Fridge / X-Men

• I didn't notice it until he did the same to Professor X — The wires on Mojo's face are a shout-out to A Clockwork Orange.
• Despite losing the majority of his powers, Cable recently seems to be able to survive attacks that would have previously killed him (his throat being slit, multiple bullets in the back and a katana through the chest all the space of a few days). But then one realizes that his former powers help keep his techno-organic virus at bay, now although weaker power-wise he is much more stronger physically because the techno-organics have spread throughout his entire body. "It's hard to completely slit a metal throat" — Wolfthomas
  • Except it is stated, repeatedly, that the vast majority of Cable's powers were being used to keep the virus in check, and that if it ever did spread to that level, it would KILL HIM.
• The final chapter of the Dark Phoenix Saga. At first it seems like a BLAM...a massive plotline about how power corrupts ending with a trip to SPACE!!!! But then I realized: The Shi'Ar Empire is acting exactly like humanity would, with their resources and technology, faced with something they couldn't comprehend and were afraid of. JUST LIKE ANTI-MUTANT HYSTERIA. Empress Lilandra even admitted how much she loved Charles Xavier and how much she owed the X-Men, but in the end it wasn't enough to overcome the paranoia, bigotry, and hypocrisy of her own empire. ~ Ingonyama
  • A second one on Whedon's Astonishing run. At two different points in the initial "Gifted" arc, the Danger Room settings get screwed up—once after Wolverine and Cyclops's fight, seemingly because Hank "forgot to specify scale" when he chose Hawaii as the location, and once after Wolverine and Beast's fight when it appears as a giant child's playroom, an apparently random setting but which Emma finds appropriate. However, looking ahead to the "Dangerous" arc, this could be seen not as errors or randomness but as Foreshadowing of Danger coming alive and sentient and choosing these settings deliberately. Which also proves she has something of a sense of humor!
• Wolverine in general. He often refers to himself as a "canucklehead". When I read this in my youth, I always thought he was pronouncing the silent "K" in knucklehead because he wasn't particularly bright (all that struggling with his animal side perhaps robbing him of higher cognitive function, I figured). Returning to comics after having experienced the world more myslef, I came to understand that he was talking about being both hard-headed (the adamantium helps) and a canuck—a Canadian. Guess who felt like the knucklehead then? ~ NeutronPong
• A moment that struck while reading Evil Only Has to Win Once, which mentions how notable it is that the X-Men's bad futures seem to ignore all the other heroes—which almost immediately brought to mind the Days of Future Past. In that future, the Sentinels killed all the mutants. During a war like that, how many non-mutant heroes would fight against the Sentinels due to having mutant family (the Fantastic Four), mutant friends (Spider-Man), or just out of principle (Captain America and most Avengers)? To kill the mutants means you'd have to go through them. And the Sentinels did. And how much of a leap would it be for the Sentinels to focus on the rest of the meta human population before turning on the "normal" humans? ~ Shotoman
  • It's not so much all down to personal loyalties and duty, neither. Heroes like Spider-Man might be friends with mutants, but they themselves are mutates, having had their genetic make-up messed around (here, by being bitten by a radioactive spider). It's not much of a big leap for the Sentinels to go from attacking mutants to attacking human mutates.
  • As Texts from Superheroes puts it: "There are Sentinels in the area, thought I'd give you a heads up." "Oh, I'll be fine, I'm not a mutant." "Have fun explaining that to the giant killer robot."
• Relating to the above, why do Sentinels almost invariably turn on humanity as well as mutantkind in the inevitable Bad Future that results when they get deployed? Because, as mutancy is a genetic trait, it is only logical (especially for a machine intelligence) for one aiming to eradicate mutants to completely uproot the genes. Once the active mutants are all detained, then the next priority is to go after the carriers; steadily working your way through those who possess dormant mutant genes, and then the mutant gene combiners, wiping out those who have first the potential to become mutants, and then those who have the potential to create mutant offspring and grandchildren. Thing is, that's kind of like trying to completely exterminate every last carrier for the gene for blue eyes in real-world humanity. To say nothing of the inevitable revolutions/anarchy that're going to happen when the mutant hunting giant robots turn on "ordinary human beings".
• A bit of Fridge Brilliance for the main villain Magneto. Note this is not my piece of fridge brilliance but one that amazed me when I read them in the comments section on Cracked.
