- We did a whole week of X-Men videos last week,
so let's see what you guys had to say
about Marvel's favorite mutants.
(upbeat music)
So, to start us off,
let's talk about the last video that we did last week,
it was DK's alter ego about what the X in X-Men stands for,
and we talked about how the creation,
Stan Lee was almost going to name the team The Mutants,
very simply The Mutants,
but you know, they said,
well nobody knows what a mutant is,
so you have to change it,
and so they chose the X-Men,
and Denni Bryant brings up an interesting point
that I've thought about before,
and I'm sure a lot of you guys have as well,
have heard that story,
which is okay, sure,
so they don't know what a mutant is,
but they know what an X-Man is?
That doesn't make sense,
and I would think that the thought behind it is
that if you call the team exactly what they are
then that's gonna throw off people if they don't
know what a mutant is,
but if you just give them a catchy name,
like The X-Men,
or The Avengers,
or something like that,
then you can kind of hook them in with that,
and then kind of reveal,
oh yeah, and they're also mutants,
kind of as the story unfolds.
On the Nightcrawler video,
Alex Davidson points out that Nightcrawler being rejected
by DC is kind of a metaphor for mutants
in the Marvel Universe.
So, if you recall,
Nightcrawler was originally going to be a DC character,
and they were like ah,
he's too weird looking,
he's too funny looking,
we don't know want anything to do with him,
and then he found his place over at Marvel
on the X-Men,
which kind of lines up as well with his story
in the comics as well.
I just thought it was brilliant.
And, along those same lines,
there was a great conversation on the Storm video,
started by KewlCats,
who said that Storm's mohawk kind of contradicts
what they X-Men want,
what they stand for about,
you know, wanting to integrate with the human world,
whereas a mowhawk is kind of a sign of rebellious behavior,
especially in those times,
when that comic was released,
which kind of goes counter to,
you know, the X-Men's goal in a way,
and this started a really great conversation with
a couple other commenters,
who were talking about like,
well, what is the X-Men's goal,
are they really trying to find their place
in the human world,
why are they just separated in their school
all by themselves,
and not trying to,
you know, integrate in any sort of way?
And, I thought that was a really fantastic conversation,
and that's actually inspired me to maybe to do a video
about it sooner or later,
but I think all of you guys that participated in that,
you're gonna earn this week's Nerd Sync No Prize,
'cause it made me think,
and I like that.
So, after hearing all of these real origin stories,
and a lot of them having to tie in with Dave Cockram,
Zak Malins-Bush says that,
well, okay, I thought Chris Claremont was the person
who made the X-Men super popular,
but it seems like this Dave Cockram guy
created all of these characters,
so maybe he should be getting a lot of the credit,
and as one of the commenters on that thread pointed out,
quite brilliantly,
it's more like Cockram setup the field,
kind of set the stage,
and then Claremont took those characters,
and just made magic, great stuff.
So, yeah, it was kind of a combination
between the two of them,
obviously Claremont is brilliant,
but I do think that Dave Cockram deserves
a little bit of credit as well.
On the Wolverine video,
there seemed to be a little confusion
that I wanted to clear up.
If you recall,
I talked about how he was almost going to be
a literal Wolverine,
and a lot of you guys commented stuff,
like how you were trying to envision
what that would like like,
and a lot of you were even saying that,
oh it's just like Rocket Raccoon then.
Just to clarify here,
when we're talking about a mutated Wolverine,
what the literal Wolverine origin would've been,
he would look exactly the same as Wolverine now,
he wouldn't be a Wolverine in an X-Men costume.
He would be exactly as we know him,
because if you recall back to the Spiderwoman origin,
where they took that exact thing,
kind of copy-pasted it,
only changed it to a mutated spider,
she still very much looks like a human woman,
she doesn't look like a spider.
That's the route they would have taken with Wolverine,
is they would've taken a wolverine,
mutated it so beyond being a recognizable animal,
into a human form,
until we got who it is now,
so don't, don't envision an actual wolverine
in Wolverine's clothes,
it's literally just Wolverine.
I said Wolverine about 80,000 times in there,
I'm not sure I cleared anything up.
On that same video of Wolverine,
a lot of you guys brought up kind of randomly,
apropos of nothing,
Sabertooth, which I'm glad you did bring it up,
'cause there was a section that I actually cut out
of the video, that I think is really interesting,
so when they were pitching ideas for how Wolverine
would look without his mask,
'cause at this point he'd always just worn a mask,
there was this picture that was floating around,
you know saying, hey,
this could be how Wolverine looks.
Now, obviously you'll recognize this as not Wolverine,
in fact, they ended up going with this design,
but again, if we've learned anything from these videos
it's that, when you draw something,
you have to use it in some capacity,
so of course, they took this rejected idea
for Wolverine's unmasked face,
and they turned into Sabretooth.
I think that's gonna do it for this week guys.
Once again, it's Monday,
which means there's a new episode of the Nerd Sync podcast.
We're talking, once again,
with Mark D. White,
all about the philosophy of Civil War II,
and of course the movie,
and this Captain America reveal that just recently
happened in the comics.
Go listen to that,
it's good stuff,
if you wanna listen to good things.
Links will be in the description,
of course, it's on iTunes,
and SoundCloud, and Stitcher,
and wherever else RSS feeds go
when they talk to philosophy professors.
Oh, and if you're curious about Nerd Sync shirts,
we also have those in the description below.
If you happened to miss last week's Mutant Mayhem,
with all of our X-Men videos,
you can go ahead and click right here
to see the whole playlist,
including the real origin of Nightcrawler,
Storm, and Wolverine,
as well as what the meaning of the X in X-Men
really stands for.
Both of those are also linked in the description below.
I will see you guys on Wednesday
for another episode of Comic Misconceptions.
My name is Scott,
reminding you to read between the panels,
and grow smarter through comics.
See ya!