10 X-Men With Powers That Make No Sense

The X-Men have grown in many ways over the decades, but one of the most important is their powers. Mutant powers have been a focus of the team’s books almost since the beginning, as various heroes and villains have had to deal with their abilities and how they changed their life. There are so many different types of mutant powers and Marvel has done its best to make them make sense. With some of them, it’s quite easy. Super strength and various energy powers have been around for ages, as have mental abilities, but Marvel merry mutants’ powers have also went in some extremely bizarre directions. The House of Ideas is known for their faux-science fiction stories, so they’ve often tried their best to make these powers make some kind of sense.

However, this can be a waste of time. The group and their villains have powers that if you think too much about, the whole thing falls apart. In fact, even the powers that seem to make sense don’t really stand up to any kind of intellectual scrutiny. These ten X-Men powers make no sense, each of them having aspects that break credulity.

10) Chamber

Generation X is a beloved classic for ’90s fans, introducing numerous mutants that fans love. Chamber was basically the male lead of the book and as a visual, he looked amazing. Jono’s psi powers destroyed his chest and jaw, replacing all of that with roiling energy. There’s no way this makes sense. He has a giant hole where his cardiovascular system should be and any explanation is going to make zero sense. He looks cool (and was a good character for a while) but only because of his nonsensical powers.

9) Marrow

The ’90s were all about the X-Men, with numerous mutants introduced. Marrow popped up in the days after “Age of Apocalypse”, a former Morlock terrorist out to hurt humanity for what they’ve done to humanity. She’d eventually join the team after her defeat, becoming the new Wolverine of the group – the mouthy, violent loner. Her bones grew uncontrollably, allowing her to pull them out and use them as weapons. There’s just so much about her powers that make no sense. She should be in pain constantly – her powers are all about uncontrollable bone growth, with bones tearing through her skin that she then breaks off to use as weapons – to the extent that she would be basically useless for anything but screaming and being addicted to painkilling opiates.

8) Forge

The X-Men have had some of the coolest tech support heroes ever, with Forge being one of the most useful. His powers allow him to create anything he can imagine, but he’s not actually super-intelligent. See, he doesn’t really know how to make, say, a faster than light engine. He can just build it. He doesn’t tap into the Astral Realm to copy knowledge from any living being of something like that. He just builds. It’s a cool power and he is a great character (go back and read his time as the leader of X-Factor in the mid ’90s), but it’s hogwash.

7) Iceman

One of the biggest changes to mutant powers was the introduction of Omega-level mutants to the X-Men, mutants with powers with no ceiling. One of the most powerful is, surprisingly, Iceman. His ice powers have reached godlike levels, but if we’re being honest, they have never made sense. The power to lower temperatures to make ice out of moisture in the air isn’t that much of a stretch, but then we get to the part where his body transforms into ice. He’s just living ice when he wants to be and we know that he doesn’t have organs in this form because of that time in the ’90s when he had a giant hole in his chest. There’s really no cogent explanation for it and once you add in his power to make moving ice constructs, there’s really no explanation at all.

6) Archangel

Archangel, before he was taken by Apocalypse and remade, was just a dude with wings and they actually tried to make it make sense. He was given hollow bones to lower his body weight, which makes it more plausible that he could fly, but it wouldn’t make all that much difference because he’s quite muscular and it weighs more by volume. However, he would need a lot of body fat to conserve his warmth, because the higher up you go, the colder it is. His wings would have to be way bigger and stronger to keep him aloft and that’s before we get to the fact that human bodies aren’t all that aerodynamic. He can also transform between feathered and metal wings somehow. All of this is before we get to his short-lived healing powers, which make it all even worse.

5) Wolverine

Wolverine was rocked to his core in 1993, when Magneto tore the adamantium off his bones. Fans were shocked and we didn’t really know what the hero was going to be like going forward; back then, Wolvie’s claws were thought to be implanted weapons given to him by Weapon X. Wolverine (Vol. 2) #75 revealed that the claws were actually bone the whole time, which brings his powers into the nonsense range. Logan’s powers are all about being an animal, so it’s weird that he doesn’t have claws more like Sabretooth, Romulus, or Wild Child, who all have the same powers as him. Also, as far as it goes, he should have to eat a lot of food all the time to make his healing factor work, because how else would their regenerative abilities would work?

4) Colossus

Colossus’s powers have the same problem as Iceman’s honestly. Piotr Rasputin’s skin doesn’t transform into metal, which would also make no sense, his entire body becomes a living organic steel statue (whatever that means; somehow his steel his alive, I guess?) that can somehow move. He doesn’t need to breath and he has no organs in this form. However, there have been alternate universes where he died and was torn open, with bones and such on display, which shouldn’t be the case. The powers make no sense, but the inconsistency makes it even worse.

3) Maggot

Maggot was introduced a little after Marrow was and ended up joining the team after “Operation: Zero Tolerance”. His powers were some of the most unique we’d ever seen once the whole thing was revealed. His maggots were actually his digestive system; he would release them to eat things, they would re-enter his body, and then he would gain superhuman physical abilities. I don’t really think I need to explain much about why this doesn’t make sense. Unless his blood is completely antiseptic, he’s dead, since it’s a very dirty world out there. There’s no way he wouldn’t get bad infections constantly.

2) Emma Frost

Emma Frost is one of the most powerful telepaths in X-Men history and those kinds of powers have at least made a little bit of sense over the year. However, it’s her secondary mutation that moves the whole thing to nonsense territory. She was able to transform into an organic diamond (Morrison wanted to use Colossus, but he had just been killed, and they needed someone with those kind of powers), which really doesn’t fit with her other powers. I don’t think anyone has ever tried to explain it other than Emma likes diamonds. It’s definitely helped her in fights, but it makes no sense.

1) Cyclops

Cyclops is one of the most important X-Men but his powers have long been a bone of contention for the character. Scott Summers absorbs ambient cosmic energies and converts them into blasts of concussive force, which he can’t control thanks to a brain injury. We’re not going to be talking about the “punch dimension” because that was always nonsense, but there’s more wrong with them than that. To begin with, there’s no way his glasses should be able to stay on his face, since it’s concussive energy and needs to have a lot of mass. Then, of course, there’s the source of energy. He would need to consume a lot more energy to allow the whole thing to work, since the ozone layer screens a lot out. His powers are continually working and there’s no way he’s just getting that power from ambient radiation. His powers are amazing, but they are also amazingly nonsensical.

What nonsensical X-powers did I miss? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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