  • "I used to like Magneto as a villain. He seemed to truly believe in mutant superiority and what he was doing. Then I remember an episode of the cartoon when he left Professor x during WWII and turned evil. He said that humans were doomed because they "can't even make peace with themselves." By this reasoning Magneto believed humans would never accept mutants because they fight amongst their own kind.Then as I grew older I start to think more on the subject. And eventually it came to me, what did Magneto really do? He gathered a bunch of mutants that believed in him and fought against OTHER FREAKING MUTANTS. He fights the x-men because they don't agree with him, he has fought apocalypse, and other mutants throughout the series. So humans are doomed because they "can't even make peace with themselves" yet mutants seem to have the same problem. So what does that make magneto? The same old hypocritical and stupid generic villain every comic book story has." -Walter Lives
  • And the reply to it adding more brilliance to the mix — "Wait, you think Magneto's hypocrisy is that they and the humans both fight among themselves? You're missing the obvious one here. You know who ELSE thought that their species, or say, race, was superior? The same ones who killed his whole family. He literally became a Super-Hitler, coming far closer to killing all humans than the Nazis came to killing all there "undesirables". That's his big hypocrisy there." — The Naive Skeptic
    • You can read comments here with full context: http://www.cracked.com/article_17175_6-supervillains-who-were-actually-ok-guys.html#ixzz23iIhkSk4
    • Magneto fight the X-Men because of ideological differences and because they get in his way and many times he have wanted Xavier to work with him side by side to help out mutants. He fights Xavier and his X-Men because of his beliefs, not because they have different powers.
    • That's a pretty good realization, though I don't think the final summation of him being a "Super Hitler" or a "stupid generic villain" holds much weight. Besides Silver Age Magneto or badly written Grant Morrison Magneto, Mags rarely tries to wipe out humanity; rather, he tries to wipe out their ability to harm his people. It doesn't really make him a weak villain, in fact it serves as a Fatal Flaw that stops him from crossing into being just a straight-up Anti-Hero; like all extremists, he's just as guilty of the same things he credits his persecutors for, which is why he's still ultimately a villain.
• Creator Rob Liefeld has been critical of Shatterstar's outing as an enthusiastic bisexual. However, one has to remember that Shatterstar is from Mojoworld, a dimension where entertainment is everything. It was almost inevitable that Shatterstar would eventually become interested in media outside of his own genre (gladiator fights), and since so much entertainment centers around sex, he would naturally become fascinated by it sooner or later.
• Fridge Horror: Given that the X-Men are only ever shown intercepting with a mutant who's either in danger or has a power that makes them a potential hazard to themselves or others, its safe to assume that the million+ mutants we never see but are mentioned probably don't have powers that are particularly dangerous. Its clear mutants with cool powers are a minority given that civilian mutants, when they appear, tend to just be physically mutated people living in poor conditions who's powers are either passive or limited simply to physical traits that are useless in most situations. However, as they're the ones who live in the streets and not in mansions or anything, they're the ones who face the brunt force of hatred from humans and any counter-measures they employ. So, picture this scenario: You're a mutant, born with a harmless ability, if that (it could be anything, down to naturally pink skin or the ability to make people forget you exist after they stop paying attention to you), and then here comes the Sentinels, designed to hunt down the most dangerous mutants. You can't run away fast enough, you can't hide, and unlike the X-Men, you can't fight back. This is the reality most mutants face.
• Something I noted as Reality Is Unrealistic, but also fitting here. A lot of people often go on about how the X-Men "don't fit" with the Marvel Universe because people seem to be OK with other, non-mutant superhumans, but for some reason think mutants are scum. Supposedly, it doesn't make sense to hate mutants if you don't have a problem with other superheroes, but here's the reality people forget: Bigotry in real life doesn't make sense either. There is no real, logical reason to hate black people, or Asian people, or gay people, or any other minority, yet people do it anyway; on top of that, its really not uncommon for someone to hate one minority group with a passion but not have any problem with another, even if there's ultimately no real difference between the groups. Bigotry is unreasonable by nature, so of course the mutant haters aren't going to make sense.
  • Add to that some other Reality Subtext: most of the other non-mutant powered superheroes are individuals who acquired their powers by accident. They will not reproduce, they do not form communities or gangs who "infringe" on the neighborhood, and they are not a part of the general population. Mutants, however, are widespread and unpredictable, and therefore would seem much more threatening than results of random freak accidents like Spider-Man or Miss Marvel.
  • To further the point, ant-mutants liking superheroes like the Fantastic Four, but hate mutants for essentially the same reason is a double standard. Double standards are one of the great pillars of bigotry.
• Wolverine's Perma-Stubble is a side-effect of his Healing Factor. Whenever he shaves, the stubble immediately regenerates, and then reverts back to a normal rate of growth because after that it's not healing any more, it's just growing.
• Cyclops mentions, in the context of the mystery of Maddie Pryor, that Jean died on September 1, 1980. This is a subtle meta-reference, as this was official date of publication of the issue where Jean died.
