The X-Men have amazing villains. It all started back in the beginning, with bad guys like Magneto, Juggernaut, the Sentinels, and many more all debuting. Over the years, they’ve faced off against evil mutants who want to destroy humanity, evil humans who want to destroy mutantkind, aliens who want to destroy humanity, various terrorist organizations, and basically every single other kind of bad guy you can think of. The X-Men are one of the most formidable teams in comics, so their villains have to be quite formidable in order to hold a candle to Marvel’s merry mutants. Over the years, we’ve seen amazing feats of power from the team’s foes.
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Superpowers are very cool, but there are a lot of them that don’t really make any sense. Many X-Men villains have powers that the more you think about them, the less sense they make. These seven X-Men villains have powers that make zero sense, abilities that get confusing the more you think of them.
7) Mystique
Mystique is one of the X-Men’s greatest villains, her shapeshifting powers allowing her to outfight and outmaneuver the team. Shapeshifting is a pretty standard superpower, so most fans never really think too much about it. Mystique has very standard shape-shifting powers, but that doesn’t change how little sense any metamorphic powers make. Somehow, she’s able to add more mass to her body, allowing her to transform into bigger people than she is. She can also become smaller, losing mass. Matter cannot be created or destroyed and trying to figure out how her powers work is headache-inducing.
6) Apocalypse
Apocalypse is one of the X-Men’s strongest villains, with an amazing coterie of powers. En Sabah Nur was born with complete control of his molecular structure, super-strength, immortality, mental powers, and energy manipulating powers. His powers don’t really go together. It would make sense for someone who has control over his molecules to have immortality and super-strength, but his mental powers and energy abilities just don’t really fit with the whole thing. You can tell that they created him to be a generically powerful villain, adding powers and making sense of it as time went on.
5) Famine of the Final Horsemen
The Horsemen of Apocalypse have always been deadly, with the various Famines being one of the most dangerous members of the various incarnations. The Final Horsemen Famine was Jeb Lee, a Confederate with the power to give his targets a bio-auditory cancer by drumming. He’s a villain who plays sick drum solos that kill you, which is unequivocally awesome, but also makes very little sense. A “bio-auditory cancer” sounds like a nonsense word created by a kid making things up, although at the very least spreading it with music does make sense. It’s an interesting twist on the power of Famine and made Jeb one of the coolest Horsemen ever.
4) Black Tom Cassidy
Black Tom Cassidy is a classic X-Men villain, teaming up with Juggernaut to go after the X-Men while his cousin Banshee and becoming a mercenary. When he first appeared, he had the power to fire concussive blasts through wood, which makes no sense on its own but then it got even more confusing. Eventually, he gained the power to control plants, his powers completely changing. Tom’s original powers were completely nonsensical and changing them to what is basically chlorokinesis makes the whole thing an even bigger conundrum. His powers are definitely cool, but they’ve never made any sense.
3) Holocaust
“Age of Apocalypse” is a legendary story, with Magneto’s X-Men battling the forces of Apocalypse. Apocalypse’s mutant empire was made up of powerful mutants and one of the most deadly was his son Holocaust, a massive armored glowing skeleton. X-Men Chronicles #1 showed that he used to look somewhat human, but at some point was hurt so badly in battle that he was reduced to a skeleton animated by energy, held together by his suit of armor. Somehow, he went from a human to a skeleton and was able to survive, which makes no sense. It’s hard to even figure out exactly what his powers are or if much like his father he has a hodge-podge of powers, because there’s no way that energy-controlling powers could have allowed him to survive losing his flesh, muscle, and organs.
2) Abyss
Holocaust wasn’t the only “Age of Apocalypse” Horseman to have weird powers. Abyss was the craziest Horseman, coming unraveled mentally and physically rather easily. His body seemed like it was made of ribbons, allowing him to unravel himself and grab his foes, pulling them into the dark world inside his body. Having a portal in his body isn’t all that weird, but his body makes the whole thing nonsensical. He’s basically made up of thin ribbons with nothing holding them up, as there’s no way he’s still made of flesh, his powers somehow transforming him into something beyond human.
1) Sebastian Shaw
Sebastian Shaw is one of the most dangerous mutants out there. He’s a genius engineer who made his fortune with his mind and kept growing it because of his ruthless business sense, taking over the Hellfire Club. His mutant powers allowed him to absorb kinetic energy and transfer it to super-strength and invulnerability. The more you hurt him, the stronger he gets. However, if his powers depend completely on him getting powered up by attacks, the first few attacks would kill him, especially if someone like Colossus hits him. On top of that, there’s the exact mechanism of how the kinetic energy of getting hit can make him stronger. His powers are awesome, but they will take you down a rabbit hole the longer you think of them.
What X-villain do you think have the weirdest powers? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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