(click)
(tones)
- Today we're gonna tackle 50 years
of crazy X-Men stories and characters
and just stuff, so let's do it.
(intense music)
Welcome to "Comic Misconceptions,"
a show that does stuff.
I'm your host, me,
and 50 years ago, "X-Men" number one
was published by Marvel Comics.
In light of this celebration,
I wanna bring you guys 50 awesome facts
about X-Men.
I want to, but I'm short on time,
so we'll just see how many I get.
It's not gonna be 50.
You probably already know by the title
of this episode.
But anyway, let's start it off with number one,
which was last week's trivia question, which was,
what material were Cyclops' glasses made of?
Once again, a ton of you guys got it right
on YouTube and Facebook and even Google+,
like a ton of people did.
Congratulations, you guys,
it's so awesome that you're getting involved,
having them all scroll along the bottom here.
And of course, the answer is ruby quartz.
Cyclops didn't always need these glasses, however,
there was never a steady stream
of energy pouring out of his eyeballs,
even when his powers emerged.
He only needed the glasses when
he realized that he could never fully control
his mutant abilities.
How Cyclops got ruby quartz glasses
has changed over the years.
First it was just an optometrist who
was trying to ease Scott's headaches
and glowy red eyes that he got because
of his mutation, and he just kinda stumbled upon
ruby quartz as a solution, just kinda outta nowhere.
Then it was revealed that Mr. Sinister
put mental blocks on Scott to help
try to control his powers, but when he realized
that he could never do that, he physically tried
to block it by way of the ruby quartz glasses.
But in the most recent origin of Scott Summers,
they skipped the glasses all together
and just go straight to the classic visor
that we know, that was given to him
by none other than Professor X.
Now, the original team for the X-Men
is a different roster than you might expect.
It only consisted of Cyclops, Jean Grey,
Beast, Angel and Iceman,
and, of course, Professor X, if you wanna count that.
It feels like somebody is missing, right,
'cause when you think X-Men, you probably
think Wolverine, too.
Unfortunately, Wolverine wasn't introduced
until the '70s, because in the '60s,
he was all like--
- Excuse me, I'm Erik Lehnsherr.
- Charles Xavier.
- Go (bleep) yourself.
- Actually, he was really in Canada fighting Hulk.
You see, Wolverine first had his appearance
in a similar cameo-type deal in
"Incredible Hulk" number 180, and then
his first full appearance in "Incredible Hulk" 181.
When coming up with ideas for the character,
two possible ideas were on the table.
Number one was Wolverine, and number two
was Badger.
Thank god they went with Wolverine.
There's also rumor that Wolverine
was meant to be an actual wolverine animal
that had mutated into a humanoid form.
Again, that's not entirely ideal, so.
Don't even get me started on Wolverine's claws.
They were originally just supposed
to be like a part of his gloves.
They were just attachments that you
could just take on and off.
Then it was revealed that they were put into him
via the Weapon X program.
Then again, we see that Magneto
rips all of the adamantium out of Wolverine's skeleton
to reveal that he had own claws hidden there all along.
After Magneto had ripped the adamantium
out of him, Wolverine became this
kind of noseless beast-type thing
with even stronger mutations.
The reason for this being, as far as I understand it,
is that the adamantium in Wolverine's body
suppresses his mutations from reaching
their full peak because his body's constantly
working overtime to prevent himself
from dying of adamantium poisoning.
Also, one time, Wolverine was beaten
by Spock.
Seriously, that happened.
But he didn't die, though, oh, no.
That's a job for Jean Grey.
Jean Grey, originally introduced as Marvel Girl,
has died approximately 14ish times
in the main Marvel Comics universe.
She's covered such famous deaths
as crashing a space shuttle
or being wiped from existence by Thanos
or even being stabbed by Wolverine
on more than a few occasions.
Let's move onto another founding member
of the X-Men, Angel.
You also may have seen him looking
a little something like this.