• A couple of off-hand remarks in a few early '80s issues completely destroys the comics' internal continuity of that period. First, as mentioned above, Cyclops canonically pegs Jean's death at Sept. 1, 1980. Earlier, in the issue "I, Magneto" in 1981, Cyclops and Magneto are talking about Jean's death and he mentions it as having happened a year previous. So far, so good. In a 1983 issue (the one where the X-Men defeat Mastermind and his plot to destroy the X-Men from within), Professor X talks of Jean's death as having happened "years ago", which implies that the comic is running in real time. Now here's where things get crazy. Let's look at character ages as stated in the comic. Kitty Pryde (may her codenames be many) enters the comic sometime in August, 1980 ^note In Real Life, a few months earlier, but it can be inferred that the events in that stretch of The Dark Phoenix Saga take place within a few days or at most a couple of weeks from mid-August up to September 1, at the stated age of 13 1/2. In the 1984 issue "What Happened to Kitty?", Storm replies to the musings of a morgue attendant who is showing her, Rogue and Wolverine what is purported to be Kitty's corpse about Kitty's age by saying "she was not yet fifteen." Meaning that a maximum of only 18 months^note assuming that "13 1/2" means literally "13 years and 182.5 days old" and "not yet 15" means "tomorrow was to have been her 15th birthday" — any other combination drops that figure by a couple of months or more could have possibly passed from her introduction to the "present" day. Assuming real time, she should have either been almost 18, or the actual timeline was set at the very latest in February, 1982, which would make rubbish of Xavier's "years ago" line. There is absolutely no way both of those premises — that Jean Grey's death happened "years ago" and Kitty is "not yet 15" in Comic-Book Time — can be true and have the timeline hold together when you think about it. Even with a charitable reading of Xavier's "years" as meaning "two years ago."
  • Further, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Storm, assuming the comic actually was in real time, could not have been much older than Kitty when recruited and would have to be in their mid-20s by that point in the comic. Yet in a 1984, post-Secret Wars (1984) issue, Colossus is revealed to be only 19, which seems to have been his constant age in the period. In 1981, Nightcrawler celebrates his 21st birthday, meaning he would have been only 15 when recruited by Professor X in 1975.
• One might think it's a little odd that there have been non-mutant members of the X-Men such as Mimic, Longshot, Hepzibah, Lockheed, Cloak & Dagger, Fantomex, and Omega Sentinel, seeing as how their whole theme is that they're the Children of the Atom, and they're looking to gain acceptance by representing their kind as heroes who value equality. Except, if they're goal to be seen as equals, then of course they would allow non-mutants to join. Otherwise, it'd look awfully hypocritical if being a mutant was a prerequisite for being an X-Man.
• This is an old one, but… Rogue the energy vampire names people food items. Or really just one food item, namely the quickest and cheapest source of energy.
• It seems like Bishop's post-Decimation Face–Heel Turn is a retcon, since he now owes his Bad Future to Hope rather than Onslaught...except that a key point of Bishop's future was that he never knew how the X-Men had died, since Legend Fades to Myth, and he only suspected they were killed by a traitor in the first place because of a scrambled recording he found in the future. That recording was, admittedly, from the Onslaught incident, but there was never any objective proof that the X-Men of Bishop's past didn't survive that mess just fine, only to die out some other way later. Really, the entire "X-Traitor is responsible for Bishop's future" plot is a case of Poor Communication Kills.
• The decades of Power Incontinence Rogue had to deal with. Power-nullifying devices existed at that point and the X-Men know Forge, a man who's mutant power is to be able to invent anything he can think of. He couldn't create a bracelet or something for her so she could turn off her powers when she didn't need them?
  • Power inhibitors, when worn on an extended basis, are bad for the wearer’s health.
• So Kitty, whose powers are all about turning insubstantial, has a real thing for guys named Peter. Which becomes hilarious when you consider that 'Peter' ultimately derives from the Greek 'Petros'... which means 'rock'.
• Scott's relationship with Emma Frost becomes a lot less romantic when you remember that its foundation was built on rape and horrible things they both did (She convinced him having psychic sex was the best way to treat his PTSD while acting as his therapist and then they kissed and made out on Jean's grave. Unfortunately, these two things are just the tip of the iceberg).
• Out of Universe this has become far worse as of Uncanny X-Men #32. Where Scott refuses to get back together with Emma. Half the fandom is pissed off at him for wanting to remain out of a relationship that he might not have even consented to (due to Jean's manipulation of his mind) and arguably brought out the worst in him. To summarise: Scott is apparently a dick for not loving his rapist.

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