubles that awesomenss. However, according to today's doctors, depression is a serious disease, a disease that Spider-man's writers use as the emotional backdrop of every single one of his stories. "Ahh, I'm depressed because my best friend's dad wants to kill me. Wahhh!", "Ahh, I'm depressed because I'm not good enough for my supermodel wife. Wahhh!", "Ahh, I'm depressed because my boss doesn't pay me enough to take photographs of myself! Wahhh!" If you really think about it, Peter Parker has the good life, and it's only his depression that f*cks it up more and more. Nobody wants a crying superhero, just look at Spider-man 3 (and Superman Returns which I'm only shoehorning into this article cause I hate that movie so effing much!)

9) Wolverine

Scientific experimental studies often lead to insanity. Ever heard of "Little Albert"? In the 1920s, a scientist and his wife stole a baby and trained it to fear furry white rats (and anything of the like, such as Santa's beard) by pounding a hammer on a table thus producing a sound that would terrify Albert every time a white rat approached him. After the mother stole him back from the scientist it was assumed the boy suffered from this crippling fear for the rest of his life (which may have been short as he was rumored to die just a few years later). But the point is, if a loud noise could drive a child to develop a phobia of Santa's beard then imagine the damage you could do to a guy's mind by injecting the world strongest metal into his his body and melding it to his bone? Luckily you don't have to because we've known for forty years what effect this would have due to X-men's finest, Wolverine! Wolverine kills people, murders people, rips people to shreds, dismembers people, disembowels people, butchers people, impales people, slashes people, slaughters people, decimates people, annihilates people, and massacres people... Okay he kills a lot, but he's not that homicidal...

...never mind.

8) Hank Pym

Hank Pym was is quite the brilliant inventor, though just about every mad scientist is. In all honesty, Pym was really just a good guy with some self-esteem issues. The strain of trying to be as cool as Iron Man and Captain America (his fellow Avengers) drove him over the edge, and he regularly changed his identity, which truthfully wouldn't do sh*t as his powers are shrinking and growing, which falls a little bit a head of super sharp fingernails on the stupid-poer-o-meter. He went from Ant-Man to Giant-Man oto Goliath, before creating another personality, Yellowjacket, who was the bad-ass that Hank could never be. Eventually all the stress got to poor Pym and he started to become abusive towards his wife the Wasp, as if she didn't have her own problem since she shared half of her hubby's sucky powers (the shrinking part) and finally, when the Avengers confronted him about his insanity he created a giant robot to destroy them all... and this dudes only #8 on our crackpot list.

7) The Hulk

Any superhero who was inspired by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has to be batsh*t insane. His strength/insanity all depends on how angry Bruce Banner (his alter ego) becomes. Strong emotions such as anger, terror and grief are also triggers for forcing Banner's transformation into the Hulk, which often is preceded by rampant destruction and a large death toll. For this, the army has practically made it their mission to track down this green giant and give him his just desserts. Just about every other superhero has contributed to capturing and/or defeating the Hulk at one point or another, eventually leading up to the Hulk being shot into another galaxy completely by Earth-616's top scientists. Of course Hulk slaughtered his way off that planet as well, returning to Earth and wiping out Manhattan, all because people just don't understand he only wants to help.

Oh yeah, and when he used to hide from the Avengers, he disguised himself as a robot clown. Basket f*cking case.

6) Sentry (Robert Reynolds)

This motherf*cker right her killed Carnage. Now that we've proved just how insanely badass Sentry is, let's go back a couple of decades and see how the Sentry all started. The sentry is the product of taking the super soldier serum used of Captain America and allowing it to be modified by Weapon X. Due to this serum, his molecules are an instant ahead of the current timeline. He doesn't have a single weakness, unlimited powers, and has even fought and stalemated Galactus. Allegedly due to covering up his past as a thief and addict, Robert Reynolds projects an entity, the Void, as a dark side effect of his powers. It has been claimed that for every benevolent act the Sentry performs, the Void corresponds with attempting an act of malevolence. He was formerly unaware that the Void was a false personality, but has since been informed otherwise. The Void is such a constant hassle on Reynolds that at one point in his past he wiped his entire mind just to rid him of the void, thus forgetting his powers for an extended amount of time. After he remembers his powers, he murders his wife and locks his own self up in the Raft (Marvel's answer to Arkham Asylum). Eventually, Mastermind, under the direction of Sentry's enemy the crazed General, implanted a virus in Reynolds' mind that created delusions and the existence of the Void, which is actually Reynolds' repressed persona. The mental virus impairs Reynolds' ability to remember life, and he subconsciously implants his memories into the mind of comic book writer Paul Jenkins, who then transferred those memories to comic books as a cry for help. Although, based on this short bio, Reynolds needs a lot more than help.

5) The Punisher

Remember, four paragraphs ago, when I stated what a homicidal maniac Wolverine was? Well, the Punisher is exactly like that, just about 5 times worse. When his family was murdered at the hands of the Mob, Frank Castle vowed to become the Punisher and lay waste to all who are evil. Not only does Frank Castile have anger issues, but he apparently has some OCD for vengeance. He considers killing, kidnapping, extortion, coercion, threats of violence, and torture to be acceptable crime-fighting tactics. Introduced in the 1970s when all the superheroes resembled that of something you'd find in the Super Friends, the Punisher was a fresh breath of mutilating air on the rapidly decaying corpse that was the 1970s family-friendly comic book industry. By the 1980s he had inspired multiple superheroes with anger issues, thus making him the Godfather of psychologically troubled antiheroes. Therefore, all these crazy nut jobs running around in tights and shooting up every bad guy they can find, can solely thank The Punisher himself.