The reason behind the switch from feather wings
to metal wings is because he had his feather wings
surgically removed against his wishes,
and then he seemingly died in a plane crash,
only to be saved by Apocalypse, a mutant
who helped get his wings back by using science
to build him metal wings.
Eventually, his metal wings molted, as they do,
to reveal his natural wings had been growing back
to the way that they were originally.
But if we're gonna talk physical changes,
we can't not talk about Beast.
Hank McCoy was an average-looking young mutant
when he was working on a serum that allowed people
to have mutations for a short period of time.
He took it himself to disguise his appearance,
but he didn't change back in time,
so he was stuck the way that he was forever.
Kind of like in "Animorphs," when that kid
turned into that red-tailed hawk,
but he couldn't change back in time,
so he was stuck that way for a while.
Anybody?
No?
Much like Hulk, Beast was originally gray,
but, of course, time allowed him to become
that beautiful blue color that we all know
and love today.
But guys, what good is an episode about
the X-Men without talking about the man
behind it all, Professor X, who, despite
what you may have seen in the movies,
is not British.
He was born in New York.
He did study abroad in Oxford for two years,
but that's not enough to get an accent.
He is the brother of Juggernaut--
- The Juggernaut (bleep).
- That's too easy, let's not count that one.
Instead, I will tell you the one weakness
to Professor Xavier, the one thing
that can beat this great man,
stairs.
That's right.
What good is that big old brain of yours
against the power of gravity.
Lastly, but probably most importantly,
if you take anything away from this episode,
make sure it is this right here:
The X in X-Men
does not stand for Xavier.
Despite what you may have heard
on "The Big Ban Theory."
- The X-Men were named for the X in Charles Xavier.
- It's not true.
In X-Men number one, it's said,
clear as day by Charles himself, that mutants,
and I quote, "possess extra power,
"one which ordinary human do not.
"That is why I call my students X-Men,
"for extra power."
There you go, you guys.
Spelled out right there for ya.
What's that? Like 25?
That's close enough to 50.
(buzzes lips) Yeah.
Leave in the comments below.
I'm interested to see what you guys think.
Who is your favorite X-Men over the past 50 years?
Mine, personally, I love Kitty Pryde.
She's awesome.
But I wanna see what you guys think.
Right now, let's move on to the weekly trivia challenge.
(lively music)
So October is a time when a lotta scary things
are happening, obviously because of Halloween,
so I figured what better way to celebrate it
than by going into some horror comics
and scary characters and Halloween-themed stories.
And why not start it off with a comic book
that is really, really popular as of the last couple years,
as well as getting its own show.
I know that you know what I'm talking about.
It's "The Walking Dead."
In the comic and the show, Carl,
that little annoying brat that he is,
wears a t-shirt with this symbol on it.
Your trivia question this week is,
what does the symbol on Carl's t-shirt
from "The Walking Dead" mean?
If you know the answer, leave it in the comments below
on this YouTube video specifically.
We're not gonna do it on Facebook
and Twitter anymore because it's getting hard
to curate them all.
Like I said, we had a lot from Google+.
All you guys who are watching it
in different parts of the Internet,
please just click on the video and post your answer
in the comments below, and you can get featured
on the show next week.
So get started on the weekly trivia challenge, yeah.
What was the heck was that?
(lively music)
All right, guys and gals, a couple quick things
to throw at your face before we go.
Like NerdSync Productions on Facebook
for some good, awesome news that we like
and some great opinionated conversations
with your fellow nerds.
Follow us on Twitter for just random junk
that I throw up there and questions that I ask
you guys that I'm curious to know your responses.
And heck, follow me on Twitter
@scottniswander, and send me a tweet
about your favorite X-Men quote
from any of the X-Men movies because
that's fun, I think.
But that's all that I have for your brains today,
so join us next week when we talk about
more things that you thought you knew about comics.
Secondly.
But now, let's (mumbles).
Please call me out on me, keep (mumbles).
(nonsense speaking)
Oh, yeah, get it started
on the weekly trivia challenge, yeah.
(laughs) What is happening?
All right.
Serious face, let's do it.