T w e n t y S i d e d

I’ve always thought the powers of mutants in the X-Man universe were pretty off-the-wall. Aside from nitpicky issues like where all the energy comes from and how special DNA can manipulate the physical world, I’ve always wondered what other mutant powers there are in the world. The X-Men and the mutants serving under Magneto are obviously the best, and their powers lend themselves to warfare, whcih is why they are high-profile mutants. But even among these guys, their powers are really diverse. Controlling the weather. Teleportation. Laser eyes. Freezing stuff. Turning into metal form. It’s pretty clear that powers vary quite a bit, and there must be a lot of powers out there that aren’t nearly as cool.

So what about all the poor mutants who have stupid or pointless powers? Imagine all the wash-outs from Xavier’s school:

1. Rash: Can cause foes to experience mild itching.
2. Mood Ring: Her skin turns a different color depending on how she feels.
3. Dry-Man: Immune to high humidity.
4. Styles: Can control the movement and color of her individual strands of hair to create any hair style she wishes.
5. Quackster: Can perfectly imitate the sound of any duck in the world with such fidelity that it can even fool the ducks themselves!

But these guys are the lucky ones. Imagine the poor guy who finds out he’s a mutant but doesn’t know what his powers are. How does he go about finding out? I imagine his journal would be fun to read.

How upset is he going to be when at last he learns his mutant power is “can see into the minds of goldfish”?

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Unexpected news:

DC comics announces that Gotham has a gay hero.

Even more unexpected:

It isn’t Batman.

It’s Batwoman.

This is a brilliant move. They brought back a hero they killed off decades ago and just re-remade her as a lesbian. They can leverage the “bat” name recognition and claim that they are making a move towards more diversity, while also pandering to the young male facination with lesbians. Let’s face it, if they had simply announced Batman was gay (which everyone jokes about anyway) it would have been a fatal move. Call it homophobic if you want, but heterosexual teenage boys don’t want to read comic books about the lives of gay men.

Left: Old and busted. Right: New and busted.

(If they really wanted to have a lesbian character, she would be mannish, with a butch haircut and a male costume. That would be a real nod towards the lesbian community, but it wouldn’t entice fanboys. Since they chose the spandex, heels, and makeup route, we can discern what their real goals are, and it has nothing to do with diversity.)

But I’ve never liked these “me too” female characters. Spider-Girl. Super Girl. Hawk Girl. Batwoman. She-Hulk. Ms. Marvel. They are never going to move out of the shadow of their male counterpart. The sad thing is that the me-too ladies outnumber original female characters who have their own book. Wonder Woman is the only one I can think of that isn’t a sad pantomime of a more interesting hero, or a supporting character from some other comic that was given her own spinoff series. She stands on her own, which is all too rare for female heroines.

I actually like the concept of comic books. I love the visual storytelling. It’s a unique medium and I think after all these years their full potential is still untapped. As they have reached out to adults, they have added boobies, swearing, and gore. That isn’t what is keeping the adults away. Comic books are still saddled with the story-telling skills of Saturday morning cartoons. Evil twins. Amnesia. Nobody ever stays dead. Dialog is clumsy and ham-fisted. Villians monologue while the hero is tied up. Women fight in six-inch heels. This lesbian character is just another clumsy attempt at growing up. It proves that while comic books are decades old, their mindset is still 15.

For the record, I do read comics from time to time, but I’m always struck by how much better they could be if the writers would just aim a little higher.

Later on the DC shill has this to say:

Lame. If you create a character who’s hispanic because you want a hispanic character, then you are going about things the wrong way. You already tried that. Remeber El Dorado?

Make someone who’s interesting, and who’s different from the heroes we already have. If you do this, you’ll end up with a diverse cast in the end, and they won’t be a bunch of obvious plastic stereotypes. Get rid of that Affirmative Action mentality and just write us a good story about people. (With super powers.)

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.