4) Moon Knight

Spider-man was once quoted as saying "Moony. Rhymes with looney." which is completely just considering Moon Knight is angsty, mean, and suffers from a major spit-personality disorder. He doesn't just have his superhero identity and his civilian identity - he has a number of civilian identities, all of which he believes are real, separate people. There's his "real" personality, Mark Spector, along with Steven Grant, plus his sassy alter ego Jake Lockley. You may be (read: are probably not) wondering what Moon Knight's motivation for fighting crime is if he has all these split personalities? Well, apparently Moon Knight (according to comic book writer Charlie Huston) "beats up whoever has it coming because he believes he is the avatar of the Egyptian god of vengeance and it helps him to feel better about all the people he killed when he was a mercenary." which is just as crazy as his alternative origin story: deriving his powers from the bite of a werewolf interacting with the silver in his armor. For lack of better words, homeboy is f*cking nuts.

3) Deadpool

Let's take a moment to list every insane attribute Deadpool is known for: He break's the fourth wall. He has a crush on Death. He frequently commits suicide, but his superpower brings him back to life. He has no morals and killed one guy just for liking The Phantom Menace. Deadpool remained in his own handcuffed for two weeks just because he lost the keys to them. His sidekick is his own dismembered talking zombie head. He once had an alien graphed to his own body. He kidnapped himself from other dimensions and started his own club/corps. He once attempted to steal a virus that will allow him to turn everyone on Earth blue. This backfires, and the entire world is turned pink. Deadpool once took a baby to Intercourse, PA, with hopes that the city would live up to its name. He once traveled back in time only to wind up fighting Nazis and eventually wound up fighting a Frankenstein Monster created by Doctor Zola. Deadpool was the cause of Venomsaurs. Deadpool has an obsessive crush on Bea Arthur, one of the Golden Girls. He once took on a whole army of Skrulls wearing a baseball mascot costume... am I getting through to you? Deadpool, while being my favorite comic book character ever, is also one of the most mental.

2) The Watchmen (The Comedian, Doctor Manhattan, The Nite Owl II, Ozymandias, The Silk Spectre II, and Rorschach)

If I allowed it, this whole list would be composed of nothing but Alan Moore's crazy characters. However, I instead opted for Alan Moore's craziest, the Watchmen:

The Comedian- Edward Morgan Blake, while wearing the patriot colors of America, is anything but a role model. His appearance was inspired by Groucho Marx and his costume is a black leather outfit with a "rapist mask", which emphasizes what has become known for: raping super heroines. He believes that humans are savage and society is evil and presents these ideas with ruthless and cynical insight.

Doctor Manhattan- Physicist Dr. Jonathan "Jon" Osterman was transformed into a blue-skinned god-like being after he was accidentally disintegrated in an "Intrinsic Field Subtractor" in the 1950s. Due to this, America won the Vietnam war and allowing the eventual annexation of Vietnam as the 51st state. He spends much of his time doing advanced technology research and development and physics research, all while getting no happiness at all from any earthly pleasures, like sex or fame.

The Nite Owl II- Daniel Dreiberg is a retired, out-of-shape superhero who has an obsession with owls. Also, he can't get hard unless he's fighting crime.

Ozymandias- Veidt is believed to be the smartest man on the planet, even capable of outsmarting Dr. Manhattan. His combination of intelligence and highly advanced fighting skills makes him perhaps the most feared and dangerous of all of the Watchmen who doesn't have God-like powers. Also, he owns a genetically-engineered lynx, Bubastis. He looks down upon humanity, a trait normally attributed to villains in superhero stories, which he later becomes when he drops a giant alien squid in the middle of New York, which kills thousands and brings the world together to stop.

The Silk Spectre II- She's a super slut. A result of the Comedian raping her mother, the first Silk Spectre, Laurie Juspeczyk was forced into crime fighting. She didn't like it, but it lead her to a relationship with Doctor Manhattan and eventually Nite Owl II. At the end of the comic, she changes her identity and tries to live a normal life, presumably as a slut.

Rorschach- Jeez Lou-f*cking-eise, this cat needs help. He was born Walter Joseph Kovacs, the son of a prostitute, and spent much of his childhood in a home for troubled youth; later he worked in the garment industry. After reading about the murder of Kitty Genovese and the reported complete indifference of the witnesses of the crime, he modified a special fabric to create a mask and became a vigilante, thus his costume is based on the tests psychs give to those they expect to be crazy, eventually forming a productive partnership with Nite Owl II. In 1975, after a failed attempt to find and rescue a young kidnapped girl before she was murdered after vowing to her parents that he would be successful, he lost his sanity, viewing Rorschach as his real identity and Kovacs as his "disguise". During the actual events of Watchmen, his insanity and conspirisist ways actually leads him to discovering that Ozymandias is killing superheros and plans to destroy New York.

1) Batman

Like you didn't see this coming. After the death of his parents, Bruce Wayne took his billions of dollars and invested in becoming a superhero based on his fear of flying rats. Just some of Batman's mental illnesses to date include: Post-traumatic stress, depression, egomania, substance dependence, mild Munchhausen-by-proxy, anger management issues, OCD, sublimation of grief and bereavement disorder, coulrophobia, and split personality disorder. Matter of fact, Batman is so connected to his insanity that when you try to make him a gleeful character (1969 Batman) or a gay-esque ladies man (Batman & Robin), nobody respects the character and the re-imagining's universally panned. Therefore, Batman is with out a doubt the most connected to his insane roots, and is literally bat sh*t crazy.